John Wilkins
evolvingthoughts
Posts by this author
January 13, 2007
Larry Moran has a Basic Concepts post on Evolution. It's not quite what I'd have written, but it's good anyway. Even if he isn't sufficiently selectionist and gene-centric...
I'm joking about the selectionism and gene-centrism.
January 12, 2007
This is the first in an irregular series of basic concepts in science, that I suggested to the Seed Bloggers we might do from time to time. If anyone wants to suggest a revision, because I got it wrong or am unclear, make a comment - this will be revised to make sure it is OK.Clade: this term of…
January 11, 2007
Quick... what was Darwin's most popular book? If you answered The Origin of Species, you were wrong. It was his last book, published the year before he died, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observation of Their Habits. Darwin noted when he was beginning his…
January 11, 2007
One of the more famous events in the development of evolutionary biology was the shift from the linear notion of horse evolution proposed by E. D. Cope O. C. Marsh and T. H. Huxley in the 19th century to the "bushy" model of horse evolution in the middle of the 20th. But not all branches of the…
January 11, 2007
Sheik al-Hilaly has again made comments about Australians and their way of life. We're dishonest, unjust, and there is no freedom or democracy here.
Oddly, this is something he is entitled to say in Australia. Let him try to make comments about Saudi Arabs in that country, or attack Egyptian…
January 10, 2007
NASA Watch reports that Patrick Rhode, the deputy to Michael Brown, of Hurricane Katrina FEMA infamy, has been appointed to a NASA position. His total lack of experience at anything except getting Bush and Cheney elected makes this a very bad bit of corruption.
January 9, 2007
I hope the Austin American-Statesman doesn't mind me reproducing this obituary to one of the University of Texas' favourite sons...
Obituary
Robert C. Solomon Sept. 14, 1942 - January 2, 2007Renowned UT philosophy professor dies suddenly in Zurich
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFFFriday, January 05, 2007…
January 4, 2007
Well, I got another paper revised and out the door a couple of hours ago (it started life as a series of blog posts on microbial species here), so I am feeling almost lightheaded. But I have one other paper to revise and a grant application to write, and a conference on evidence based medicine to…
January 4, 2007
Courtesy of Thoughts from Kansas comes a link to this site where a short test using the standard diagnostic criteria for psychopathy allows you to decide if Bush is a psychopath. My own assessment gave him 38/40, which is well above the dividing line of 30/40, although it is likely I was marking…
January 4, 2007
PEER, a website devoted to promoting environmental responsibility by public institutions, notes that three years after promising to review the literature on display at the Grand Canyon National Park after creationist literature was on offer, nothing has happened.
In fact, the National Park Service…
January 3, 2007
A well-known philosopher of the emotions, Hegel, and existentialism, Bob Solomon died yesterday. He was only 59. He was instrumental in setting up the International Society for Research on Emotions (ISRE).
I met Bob when he came out to our Biohumanities Conference on emotions early last year. The…
January 3, 2007
In addition to the wonderful Darwin's Writings on the Web site, there's also a Lamarck on the Web, an Alfred Russel Wallace site, and a Buffon site. Put your favourite historical biology sites in the comments, and I'll assemble a general reference page.
January 2, 2007
In yet another attempt to Catholicise the Australian options on health, Minister Tony Abbott, a Catholic, continues his reckless quest by assigning to the Catholic Church in Australia a contract to provide pregnancy counselling services. This is in part because he wants to reduce the number of…
January 2, 2007
Mark Vernon, at the Guardian's blog site, asks what would happen to theology if Corot finds evidence of inhabited planets (which it won't, because it's not set up for that). He raises the traditional theological concerns, made popular in C. S. Lewis' Perelandra series. But then he makes the…
January 2, 2007
I was watching the Frontline report "The Enemy Within", on the FBI and a prosecutor who got an obviously innocent couple of Muslims convicted of terrorism in Lodi, California, and the prosecutor, McGregor Scott, was obviously uncomfortable about his role in this travesty, but he continued to toe…
January 1, 2007
Salon has a nice interview with the historian and sociologist of creationism well worth reading. In particular, this:
Are you an atheist?
I don't think so. I think that's a belief -- that there's no God. I really wanted to have religious beliefs for a long time. I miss not having the certainty of…
January 1, 2007
A new report says that the injury rate for surfers is lower than for college sports like soccer and basketball. But basketball players don't get bitten by sharks.
Actually, all exercise is bad for you. Nobody ever did a hamstring sitting on the couch.
December 30, 2006
Brent Rasmussen, at Unscrewing the Inscrutable, has a nice smackdown of the atheism-intolerance of Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College and Distinguished Scholar of the City University of New York, with which I agree totally.
But in the…
December 25, 2006
For those of you still in December 25, a short reminder of the meaning of this holiday. There was an individual who was born today, many years ago. His life and work changed the world. He inspired millions of people and changed our way of life, our sense of ourselves and what we can and should do…
December 25, 2006
Larry Moran, at Sandwalk, has argued that evolution is indeed a matter of chance. It is, he thinks, something that atheism requires. This is an interesting issue, one that has deep roots, both in the role of chance explanations in science and prescience, and the theistic reaction to it.
Larry…
December 24, 2006
It's a season, so I am told, that has something to do with religion. We celebrate the birth of commodity capitalism, or something. So I thought I would combine my favourite issues - philosophy, religion and evolution.
It's all Alex Rosenberg's fault. At a dinner before the conference, he was…
December 22, 2006
My mate Marc Buhler noticed this one:
This week's issue of Science magazine has an article that is the subject of a story (pasted below the fold) from the NY Times.
"From Scum, Perhaps the Tiniest Form of Life" by William J. Broad - Dec. 23, 2006
The smallest form of life known to science…
December 20, 2006
Sayeth the Deepak Oracle:A number of evolutionary biologists are attempting to create a more holistic integral view of evolution that includes both objective and subjective dimensions of reality.
I don't claim to know what "reality" is, but I'm pretty sure that "subjective" is a modifier of…
December 20, 2006
George Bush wants a bigger military.
Cynical as I am about the claims of the "military-industrial complex" of a generation ago, it really does look like the underlying motivation for the past decade or so has been to increase the size of the military in the US.
I was shocked at how militarised the…
December 19, 2006
Once, in a previous incarnation (where I was not so furry, fat and albinoish), I ruled a graphics department. We had the IT staff try to convince us to go Windows about every six months instead of Mac, for about 18 years...
Hence this:
December 19, 2006
As PZ McMyers notes, the Libyan court has condemned to death five nurses and a doctor for infecting children with AIDS deliberately as part of an experiment, despite the clear scientific evidence that the real cause was pre-existing strains of AIDS and the lack of proper funding and material, with…
December 18, 2006
I stumbled on this amazingly useful website just now, when trying to work out who our nearest extragalactic neighbours were (and what they were getting up to - it seems we are the cause of a lot of domestic disputes). Called "Atlas of the Universe" it has a "powers of ten" (except for our local…
December 16, 2006
Well, I'm just back from the 3rd Queensland Biohumanities Conference, convened by Paul Griffiths, which was titled "Idealization, mechanism and reduction: New Directions in the Philosophy of Proximal Biology". Speakers were Bill Bechtel (UC San Diego), Alex Rosenberg (Duke), Marcel Weber (Basel),…