Author: David Bradley

Apple has got ever so touchy about websites using the term podcast more liberally than its claims to trademark registration would allow. Cease and desist letters have been sent to the likes of Mypodder and Podcastready by the company, according to reports in Wired and The Register.

There are, of course, some bloggers that claim that the term podcast actually has nothing to do with Apple’s brand of mp3 player and that it originates in the phrase “publish-on-demand”-cast. Yeah, right!

Nevertheless, there is no mention of Apple in the dictionary.com definition of podcast: “a Web-based audio broadcast via an RSS feed, accessed by subscription over the Internet” or “to deliver a Web-based audio broadcast via an RSS feed over the Internet to subscribers”. Moreover, despite the term having an obvious etymology in a bastardisation of iPod and broadcast, neither an iPod nor over-the-air broadcasting is need to make or listen to a podcast.

Mark Ramsey of Hear 2.0 reckons it’s time we ditched the term podcast anyway, too few people “get it” he says, and the word should be changed to “audiomag” or something similar. This assertion is made despite the fact that the Ricky Gervais Show is mentioned in the Guiness Book of Records as the most popular podcast, presumably that will change soon with the launch of Sciencebase’s very own Geordie Boffin Podcast. Well, we can all dream, can’t we?

Bizarrely as ever, The Register includes a list of podified words in its report: antipodean, cephalopod, chiropodist, monkeypod, podgy and uropod. They overlooked arthropod, podiatrist, peapod, monopod…some of which point to the fact that pod, the prefix, has its etymology in the Greek word for foot. Maybe it’s time to give it the boot and go with Ramsey’s suggestion, or better still, we could rename them “blogcasts”, no doubt that would open yet another can of bad applies as the trademark owner of that term would more than likely kick up a fuss too.

In an item on The Register about why natural selection takes so long to get results, Dr Stephen Juan, an anthropologist at the University of Sydney makes several statements that seem to me to be at odds with evolutionary theory.

“Most mutations do not help the species survive.”

This is true in one sense, but natural selection doesn’t act on species, all it does is remove individuals from the gene pool that are no longer best adapted for a particular environment. If a mutation in an individual’s DNA mean it is better adapted to a changing environment then it will pass the “new” gene(s) on to its offspring who will then have the trait and the viability in that environment to reproduce and so on.

“A species and an environment exist in balance with each other.”

Do they? Perhaps, but only in the sense that should either one change radically then we will no longer observe a balance. Moreover, several mutations over several generations that allow individuals to cope with a changing environment leads to species diversity.

“Populations simply adapt to their current surroundings and to changes in those surroundings.”

No they don’t. Individuals either survive the new surroundings and pass on their genes to their offspring or they don’t. Usually, only those best adapted to new environmental conditions survive to do so. Populations may display synergetic effects between individuals but this is not the same as a population adapting.

“They do not necessarily become better in any absolute sense over time.”

There is no such thing as “better” or “worse” evolutionarily speaking. An individual either survives and passes on its genes or it does not. If those genes endow the offspring with the ability to survive and pass the genes on again then the genes survive. If they don’t they are lost. Evolution is littered with dead-ends but every single living thing on the planet has ancestors that were capable of reproducing.