Recently I've become entranced with the idea of polyphyletic and paraphyletic groups. Sadly, this is nothing to do with polyamory (or paraphilia), and has a much more direct and necessary connection to reproduction.

( Long and geeky taxonomic ramblings. Contains monkeys and dinosaurs, which are, it turns out, fish. )

For bedtime story tonight, **FIXME wanted me to tell him about how people came to be. From start of life, through to mammals, then monkeys and chimpanzees, then humans. (His choice of waypoints, although originally he wanted mammals between chimps and people and had to be renegotiated.) So I told him, and he listened with interest (he has heard ( Read more... )

An eclectic collection of ideas running round my head at the moment, in compressed format due to lack of time (and thus, in parts at least, likely to be incomprehensibly telegraphic (and overly parenthetical) at best and unclear and poorly-thought-through at worst), but with luck it will at least serve to get them out of my head ( Read more... )

I finally got round to reading The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock. I had several interesting thoughts while reading it, and imagined myself writing a well-referenced and well-argued review of the book that riffed on the themes raised therein. As I thought, it was worth reading, but hasn't completely changed my mind about nuclear power ( Read more... )

It really does seem like Spring at last. The weather's warmer, the daffodils and primroses have burst forth all over the place, and it's light enough to go out and pick stuff from the garden for supper. Things are growing and there's the prospect of planting things up for the new season. Hooray ( Read more... )