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
Biology Tautology 3: The problem spreads 25 Aug 2009 This post will look at two different aspects of the tautology problem: 1. The public aspect, as it becomes a widely used counterargument to “Darwinism”, and the rebuttals of some public “Darwinists”; and 2. How it played out in the biological and philosophical literature. Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity “Systematics is sick” 21 Aug 2008 So says a committee of the UK House of Lords: Systematic biology and taxonomy – the science of describing and identifying plants and animals – is in critical decline and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) must act before it is too late. Of course, this is not… Read More
Biology A leading philosopher blogs… about cuttlefish! 4 Jul 20124 Jul 2012 Peter Godfrey-Smith is one of the leading philosophers of biology and science, and he is presently Distinguished Professor of philosophy at CUNY’s Graduate Centre. He also blogs! It’s nice to see that employed academics are catching up with the rest of us. What’s really interesting is that Peter is focussing… 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.