Blog posts

Extinct

• Landmark studies

  • Computer modeling and naturalism in paleontology

• How do you pronounce "Parasaurolophus"?

  • Is it "para-SORROW-low-fuss" or "para-SOAR-ollo-fuss"?

• Extinction, resolved

  • Is extinction a relation rather than a property?

• Systematics of "Star Wars"

  • Testing a phylogenetic hypothesis about "Star Wars" aliens

• The Chidi-Ross Spectrum: role models in philosophy and paleontology

  • How pop culture represents philosophers better than paleontologists

• Stop the clocks (and the other geological timescale metaphors, too)

  • Why it's so difficult to imagine geological time: we have only ourselves to blame

• Paleontological luck

  • The woulda, shoulda, and coulda of fossil hunting

• How should museums organize their fossils?

  • Comparing database norms in paleontology and archaeology

• "Mass" effects

  • A thought experiment about extinction

• Some questions about dinosaur feet

  • Why fossil tracks are important for understanding dinosaur ancestry

• Indiana Jones and the Griffin's Egg

  • The ethics and metaethics of repatriating fossils

• "Geoffrey," by "Plato"

  • Socrates calls customer service to complain about dinosaur toys

• How paleontology made America great again

  • Believe me: America's fossils are huge

• Excavating hidden truths

  • How philosophical argument is like paleoart

• You call that a Velociraptor? A philosophical review of Jurassic Park

  • What one learns after reading the novel for the nineteenth time

• The paleontological individual

  • Learn how to count like a paleontologist

• Humps and lumps: thoughts from Loch Ness during my summer vacation

  • Where cryptozoology enters the debate between conservatism and liberalism

• What, if anything, is a Tyrannosaurus rex?

  • Why you don't really know any dinosaur names

• The unspecific unicorn

  • How to follow a fossil trackway to a mythological creature

• Of endlings

  • When is a thylacine not a thylacine? Maybe when it's the last one

• Mo' parsimony, mo' problems

  • Wherein a wrong number can dial us into the nature of paleontology

• Sail away?

  • Hey, Dimetrodon: what's that thing on your back?

• Tryin' to throw your arms around the world

  • An ode to the author's first love on its 100th birthday

Scientia Salon

• Brontosaurus and the nature of philosophy

  • Why a paleontology paper should be recognized as a great work of philosophy

Rationally Speaking

• On the evil of George R.R. Martin

  • Lessons in theology from Fantasy's most bloodthirsty author

• Attack of the clones

  • Where Jurassic Park goes conceptually wrong

• Confessions of a modal realist (Part 1; Part 2)

  • The author's attempt to make an unpopular philosophical view seem reasonable

• On the species of species

  • How to distinguish philosophical and empirical issues in biology

• Universities are people, my friend

  • The telos of higher education, as revealed by controversy at the author's alma mater

• Superman rises some more (and why that's bad)

  • Musings on omnipotence and moral responsibility

• Superman rises

  • An explanation of why Superman is a better role model than Batman

• Enjoying natural selection on multiple levels

  • Insight into a feud between Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson

• Time travel, dinosaur clones, and free will

  • Summary of the sort of conversation one can expect on a date with the author

• Peas and quiet

  • Do plants have feelings? (No)

• Here we go again

  • Some thoughts on recent Creationist nonsense

• Love and reptiles

  • What the classification of birds can tell us about love