I just wrote 500 words explaining the relationship between Taxonomy, Nomenclature and PESI for use in the PESI portal. Here they are:

The process of creating a classification of life is split into two parts. Firstly experts decide which species exist. This process is called taxonomy. Secondly the experts work out what to call the species they recognise. This is called nomenclature.

The relationship between taxonomy and nomenclature is complex. Continue reading »

I have just been accepted onto the course in Mindfulness-Based Approaches at Bangor University. Starting in October this year I’ll be travelling to Bangor for 5 weekends a year and studying from home to develop my practice  and knowledge of mindfulness based approaches to mental health and general well being. Here is a quote from my application that explains why I want to do the course.

My experiences from meditation have lead me to believe that a secular form of mindfulness practice would be of great benefit to many people in the wider community. I believe, for example, that basic mindfulness classes in high school or as a general preventative treatment may improve many peoples lives.

As a scientist and advocate of a secular society I understand that beliefs based on individual experience alone are not enough to inform policy in education and medicine but that validating the efficacy of mindfulness practices is exceedingly challenging. Indeed even developing testable hypotheses is challenging when the result of such interventions may be an overall change in the quality of experience. This is an appealing research area.

I am excited by the masters courses at Bangor as they appear to offer a way for me to ’square the circle’ of my personal mindfulness practice and the more analytical approach to life that comes out of my professional work.

I hope to blog about my experiences on the course as they unfold.

The Frog in the Pond

Sometimes two things cross your desk at the same time and they say more than either one of them would on their own.

Firstly I was looking for a list of British birds and happened across the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) list of bird names and how they have changed between 1923 and 2007. This is most delightful list as it shows the English names are as stable as the scientific names – or both are equally unstable. If it hadn’t been for an attempt to standardise the use of the hyphen the English names would have been much more stable in my opinion (though by no means totally static). Here is a quote: Continue reading »

I finally submitted deliverable D4.3 for the PESI project and in the great tradition of putting my outputs on my blog here is a PDF copy: Application and Adoption of Taxonomic Standards.

This will be of interest to those involved in taxonomic and nomenclature projects as it shows our collective attempts to get to grips with GUIDs and RDF probably in a more political than technical sense. It advocates the use of Darwin Core Archive format as proposed by the GBIF ECAT project.

I have decided to close down comments on the pine nut blog post. I have been meaning to do this for some time but people seemed to find it very useful, or even therapeutic, to be able to express their feelings and I figured I was providing something of a service in this respect. As we have now hit over 1,500 comments on a single blog post it was only a matter of time before it became more work for me than simply approving the non-spam comments. I recently received a comment from a user saying they had exposed their email address on one of the comments and could I remove it – but without telling me which comment or what their name is. This falls into the category of providing too much support so I’m closing down these particular posts to comments.

If you are suffering from a bitter aftertaste then you have my sympathies. Don’t worry about it though it will go away in a few days and you could probably do with eating a little less anyhow. I am sure there is a correlation between people with internet access and those who consume too many calories – I could certainly do with eating just a little less. If the taste does not go away  you should talk to a doctor.

My hunch this is caused by spoilage of the pine nuts but their is an outside chance it is caused by a particular variety or species of Pinus.There is no need to stop eating pine nuts in the future. There is also no need to come over all xenophobic about the origins of the nuts. Not wishing to be xenophobic myself it does appear as though all the xenophobes live in one country