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evolvingthoughts | February 13, 2008
Have you ever noticed that there are occasionally periods in which things just work, particularly with computers?
I find that there is a confluence of coherence about every four years. I'm not sure if it's just because the vendors - the Evil Apple Empire, or Micro$oft, whoever - recognises that if they don't actually dangle a carrot of functionality from time to time we'll all give up and start knitting or making model planes or killing software vendors or something, or if it's an outcome of cycles of dysfunctionality that cancel each other out like standing waves, but I'm in one now.…
evolvingthoughts | January 30, 2008
For a long time, I thought that animals were pretty much as Descartes thought - largely unreasoning organic machines. This morning, my teacher on animal communications died.
Her name was Chesh, and she was 17 and a half. She was a year younger than my eldest, and a year older than my youngest, so we referred to her as the "middle child". Her name comes from the fact that my firstborn is named Alice, so "The Cheshire Cat" was obvious, reduced by said child at 1 to "Cheshycat", and thence to "Chesh".
Apart from having the loudest purr, usually just when one was feeling down (coincidence?…
evolvingthoughts | January 24, 2008
A passing reference to Language Log has introduced me to an excellent blog. For instance, this well-balanced post on hate speech. Why didn't someone notify me of it before?
evolvingthoughts | January 24, 2008
We got delicioused, for the Basic Concepts Post, and wow, scores of links and (I hope) new readers. Some of the referrals [UPDATED]:
Del.icio.us
Geek Dad at Wired
Unbridled learning
Andy's classes
Farm School
A Small Speck
A Garden of Varied Delights
the Daily Irrelevant
Clipmarks
ABQNews
Frédéric Boulanger's Journal
A Lone Tree Green Meadow
Thinking as a Hobby
Masson's Blog
Rational Homeschooling
You Are Wrong
Trash Bin
Jon Lowder (with the best Latin tag: Stultus est sicut stultus facit, quoting the famous Roman philosopher, Forrestus Gumpius, a Stoic, I believe)
Reportr.net
Welcome to…
evolvingthoughts | January 21, 2008
So, I just found out that I'm teaching this semester, which is a comfort (money will come in, and we can eat) and a pain (I am going to Arizona in March, so we will have to sort out some guest lectures or something). The subject is philosophy of the life sciences, but the blurb covers topics I wouldn't have put up myself:
This course looks at some of the philosophical issues arising out of the study of the life sciences-primarily biology & ecology. These issues include problems associated with the theory of evolution such as: (i) recent philosophical debate on the unit of selection; (…
pharyngula | January 14, 2008The always perspicacious Chris Clarke is talking about us, in a post where he talks about the pleasures and perils of managing comments on a blog.
I'd be lying if I said I never appreciated a good bar brawl of a comment thread. And some blogs make the free-for-alls work: Pharyngula comes to mind as an example of a wonderful, worthwhile blog with a laissez-faire comment policy. But few blogs have that winning Pharyngular combination of high traffic, sharp focus, distinct blogger personality, and devoted constructive regulars. The chance of a typical low-to-mid-traffic blog ripening into…
evolvingthoughts | January 12, 2008
I am blogging lightly while I write madly in Real World™ conditions - some deadlines approach, such as grant deadlines, paper deadlines, book review deadlines and editing deadlines. That said, I will pop up for a bit occasionally, but bear with me.
Deadlines being what they are, I will either return in early February to my normal lack of sense, or be dead (just don't cross that line - editors are vicious).
laelaps | January 6, 2008
Sorry for the lack of updates, everyone. I caught a pretty nasty cold over the weekend that knocked me on my butt and kept my updates to a minimum (plus I've been petsitting and not actually home since Christmas, so computer access has been a little spotty). I've also been working very hard on an updated and revised version of my essay on human evolution that is going to appear in The Open Laboratory, and while I would really liked to have added in even more references and resources than I already have, if I did I fear that the essay would become a book in its own right. Still, I've got some…
laelaps | January 4, 2008
It's interesting where my name or photographs end up. As I vainly searched google to make sure no one was talking smack about me on the 'net, I saw that one of my photos of an Amur leopard (pictured above) ended up in the November 2007 edition of AppleSauce by the South Australian Apple Users' Club (which can be seen online here). If you end up borrowing one of my photos for your own publications or blog (it'd be great if you asked first, but I'm not going to cry about it), just shoot me an e-mail and let me know so I can have a look, too. Even if I stumble upon one of my pictures somewhere…
laelaps | January 2, 2008I got some good news last night that I'd love to share, but I think I'm going to keep my lips sealed for until the official announcement is up elsewhere. It was definitely something good to hear on the first day of 2008, and hopefully I'll soon be able to tell you a bit more about it.
evolvingthoughts | January 1, 2008
Today I received my copy of COSMOS (not Cosmo, you perves!) in which my article appeared. I have to say (and not just because they showed the good taste to print me) that this is one of the better science magazines I have seen. It reminds me of OMNI at its height. OK, it's Australian, but you forners ought to check it out too if you can.
pharyngula | January 1, 2008I'm dying here, people. It's spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spammity, spam, spam, spam. I get up every morning and get to spend a half hour cleaning up the crap that accumulates every night, and have to invest more time at intervals during the day purging it. On top of that, as many of you know, the spam filters we have here are garbage. That's a little unfair — I'm sure they're keeping out 99% or more of the spam — but it's the perception we all have. Certain commenters are routinely singled out for exclusion by the filters for mysterious…
laelaps | December 31, 2007
In about 6 hours I'll have to start remembering to date everything 2008 instead of 2007, but otherwise the year will tick over like another mile on an odometer. I don't really have many resolutions, at least not moreso than a list of things I've been wanting to do for some time and haven't yet been able to accomplish, but at the moment I'm just wishing I had a few more days to get some writing done and kill a few more books (at last count I've read about 6 since Christmas).
I do want to take a moment, though, and thank everyone who has offered compliments, corrections, and critiques of some…
evolvingthoughts | December 31, 2007
It is midnight on January 1 here in Australia. There's a loud party next door (young folks, heh). So I hope you all have a good year and thanks for reading me in 2007.
laelaps | December 28, 2007Despite all the work I put into it this evening, my post on whether evolution is directed or not is still unfinished. I've completed most of it, but I want to go over it again and choose my words carefully as I know I'm considering a topic that has spurred a large amount of debate, although it shouldn't be a surprise which side I come down on. While you're waiting, why not watch Carl Sagan's last interview on Charlie Rose below? (What Sagan says about faith and the absence of evidence has a lot to do with what you'll be seeing tomorrow.) I should have the monstrous essay up in the morning (at…
laelaps | December 27, 2007Sorry for the lack of new material, everyone. The past few days have been a little hectic and I didn't think I had internet access at the place I'm currently staying, but it turns out that I actually do (I made a rather silly mistake). I'm using an old laptop that can only be described as an "unwieldy behemoth" that recalls the days of dial-up, but I suppose it's better than nothing. As you all might have suspected most of my Christmas gifts ending up being books, the stack reaching about three feet high when everything is placed on top of each other, but I've already made some decent…
evolvingthoughts | December 20, 2007
Philosophy isn't one of those things that makes great breakthroughs that are recognised at the time. Generally something is thought of as a significant development much later, after it becomes obvious that people are engaging with it, like the Chinese Room of John Searle. So instead I will simply list my better posts of this year in a fit of self-aggrandisement.
January
Bioturbation and Darwin's worms
Another kind of agnosticism
The man who invented evolutionSpecies
FebruaryDadsDarwin on species: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3Science and nonscienceTheoryThe many faces of "evolution"…
laelaps | December 20, 2007Ah, freedom... well, relative freedom anyway. I just polished off the last exam of this semester and won't be headed back to the classroom for about a month, although I'm anything but relieved. I still have a tangle of red tape (made all the more appropriate being that I'm at Rutgers) to fight through in my quest to get into evolutionary anthropology, which is all I really want for Christmas. Maybe I should put out some turnips, a pork pie, and some sherry and ask the Hogfather...
evolvingthoughts | December 18, 2007
I received an email telling me I'm number 20 on the list of influential science blogs, according to Wikio, a European site that ranks according to links and readership, I gather.
The irony of a philosopher being a high ranked science blogger is not lost upon me, I can tell you. Even moreso given that I have no science qualifications (but that matters not in journalism, so why here?). But Mashable seems to think this is a good alternative to Digg and other such sites, so who am I to dispute it?