Walkabout - Science & Evolution

Perpetually confusing

Infinity is this curious concept, wide open for misinterpretation, but even in its refined sense, it often suffers from one of the biggest problems of philosophy: we believe that since we’ve put a lot of effort into it, it must be important.

To explain the most misunderstood aspect of it, I’m going to steal [...]

It’s a tad humid

I got out the camera to chase a particular subject, which disappeared on me, so while the strobe was still charged I decided not to waste that electricity and went looking for something else to photograph. Yeah, I really do think that way sometimes, though if I do find another subject, I’ll fire off [...]

Bully for you!

I have a list of topics to address in posts someday, and within them is one about the difference between bullying and criticism. I was reminded of it with a recent interchange between Jerry Coyne and Deepak Chopra, and so…

Deepak Chopra is the shining god of the pseudoscience, new age, mystical reality, mushrooms-lead-to-higher-consciousness [...]

That’s just your science

An article over at Wired talks in detail about the overblown reputation and fears of the notorious brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa) and, as is so typical of any attempt to impart some needed perspective to the general public, it crashes like a wave against the rock of human nature – at least, if [...]

Seeing is believing. But not necessarily true

Perspective, in the usage of considering some topic from a different standpoint than originally, is a great thing, and something I play with a lot on this blog. In the usage of how things appear to us visually, based on our position, it’s a useful thing to play with in photography as well. But [...]

So, why should we bother?

In a previous post detailing the difficulties and uncertainties of tracing our hominid ancestors, I kind of led up to a question, expressed now in this post: Why should we bother? It’s a lot of effort to determine something that happened in the past, which is highly unlikely to have much affect on anything [...]

You can call me Al

Over at the New York Times, Carl Zimmer has an article on the difficulties of pinning down hominid species, which illustrates an interesting perspective in biology, but is unfortunately a little too brief. There are a couple of factors at play, and no easy way to resolve them.

The very first thing to bear [...]

Too cool, part 20: Stop it, you’re creeping me out

Lyssomanes viridis, known to those of us who do not speak dead languages as the magnolia green jumping spider, is a lovely translucent green spider that wouldn’t hurt a fly um, is harmless to anything larger than a honyebee and is undeserving of any arachnophobic reactions. Until you get close. Really, really close.

Because, [...]

Limitations

Several years ago, I witnessed a particular action from a friend’s dog that startled me. The dog had come into their living room on a lazy afternoon and looked around for a place to lie down, to find the other dogs had already claimed all of the best snoozing spots. He actually got a [...]

Buried at the crossroads

I wish I could draw political-style cartoons, because then I’d open this with an illustration of an unkillable zombie, or maybe Jason from the Friday the 13th franchise, with the label “Free Will” on it…

This time around it’s an article in Slate from Roy F. Baumeister entitled, “Do You Really Have Free Will?” [...]

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Perpetually confusing

It’s a tad humid

Bully for you!

That’s just your science

Seeing is believing. But not necessarily true

So, why should we bother?

You can call me Al

Too cool, part 20: Stop it, you’re creeping me out

Limitations

Buried at the crossroads

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