John Wilkins
evolvingthoughts
Posts by this author
December 16, 2008
The Bradley Report [Here] is proposing, among other things, that [Australian] students have vouchers to attend the university they want to, rather than making the university the funding recipient directly. Two things stand out to me. One is that this makes higher learning a marketable commodity, in…
December 15, 2008
Here's an excellent discussion by Lawrence Lessig on the creeping nature of regulation through copyright. Quite apart from anything else it's an amazing use of presentation software. Sure, it's 2002, but things have only got worse...
December 15, 2008
Below the fold is a video produced by the Australasian Association of Philosophy back in the 1990s. The talking head is, I think, Graeme Graham Priest.
December 14, 2008
Here's an article, by MSN no less, that explains the problems with broad filtering. A fellow named Herman Libshitz can't get an email account from Verizon because his name contains "shit". Residents of Scunthorpe in the UK apparently have similar problems. God only knows what the residents of…
December 14, 2008
Just a couple of days ago I mentioned the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. They must have heard me because today I get my email notification that they have published this year's volume. I'd like to mention three papers of interest to me. Alas, children, if you don't have a…
December 14, 2008
I received this from GetUp today. I wonder if the politicians recognise that no amount of economic manoeuvring or political RealPolitik will avoid the laws of nature? If we do too little, then our children - not even our grandchildren but the very next generation - will suffer and badly. The ALP (…
December 13, 2008
The Wilkins Ice Shelf, of course. The European Space Agency has a "satcam" up for you to see how it's going.
December 12, 2008
There is a widespread tendency of biologists to overgeneralise from their study group of organisms to the whole of biology. Sometimes this is because the organisms are model organisms, like Drosophila (the "fruit flies" that have been used in genetics since the beginning).Other times it is because…
December 12, 2008
I received a query from reader Jodi, of Nova Scotia (I so want to visit there one summer) about how to learn about a scientific subject as a layperson. Of course being a philosopher I was able to answer her quickly, but readers may wish to comment more authoritatively and knowledgeably, as we know…
December 11, 2008
... shh, not so loud or everyone will want one.
Here's a piece by Darksyde at Daily Kos in which he reports the outgoing EPA chair (who has overseen all manner of bad science and decisions, although that may not be his own fault) as saying
"It's not a clean-cut division [between evolution and…
December 11, 2008
From Almost Diamonds, by Stephanie Zvan, comes a description of many of my favourite trolls, including the one who won't take "you're banned" as an answer. This is why he's banned.
Or, A Primer in Antisocial Attention-Seeking
Lay your groundwork. Watch the group interaction. Make yourself known to…
December 11, 2008
At the other blog here and here , the latter a plea for a Human Rights Act.
December 10, 2008
I've been travelling a little to organise my move to Sydney. Love the building, the department, the people and the project. Not sure about Sydney... so anyway, nothing of substance from me for a while.
Here's a lovely little essay about Newton pissing off most of the European intellectual giants of…
December 7, 2008
So it looks like Australia won't be the sole idiot child of the Internet. FCC chair Kevin Martin wants... you guessed... an "opt out" smut filter at the ISP. In your face American First Amendment!
All you smug Mericans, wipe of that goofy smile, now, OK?
December 7, 2008
Siris has an interesting piece on the nature of the liberal arts. I loves me some 13th century, I does.
Bora objects to Obama's choices being characterised as "elites" and therefore bad. On the other hand, the term "groupthink" was coined to characterise the elite advisors of the first American…
December 6, 2008
Bora made me do it... first line of the first post of each month the year. It doesn't quite read like a dadaist poem.
January: 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…
December 6, 2008
I just love this:
Cambridge University's Space Flight club got local school children to make space suits for these teddy bears, which were attached to a helium balloon that rose to 30km, enough to see the curvature of the earth. All teds were recovered safely. I expect Prof. Steve Steve to take…
December 6, 2008
At my other blog here.
Also see Ars Technica:
Here's an idea: if the Australian government actually finds child porn, nuclear bomb making manuals, and the like on the Internet, why not do their best to find the perpetrators and put them behind bars? That way we get to keep our free speech and have…
December 5, 2008
The General Ecosystems Thinking (GET) Group centred at Queensland University of Technology (or as we at UQ like to call it, the "city university") invited me to come give a talk on the ontology of evolution. I gave it yesterday. As it will be part of this series of posts that will end up as some…
December 4, 2008
This is just embarrassing. Here's a representative of Parliament in the ALP, which I have noted before is increasingly pandering to religious interests:
LABOR MP James Bidgood, the first-time MP under investigation for selling pictures of a protester attempting to set fire to himself outside…
December 3, 2008
Note the careful ambiguity there: this is not a blog of another antipodean philosopher, but another blog of this antipodean philosopher. The ins and outs of Australian politics and policies are not of interest to much more than 0.3% of the world, so my asseverations are even less interesting to…
December 3, 2008
When my kids were in school, I noticed an interesting phenomenon that went something like this:
Headmaster: No, your kids can't be being bullied. We have a policy against bullying.
I came to call this the "Policy policy": so long as there's a Policy in place for some longstanding problem,…
December 2, 2008
The only problem with Queensland, apart from the occasional severe storm, is that they filled it with Queenslanders. Here's a bunch of northern bigots protesting a Muslim school being built on the Gold Coast "because they won't integrate" with Australian society by being, I don't know, Christian…
December 2, 2008
Because Apple posted an advisory [a while back now] suggesting that an antivirus program be used, the Windows bigots have erected a strawman: Apple says it is immune from viruses, so now it looks like Macs aren't so great huh?
Of course, that's not what is happening at all. I have used a virus…
December 1, 2008
The chair of a course on religion, philosophy and ethics at the University of Gloucestershire (being English, they'll pronounce that "glostersheer"), David Webster, is calling for people to give the worst argument in Britain. Go leave yours. Caveat: They already have the full complement of…
December 1, 2008
New: Solutions listed
Mike Dunford, who is still trying to get me to pay for that time he put me up in Hawaii when his wife was on active service in Iraq (if I knew what I'd have to pay, both in climbing horrific rainforested slopes to release wallabies, and this meme, I'd never have gone) has…
November 28, 2008
I haven't done much philosophical blogging lately. There are Reasons. I'm preparing to move to Sydney over the next few months (and there may be a period in which I have no laptop too), and trying to catch up on a bunch of projects I have in play and which deserve my attention. Also, there's a…
November 28, 2008
... to his doctors. Here.
Late Note: Ronan in the comments points out this was in 2006. I think I was sleeping that year...