Now on ScienceBlogs: And so, driven on ceaselessly toward new shores
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 worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. 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...
I also have an Australia-focussed blog: The Drought Resistant Philosopher
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
October 28, 2008
Category: General Science
One of the downsides to being old is that your favourite teachers die. I learned most of what I know about the Empiricists, in particular John Locke, from a book by C. B. Martin, who passed away recently. Hat...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:51 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Politics
As I feared, the internet filtering issue has now been taken up by special interests. The conservative Christian political party Family First, run largely by the Hillsong evangelical denomination, has one senator, but the balance of power is so...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:36 AM • 9 Comments •
October 27, 2008
Category: Humor
The Grauniad has a front page item pinpointing the real cause of the economic crises of the part 30 years: the Australian/British group, AC/DC, or Acker-dacker as we call them here. Because when pants hems move up, the FTSE...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:54 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Evolution
The NCSE has put up more of its content from it's excellent, if badly laid out, magazine Reports of the NCSE. As a result, one of my better pieces, on species concepts, is now up, with a list of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:52 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Politics
Well, anyone, really, not just Americans. My question arises from the somewhat breathless attitude taken towards Obama. While I think he is an admirable guy, and I have done so for a time now, I wonder what people expect...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:35 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Administrative
Readers: if you haven't eaten lately, hover your mouse over the Snowflake avatar to the left. Give it a bit of time and you will see what I look like when I shave. Clicking on it merely takes you...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:12 AM • 20 Comments •
Category: Politics
Users, or Lusers as they are known, learn early not to piss off the sysadmin, who is God. Federal minister Stephen Conroy's ham-fisted attempt to gag critics of his stupid paternalistic and ultimately failure-ridden net filter scheme has managed...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:54 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Administrative
The Ediacaran period is the era between around 635Mybp and 540Mybp, just before the Cambrian. You pronounce it "ed-ee-ack-a-ran". It is also the name of a new blog by the inimitable Chris Nedin, erstwhile paleontologist who specialised in the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:23 AM • 2 Comments •
October 26, 2008
Category: General Science
I love golden orb spiders - they are among the prettiest spiders you will find in Queensland, and the largest [click on the pic for information]. You'll come across them in the oddest places, too. I once nearly stepped...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:15 PM • 7 Comments •
October 25, 2008
Category: Humor
Waits is one of the few people I admire almost without reservation, even including the industrial blues. A comment quoted on a passing web site was "We are monkeys with money and guns", leading me via Google to this...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:46 AM • 2 Comments •
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
