Miscellany 26 Jun 200818 Sep 2017 Barbara Forrest has an excellent analysis and background story on the introduction of the creationist bill in Louisiana, and the organisations supporting it, here at Talk2Reason. There’s a new phylogeny of birds out. See GrrllScientist’s post, and a full size tree here. Late edit See Bird Evolution – Problems with Science for more. Jesse Prinz has an essay on atheism and morality, which I think jumps the shark at the end (how can there be atheist charities? Atheism is the lack of some belief, so any charity that doesn’t make theism part of its core mission already is atheist), here at Psychology Today. Michael Ruse has an interesting and entertaining review of, among other things, Bill Wimsatt’s book, at American Scientist. It turns out we can know what it is like to be a bat… Science After Sunclipse has a discussion on what education can be achieved by science blogs. Laelaps‘ Brian Switek responds. Sciguy reports that Spain is about to give basic human rights to apes, something I have previously supported elsewhere. Stephen Hale had already argued one can prove a negative, before I did. Hat tip: Abnormal Interests. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution General Science Politics Sermon Social evolution Species and systematics wimsatt
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Researchers teach gorilla existential angst 31 Mar 2010 I love The Onion. They even get the species right. Read More
Biology It was 150 years ago tomorrow 23 Nov 2009 … Sergeant Pepper… oops, sorry, wrong theme. 150 years ago tomorrow, people suddenly became smart, observant and able to understand the world. Right? Right? Well, look, I have enormous respect for Darwin, and I think the Origin is a cool and interesting book, but really, no. People were working on… Read More
Evolution The End of Punditry 7 Apr 2009 This is a response to David Brooks’ column in the New York Times, today: “The End of Philosophy”. Other respondees include PZ Myers, Brian Leiter, James Smith, bottumupchange, Mark Liberman, and chaospet (who does a very nice cartoon summarising many of the problems with Brooks’ column). Hume once wrote: “Reason… Read More
Thanks for the link! Sciguy reports that Spain is about to give basic human rights to apes, something I have previously supported elsewhere. That is excellent news; I certainly hope the legislation goes through. If you haven’t seen it already you should definitely check out the Nature special “Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History,” too.
The comments on that SciGuy link are mostly so deeply stupid I’m left wondering how they mustered the basic literacy to post them. How does an intelligent poster attract a rabble like that?
I learned about Wimsatt’s book through your blog and the title made me take a look at it in Amazon. The description there made me think it might be interesting to read it, but if it’s being reviewed in American Scientist (and by Ruse), I’ll have the best reference possible.