George Carlin – The Earth and Humans
George Carlin really understood the relationship between humans and the Earth!
He must have been a paleontologist.
A Commentary on Theology and Biology
From a letter by Michael Jinkins:
“If sophomore biology threatens your faith, your theology has bigger problems than Charles Darwin.”
From observingstupiditydaily: “Remember when … “
Quoting observingstupiditydaily.
“Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither.”
Some Of My Other Furniture
I like building things. Here is a slideshow of some of my furniture pieces and other things around the house I’ve built over the years.
My Ancestors
Last week, I took a trip to Knoxville, Tennessee to visit the NIMBioS Center. I had a great time seeing old friends and talking to the postdocs and faculty there, but I also had an ulterior motive. It was to find where a number of my ancestors are buried. Read the rest of this entry »
My next chair
I love to build things. That probably comes with being a scientist: the challenge of making a bunch of things fit together. I’ve built much of the furniture we have in the house, plus a couple of canoes, clocks, and the like.
Because of my bad knees, a couple of years ago I built myself a Morris chair for my office.
Read the rest of this entry »
So you want to be a great reviewer
In my current position as Editor-in-Chief of the American Naturalist, I read all kinds of reviews of scientific papers from all kinds of people. I routinely get asked, particularly by graduate students, what makes a good review. Here are a few thoughts on the subject.
Read the rest of this entry »
Unifying the unified theories of biodiversity?
A paper in Ecology Letters describes a “unification” of the six unified theories of ecology (doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01449.x). I didn’t know we had six “unified” theories to start with. (How can there be more than one “unified” theory? But that’s beside the point.)
Read the rest of this entry »
Nobody can give you an education
Nobody can give you an education; you have to take it.
Read the rest of this entry »
What are exams for?
If you teach long enough, you start to think that students are only after an extra point on an exam, and not trying to learn from what you are trying to teach them – particularly the broader learning experiences that students should be having in genuinely evaluating their own performance, and engaging in self-critical evaluations that will make themselves better.
Read the rest of this entry »