Administrative I get email 15 Mar 2011 Only one of the very many things I share with PZ Myers (apart from the success, the job, the handsomeness, the youth, and the Trophy Wife™) is that occasionally I get emails from crackpots. When you get an email whose Subject line is Fw: Tidal Wave Hit Japan and Alaska… Continue Reading
Administrative Admin: May be off line for a week 13 Feb 2011 So I am trying to transfer my blog and domain name to a new host, and am about to be without internet for a week, as I move into a new flat. These two facts may interfere with a good outcome. If things go well, you won’t notice. But things… Continue Reading
Administrative Too big for my boots 13 Feb 2011 I can no longer use the online WordPress export function to back my blog up – I have to ask WordPress to do it. This is because the size of the blog and comments and graphics, etc. has exceeded their latency time and so it times out. Oh dear… it… Continue Reading
Administrative My talk online 23 Jan 2011 The Australian Broadcasting Commission, or ABC, radio show on science, Ockham’s Razor (named after some philosophy guy), has finally played my talk on species concept history and the death of essentialist stories. You can go listen to it here. The recording process was fraught. I have reduced lung capacity due… Continue Reading
Administrative Update on a pilgrim’s progress 21 Jan 201122 Jun 2018 Okay, well it’s more like the John Wayne sense of “pilgrim” than John Bunyan, but here I am, having gotten out of Dodge Brisbane just as the latest natural disaster hit. “Here” being the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. Once my goods and chattels were “uplifted”, to use the quaint… Continue Reading
Administrative A paperback of Species: A History 12 Jan 2011 My not-inconsiderable ego has expanded several sizes upon the news from University of California Press that my book Species: A History of the Idea (see at right or on the My Books page) is to become a paperback. I hope to make a couple of corrections, and maybe add a… Continue Reading
Academe The end of a dream… for now 21 Dec 20109 Jan 2023 A while back I declared that my career was over as an academic because things were going to hell. Instead, things went on to get better, and I got a postdoctoral research fellowship at Sydney. So I looked like a real putz. Then I got an associate professorship at a… Continue Reading
Administrative On inspiration 26 Nov 2010 Being as I am swamped with boring, but remunerative, things to do, I haven’t blogged for a while. So another reflection. As I age, I find that I am no longer struck by the vivacity of books. When I was in my twenties, and discovering new fields and ideas for… Continue Reading
Administrative Academic genealogies 29 Oct 2010 Wasting time usefully with my friend and co-student of Gareth Nelson, Malte Ebach, we wondered what our academic genealogies were. My thesis advisors were Gareth J. Nelson and Neil Thomason. Gary was advised by William A. Gosline (1915-2002), who was advised by George Sprague Myers (1905-1985), who was a student… Continue Reading
Administrative My present work 10 Oct 2010 Life can be … interesting, for Chinese values thereof. No, I don’t mean the Nobel Prize, although good choice. I mean that I’m presently undergoing some kind of curse. I think it’s called “work” . Work!? So what I’m doing doesn’t translate to meaningful blog posts. Not always (but eventually,… Continue Reading