After the apocalypse, links…
Species, biodiversity, and cool biology stuff
Richard Conniff explains why species matter to humans: What Are Species Worth? Putting a Price on Biodiversity: Yale Environment 360
A “new” “more objective” measure of what is a species: Quantitative criteria for species delimitation – TOBIAS – 2010 – Ibis [Editorial here] It looks a little phenetic, but in fact it might not be. I’ll try to get around to discussing this when I have time to breathe.
Microbes seem to share genes “intentionally” in the sea: Horizontal Gene Transfer: Bacteria Transmit Genetic Code without Sex; Virus-like particles speed bacterial evolution. I noted this in my microbial species paper, but not that it was itself a functional process. I’m still unsure to what extent that is reasonable.
Chromosomal inversions leads to speciation, in plants, anyway. Well, in one plant…. Adaptation, Reproductive Isolation, and New Species! Oh, and on that topic: How and Why Chromosome Inversions Evolve.
A microbial mat the size of Greece! Commuting to Work.
Giraffes – Necks for food or necks for sex? Hurrhurr, he said “necking”….
David Sloan Wilson says Open Letter to Richard Dawkins: Why Are You Still In Denial About Group Selection? and gave a talk last night in Sydney: Social Darwinism shows we control our environment (there are so many things wrong with that headline I nearly put this under media crap below, but it’s not DSW’s fault). Maybe because group selection is not the only alternative, David; Multilevel selection theory makes sense to me. I thought it did to you too
To gain pallor is easier than losing it – Razib discusses genes for skin colour.
A Very Remote Period Indeed: Independent Neanderthal Innovation – Some Additional Considerations – did Neanderthals innovate?
Fossil secrets of the da Vinci codex – did Leonardo discover fossilisation and in particular trace fossils?
The Taxonomy Fail Index – how to get it really wrong taxonomically.
Religion and philosophy stuff
Beyond God and atheism: Why I am a ‘possibilian’ (in other words, an agnostic).
A philosopher says we’re doing it rong – a plea for reading the philosophy. The problem is that the philosophy here is not all that impressive.
Jean Jacques Rousseau – a new article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Aristotle would say America is an aristocracy: American Aristocracy
Hume, Curiosity, and the Justification of Scientific Endeavor
Reality, one bite at a time: Force of faith trumps law and reason in Ayodhya case – The “beliefs of Hindus” trump law in India.
Science stuff
Back to School Month: Peak Oil 101 : Casaubon’s Book
Research funding: Making the cut : Nature News
Only In It For The Gold: Thought-Provoking Week
Because publishing your paper is only half of the job
Government funding for ‘pure’ research: an extremely brief and gappy history
Smarter Teams Are More Sensitive, Have More Women? – the intelligence of a group matters less than their cooperative abilities.
Media crap
The Oz declares war on bloggers, more on the bastardry. But Quality sets The Australian apart!
Other stuff and crap
Versatile Blogger Award – some cool blogs linked.
It always simply mystifies me when people recommend Swinburne. Not that he isn’t clever, but I’m really not sure why anyone should be impressed by anything he does in any sense beyond “Oh, how very interesting that one could make such an argument if one accepted these bizarre assumptions”. I suppose that that’s the secret of Swinburne’s success: he’s a philosopher’s philosopher, good at coming up with striking arguments that only philosophers could recognize are clever, and that have no value whatsoever except that philosophers can see that they show that Swinburne is very clever. (I have much the same problem with Plantinga, but I think he also comes out as much the better of the two in the comparison.)
But then, what he’s really doing is transferring a particular form of philosophy of science into a new domain, and I have no sympathies whatsoever with the assumptions of the particular from of philosophy of science he’s using, even in its own domain, so I’m not an impartial judge in the matter at all.
Well said that man.
I like the Taxonomy Fail Index. Haroun Yahya’s Big Book O’Creationism (or Atlas of Creation if you prefer) has two wonderful examples of TFI >100: featherduster worms labeled as crinoids (Lophotrochozoa vs. Deuterostomia) and a spider crab labeled as a crab spider (Pancrustacea vs. Arachnida). Can anyone do better? (Not sure what the TFI would be on the fishing lure labeled as a mayfly.)