Official Comment Count: 1,031,864
One man's struggle against impermanence
John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and a position as a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Queensland, in Australia. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
This blog is designed evolved to host any random thoughts that happen to be passing through my forebrain at a given moment. So there will be errors...
My personal page is here:
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
July 30, 2008
Category: Evolution
For a while now, and in particular since I read Robert Bannister's Social Darwinism and then actually read Herbert Spencer's own work, I have been unable to reconcile the mythology about social Darwinism with the actual writings of Spencer...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:29 AM • 7 Comments •
July 29, 2008
Category: Biodiversity
Electron cryotomographic reconstruction of a C. merolae cell. n = nucleus; c = chloroplast; p = peroxisome; er = endoplasmic reticulum. Source Elio Schaechter has a typically informative and informed post on the smallest eukaryotes, a kind of algae...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:46 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Logic and philosophy
From PhD Comics:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:10 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: Politics
The Labor government has a policy to force ISPs to filter web requests to prevent child pornography. Sounds nice in theory, but I've been using a filtered ISP at my university (they're running a trial) and what I can...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:53 AM • 6 Comments •
July 28, 2008
Category: Administrative
Those who are getting very agitated, missing out on their Usenet fix of the group talk.origins, which has been dormant for the past few days, should know that Steps Are Being Taken. Stop emailing me. I don't know any...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:28 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: General Science
Lately there has been a rediscovery on the blogia of C. P. Snow's Two Cultures - which initially was the divide between those who understood the Second Law of Thermodynamics and those who don't, but is now, it appears,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:59 AM • 30 Comments •
July 27, 2008
Category: Evolution
A new genus name for water mites, from a recent paper in Zootaxa: Vagabundia comes from the Spanish word ‘vagabundo’ that means ‘wanderer’. It is a feminine substantive; sci refers to Science Citation Index. We pointed out some time...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:39 AM • 4 Comments •
July 26, 2008
Category: Basic Concepts
In the process of maintaining the Basic Concepts in Science list I often have to make a judgement call about whether or not something is a basic enough post. For example I have a slew of rather good but...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:02 PM • 8 Comments •
July 25, 2008
Category: Evolution
Strange cladogram from another method, able to leap large evolutionary distances in a single bound, faster than a speeding parsimony analysis... oh, you get the idea. A supertree is what you get when you add a number of possibly...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:26 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Humor
Now it's against gravity... “Too many scientists have been afraid to speak out against the powerful gravity lobby,” said Crowther. “With Intelligent Motion, we are looking forward to imposing balance on yet another heavy-handed field of science.”...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:07 PM • 12 Comments •
July 24, 2008
Category: Sermon
I spent three days trying to reinstall Vista on my son's Dell Inspiron laptop; three solid days. Using Dell's supplied disks and instructions, no less. Each time it would fail for some unknown reason. We lost everything on the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:31 AM • 10 Comments •
July 23, 2008
Category: Administrative
I've been uncommonly productive in the last few days - first the book went off (and then I find that one chapter needs a complete rewrite, but hey), then I sent off a paper based on the talk I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:14 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Creationism
Once upon a time, a Roman author named Quintus Ennius wrote: "how like us is that very ugly beast, the ape!" It was quoted by Cicero, and from him Bacon, Montaigne and various others. But always it was thought...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:05 AM • 53 Comments •
July 22, 2008
Category: Creationism
A Floridan neighborhood was surprised yesterday when after heavy rain, catfish started walking around their street. Of course, the fish were quick to point out that this doesn't prove evolution is possible, as they all went to the local...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:39 PM • 6 Comments •
July 21, 2008
Category: Administrative
Today I got my manuscript off to the publisher. Heaven knows what the editors will do with it; I expect a sympathetic treatment as the publisher's editorial board are quite keen. But it's like having a ten year boil...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:27 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: General Science
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:09 AM • 12 Comments •
July 20, 2008
Category: Administrative
John Hawks has an excellent essay up (I don't know how correct it is, never having been on a tenure track) on the merits and problems of being an academic blogger. Do read it....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:54 PM • 1 Comments •
July 19, 2008
Category: Fiction
Wow. Just... wow. This is not the best superhero film I have seen. This is perhaps the best film I have seen for over a decade. It is replete with moral problems, Greek tragedy, farce, some serious character development,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:24 PM • 17 Comments •
July 18, 2008
Category: Humor
I miss Buffy. I miss Mal Reynolds. I really miss Kaylee. Most of all I miss Joss Whedon's sparkling entertainment. So go watch Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog, now!...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:49 AM • 11 Comments •
July 17, 2008
Category: Humor
Stealing this one from Moselio Schachter: A guy walks at night on a beach in California and stubs his toe against an old bottle, which breaks and releases a genie. “I’ll grant you one wish, oh Master,” says the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:29 PM • 11 Comments •
Category: Humor
Courtesy James F in the "Getting Rid of Darwinism" comments...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:38 PM • 2 Comments •
July 16, 2008
Category: Evolution
Good to see that Olivia Judson has finally caught up with me......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:54 AM • 13 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Ryan Gregory at Genomicron has a couple of interesting posts; One on Natural Selection before Darwin, which discusses prior presentations back to Hutton. I think he's right that prior to Darwin selection was typically not thought of as a...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:37 AM • 0 Comments •
July 15, 2008
Category: Administrative
Not the Simon and Garfunkel song, this: Just seeing if it works....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:29 AM • 3 Comments •
July 14, 2008
Category: Humor
Language Log has a very nice summary of the reasons why some holes are black, and some are white....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:57 AM • 1 Comments •
July 12, 2008
Category: Administrative
My paper in TREE is now available as an in-press corrected proof. It is titled "The roles, reasons and restrictions of science blogs", so thanks to you guys (and Bob O'Hara in particular) for the raw material and opportunities....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:12 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Evolution
When does a person's religious beliefs constrain someone who is not religious? What sorts of redress can a religious person expect in a secular society? These questions arise from the recent to-do about PZ Myers defense of the stealing...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:11 AM • 132 Comments •
July 10, 2008
Category: Humor
If a black hole is where common sense is lost, is a white hole where we spew out absurdities? To say so seems like blackmail, which only yellow dogs employ, with a niggardly vocabulary. It's a red flag, I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:52 PM • 12 Comments •
Category: Politics
here...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:34 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Administrative
Well I have done my talk at the AAP conference, and survived with ego intact (as if there was any doubt). All I need to do now is sleep for eight straight days. Sorry but I don't have the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:00 AM • 2 Comments •
July 3, 2008
Category: Administrative
Hi folks. It's conference time again, and of course we have organised to have the Australasian Association of Philosophy/Australasian Association for the History Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAP/AAHPSSS) conferences in the coldest place on the mainland -...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:38 AM • 17 Comments •
July 1, 2008
Category: Evolution
Readers may be somewhat surprised that Evolving Thoughts hasn't made much of the Darwin bicentennial and the Origin sesquicentennial so far. Well, I haven't needed to, given the number of other folk making hay from this. In particular I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:58 PM • 24 Comments •
Category: Politics
This is me commenting on American politics again. Sorry. I am somewhat amazed at the furore over Wesley Clark's comment that being a prisoner of war doesn't automatically make one qualified as Commander in Chief of the armed services,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:58 PM • 16 Comments •
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