Fiona

follow-up on Lawrence

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Re yesterday’s post: It’s an interesting essay. I think Science were right to reject it on the basis that it presented no positive suggestions for action. One could be left with only the message that the status quo is acceptable in some situations, if we accept that men and women bring different plates to the … Read more

paper: men, women + ghosts in science

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The leaky pipeline in science, or why 60% of biology undergrads are female yet only 10% of professors are. Science rejected this after long consideration, but it got published by PLoS Biology. I am just linking to the paper by Peter Lawrence: haven’t read it yet, haven’t read this commentary in The Telegraph, but will … Read more

phylogeny comparison applet

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A nifty little web-based applet for comparing the topology of two phylogenies and identifying where the differences lie. Could be useful in the future. Works for me on a G5 with Firefox. The paper referring to it is: Nye, T. M. W., Lio, P. & Gilks, W. R. (2006) A novel algorithm and web-based tool … Read more

alumni events

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The University of Auckland is having an alumni event in London next month. I’m vaguely interested in the proposal (for a Centre for NZ Studies in the University of London system), but more importantly, I’m wondering about networking opportunities. I’ve not made an effort with alumni events so far (granted, they’re limited on the other … Read more

expectant dads get fat + parable of hats

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New Scientist reports on research in Biology Letters, demonstrating that, in marmosets and tamarind monkeys at least, dads-to-be put on weight during pregnancy as well as the mothers. The hypothesis is that the extra weight gain (about 10%) provides an energetic reserve for when the infants are born and dad has to cart them about … Read more

links: pacific prehistory

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At Savage Minds, a great anthropology blog, Rex praises Untangling Oceanic Settlement: The Edge Of The Knowable as a review of the interdisciplinary state of knowledge in Pacific prehistory. It is a great paper, because it is very “four field” in its scope. However, it makes me pout a little to be relegated to The … Read more

Darwin Correspondence

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The Rev. Charles Kingsley (he wrote The Water Babies) received a copy of Origin from CD and wrote the following letter: C. KINGSLEY TO C. DARWIN. Eversley Rectory, Winchfield, November 18th, 1859. Dear Sir, I have to thank you for the unexpected honour of your book. That the Naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I … Read more

Language: hip-hop

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Hip-hop and linguistics: you ain’t heard no research like it. Calgary linguist Daryn Howe investigates Black vernacular in hip-hop lyrics. Jeff Long, the GWUM[1], was the hip-hop fan here. The message: Black speech has lots of ain’t. I was sitting on the bus this week idly eavesdropping on conversations and just could not understand the … Read more

Books to read

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Graphs, Maps and Trees by Franco Moretti. UCL Library doesn’t have this, wah. The amazon.com reviews said that he had a chapter attempting to create what sounded like phylogenies of literary motifs, such as the clue in detective fiction. Intriguing… hopefully over in the bookshop for a browse.

Darwin Correspondence

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The Writings of Charles Darwin on the Web is an amazing resource which allows you to search the texts–including, at an offshoot site, some of his correspondence! When I was writing my honours dissertation I had to stop myself reading the letters obsessively, seeing if I could glean some overlooked insight about language buried in amongst the natural history anecdotes and Darwin’s bleating about his poor health.

This letter (reference only) to his sister Caroline was a great find. In it, Charles used the hypothetical age of the Indo-European languages, and their differences from Chinese to agree with Herschel that yes, the earth must indeed be older than 6000 years as argued by the Bible.
I also love this one (below) that CD wrote to Thomas Henry Huxley. I confess to being a bit of a Huxley fan myself, but their mutual admiration society makes me smile…

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