E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
:
Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. There is no genetic destiny outside our free will, no lodestar provided by which we can set course. Evolution, including genetic progress in human nature and human capacity, will be from now on increasingly the domain of science and technology tempered by ethics and political choice. We have reached this point down a long road of travail and self-deception. Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Still, except for the rare behavioral conditions approaching total genetic determination, heritabilities are at best risky predictors of personal capacity in existing and future environments. … The message from geneticists to intellectuals and policy-makers is this: Choose the society you want to promote, then prepare to live with its heritabilities. Never favor the reverse, of promoting social policies just to change heritabilities. For best results, cultivate individuals, not groups.
I’ve got two tests in the next few hours that I haven’t studied for enough because I’ve had a migraine almost every day for the past 3 weeks.
***UPDATE***
That didn’t go very badly at all 
Monitor Mix is complaining about the same music being redone. Have you ever heard of Cilla Black or Sandy Shaw?
Doing science in a nutshell at Seeds Aside:
If you don’t make mistakes, you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t correct those mistakes you’re doing it really wrong. If you can’t accept that you’re mistaken, you’re not doing it at all.
Pandagon discovers that voter ID laws have prevented a woman who has voted in the last 19 presidential elections from registering to vote in Arizona. And I believe it. I had to try 4 times before I’d given them all the paperwork and information they wanted.
The Edge of the American West presents “Things that it has been empirically demonstrated academics do not know,” including
Asking a question is not the same thing as giving a speech.
This is painfully evident at departmental seminars.
A video of McCarthy you should have seen over at The Edge of the American West.
Some plants can recognize genetic relatives and modify their behavior based on that information. Full length explanation at A Neotropical Savanna.
Hottonia inflata is now on the list of plants I have to see in person.
Tags: academics, arizona, cilla black, competition, genetics, hottonia inflata, mccarthy, music, plants, sandy shaw, science, voting rights |
One Comment
Registration starts this week at my university. I love planning out what classes I’m going to take. I think I’m going to come up with enough money to go to school full time next semester, too, which makes the decisions much easier. Choosing 4 or 5 is far less painful than choosing 2.
Next semester I’m going to take:
- Plant Morphology
- Ecology
- Statistical Analysis
- Genetics
If you go to school with me and you’ve had calculus and want to take statistics, sign up for 275 instead of 270! 275 will be a small, calculus based class but it won’t be taught if enough students don’t sign up for it. If I am accepted to the UMEB Program again next year, I’ll be taking another class associated with that program.
The only bad part about registering is that everyone else gets to register at the same time and the registration system goes so slowly. My classes shouldn’t be hard to get into, but I’ve seen some intense tantrums when someone doesn’t get into a class they need to graduate!
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