13 November 2006
The entry on Charles Darwin in the online community encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, has been locked to prevent “vandalism”.
Wikipedia, like democracy, is a great idea in principal. The concept works something like this: anyone can contribute and anyone can update or improve the information. In theory, it is a self-correcting set-up that should lead ultimately to articles of authority that have been literally checked thousands of times. The problem is that it is open to abuse from “cheaters”. Read More...Tags:Wikipedia, Charles Darwin, Game theory, Cheaters, Selfish
05 November 2006
About the time that Charles Darwin was cruising the world on the Beagle, discovering things that conflicted with the notion of a Creator, Christian missionaries were plying their way around Cape Horn too, spreading the word of God to the uninitiated in the Pacific isles. Among those was Jean Baptiste François Pompallier, a French-born Catholic just a bit over six years older than Darwin. In 1835, at the same time Darwin was making his way across the Pacific, Pope Gregory XVI created the Vicariates of Eastern and Western Oceania. Pompallier was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania and Bishop of Maronea and, on 24 December 1836, less than three months after Darwin’s arrival back in England, he sailed from Le Havre aboard the Delphine for Western Oceania and New Zealand. Read More...Tags:Tonga, Charles Darwin, Bishop Pompalier, Christianity, Pangaimotu
15 October 2006
There is an axiom that one should never perform with children or animals because they are bound to upstage you – well, I am going to add another: intelligent articulate 88 year-old gentlemen!
It was a pleasure to spend a little time in the spotlight with well-known theological deep thinker Lloyd Geering at the Otago Festival of the Arts as part of the Readers and Writers programme. If anyone thought that it was going to be a showdown between Darwin and Religion, they would have been bitterly disappointed. To the contrary, however, the sell-out audience seemed to really enjoy it. In fact, it was more than a sell-out: against all the fire regulations, they moved an extra 60 seats in to help cope with the demand. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Lloyd Geering, Lloyd Spencer Davis, Otago Festival of the Arts, Readers and Writers, Bernard Beckett, Religion, Christianity
23 September 2006
I have a pact with my daughter: each morning when I drive her to school, whoever turns the radio on in the car first gets to choose the station. Unfortunately, I don’t move as fast as my daughter and, as a consequence, most mornings I have to listen to an endless supply of drivel that only a 15 year-old could love.
The radio station she likes is called The Edge and I can just about put up with the verbal diarrhoea that passes for repartee between the three – count ‘em – three announcers. However, once per week they have a so-called Medium on (The Ghost Whisperer), who can, they all claim, communicate with the dead. Read More...Tags:Medium, Charles Darwin, The Edge, Horoscopes
26 July 2006
Two seemingly unconnected events: (i) I am writing about Emperor Penguins, and (ii) I am listening to an interview on the radio about applying quantum mechanics to evolutionary biology. Read More...Tags:Quantum mechanics, Emperor penguins, Evolution, Natural Selection, Michael Schumacher, Juan Manual Fangio, Creationist, God
30 May 2006
Lucky Lincoln Hall
At the very moment that I was writing the previous entry on Mark Inglis’s climb of Mount Everest and the abandonment of English climber David Sharp, another climber – Australian Lincoln Hall – was also left for dead near the top of the world’s highest peak. He had collapsed after reaching the summit. Sherpas did try to rescue Hall, but abandoned the attempt, declaring him dead. He spent the night out alone and untreated at 8700 metres. The next day, another climber found Hall, detected signs of life, and, in contrast to the fate that had befallen David Sharp, another rescue operation was launched. Lincoln Hall is now down from the mountain and although somewhat frostbitten, showing every indication of recovery. Read More...Tags:Survival of the Fittest, Lincoln Hall, Mark Inglis, David Sharp, Mount Everest
25 May 2006
Recently a New Zealander, Mark Inglis, who has had more than a few mountains to climb – real and personal – managed the almost unbelievable feat of climbing Mount Everest even though he is a double amputee. Inglis lost his legs just below the knees after a prolonged period of frostbite 24 years ago, when he got caught out in a snow cave for 14 days while trying to climb Mt Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak.
Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Mark Inglis, David Sharp, Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, Ethics, Selfish, Selfish gene, Reciprocal altruism, Kin selection, Mount Everest
29 January 2006
I’ve just arrived back from the Antarctic. A magnificent place of contradictions. While the perception is of a white continent, it is the subtle variations of light and colour that contribute so much to it’s beauty; covered in frozen water it is one of the driest places on Earth; and then, there are the animals. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Antarctica, Natural Selection, Creationist, Adaptation
20 November 2005
I’ve recently been taking a break from writing Looking for Darwin to write a series of articles for New Zealand’s major national newspaper, the Sunday Star-Times. The series is called Back to Nature and it is my very personal look at the people who have been among the greatest advocates for Nature. You can read my account of Stephen J. Gould here: a man I admired for his views on Nature but detested when his own nature was on view.Tags:Stephen J. Gould, Nature, Looking for Darwin, Charles Darwin, Sunday Star-Times
07 November 2005
Darwin came to New Zealand – the far north – but he didn’t stay long and he didn’t like it. I’m trying to imagine what he may have experienced had he wandered to the South Island and the rugged mountains of the Southern Alps. Unlike the Andes in South America, he would have observed that these were very young mountains, perhaps 5 to 7 million years old. But I think what he would have noticed most – at least it was what I noticed most when I tried to put myself in his shoes – would have been the preponderance of white flowers and butterflies. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Adaptation, White apline flowers, White butterflies, Pollination, New Zealand, Southern Alps
22 October 2005
I’ve not long finished researching and writing an article on Rachel Carson for the national Sunday newspaper in New Zealand. The article, naturally enough, was about pesticides, but it roamed into the area of breast cancer inasmuch as there is a suggested link between pesticides and breast cancer and, as fate would have it, Carson died of breast cancer. While I did not include this in the article, it seems apparent that our changing lifestyles are having a big impact on the dramatic increase in the rate of breast cancer over the last 100 years. Read More...Tags:Breast cancer, Rachael Carson, Pesticides, Oestrogen, Charles Darwin, Menstrual cycle, Period, Natural Selection
13 August 2005
The cover story in the current issue of Time Magazine is headlined “Evolution Wars”. It reports on the growing push within the United States to have “Intelligent Design” taught alongside evolution in schools as an alternative theory. Perhaps the most telling line in the whole article is the one that quotes the results of a Harris poll of 1,000 American adults: “54% did not believe humans had developed from an earlier species”. Read More...Tags:Time Magazine, Evolution, Charles Darwin, Evolution wars, Looking for Darwin, Intelligent design, Natural Selection
06 August 2005
My daughter pointing to a fossil she has found in the Burgess Shale.I have just returned to New Zealand from a research trip for Looking for Darwin. One of the highlights was a hike to the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, Canada – the site made famous by the fossilized bodies of weird creatures found at no other place on Earth. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Stephen J. Gould, Burgess Shale, Daughter, Fossils, Qualcott Quarry
