Ten best species for the last year 23 May 2009 It’s fun to read, but what it means I am not sure. A bunch of systematists have devised the Top 10 New Species list for 2008. It’s basically a way to promote the need for more conservation and systematics at the species level, and that can’t be a bad thing: The list at the Institute for Species Exploration, centred at ASU, is here. However, I am particularly concerned at the choice of the coffee bean without caffeine. What’s next? Lauding a cacao bean without theobromine? This is just wrong, and they should have hidden the news altogether, lest it become the standard offering at coffee bars. Ecology and Biodiversity Humor Systematics
Epistemology The relation of classification to abductive reasoning 3 Feb 20135 Feb 2013 In my last post, commentator DiscoveredJoys raised the question of abductive reasoning and how it relates to my claim that classification is basically pattern recognition. It’s a fair question. First I’ll repeat my response, and then go into it a little more. In my view, abduction is larger in scope… Read More
Humor My life as a book 8 Oct 2010 Here’s a page [H/T @BoraZ] that suggests we do personal development and therapy by imagining our lives as books. Oh, yeah, I can see it now: Chapter 1: In which I learned geek stuff Chapter 2: In which I used geek stuff to get money, and raised little geeks Chapter… Read More
Humor NASA broadcasts Beatles 3 Feb 2008 NASA is broadcasting “Across the Universe” from Let It Be to the North Star, Polaris. All well and good until the aliens arrive and we find out they’re Stones fans… Read More
A caffeine-free coffee bean might be economically useful – for producing a never-caffeinated subsitute for decaffeinated coffee.