History
terrasig | May 13, 2009
Ski Train? Wasn't that the title of a Cat Stevens song?
I was just getting around to putting up a science post when I just received a Tweet from my Rocky Mountain peeps at Denver's Westword magazine, the indy pub of the Queen City of the Plains. (Actually, this is kind of a science post because I did a lot of science in Denver.).
In his post, "Video: Goodbye, Ski Train! We'll think of you the day we finally punch Phil Anschutz," Jared Jacang Maher writes:
The train had been making trips between Denver and Winter Park since 1940. The operation was owned by local billionaire Phil Anschutz. […
aardvarchaeology | May 13, 2009From my Australian friend Ian I got a good book, Inga Clendinnen's 2003 Dancing with Strangers. It's an account of one of world history's most absurd situations.
Imagine a tropical continent inhabited exclusively by fisher-hunter-gatherers at a low population density for tens of thousands of years. They're isolated from the rest of humanity. There is not a single permanent building on the continent. Nobody ever wears clothes. Nobody has ever heard of agriculture or stock breeding. Now watch a fleet of colonisation ships from an early industrial society arrive at the continent's south-east…
oracknows | May 12, 2009I like the way some people think, Clive Davis, for instance.
Remember how, two or three weeks ago, I speculated about who would play arch-Holocaust denier David Irving in a movie that's been optioned based on his libel suit against Holocaust historian Professor Deborah Lipstadt? Well, Clive Davis has a better idea:
Cinematical suggests Emma Thompson should portray Lipstadt. As for the other lead role, I'm tempted to go for Denzel Washington, just to give the world's most famous Holocaust denier another reason to go to court.
Heh. I'd love to see that. Of course, if we want to match viewpoints…
razib | May 11, 2009That seems the finding of this paper, Familial Aggregation of Survival and Late Female Reproduction:
Women giving birth at advanced reproductive ages in natural fertility conditions have been shown to have superior postmenopausal longevity. It is unknown whether improved survival is more likely among relatives of late-fertile women. This study compares survival past age 50 of men with and without a late-fertile sister in two populations: Utahns born in 1800-1869 identified from the Utah Population Database and Québec residents born in 1670-1750 identified from the Programme de recherche en…
evolvingthoughts | May 10, 2009Before this text in 1686, the term species just meant some sort or kind of organism. It was a Latin word in ordinary use without much meaning in natural history, but then arguments began whether or not there were one or more species for this or that group, and so it became important to know what was meant by the term in natural history. That is, a distinctly biological concept of species was needed, and John Ray gave it here:
The translation is this:
In order that an inventory of plants may be begun and a classification (divisio) of them correctly established, we must try to discover…
evolvingthoughts | May 8, 2009There was a paper recently in PNAS on "The cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief". A couple of bloggers, Epiphenom and I Am David, come to opposite conclusions. Epiphenom says that the study shows that religion is not a side-effect of the evolution of cognitive processes, while IAD says that is exactly what it shows.
The paper purports to show that when thinking about God or beliefs about God, the very same areas of the brain are used that are used in ordinary social interactions and so on:
The MDS results confirmed the validity of the proposed psychological structure of…
aardvarchaeology | May 5, 2009
Spent the day metal detecting for Thomas Englund at the battlefield of Baggensstäket, anno 1719 (as blogged about before: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4). This was my third time there, and the first time I've helped on the northern half of the area across the water from where I live. Thomas found musket and pistol balls. I picked up an 18th century coat button and loads of steenkeenggg aluminium bottle tops, and saw an abandoned tree house. I'm particularly interested in the pre-battle finds that are starting to accumulate.
evolvingthoughts | May 1, 2009It is often stated in the literature that Linnaeus late in life turned to an evolutionary view based on hybridisation (e.g., Clausen, Keck and Hiesey 1939). I myself have repeated this, but as always it's worth looking at the actual text. Unfortunately I have so little Latin that I can't even use pig Latin, so it is great to find, yet again, that archive.org has it in an English edition published in 1783. I love archive.org. Deeply.
It's in the context of what he bases his system on, the "fructification" of the plants; i.e., the reproductive organs:
26. The PRINCIPLE of Fructification, the…
evolvingthoughts | May 1, 2009... says Linnaeus:
False BOTANISTS proclaim the Laws of the Art before they have learned them:
Extol absurd Authors, and are jealous of the excellent ones:
Steal from others, producing nothing of their own:
Boast much of a little knowledge:
Pretend they have discovered a natural Method:
Assert the Genera to be arbitrary. [System Vegetabilis 1774, §27]
I wonder who he is talking about.
oracknows | April 29, 2009Ten days ago, I made a bit of fun of the big, fat slobbery 120th birthday kiss that David Irving planted on Adolf Hitler's cheek (metaphorically speaking). At the time, I mentioned that there is one Hitler-related holiday that I can actually celebrate, and that day is here:
Führerstodestag.
Führer Death Day! 64 years ago today, April 30, the mass murdering dictator Adolf Hitler blew his brains out. Spread the word and wish all Holocaust deniers, fascists, and neo-Nazis a very unhappy Führerstodestag.
evolvingthoughts | April 29, 2009As I investigate the use of tree diagrams in the nineteenth century, I keep running across things that shouldn't be there. One of them was this book:
Herdman, William Abbott. 1885. A Phylogenetic Classification of Animals (For the Use of Students). London; Liverpool: Macmillan & Co.; Adam Holden.
It's on Archive.org, but they didn't properly scan the figure on the foldout (a real problem of the electronic versions of old books is that they don't scan the foldout figures. Imagine the Origin without the one figure). So I bought a copy. It's a real revelation - he correctly uses "…
terrasig | April 29, 2009Word around town and just tweeted by local hero, Ayse, is that the great Ernie Barnes passed away yesterday at the age of 70.
From the biography at Mr Barnes' website:
Born Ernest Barnes, Jr. on July 15, 1938 to Ernest Sr. and Fannie Mae Geer Barnes during the Jim Crow era in Durham, North Carolina, his mother worked as a domestic for a prominent attorney. As a child, young Ernest would accompany her to work and was allowed to peruse the extensive collection of art books. One day in junior high school, a teacher found the self-admitted fat, introverted young Barnes drawing in a notebook while…
razib | April 28, 2009In the wake of my post on Predictably Irrational, The Last Temptation of Risk:
THE GREAT Credit Crisis has cast into doubt much of what we thought we knew about economics. We thought that monetary policy had tamed the business cycle. We thought that because changes in central-bank policies had delivered low and stable inflation, the volatility of the pre-1985 years had been consigned to the dustbin of history; they had given way to the quaintly dubbed "Great Moderation." We thought that financial institutions and markets had come to be self-regulating--that investors could be left largely if…
pharyngula | April 27, 2009
The Making of Hitler: A Tale of Social Darwinism or Christian Idealism?
Michael Lackey, UMM
Tuesday, 28 April - Common Cup Coffeehouse - 6:30pm
You're all planning to come on out, right? It should be a good one: Michael Lackey will be directly addressing the fallacious claim that Hitler's crimes were built on a foundation of godless Darwinism.
razib | April 26, 2009Fortune has a massive profile of Bernie Madoff's life, career and scam. Some new material too.
oracknows | April 25, 2009I just learned yesterday from a link a friend sent me and from Professor Deborah Lipstadt's blog that the team of producers who made The Soloist have optioned the movie rights to Professor Lipstadt's book History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier, which is the story of the libel suit brought against her by Holocaust denier David Irving in the U.K., a lawsuit that Irving ultimately lost big time.
This is excellent news. Having read her book, as well as Richard Evans' account of the trial, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, I had always thought…
evolvingthoughts | April 22, 2009I gave my talk today on tree thinking at the local science museum for kids and the general public, which is amazingly popular. The Portuguese seem to hold science and knowledge in high esteem. Which is great. The Ciências Viva helped pay for my ticket, so I hope they liked my presentation. It will be online as a podcast, and they apparently simulcast it at the time, too. I didn't let you know that because I want to check it before I tell my loyal readers about it. Oops...
I am overwhelmed by the hospitality and food here. If I could learn another language, or they all spoke English, I'd…
oracknows | April 20, 2009David Irving has made a career out of being a Holocaust denier and then protesting when someone calls him a Holocaust denier. As you may recall, he even sued Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for correctly referring to him as a Holocaust denier in one of her books.
Let's take a look at what's on his website today. If you go to Irving's main website and click on today's newsletter, this is what you will see as a flash screen before the website goes to the newsletter:
That's right! It's a big fat, sloppy 120th birthday kiss to Adolf Hitler, straight from David "I'm not a Holocaust denier…