Evolution/design: if a conversation starts in the blogosphere and no one joins it, does it make a sound?

Something I ran across by accident, while perusing our latest copy of Issues in Science and Technology: currently, the National Academies are sponsoring a Visual Culture and Evolution Online Symposium. It runs through Wednesday. What that means, apparently, is their panelists discuss the intersection of design, art, and culture with evolutionary biology concepts (sexual selection, genetics, adaptation, etc.) at a blog set up for the purpose.

The blog is basic (generic template), and a bit confusing. What seems to be happening is that panelists' ongoing contributions are folded into the posts themselves. Perhaps nonpanelists' contributions would be left as comments, but currently the number of comments on the recent posts stands at zero; it seems to be a fairly insular discussion. I'm always happy to see this sort of cross-disciplinary conversation taking place, but I do have to wonder whether (despite the ad in Issues) they wanted to invite anyone else to the party, given that there was basically no buzz about it and there are plenty of bloggers and thinkers who would have made excellent additions to the convo. Perhaps it would be a faux pas to intrude?

Anyway: I don't really know what the ground rules are, but they're talking about lots of interesting topics and posting ephemera, so you might want to head over and meander around. I thought I'd let y'all know about it, anyway. Good luck!

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