Tue 2006-05-16 On the train on the way home I was inspired to compose the following anagrams by something that I saw:
Can you solve them? What is the common theme?
Tue 2006-05-16 A few months ago I treated myself to a copy of Edward O. Wilson's 'From So Simple a Beginning', a one-volume collection of Charles Darwin's four major works. Included are The Voyage of the Beagle, On the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. It is a beautifully produced book: well bound and printed with clear diagrams and comprehensive indices. It even comes in its own box sleeve. If it has one fault, it is that it is rather too heavy for me to carry in my bag and so I cannot read it on the train to and from work. Still, it fits very nicely on my bedside table.
The introductions that Wilson has written to each book are interesting enough but, at only 2 to 3 pages each, they are only a very minor part of the book. I will talk about Darwin's 'contributions' to this volume later, as and when I finish reading them.
James D. Watson has also recently published a one-volume collection of Darwin's works (Darwin: The Indelible Stamp; The Evolution of an Idea). I came across a copy recently and, from what I've seen of it, it looks somewhat inferior to Wilson's book (as if less care had gone into its production). In his autobiography 'Naturalist', Wilson describes how Watson and other molecular biologists more-or-less pushed traditional biologists, like himself, to one side in the Harvard University biology department during the 1950's and 1960's. Well, with From So Simple a Beginning', Wilson has at last got the better of his old 'enemy'!
Sun 2006-05-07 
I have created a Flickr set to hold photos of the Egyptian gosling at various stages in its development. You can find it here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tristrambrelstaff/sets/72057594125209519/
Sat 2006-05-06 The following is from Richard Dawkins' foreword to the 1993 edition of John Maynard Smith's 'The Theory of Evolution':
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe. It is the only known explanation for the rich diversity of animals, plants, fungi and bacteria; not just the leopards, kangaroos, Komodo dragons, dragonflies, corncrakes, coast redwood trees, whales, bats, albatrosses, mushrooms and bacilli that share our time, but the countless others - tyrannosaurs, ichthyosaurs, pterodactyls, armour-plated fishes, trilobites and giant sea scorpions - that we know only from fossils but which, in their own aeons, filled every cranny of the land and sea. Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live a sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study. ...
Tue 2006-04-25 According to Paul Thurrot, Microsoft seem to be having some difficulties with Windows Vista, their intended successor to the Windows XP operating system. My feeling is that it is, as C.A.R.Hoare said of the programming language Ada, "doomed to succeed".
