Travel Diary 9: An Australian in New York 24 Oct 2009 I’m an alien, a legal alien, and I have been in New York for a week. This is what I did there… First of all I must express my unbounded admiration and affection for my hosts, Matt and Cathy Silberstein. I mooch off them every time I come to New York, and I did so again, with great breakfasts, dinners and events organised for me… Apart from the Howlerfest* I met with a number of local folk. I had dinner with Massimo Pigliucci, head of SUNY Philosophy and until recently a working evolutionary biologist. I also met with Joel Cracraft, who is a leading ornithologist (he basically did the taxonomy of birds) and figure in the species concept debate. Joel and I talked easily an hour and a half and only his prior commitments stopped us. In both cases I found that my personal opinions about various topics were not immediately rejected as laughable, which was a plus. I don’t think New Yorkers are that polite they would not have said something. I also met my long time internet correspondent, Bill Benzon, who is a jazz musician, cognitive scientist, and, as I discovered, an early applier of evolution to literary theory, although he is rightly dismissive of what has come to be known as “literary Darwinism”. His ideas on narrative structure have got me thinking about the prallels between taxonomy in biology and taxonomies elsewhere. I am presently on an Amtrak train to Washington DC, where I will mooch off Mitchell Coffey, another talk.origins netizen, and his family. I gather that to sing for my supper I must entertain adolescent males with rollicking Australian stories. This I can do, since the only reason I am not adolescent myself is an unfortunate accident of chronology. Inside I am definitely 16, trust me. I am now at Mitch’s, also mooching off his wifi. More later. * I spent years on a Usenet group, talk.origins. One of the anitevolutionists, Ted Holden, called evolutionists “a tree full of howler monkeys”, leading us to adopt the slogan semper Alouatta, and refer to our get-togethers when one of us was travelling as Howlerfests. Administrative Evolution
Evolution The ontology of biology – interlude and podcast 5 Dec 2008 The General Ecosystems Thinking (GET) Group centred at Queensland University of Technology (or as we at UQ like to call it, the “city university”) invited me to come give a talk on the ontology of evolution. I gave it yesterday. As it will be part of this series of posts… Read More
Administrative The Bastards are emerging 17 Jul 2010 We have now had three posts on Opinionated Bastards . Lorax on grant funding, Mike Haubrich on why religion and science are incompatible on an inductive inference, and now Eamon Knight on why pedophile priests and women priests are equivalent in the eyes of the Vatican. Stay tuned for more… Read More
Administrative Travel Diary 7 17 Oct 2009 So yesterday was a full day. I attended a talk by Tony Coady, coincidentally of my alma mater Melbourne, on whether religion is a danger. He argued, well, I thought, that it was no more a danger than any other human activity. However, one of the ways he did that… Read More
I’m an alien, a legal alien, and I have been in New York for a week. Since you’re an Alien, could you answer a few questions for me? (1) Is it true that most of our modern technology, such as computers, the internet, rockets, airliners, and iphones was traded to us by Aliens? (2) Is it true that Aliens traded this wonderful technology to us in return for the right to impregnate 1 million humans with their spawn? (3) What is the Government really hiding in Area 51?
1. Yes. They were all invented in Australia. 2. Yes. All American women must now be impregnated by Australians. 3. Real Australian beer.