Politics:
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V scene 1, Miranda says O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't! The third line gave Aldous Huxley the...
Posted on May 14, 2008 9:26 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
From Wiley: And while we're on the topic......
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Posted on May 12, 2008 2:50 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The federal Australian government of Kevin Rudd has done its first act of pure bastardry. As I noted before, the PM thinks that marriage is reserved for heterosexuals only. He can think that. He can think that marriage ought...
Posted on May 5, 2008 2:20 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Australian government, still in the period of meeting its election promises, has legitimised the relations between homosexual couples so that they now have the same rights as defacto couples, which is long overdue. But they didn't quite get...
Posted on April 29, 2008 10:21 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I have an uncanny ability to offend those who I shouldn't be offending, with bad jokes. In a recent post I put in a Tom Lehrer video where he mocks sociology. Having had philosophy mocked by my friends and...
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Posted on April 26, 2008 9:51 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Imagine a scientific theory that very few people know or understand. Let's call it "valency theory". Now suppose someone objects to valency theory because it undercuts their view of a particular religious doctrine, such as transubstantiation. So they gather...
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Posted on April 20, 2008 11:16 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I've been pretty preoccupied this week with lectures and meetings, so this is my first post for a bit. Yesterday I attended a meeting at my university which pretty well aimed to wind up the disciplines of my school...
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Posted on April 11, 2008 9:47 PM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Evilunderthesun is a German language blog that recently did two things: totally demolished the "Nazism was caused by Darwin" trope, with generous quoting of mich, and educated me that the word for April fool in German is Aprilschmerz, which...
Posted on April 4, 2008 8:37 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Oh honestly! The Australian Federal Police are still investigating Haneef for terrorism even after their own incompetence and prejudice has been laid bare, and a Royal Commission is in train to investigate them. Really, it's like J. Edgar Hoover...
Posted on April 4, 2008 1:15 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Idiots and the ignorant should not speak on matters they do not understand. As I am both, I want to make some vague and ultimately useless comments about Framing, yet again. This has been motivated by Chris Mooney's admirable...
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Posted on April 3, 2008 5:25 AM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Posted on March 28, 2008 4:57 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Okay, so it's the Wilkins Ice Shelf, but it's even more important than news about me. The 6000 square mile (15,540 km2) ice shelf named for Sir Hubert Wilkins, the famous Australian Antarctic explorer (and very possibly some kind...
Posted on March 25, 2008 10:21 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is a nice review in New Scientist, obviously "framed" more in sorrow and confusion than in anger, which ends with Throughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn't help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was...
Posted on March 24, 2008 5:23 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
So here's a neo-Thomist talking about species, and not getting it due to (i) prior metaphysical commitments, and (ii) not understanding Aristotle - dude, he never called anything a species, not in the biological sense. Eidos and genos were...
Posted on March 24, 2008 4:26 AM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article discussing a study as to why there are so few conservative academics, in the light of the campaign by conservative activist David Horowitz to propose and "academic bill of rights". The...
Posted on February 21, 2008 11:06 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A real journalist reviews a media conference held for the new pro-ID film Expelled: Freedom of expression is unseemly at an Expelled press conference. There was no give-and-take, no open marketplace of ideas, in fact, scarcely any questions at...
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Posted on February 16, 2008 8:20 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Language Log recently took apart the speech and interview by the Archbishop of Canterbury that the media are, inaccurately, reporting as advocating the introduction of Sharia law into British and by implication other common law jurisdictions. Its conclusion was...
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Posted on February 12, 2008 10:46 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Martin Rundkvist, a Swede, has chastised the American body politick for being Right Wing and Even More Right Wing; that is, for lacking a Left in European terms. The American Body Politick, in the person of Chad Orzel, has...
Posted on February 3, 2008 5:09 PM • 30 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Readers will know that I got very angry about the Haneef Affair, in which a muslim Indian doctor was accused of being a terrorist and deported by the improper abuse of power by the minister for immigration of the...
Posted on February 1, 2008 8:35 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
And why would an Australian care? It's another country, so what business is it of mine? Well, apart from the fact that whoever is US president affects the rest of the world (and historically the best party for Australian...
Posted on January 27, 2008 10:06 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Colin Purrington has a nice set of publicly available images for use in pro-science talks. Go check 'em out....
Posted on January 17, 2008 11:00 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In an article on the Catholic or otherwise virtues of Harry Potter (didn't we do all this a while back), L'Osservatore Romano has an article claiming that Harry Potter is the wrong kind of hero. Why is that? Not,...
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Posted on January 15, 2008 4:53 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Lawyers shouldn't determine who gets to read what. Religions shouldn't determine who gets to think what. But the worst combination is when religions use lawyers to stop criticism of their actions and beliefs. Scientology, the money making scam purveyed...
Posted on January 13, 2008 3:33 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Some things I spotted today.....
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Posted on January 8, 2008 6:50 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Let's see... what's happening in the world today? Kenya is in turmoil and thousands are displaced and in danger of death by disease, starvation or tribal feuds. Religious moneymaking scam Scientology is accused of threatening those who leave it...
Posted on January 7, 2008 2:54 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The previous Australian junta introduced a "citizenship test" for those wanting to become naturalised Aussies. It includes such gems as who Don Bradman was, who wrote a song that isn't even officially our anthem (Waltzing Matilda - Tom Wait's...
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Posted on January 3, 2008 10:38 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I'm going to have to start a "freedom watch" thread, I can see. Australia, under the ALP government, is to impose an "opt-out" internet filtering system on all lSPs, leading to the question asked by IT-Wire: what happens if...
Posted on January 2, 2008 10:00 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Since I am divesting myself of the occasional political whine, here's another. The US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have assessed over 70 countries for their protection of privacy, both online and generally. The worst...
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Posted on January 2, 2008 3:31 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
OK, so the next door party finished about 1.30, but the family disputes finished about 5 am, so instead of thinking, I'm going to let others think for me, and round up a few New Years Day links......
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Posted on January 1, 2008 12:28 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The New York Times has a long overdue article on the stupidity of airport security measures for those flying to, within or in markets affected by the United States post-9/11. Pointing out that the security screening at airports in...
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Posted on December 30, 2007 4:13 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Just to demonstrate that it is not only the Christians who have their religious fundamentalists opposing science, here's a piece that claims that the Vedas are the source of all true scientific knowledge. OK, guys, inventing zero was cool,...
Posted on December 28, 2007 3:42 AM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Well the mills of God and the justice system grind exceeding fine, but they sometimes come up with the right conclusion. Haneef has been given back his visa, as was obviously going to happen from the beginning. Ex-minister Kevin...
Posted on December 21, 2007 10:15 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The previous Australian government, in its ongoing quest to out-mediocre the rest of the world, had instituted a "research Quality Framework", liberally taken from a failed exercise in Britain. Now, the new government has declared it dead. It will...
Posted on December 21, 2007 1:31 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Just to head off the obvious: Do people kill because their religion or ideology tells them that nonbelievers are subhuman? Yes. Do people go to war because their religion or ideology tells them it is their patriotic duty? Yes....
Posted on December 10, 2007 4:51 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
John, hear me. What? Who said that? It is I, God. Oh come on. PZ, is that you? I'm not buying it. It is I, God. Look, I'll prove it. [Clouds in the sky form the letters "Yep, It's...
Posted on December 8, 2007 9:54 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I'm angry. The business with the CIA and the torture tape leaves me angry. Why oh why have the Democrats not immediately impeached Bush, Cheney, the Attorneys General involved, the Secretaries of State and Foreign Affairs, the heads of...
Posted on December 7, 2007 12:16 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Way back in the 1910s, when human evolution was poorly known, some trickster, probably Charles Dawson, its discoverer, set up a hoax: Piltdown man. This was enthusiastically accepted by many British experts because it made Britain, and in particular,...
Posted on December 3, 2007 7:06 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
[Australian politics: look away] Oh dear. It took only seven days for the shine to wear off the Labor victory. Julia Gillard has outlined the priorities for education: computers and trades training centres in schools. Yep, that's right, the...
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Posted on December 1, 2007 9:20 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is kicking a man when he's down, but the iPod popped this up to me last night, and I thought how appropriate it is to the election outcome:...
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Posted on November 27, 2007 12:35 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As I watched the total collapse of the conservatives in the federal election, and the landslide of Labor wins, I mused......
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Posted on November 25, 2007 1:11 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
So now, I think it's worth asking what we really can achieve by doing sociobiological investigations, and some of the traps in previous attempts....
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Posted on November 22, 2007 5:34 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The African apes don't get much good news these days. But the Congo has just announced they are setting up a preserve to protect the bonobo. The size of the Sankuru Nature Reserve is 11,803 square miles (in real...
Posted on November 21, 2007 12:33 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I have always enjoyed reading the work of Frans de Waal, a primatologist who focuses on the social structure and psychology of apes, particularly the two chimp species, and monkeys. His previous books, Good Natured: The Origins of Right...
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Posted on November 18, 2007 1:20 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I have a rule: a political party is usually the exact opposite of its name. Hence, the Liberal Party of Australia is not liberal, the National Party is not national, the Labor Party does not represent those who work,...
Posted on November 4, 2007 2:39 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Here is a wonderful (and for us old fogeys, resonant) essay by Chris Kelly at The Huffington Post on the use of the Geneva Convention by both Nazis and Allies during the second world war. The money quote: In...
Posted on October 29, 2007 10:12 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I actually don't dislike the guy, but this is one of the funniest political ads I've ever seen. For forners (not from Orstraya), it helps to know that Rudd leads the erstwhile socialist party, speaks Mandarin, and is likely to...
Posted on October 29, 2007 9:19 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Much to do about the sexual inclinations of a fictional character in the most successful (and I still think, despite the lack of editorial control, one of the classic) children's stories. PZ Mungle has this to say: I really,...
Posted on October 23, 2007 10:58 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
They are now toadies of the Exclusive Brethren, who fund campaign advertisements for the Liberal Party. Add to this Cardinal George Pell's support, Catholic minister Tony Abbott's attempts to control who can use RU486 on an individual basis (i.e.,...
Posted on October 15, 2007 9:51 AM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
So, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has admitted that Haneef, the Indian muslim doctor who was deported for being of "bad character" because he was related to someone who had peripheral involvement in the London and Glasgow bombings,...
Posted on October 14, 2007 12:23 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The International Herald Tribune worries that Gore's receiving the Peace Prize is going to denigrate the award because it "strays from traditional Nobel definitions of peace work". Huh. As Tom Lehrer said, when Henry Kissinger can win the Peace...
Posted on October 12, 2007 11:10 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It seems that almost nobody can mention Jews without making an inadvertent or deliberate ass of themselves. Most recently, Richard Dawkins put his foot in it in this Guardian article. He said: When you think about how fantastically successful...
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Posted on October 10, 2007 2:06 AM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On Monday night last, Jason Grossman, a philosopher form the Australian National University rang me with an idea. He was coming to my university to give a talk entitled "How to Feyerabend", arguing that Feyerabend was a dadaist rather...
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Posted on October 5, 2007 9:46 AM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's been a lot of media spin and unthinking objections to the visit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the US. He was called the "modern Hitler", for example. This strikes me as both unthinking and dangerous. Ahmadinejad is his...
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Posted on September 28, 2007 12:43 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On Friday I assessed an essay by a masters student on the evolution of reciprocity and altruism (she cleverly introduced a notion of benevolent behaviour rather than "altruism" in social contexts, to avoid confusion with genetic altruism. Then today...
Posted on September 22, 2007 10:07 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When the Republicans began their deconstruction of American democracy, under Newt Gingrich, one of the immediate targets was the emasculation of the Office of Technology Assessment. Since that time, the Republicans have mangled, misused and rhetorically denied any science...
Posted on September 14, 2007 10:33 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Larry Caldwell, a well-known proponent of antievolutionism, tried and failed to get "the controversy" taught in the school district of his kids' school. He failed, so he sued the school board because he was "discriminated against... for being Christian"....
Posted on September 13, 2007 10:55 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
COSMOS magazine has an interesting article sure to stir up trouble by suggesting that, among other things, global organic farming would necessitate clearing all remaining forests and even then a substantial portion of the earth's population would starve. I...
Posted on September 7, 2007 2:51 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
"It is incredible what people say under the compulsion of torture, and how many lies they will tell about themselves and about others; in the end whatever the torturers want to be true is true." Friedrich Spee von Lagenfeld,...
Posted on September 6, 2007 12:31 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I have decided that I am sick and tired of the antievolutionists. When I got into this game about 15 years or more ago, I thought that if we just argued and presented information about what evolution really is,...
Posted on September 2, 2007 12:18 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Oh honestly. Christianity Today reports the travel of the Australopithecine fossil "Lucy" to the US with the closing paragraph: It should be interesting to see what the interest in Lucy is, given that according to opinion polls roughly half...
Posted on August 29, 2007 1:36 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As part of the "War on Drugs" an entire family of hydroponics sellers, selling legally available material, were sentenced to prison without parole. Gary Tucker has just been released after a ten year stretch and confiscation of all his...
Posted on August 24, 2007 6:09 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I do not care if a politicians visits a strip club. In fact, a politician that did it and owns up without embarassment would be a good choice to pick, because you know he's not going to pull that...
Posted on August 18, 2007 11:47 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Nature [subscription required] is reporting that Brazilian ecologists are threatening a strike if Marc van Roosmalen is not released. You'll recall that I posted on his case before. Van Roosmalen is a maverick primate researcher who has effectively been...
Posted on August 8, 2007 8:53 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sorry to bother you all with internal Australian politics, but this has to be discussed. Now the minister for immigration is saying that the Australian Federal Police intercepted a chat room conversation in which Haneef was told to leave...
Posted on July 31, 2007 5:28 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A short note - it looks like Haneef has been cleared of all charges and the political pressure on his arrest and detention has been criticised by civil rights lawyers. Good news, but I really hope further action is...
Posted on July 27, 2007 7:31 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In yet further evidence that due process is a bulwark against the arrogance and incompetence, not to say potential police statery, of intelligence agencies, it turns out that the core piece of evidence against Dr Haneef, the Indian doctor...
Posted on July 20, 2007 3:08 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks<
John Wilkins is an aged, 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 Postdoctoral Fellow 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, which he is working into two books. One has been accepted for publication, and will come out in 2008; the other may be contracted soon. He is also interested in cultural evolution, philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids (they sort of make it a necessity, you know?).
