Administrative
pharyngula | September 24, 2007We have a new Molly winner: congratulations to David MarjanoviÄ!
I've also updated the blogroll with a few new names.
evolvingthoughts | September 23, 2007
... an email archiver that sorts through the several tens of thousands of emails I have received in the past fifteen years and makes it all a nice searchable archive. If it would automatically archive from the current folders, that would be nice. On the Mac OS X.
Any ideas
pharyngula | September 17, 2007It's that time of the month again, when we try to acknowledge the work of some commenter (or inanimate carbon rod) who has most delighted us by bestowing admission in the grand Order of the Molly. Just leave a comment here naming your favorite commenter or random object intended to mock the proceedings, and I'll tally them up at the end of the week.
Also, I maintain this mega-blogroll, and I'm appallingly generous in putting blogs on it — of course, I'm also appallingly ruthless in expunging blogs that haven't had an update in 30 days. All you have to do is:
Check the current blogroll in case…
evolvingthoughts | September 13, 2007
Eagle-eyed readers will note a new tab above this post (and all others if I have done it properly) which list the very best of Evolving Thoughts - the meaty posts that will have long term value (as much as anything I write has value).
If you are new here, or just want to see what absurd things I write, click on it and see. It's organised by themes.
Thanks to PZ Mahappenstance for telling me how to wrangle the code.
evolvingthoughts | September 6, 2007
I have, I must confess, started a number of projects here that I haven't finished. Teaching is getting the better of me (and no, I'm not going to put my lectures down on cognitive science, as I do them "freeform",, so I'd have to do a lot of work to get them down in written form).
Some of the things I intend to one day finish:
The World According to Genesis. Reader Michael Gardner put in a lot of work doing the Abraham story outline for me, but to my shame I haven't had time to add my bits. Sorry Michael - you haven't been forgotten. I aim to cover the patriarchal stories pretty quickly,…
evolvingthoughts | September 1, 2007
If you're reading this on "Science Blog", be aware that the site is stealing, copying without proper attribution, and generally parasitising real blogs, including mine. Go to the real Science Blogs site for information on the actual blogs. Although I have a Creative Commons license, this doesn't mean that anyone can copy all my material and call it, implicitly, their own.
pharyngula | August 24, 2007You may have noticed (how could you avoid it?) all the information about Seed's new contest: if you're commenting with a valid email address, you're in the drawing. The prize is a 5-day trip to a great science city (there's a poll to determine which one) — this is good, because even if some wacky creationist or HIV denialist or demented Republican wins, their reward will be some intense exposure to real science. I tell you, the brains behind this outfit are cunning and nefarious in their machinations. (If you are one of those deluded individuals who doesn't want their illusions dashed, you…
evolvingthoughts | August 21, 2007
... I'm teaching. First years. Cognitive science.
It turns out that a lot of what I thought was common knowledge isn't common at all. And what I count as a simple introduction leaves a lot of folk behind.
Now I know I'm not that ordinary in many senses - the obsession with complex concepts may give it away if the lack of social skills don't - but it is a big shock to me how under-educated these kids are. I find myself having to explain simple argument skills, and many of them have already done the critical reasoning course! This is no excuse, of course - it's my job to see they…
pharyngula | August 20, 2007The commenters have spoken, and two new Order of the Molly awards have been issued.
pharyngula | August 16, 2007I was bad. I completely forgot to have Molly nominations for July, and here it is August. So let's catch up: name your fave commenter for either month right here, or just your favorite for any time, and I'll tally 'em up when I get back from New York — we'll have a super-duper double induction ceremony, with both cake and pie.
evolvingthoughts | August 15, 2007
Dear readers, Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily has suggested that we have a universally available icon to indicate that the blogger is blogging about peer reviewed research, and he has created a discussion blog at BPR3. Please go make suggestions and add to the discussion. Muggins here will implement it when the consensus has been reached.
jrosenhouse | August 14, 2007With the fall semester starting in just under two weeks, it's time to take off for one last trip. We're having a big Science Bloggers gathering in New York City this weekend, and I've just gotta see for myself that there are actual people behind all these blogs I keep reading. Along the way I'll stop off at my New Jersey office to visit the 'rents, and wander over to Brooklyn to see big bro. I'll be back next Tuesday. See you then!
evolvingthoughts | August 12, 2007
I had to. They made me do it.
Yes, I'm smoking again, but I'll give up soon, I promise. The grumpy expression is because I'm teaching...
pharyngula | August 3, 2007Mainly because you don't know what foo camp is all about. Yes, I have arrived in lovely Sunnyvale, safe and sound, ready for my alter ego, Tyler Nerden, to face the google geeks.
While I was hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, what did I miss? I just caught Behe on the Colbert Report, and yowza, what a clown. Einstein's theories were all about putting limits on Newton? And Behe is the guy who's putting limits on Darwin? Can we just say he's an idiot and be done with it now?
And speaking of dismissive one-liners, what the heck is going on here in my own little fever-swamp?…
evolvingthoughts | August 3, 2007
So I'm home from Ish, and the front part of my brain is giddy and tired while the rest has just shut down. I don't travel well, I'm afraid.
One thing that I came back fired up over are the unfinished projects I have running. So I intend to finish them. They are, in no particular order:
1. Denying that genes have information [heresy #1] Status: Written and needing to be submitted.
2. Denying that functions in biology exist outside models [heresy #2] Status: Written but badly in need of a rewrite.
3. Denying that essentialism ever existed in biology [#3. Four more and I get a free auto…
pharyngula | August 1, 2007Urgent news for the chatty among you: Skatje tells me the Pharyngula chat room has been playing musical chairs lately, and it is now located on channel #pharyngula on irc.synirc.net. If you want to try it out, just click on the link above, and it'll launch a java-based irc client and you can type away in real time to human beings.
Creationists and fundies are especially welcome to go witness to the regulars.
evolvingthoughts | July 30, 2007
So the ISHPSSB Conference is done, and here I sit in the University of Exeter Library getting some internetting done for the first time in a week. Great conference. I got to meet Scibling John Lynch and his colleagues and drink much beer of various UK kinds. I got to meet Massimo Pigliucci and his colleague Jon Kaplan (I had met Jon earlier). And a host of other names who mean a lot more to me than to you.
My talk denying Essentialism ever existed went down as well as a 20 minute presentation of a 300 page argument can, with historian Jon Hodge chatting to me enthusiastically over the rest…
evolvingthoughts | July 25, 2007
So, I finally have access to the internet. For the past few days I've been either in London, on planes, trains or in Exeter, where I am now for the ISHPSSB biennial conference of philosophers and historians (and some sociologists) of science.
In London I walked myself silly (getting the worst blister I have had since I was a teenager back in the late Pliocene), visiting, among other things, Jim Mallet at the University College London. This was where the Galton Lab was, which means it's where Pearson Fisher, Haldane and various others worked. For those who do not know, these are Great Names…
evolvingthoughts | July 18, 2007So I'm off to the Mother Country on Saturday my time. Anyone in London who wants to meet for dinner on Sunday or Monday nights, drop me an email before I fly off...
pharyngula | July 10, 2007The terrible thing about going on vacation is that you fall behind on everything, including your reading, and when you get back you have to struggle to catch up. When I got back on Sunday I found three books waiting in my mailbox, and of course I'd missed a whole week of the journals, so I've been reading, reading, reading every day. I've decided I can never go on vacation again.
No, not really! But I do have a backlog to clear, and just this morning I had a chance to sit down and read through that wonderful new paper on the sea anemone genome. I'm going to get that assimilated and I should…