Administrative
laelaps | February 27, 2009Many thanks to everyone who wished me a happy 26th birthday yesterday. I was surprised by the number of people who did, in fact, and I was glad to receive the kind greetings of so many friends.
Special thanks are due Amanda, as well, who sent me a shiny new copy of Richard Fortey's Dry Storeroom No. 1. It came in the mail just as I was headed out the door and I was deeply tempted to call in sick from work so I could start reading it. Thank you, Amanda; I cannot wait to dive into it!
My "big gift", though, was a comparative skull set (fish, frog, lizard, pigeon, rabbit) from the Bone Room that…
evolvingthoughts | February 26, 2009Folks, I haven't forgotten you or the promised myth posts, but I've had to do some book stuff, along with Real Life stuff. So hang tight - I'm away this weekend (and - shock! - I'm not taking the laptop with me) but I promise something meaty on Sunday evening or so, OK?
In the meantime: some X-Phi links:
Philosophy: the new x-philes, and a new podcast too
Philosophy’s great experiment
Francis Galton and the History of X-Phi
X-Phi, by the way, has nothing to do with Mulder and Scully...
laelaps | February 25, 2009So there I was, vainly searching Amazon.com to see if a subscription to this blog is available on Kindle (it appears not), when I was hit between the eyes by something unexpected.
A few of you may recall that a few months ago I wrote a lukewarm review of Jerry Coyne's new book Why Evolution Is True. It is not a bad book, and it actually is a good primer if you do not know very much about evolution, but there were a number of errors in it that I felt could have easily been avoided with a little more research.
How is this relevant to my opening statement? In searching for "Laelaps" on Amazon.…
evolvingthoughts | February 17, 2009Once upon a time, I made mention, simply a mention, of a paper by one Matts Envall, which I said I would later comment on. I did so because a friend of mine, Malte Ebach, told me about him and the paper. I have yet to appropriately thank Malte. My gratitude involves a water balloon, I think.
This alone was the trigger for Envall to come along to my blog and start comment bombing. I have in my spam folder over 350 comments, most of which are cut and paste. Independently of his views, of which more anon, his behaviour - spamming, using fake email addresses and changing IP numbers to avoid bans…
evolvingthoughts | February 12, 2009The University of Sydney is covered with modern buildings, but it also has a few that date back to the 1850s. As it happens I'm located in one. It has no heating, cooling, or internal toilets, but look at it:
My office is the two windows to the right, on the floor above the arch. I don't know if I will do any good work here, but it won't be for lack of tradition. I can even deal with the carillon exercises immediately above my head each day.
evolvingthoughts | February 9, 2009Well, on Thursday night I was incredulous at a lecture by Steve Jones. On Friday night I met the fascinating Richard Grant from Our Competitor Blog Network, Nature Network. On Saturday I had a lovely lunch with my new colleagues at Sydney, and then proceeded to nearly drown while skin diving (thirty five years of smoking tends to lessen your lung capacity, okay? I stopped over a year ago). My son returned from a trip to Victoria, which state then proceeded to burn down.
And I still don't have internet at home. Which is why none of these events received a measured and interesting blog post.…
evolvingthoughts | February 4, 2009I move into a new place and less than three days later, it gets bombed. Well, strictly a place around the corner got bombed. I slept right through it. Seems someone doesn't like the Hell's Angels. I had no idea their clubhouse was nearby (not that it bothers me. I'll leave them alone if they leave me alone).
evolvingthoughts | February 2, 2009... but my furniture, clothes and importantly bedding aren't. So I sleep on the floor tonight. Also I'm having horrible times trying to get the University of Sydney's IT to give me access (it seems not to like Google Mail or Firefox). So blogging and replies will be slow for a bit. Sorry.
Later: the motorcycle ride down was tiring and a bit fraught. Cars changing lanes in front of me at 120kmh without indicators or clearance, that sort of thing. I got here in time for peak hour, and rushed to get to the real estate agent (realtor for Mericans) so the movers could unload, only to find that the…
pharyngula | February 2, 2009The people have spoken, and the honored recipient of the Molly for December is…Nerd of Redhead! This, of course, merely confirms the nerdishness and raises it to new heights, so the nick is now even more appropriate.
Next, we have to pick some other nerd to get the OM after his or her name for the month of January. Leave your nominations/votes in the comment thread below.
pharyngula | January 25, 2009Since an annoying security hole in Typekey was exposed here, I've reenabled anonymous commenting. I still want to tinker with this, so later I may try requiring OpenID registration…but I've irritated everyone enough for one weekend, so I'll try that some other day.
pharyngula | January 24, 2009This is a long traveling weekend for me — I'm on my way to Calgary/Edmonton for a lecture and a debate. That means my internet access may be a little spotty, and I'm a little concerned about some of the trends in the comments, so I'm laying down a few rules.
There are too many trolls. I'm shutting off anonymous commenting for at least a little while — it won't make them go away, but it will make it much easier for me to clean up their stinky little droppings afterwards. If it suddenly makes it impossible for you regulars to comment, let me know by email.
I may turn anonymous commenting back…
evolvingthoughts | January 22, 2009If I have seemed a little distracted and unresponsive lately it's because I have been using an old clunker of a half dead laptop. I received my new employ's Macbook yesterday and spent pretty much the rest of the day migrating to the new beast. I'm still in the process of moving to Sydney - which won't finish until next week - but I should be able to reply and write a bit more easily once I get all my software up and working.
pharyngula | January 13, 2009Some of you have noticed some little instabilities around here since the software upgrade. Well, fasten your seatbelts, it's going to get a little more rocky tonight. Our crack technical team is going to be ripping into the database and shaking some more bugs out of the system overnight, and while everything should still be usable, it may be slow, and there may be a few glitches now and then. It should all be fixed by the morning.
I think they chose to do it starting at midnight New York time because they hate all the Australian readers. Or maybe it's because they trust you to be tough enough…
pharyngula | January 13, 2009You may have noticed a recent influx of whining wackaloons, whose enchanting cries have consisted mostly of "You're all so uncivil" and "This is not a science blog". This is fallout from the Weblog Awards, where a couple of climate change denialist blogs have effectively turned out the disgruntled conspiracy theorist vote. One of those blogs will almost certainly win the 'award' — which tells you the value of these contests — so don't worry about that. However, I do want to reply to the mindless, repetitive complaints of our new visitors, even though they will almost certainly evaporate when…
evolvingthoughts | January 12, 2009The website www.talkorigins.org is now back up, although links to the temporary archive www.toarchive.org/ still work for now. The story is roughly this - the company (joker.com) we bought the domain name from reassigned the IP number for the site as part of changing their data centre. They apparently sent an email notification to the administrator - Wesley Elsberry- but that went (you guessed it) to the email at the domain name. Since the domain no longer was active at the IP#, Wesley never got the email, and because we couldn't use the registered email address to contact joker.com, they…
pharyngula | January 9, 2009Pharyngula will be going silent this afternoon. Do not panic, do not call 911, do not convert to Catholicism in a desperate search for succor. The Seed overlords are implementing a much-needed upgrade to the software that drives this place, so some of the functions will be turned off this afternoon, like posting and commenting, while a team of code dwarves move in and bang up the joint. It's a big upgrade, so you're likely to be locked out until sometime on Saturday. Be strong.
What will you get out of this? At first, not much. Everything will look and act exactly the same to the reader after…
pharyngula | December 31, 2008The Molly Award for the month of November goes to Emmet Caulfield. Buy him a beer, someone.
Now we have to pick one for December — leave your nomination in the comments!
evolvingthoughts | December 21, 2008Because I have to hand back my laptop to my present employer, and my future employer won't have a Mac for me before mid-January or later, I may not be able to post much for a while. I do have access to a desktop PC, but what can one really do with that sort of SNAFU technology anyway? I may get a loan of an old G4, but that won't run some of my software.
So nobody play Mornington Crescent while I'm gone, OK? Enjoy the surfeit of food if you have access to it, and survive the family reunions.
pharyngula | December 12, 2008We've got a few new trolls/poes babbling in some of the threads, and it's getting out of a hand. I think it's time to remind you that the list of bannable offenses does include godbotting — and it doesn't matter if you are sincere or if you're clowning around, once I get tired of the games I will start adding your user info to the blacklist. It would be a shame to get your IP address locked out of commenting because you thought it would be funny to run a fake creationist under an alias.
We do have word that there will be a major update to the scienceblogs software in the next month. You…