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scoutle a footnote to the british empire posted on january 28 2012 by ian ramjohn in his 2002 review of the mystic masseur roger ebert wrote the west indies were a footnote to the british empire and the indian community of trinidad was a footnote to the footnote even intelligent educated people tend to make the mistake of assuming that to some extent things have always been the way they are today what s left of the british west indies is indeed collected leftovers of empire too small to stand on their own and the english speaking caribbean is little more than a footnote in geopolitics but that wasn t always the case more filed under economic botany history trinidad and tobago leave a comment farewell prof kenny posted on august 9 2011 by ian ramjohn i began my uwi experience knowing a little more about the place than the average undergrad my sister two years into her time there saw to it that i knew the general layout of the place such that i was able to easily win the orientation week treasure hunt and the 50 prize which was more than a little money back in 1989 in addition to campus geography i was also aware fo the basics layout of the chemistry plant science and zoology departments and more than anyone else i had heard of professor kenny the professor of zoology who would lock the door to the lecture room at 8 o clock so if you were late you were out of luck so it was with a great deal of interest that i attended my first zoology lecture as an undergraduate i don t recall an awful lot about first year zoology prof kenny taught the first few months of the class before mary alkins koo took over in january i think with graham white rounding out the year with vertebrates kenny having decided to mellow in his old age took to leaving the doors to the lecture hall unlocked but his comments to late comers were enough to ensure that i was in class by 8 am or failing that skip class if i made it his lectures were an experience worth getting out of bed for his long lanky frame would move across the front of the lecture hall sitting on the front table like a large bird of prey now standing with one foot up on the front table he had an energy in the classroom full of movement full of a slightly jerk energy having done a level zoology i didn t feel too great a need to make it to lecture until graham white s bit at the end of the year there was very little that was entirely new to me the lab on the other hand was a very different experience and one that i would not consider missing labs allowed for direct interaction with faculty a chance to talk to get to know people even after his section was done kenny had a habit of dropping in on the first year labs and talking to students while his entry usually attracted a large group of admirers there were still opportunities to talk to him tap into his wealth of knowledge kenny always struck me as an unlikely environmentalist his contribution to th environmental movement in trinidad and tobago is huge and he inspired many people to work for conservation as i understand it he was a major inspiration for the foundation of the uwi biological society around 1987 a movement that not only launched many a career among environmental professionals in trinidad and tobago but which also helped transform conservation from a french creole hobby into a serious national concern it s an unusual legacy for someone who was not only born to the local white elite but also someone who seemed profoundly skeptical about whether there was any point whatsoever in trying to conserve anything at all still he taught people to value nature to love it and even if he had little faith in their ability to stem the tide of destruction the love of nature he instilled in his students made them care enough to try while i only took first year zoology from him so i don t really know if i count among prof s students after all i never called him prof he certainly had a major impact on me at the end of first year he said to me sure you topped the class but you should have done better i only got a b and that backhanded compliment was really one of the most important things anyone ever said to me filed under conservation personal trinidad and tobago 3 comments evolution 2011 posted on june 17 2011 by ian ramjohn the 2011 evolution meetings are in norman and i am maybe kinda blogging about it trying to start blogging again consolidate my disparate efforts at my own domain evolution 2011 opening reception filed under evolution 1 comment doubt is our product posted on june 9 2010 by ian ramjohn one of the remarkable things about the bp gulf of mexico disaster is their denial of the existence of underwater plumes of oil it seems odd inexplicable really for bp to deny what s been confirmed by independent scientists it ceases to be odd though when you try to put it in context i am reading naomi oreskes and erik conway s excellent book merchants of doubt in it they trace the history of the marketing doubt and undercutting science from tobacco to sdi acid rain ozone depletion secondhand smoke global warming and finally to the recent revisionist attacks on rachel carson from that context bp s outright denial of the science seems terribly familiar it s not important whether your position is defensible or not you simply have to repeat it over and over and depend on the pro business media politicians and experts to take up your case so far no one but rand paul is defending bp but give it some time you ll soon hear about the junk science of oil plumes filed under anti environment anti science denialism 3 comments hackademe posted on february 5 2010 by ian ramjohn t ryan gregory of genomicron and evolver zone has set up a new website of tips and tricks to help academics manage their lives he calls it hackademe and it s well worth checking out filed under academia leave a comment updates posted on february 5 2010 by ian ramjohn ok so i haven t finished my posts about darwin s dilemma can t promise that i will but it really doesn t do any good to not blog because i feel like i shouldn t until i finish what s pending after all the best way to ensure that the posts never get finished is to not blog at all that said it isn t like i have a whole lot to blog about right now berry go round 24 i s up at phylophactor another thing i ve neglected it s interesting to look at the blogs that have contributed those posts most of them are new to me two years ago when bgr began i knew most of the blogs and got to know many of the bloggers whose work graced that blog carnival now i don t makes you think about the half life of a blog people contribute for a while and then fall out of the habit some people keep going luigi and jeremy of the agricultural biodiversity weblog keep at it and we are very fortunate that they do filed under blog carnivalia blogging leave a comment a nobel peace prize posted on october 9 2009 by ian ramjohn i scanned my rss reader quickly this morning short on sleep with at least an hour of work to do to prepare for my morning class it was meant to be nothing more than a cursory glance the story covered on some blog or other stood there at the top of the list nobel peace prize obama it didn t look like a joke posting but it just looked too unbelievable to be true so i scrolled down saw the story on one then another then i saw it on talking points memo only then did i accept it as true josh marshall doesn t joke around nor does he print stories based on rumours wow my first reaction once i accepted it as true was simply wow on one hand it s nice to see a positive take from someone with perspective that isn t tied up in the internecine struggles of american politics even as you reject the birthers and the deathers their brand of outrageous nonsense still colours the discourse and like many liberals i m less than thrilled with the way the white house is handling the health care debate the why the doj has handled some civil liberties cases so positive news is a breath of fresh air on the other hand it seemed premature he s seriously considering escalating in afghanistan while the palestine seems on smoulder on the edge of a new flare up but the language of the nobel committee s language spoke of change in the international climate and as the climate of international relations changes it creates space for peacemaking later on i started to think about what people had said had to say and it occurred to me that maybe obama wasn t such a bad choice several people said that obama received the prize for not being bush phrased that way it seems trite but that s actually a pretty good argument for awarding him the prize it s easy to forget how much things have changed in the last year or so it wasn t that long ago that people were discussing with straight faces the question of whether the us should use nuclear weapons against iran cheney and the neocons were ready to go to war with iran there was also talk about war with north korea right or wrong it seemed like the only thing holding them back from getting involved in another war was the fact that the military was strained to the breaking point in addition to that the us wasn t only using torture people in the government were defending tactics like waterboarding so it s more than not being bush it s a conscious decision to abandon much of the former regime s rhetoric and a good bit of their actions the obama administration has still fallen short on civil liberties it still hasn t ended the wars it still hasn t closed guantanamo but that doesn t change the fact that what they have done is huge but all of this is still simply a matter of not being bush right not really obama didn t defeat bush in the election last year he defeated john mccain and john mccain rhetoric was far more belligerent than bush s not only was he singing bomb bomb bomb iran he also seemed ready to go to war with russia over georgia last summer and of course a mccain victory would have put sarah palin a heartbeat away from the presidency still it s easy to say well ok but any democrat would have done this but would they have during the democratic primary obama was ridiculed by his fellow dems for his willingness to engage in diplomacy even with iran more importantly he showed himself to have a spine when dealing with the right wing claims that he or any dem was soft on terrorism or international affairs or look what happened in the authorisation of the iraq war dems were cowed into voting for the war that s important because as we have seen the criticism from the far right is unrelenting and congressional dems have shown that they will cave if the far right gets loud enough this was important in the decision to stop the plan for unproven anti missile systems in eastern europe while touted as being defenses against iran they were most likely to provoke escalation with russia again it takes enough spine to stand up to the far right and do what makes most sense obama also has a proven track record on nuclear disarmament of course equally important is obama s attempts to improve relationships with the muslim world again given all the claims that he was a secret muslim i can see strategists telling obama stay away from the muslim world since it will inflame the far right it took courage to reach out and reaching out matters not only does it create the opportunity to improve relations and thus improve the global climate it also may help average americans begin to get over their islamophobia you talk to americans even liberals and they see islam as monolithic and scary muslims were never popular in the us but over the last few years they were dehumanised to the extent that deaths in iraq and afghanistan are seen as insignificant or even horror of horrors a good thing in some cases obama s personal popularity and likability also contribute to the way he and by extension the us is perceived in the world again this is more than being not bush this is being obama national leaders need to work together regardless of what they think of one another and regardless of what their people think of the other leaders it s far more popular to negotiate with to cooperate with a barack obama than with a george bush similarly if you re a demagogue trying to work people up against america it s easier when the american leader is hated and much more difficult when the american leader is loved it s more than just showing up obama has changed the international political climate and he s done so in a way that makes peace more possible that doesn t excuse the fact that he s also in charge of two wars and is considering escalating in afghanistan that doesn t change the fact that he must do more for world peace it s one thing to ask whether obama is the most deserving candidate i don t know i can t answer that question it s quite another to suggest that he isn t qualified for the award it s only been a few months but he has made a real and significant impact on peace filed under politics world affairs leave a comment how to write an intelligent design book posted on october 6 2009 by ian ramjohn yeah i m still working on my review of darwin s dilemma which is how i end up on these tangents in my review of stephen meyer s talk at ou last week i commented on his fruitful use of the model that michael behe had used in darwin s black box abbie disagreed with me pointing out that meyers choice of origin of life was a bold choice meyer is not a biologist i mean hes got some earth science degree but origins research is dominated by virologists astrophysicists biochemists waaaaaaay beyond meyers knowledge base waaaaaaaaay off behe could bullshit biochem cause hes a biochemist but for a geologist philosopher to try to bullshit astrophysics thats bold resisting the urge to add apostrophes while what she says is true it assumes that idists are out to bullshit scientists i don t believe that s true the goal of id is apologetics science and scientists are just props convenient or inconvenient foils the first work attributed to the intelligent design movement is davis and kenyon s 1989 textbook of pandas and people but as barbara forrest and nick matzke demonstrated in the kitzmiller trial pandas was written as a creation science text and only slightly modified in the wake of edwards v agillard over the next 13 years the id movement produced four important books phillip johnson s darwin on trial 1991 michael behe s darwin s black box 1996 william dembski s the design inference 1998 and jonathan wells icons of evolution 2002 both johnson s and wells books are primarily anti evolution books and they draw upon the creationist tradition of using problems with evolution to attempt to discredit the entire endeavour they follow the lead of michael denton s 1985 book evolution a theory in crisis their arguments are for the most part specious and are only effective if you don t understand or disbelieve the self correcting nature of the scientific endeavour behe s and dembski s ...