The Bloggingheads with David Dobbs and Moi is now up at Blogginheads, and embedded here:
I had just posted a review of Dobb's book, Reef Madness, which I enjoyed a great deal, and here we discuss the book in more detail. I left out a lot of detail, especially the exciting multi-part ending, in my review. You'll hear more about what happened to the competing reef theories and to Alexander Agassiz in this hour long bla-bla-blawginghead's interview.
David Dobbs' main web site is here.
Added: Note something funny (as in funny strange) happening at about 23 or 24 minutes.
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For Darwin's Birthday Weekend, a reposting of my review of David Dobb's Reef Madness:
Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral is a book about the origins of modern science, the interplay between theory and empiricism, the machinations of the Victorian scientific…
There are many fascinating stories linked to the early days of evolutionary biology and geology, and more than one of them is intertwined with our understanding of coral reefs. I had always thought that Darwin's interaction with the question of how coral reefs form was central to Darwin's own…
Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral is a book about the origins of modern science, the interplay between theory and empiricism, the machinations of the Victorian scientific gentry, epic rivalries, polyps and plankton.
Reef Madness is by David Dobbs, of Neuron…
Bloggingheads.tv just posted a conversation Greg Laden and I had about the second-biggest scientific controversy of Darwin's time, and of Darwin's life: the argument over how coral reefs form. The coral reef argument was fascinating in its own right, both scientifically and dramatically -- for here…
There's a hiccup at the beginning of the diavlog that jumps right to the end. You need to manually push the marker up to the 1 or 2 minute mark and start playing.
I also felt that the sped up dialog is annoying and distracting and made me leave after several minutes.
Those are two glitches that I think are not really there for everyone. This technology seems to act differently in different contexts. What do you mean by sped up dialog?
It can only be the hand of gÃd! You should apply for the Templeton prize. :-P
Very interesting, I've never heard of this historical debate before and it really does seem like a classic question of "how do we do science?"
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I was ready to give up on Bloggingheads after the creationism controversy and the waste of this week's Science Saturday on Wright's excuse-making, until I clicked on it one last time and saw that the REAL Science Saturday had been moved to "Percontations," and there was Laden.
This was a GREAT conversation. Fascinating topic. I was impressed by the way the two of you stretched the story out and made the conversation suspenseful. Now I have yet another book I have to read, dammit.
What with Plait leaving Bloggingheads too, you're going to be lonely if you keep on doing these.
Thanks.
All we did was to go in order of the book, pretty much. It's a great story with an excellent flow.
What I get is a greyed out screen and three buttons, two grey and one green. The grey ones say respectively, "Continue this video on Bloggingheads TV" and "Repeat this clip". The green button says, "link/embed".
At Bloggingheads you get the same clip, and a link below the screen that says, "click to play video". Click that and you get the clip again. Apparently in order to see the full video you have to click one of the three download links, and as I type the MP4 file is still downloading.
Update: So I've said screw it, and I'm going to download the audio (mp3) because I've gotten the feeling there's something screwy with the video download.
So now the audio is playing, and my first impression is, Greg is not a polished public speaker. :)
In any case, download the audio file and give it a listen. You'll get the gist of what Greg and Dave are talking about.
Alan #9: Have you ever seen Laden publicly speak? His audiences are usually left enthralled, except for the ones he kills:) I go to a lot of academic type public talks, and I've seen Laden twice. There are not many as good as him.
Most people will not have to download the audio. Just click on the little "go" arrow that is on most videos and it will play. If not, fix your computer.
I enjoyed it. It really is better than the average blogginghead.
Well, Alan, I don't like it much either, to be frank, but this is not public speaking. Or, if you think this is public speaking you need to get out more.
Thank you Liz. Next time, introduce yourself to me, I'll give you that twenty.
Sped up dialog for me watching was the appearance that both of you were either talking so fast that you never paused for a breath or to contemplate what you were going to say.
It seemed like every pause, no matter how small was edited out. The words were jammed together, the sentences were done as if there was no end of one and start to the next.
I have seen some BH dialogs like this and others at regular speed.
It was a strain to concentrate on what you two were saying.
Bob: Interesting. I'll have to look into that. I can tell you that the video I sent in was something like 59 minutes 38 seconds long, and we had a technical glitch that took out a minute or two during the process. So if this was speeded up, that should be numerically obvious. (Also, I can compare what i sent with what was posted)
Aha. I timed it.
For every 60 seconds on my watch the timer of the video ticked off 85 seconds!
New Enlgand Bob, are you using the "speed up the video button"? If yo dn't like the speedup, don't hit the "Sppedup the video button."