Monthly Archives: July 2009
Around the internets
Razib has a post on a paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology that shows, fairly well, I thought, that Australian aborigines are most closely related to relict populations of indigenous Indian tribes. They are touting this as evidence that the “southern … Continue reading
Quotemining in the 19thC
Dispersal of Darwin again has an excellent piece of the history of evolution: he traces the quotemining by the theologians in the 1880s of John Tyndal, a known Darwinian of the day, to “show” that evolution is unproven and speculation. … Continue reading
Religion and well being
A paper in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry is reviewed by the awesome Epiphenom. The authors do a horizontal study and find that fewer people in religious communities suffer depression, and a longitudinal study that suggests this is not a … Continue reading
Filed under Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Evolution, Religion, Social evolution
Where I was, forty years ago
I know only two locations with accuracy in my life’s experience. One is where and when I was when I found out that John Lennon had been murdered, and the other was where I saw the Moon walk. I was … Continue reading
Filed under General Science, History
Some more reading
While I compose my haiku philosophical masterpieces, read these links:
Filed under Biology, Creationism and Intelligent Design, Genetics, Race and politics, Religion
We are natural villagers
We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became … Continue reading
Filed under Social evolution, Technology
Evolution and morality
Ever since Thomas Henry Huxley’s marvellous book Evolution and Ethics in 1893 (online here; it’s the Prolegomena you really want to read, though), the relationship between evolution and morality has been mooted. Spencer famously wanted to say that morality was … Continue reading
Filed under Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Religion, Social evolution
Ideas for papers
So I was reading through some of my colleagues’ bibliographies recently and getting mildly depressed at their productivity relative to mine, and wondering, what can I do to publish more papers? And it hit me: I need to write my … Continue reading
Filed under Administrative
Some reading
My longtime correspondent Bill Benzon has a very nice piece on the biological failure of the so-called “literary Darwinism” movement, in particular that of Joseph Carroll, who is the leading exponent of it. As Bill points out, we can mistake … Continue reading
Filed under Evolution, History, Humor, Social evolution
Unscientific America
I can’t yet speak about this book, because my review copy is presently on what passes as Australia’s international mail service, which involves yaks hiking across the Himalayas and then taking the parcels via the Silk Road to Beijing, where … Continue reading
