Travel Diary 13: Berkeley talk 6 Nov 2009 Well, yet again I have utterly utterly failed to embarrass my university by making an idiot of myself in public. In short, the talk (on the Essentialism Myth) to the Vertebrate Zoology crowd at Berkeley went very well I am told. I believe them because instead of sending me on my way surreptitiously, they bought me beer. Lunch with Chuck Crumly of UC Press, Brent Mishler of the Herbarium, and mein host Kevin Padian was lovely, if a little tipsy. I recognised some faces in the crowd, once I had got the computer working. Nick Matzke, once of NCSE and now a doctoral student, was there. Tonight I will take it easy, and tomorrow I meet a crew from talk.origins for pizza and a ferry ride. Then Sunday back home, at last! Administrative Evolution History Philosophy Science Species and systematics Species concept Systematics
Evolution Is religious cognition adaptive? 8 May 2009 There was a paper recently in PNAS on “The cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief“. A couple of bloggers, Epiphenom and I Am David, come to opposite conclusions. Epiphenom says that the study shows that religion is not a side-effect of the evolution of cognitive processes, while IAD says… Read More
Evolution Evolution quotes: Darwin on randomness 25 Jun 2010 Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. Now, if it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were… Read More
Philosophy Epitaph on a Tyrant 4 Aug 2009 Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little… Read More