I wanted to give a shout out to a bunch of books I've read recently. Well, I wanted to write up a post reviewing each one, but that turned out to be overly ambitious given other constraints on my life, and they're due back at the library already. So here's the brief shout:

The Future Eaters, by Tim Flannery. Ecological history of Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and New Caledonia. Fascinating, takes in a broad sweep from the break-up of Gondwana through to recent human impacts,...

Tamino is a mathematician with an interest in climate science, he runs an excellent blog where he posts lucid introductions and analysis of some climate science issues. I've learned quite a bit from reading it.

Check out this recent post, it's a clear introduction to time series analysis, and in particular about how to use statistics to determine if there are trends in temperature data. I'd recommend the earlier parts to anyone who wants an understanding of what a trend is and isn't,...

I finally decided to take the plunge.

For the last few ideas I've been toying with the idea of returning to University, 15 years after I quit part-way through a philosophy degree. Now I've decided the time is right, and, starting next February, I'll be relocating to Dunedin and beginning the University of Otago's ecology programme.

The registration pack arrived in the mail today. I'm both excited and daunted. It's been quite some time since I was in tertiary education,...