If you’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for the videos of last October’s Darwin conference in Chicago, wait no more. All 28 session talks are up at this site. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for the three plenary videos (Lewontin, Numbers, and Hauser), which need to be downsized for posting.
DarwinFest videos finally up
August 15, 2010 • 11:44 am
Nice! Can’t wait to watch the philosophy section.
Whuzzat? A conference? That was so 2009.
Hope that means cut up for posting, not shrunk wrap to fit.
I was taken in by Lewontin’s title on adaptation as “bad metaphor” so I hope that will come up eventually.
After reading Gell-Mann’s “The Quark and the Jaguar” it was my understanding that “adaptation” was not a bad metaphor, as far as generalization goes from biology into other sciences. ‘Adaptive and maladaptive schemata in complex adaptive systems’ takes Gell-Mann from physics all the way to science (adaptive schemata) and religion (maladaptive schemata).
Of course it gets fuzzy around the edges in a evo-psych way, but he was excited about the possible predictivity. That was 1994 so likely it petered out. But the analogy between adaptation and learning remains, at least. [There are also connections to neuro-science, but they are fuzzy yet again.]
There’s one talk from one Coyne on speciation, which is so good that even this layman was left less confused after than before. You could say that the information migration m was > 0.
In retrospect, I now find the Wikipedia article on this awful. Some of Coyne’s systematics (characterization by gene exchange; gene exchange makes speciation less likely) should find its way in there.
Is Lewontin still banging his anti-panadaptationist drum?
Are the sponsors of the conference really anxious to post a talk by Prof. Hauser?
That was a gratuitous and uncalled-for remark.
the Hauser movie is up now, but it’s HUGE.
over 2gb.
But it’s not the size, it’s what you do with it… oh, who am I kidding? Academic greatness can’t be denied!
But it’s not the size, it’s what you do with it
O.o
Jerry-
watched your talk; sorry you got rushed there at the end. I thought you were doing quite well; I think if they gave you another 10 minutes it would have been worth it.
OK, question:
There appears to be good evidence to indicate that sympatric speciation has NOT occurred in oceanic bird species, given the fact that nobody has yet been able to find any sister species on the same islands even (Darwin must be terribly upset).
OK, now lets talk Cichlids. I was a grad student of George Barlow’s ages ago, and even then rift lake Cichlids were considered the best place to look at sympatric speciation. You did mention some great examples in the crater lake studies, but didn’t get a chance to elaborate on them much (maybe you were planning to circle back to them at the end?).
so, ARE they still good examples of sympatric speciation? Who has the best genetic evidence at this point, and just how complete is the picture?
thanks
rethinking that, it was a rather flippant comment about Darwin.
Frankly, Darwin would have been excited.
It says something about my phone not being suported. And that they are looking forward to when it is. Whenever that will be. Or my conections keep timing out. Either way, I sm unable to watch any of them currently. Frak. I was realy excited about these. I also canot get any of Dawkins genome talks.