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
Ecology and Biodiversity Ten quirky species… 28 May 2008 <insert The Count From Sesame Street‘s laugh here> Okay, so the International Institute for Species Exploration has come up with a list of ten new species named in the last year. It’s clearly for promotional purposes, with nothing much other than an interest in new species underpinning it for all… Read More
Humor A quote that should be true 13 Aug 2010 … even if it probably isn’t At a television news station, one of the employees put up a sign in the elevator: “The ‘7’ button is broken. Please press ‘4’ and ‘3’.” Then he stood back and watched the behavior of those people who are supposed to tell us what… Read More
Humor God damn Tony Piro! 2 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 Tony Piro does this comic: But that’s not why God should damn him. Philosophers do these sorts of things to their kids, and neither of my kids could leave home because Achilles and the Tortoise were always blocking the door. Instead, he should be damned because He’s a godless atheist… 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.