Miscellany 8 Nov 2007 Some things that piqued my interest without triggering a full post: The readability of this blog is high school level, which is good. That’s pretty much how I pitch it: There’s a new species of killer whale in the Antarctic. [HT: Jason] Toads will mate across species if things get tough. This has also been documented in other species such as ducks. Administrative Evolution Species and systematics
Evolution The two Wilsons on sociobiology 18 Nov 200718 Sep 2017 It’s not often I get to comment on as-yet-unpublished work, but I have been sent a copy of a forthcoming essay by David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, two giants of the theoretical evolutionary field, defending and redefining the nature of sociobiology (Wilson and Wilson 2007). As I have… Read More
Accommodationism Accommodating Science overview 13 Mar 2014 I have done quite a lot of blogging under this heading lately so I thought it might be useful to get all the posts used in order: On beliefs Why do believers believe silly things? The function of denialism Why do believers believe THOSE silly things? The “developmental hypothesis” of… Read More
Evolution My species article online at RNCSE 19 Dec 2007 A little while back I published an article on species concepts in Reports of the National Center for Science Education, and I just discovered that it is available on the web. This is actually abetter format than the published version, which has weird columns and layout. The citation is Wilkins,… Read More
The response comes back suspiciously quickly on the reading level of the blog. I also have a high school reading level on mine. When I compare my writing to yours, I would put mine at the middle-school level.
My blog comes up as “Genius”, which I’m assuming means that no bugger can read it or be bothered to try. The “new killer whale” has been floating about for a while, I think. A number of cetacean “species” (including the killer whale, but also the common dolphin and the minke whale) fall into that taxonomic limbo where it’s a widely-known secret that there’s probably a number of species currently lumped under the one name, but there’s a bit of reluctance for anyone to leap in and try and sort them out, both because of the amount of work involved with a shortage of specimens, and because there’s a great list of synonymised names that would have to be examined to see if any of them correspond to any re-identified separate species.
Yeah, I’m a ‘genius’, too. Seriously, when a fella like me rates as a ‘genius’ and a serious, erudite (and often esoteric) real-life scholar like John Wilkins is judged to be at a ‘high school reading level’ there’s something wrong with me.
Yeah, I’m a ‘genius’, too. Seriously, when a fella like me rates as a ‘genius’ and a serious, erudite (and often esoteric) real-life scholar like John Wilkins is judged to be at a ‘high school reading level’ there’s something wrong with me.