NSW removes protection for marine parks 11 Nov 201311 Nov 2013 I received this from NYU CUNY philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith: The NSW government recently decided to temporarily lift the ban on line fishing in NSW marine sanctuaries. They may well decide to make the new regime permanent, effectively abolishing all real marine sanctuaries in the state. This is such a bad step backwards. I’ve heard that the Abbott govt is closely watching what happens here, and may move in this direction at a Federal level too. Some basics from the government: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/460367/Factsheet-beaches-and-headlands.pdf It’s a bit hard to tell exactly what’s covered and what’s not, I realize. Peter has a post on this at his site GiantCuttlefish.com. Australian stuff Ecology and Biodiversity Politics NSW drops protection for marine parks
Ecology and Biodiversity Measuring extinctions 24 Jan 2008 In 1972, David Raup published an influential paper on taxonomic diversity during the Phanerozoic. In that paper, he estimated extinction rates based on the number of fossil families and genera for the period and before and after. The idea was to estimate the “kill rate” of major disruptions in earth’s… Read More
Evolution A good German site 4 Apr 2008 Evilunderthesun is a German language blog that recently did two things: totally demolished the “Nazism was caused by Darwin” trope, with generous quoting of mich, and educated me that the word for April fool in German is Aprilschmerz, which I really like. Tometheus (Prometheus’ and Epimetheus’ little brother, responsible for… Read More
Censorship Some more on ISP filtering, and a rant on censorship in Australia 27 Nov 20084 Oct 2017 The Greens (who I am considering joining, despite their unreasonable opposition to nuclear power) have said they will oppose the “clean feed” proposal in the Senate, so unless the Coalition decides it is a good idea after all, or put it to a conscience vote (because let’s face it, a… Read More