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
Administrative Why wasn’t I told? 25 Jan 2008 A passing reference to Language Log has introduced me to an excellent blog. For instance, this well-balanced post on hate speech. Why didn’t someone notify me of it before? Read More
Biology Natural classification 23 Jan 201423 Jan 2014 It occurs to me that I haven’t plugged my own book here. What a failure on my part! It was published in December, so it is really time I did so. In this book, Malte Ebach and I discuss a topic not often discussed in the philosophy of science: the… Read More
Species and systematics Barcoding and classification, again 3 May 2008 Duck and cover, folks. I’m about to upset somebody. I have previously been fairly critical of DNA barcoding, the proposal to use a small fragment of the COI gene – a mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase, subunit I – as a surrogate marker for species. That is, in simple terms,… 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.