Good news, and bad news… 17 Apr 2008 First, the good news. The inestimable John van Whye has added, with the help of his team of course, 90,000 scanned images of Darwin’s journals, manuscripts and letters. Now the bad news. The Utrecht Herbarium is closing, and no plans have been made to store and make available its collection of type specimens. Why this matters is that the very name of species depend on there being type specimens. Go read Catalogue of Organisms, an amazing blog in any case, on the matter. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution Humor Species and systematics
Administrative More of me in Spanish, and information again 4 Aug 200818 Sep 2017 A blog post by the incredibly multilingual John Wilkins (who knew he spoke French, Portuguese and Spanish? OK, it’s by proxy, but it’s nearly as good as actually speaking it) is now available in Spanish. Gee but he looks like he knows whereof he speaks… Thanks to Eduardo Zugasti for… Read More
Epistemology Defining philosophy 22 May 201018 Sep 2017 While I am travelling, of course an interesting net phenomenon occurs: people trying to define what philosophy is. It began with Simon Critchley opening a philosophy blog in the New York Times. As pleased as some are to see such a beast, they objected to Critchley being the blogger, and… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design But ID is not based on religion, no, not at all, fer shure 11 Nov 200922 Jun 2018 From here – Leading intelligent design advocate speaks at BCF Tuesday, 03 November 2009 08:55 Students were on the edge of their seats recently as leading Intelligent Design advocate William Dembski spoke in the R. G. Lee Chapel at the Baptist College of Florida in Graceville. Known for his comprehensive… Read More
Ah HA! I know where that squiggly scrawl in your masthead comes from. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=CUL-DAR121.-&pageseq=38 Very clever.
Ah HA! I know where that squiggly scrawl in your masthead comes from. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=CUL-DAR121.-&pageseq=38 Very clever.
It’s always shocking to observe of closing of any kind archives (google groups t.o, or real specimens..). former t.o’ist MrKAT from Finland
I don’t know what’s behind the economic problems of the herbarium, but I’d be curious to know if it has something to do with the recent drive for privatizing and “effectivizing”. In other European countries, this has resulted in absurd situations when university buildings are given for free to new state-owned companies to manage, and they then charge market-based rent for the offices and labs, although in most cases the university has no real choice of location.