Ecological Evolution Group 生态进化组
Posted on Apr 19th, 2010
The storm last night knocked a lot of branches and leaves out of the trees. Walking home at lunch, the kids and I passed through the scattered remains of a large ant nest that had fallen out of a mango tree. They create these impressive structures up in the tips of the branches by pulling [...]
Posted on Apr 18th, 2010
Planted tomato and pepper plants today in pots. They were volunteers in our backyard, where we throw the cuttings from dinner prep. It was very fun. Gardening is a wonderful way to connect with the soil. In finding pots, we emptied several old ginger plants onto the ground and they were incredibly pot-bound. Must have [...]
Posted on Apr 8th, 2010
First Flight We were out on our evening walk the other way, to see the peacocks on the far side of the garden. Near the dirt road leading down to the peacock house, we encountered a cloud of flying termites and a host of bats swooping around to catch them. The termites were pouring out [...]
Posted on Apr 2nd, 2010
It’s April. Quana’s 6 years old. I have three months here in the garden with little travel or distraction. It is the ‘write time’and I have a long list of things that I want to finish. Too many projects. I have changed the set up in my office to try and get the most of [...]
Posted on Mar 29th, 2010
Participated in the leading group discussion about the Shier Wu (12th Five Year) plan this morning. A lot of exciting things planned in the near future! Given the success over the last five years, I expect XTBG to fulfill a large proportion of these new initiatives. One of the most interesting aspects of this process [...]
Posted on Mar 28th, 2010
Woke up this morning to distant echoes of raucous thunder – single rolling booms that were building in intensity and drawing closer until the quick lightning flash was visible seconds beforehand. I grew up loving thunderstorms in Texas. Mainly because they were a sure guarantee of getting out of work, at least the heavy and [...]
Posted on Mar 15th, 2010
I realize that I am not at the bleeding edge of this curve but I bought a Sony ereader for Christmas this year for myself and I like it much more than I expected. I have owned several digital devices but have never really found a use for them. I tried to use a Sony [...]
Posted on Mar 14th, 2010
Writing from KL tonight. Will be going back to Banna in a few days. We’ve decided to not go to the meeting in Spain this June. This decision simplifies our lives a great deal. I am going to try mightily to stay in the garden the entire time until the ATBC meeting in late July. [...]
Posted on Jul 3rd, 2009
The AFEC-X is about to start! A crowd of students are converging on Kunming and then Menglun. I am going to try and forget about publishing and research for the course and just have fun with it. I haven’t taught in a while and find that I miss it. We’re going to try and live [...]
Posted on Jun 30th, 2009
Okay, I have been debating whether I should post this or not but here goes. I have been involved with the DNA barcode idea through a series of strange events and communications, most of them from rather irrational proponents of the DNA barcode idea – including calling me a ‘reptile brain’. Hmm. Okay, sounds like [...]
Posted on Jun 21st, 2009
In Singapore for a week – meetings mainly, see some friends – I mainly wanted to comment on how connected we all are and how much this has changed our lives. Modern life is incredibly different than it ever has been and the change is pervasive, not as if only a small fraction of the [...]
Posted on May 24th, 2009
Just a couple of direct quotes from Alfred Russel Wallace, which are found within a few pages of each other. They illustrate his wisdom and his outlook on life. discussing the king bird of paradise, one of the most remarkable birds in the world, with its elaborately beautiful tail feathers- “I thought of the long [...]
Posted on May 23rd, 2009
Almost finished re-reading ARW’s Malay Archipelago. I first read it over twenty years ago and I appreciate it much more now, after having visited many of the places he went and have done a wider variety of research. He is enormously impressive and his life and adventures exemplify the most noble and honest curiousity in [...]
Posted on May 23rd, 2009
Just finished Isaac Asimov’s “The Gods Themselves”. Bought it earlier this year in Malaysia at a used book store and read it cover to cover in just a few days. Asimov is a master at sci-fi, packing a great deal of imagination and creativity and scientific plausability into 300 pages of rather large text. He [...]
Posted on May 19th, 2009
A friend told me to get back to work on this blog, so here I am. It’s rainy season now. Rather suddenly last week, it started raining. It comes in great downpours. This morning at 5 AM, it started with a quick crescendo and continued heavily for about an hour. The rest of the day [...]
Posted on Jan 24th, 2009
Start this blog off with something simple. A recent publication in Psychological Science demonstrated that people are mentally replenished by the peacefulness and beauty of natural outdoor settings and can generally think better after having a bit of time away from the urban environment. Yeah, makes sense to me. I hope to never live in [...]
