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
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Rise of the Planet of the Moralists 5: Social Dominance and Power 2 Nov 20112 Nov 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Moralists Series1: Introduction2: Chains and Trees 3: Clades and grades4: Predicting traits5: Social dominance and power Thus far we have focused on the differences between human beings and apes, and the ways we should expect to find each species behave. What do all apes… Read More
Humor No chance in Hell of a Catholic education 9 Jul 2007 Proving, contrary to the father’s comments in the story, that it really is the dark ages, an Australian Catholic Church school has banned (and since rescinded) a child whose surname is “Hell”…. The 15th century was the time of the rebirth of classical learning with the translation of Aristotle’s works and many Arabic scholarship into Latin. Read More
Administrative News from Ediacara 27 Oct 2008 The Ediacaran period is the era between around 635Mybp and 540Mybp, just before the Cambrian. You pronounce it “ed-ee-ack-a-ran”. It is also the name of a new blog by the inimitable Chris Nedin, erstwhile paleontologist who specialised in the Ediacaran fauna before joining the Dark Side (federal public service) in… 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.