Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
Category: Biology
If yeast can make alcohol directly out of starch, why bother malting the barley before making beer?
Posted by Martin R at 8:21 AM • 12 Comments •
Aardvarchaeology
Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
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Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
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Recent Posts
- Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Like an Elephant
- Laptop Day
- Early Medieval Magnates Talk in Lund
- Dan Simmons's Scientific Let-Down
- Information Longevity Talk in Gothenburg
- Upgrading Ubuntu Linux is Risky
- Odin from Lejre? No, it's Freya!
- Recent Archaeology Mags
- Intellectual Aristocrat
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- yogi-one on Dan Simmons's Scientific Let-Down
- Martin R on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
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- Ex Biochem Prof & occasional brewer on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
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Good Blog Carnivals
Biology:
Dan Simmons's Scientific Let-Down
Category: Books
Dan Simmons published a wonderful, galaxy-spanning, mind-blowing sf novel in 1989: Hyperion. Then he followed it up with three more novels of which I have read two. They're OK, but not as good as the first book. Science fiction is...
Posted by Martin R at 8:21 AM • 15 Comments •
Only Certain Humans Ever Have Sex To Reproduce
Category: Health
Ed Yong's excellent post about fruit-bat fellatio received some even better, eye-opening comments from one Russell and Frog:Russell: "Tan is falling into the fallacy that animals have sex for the purpose of procreation. Or of writing as if. Those bats...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Fungal Research Tries To Surf MRSA Wave
Category: Biology
The research reported on is in fact irrelevant to the much-publicised concerns about MRSA and other bacterial strains that have evolved resistance to antibiotics.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
My House is a Wasp Condom
Category: Homeownership
The wasp nest is ejaculating its little emissaries, and my house is one big latex contraceptive.
Posted by Martin R at 2:41 PM • 9 Comments •
How To Get a Mink Skeleton in a Weird Way
Category: Biology
My friend Eddie the pagan goldsmith has inadvertently discovered an unusual way to acquire a clean mink skeleton. Here's what you do.
Posted by Martin R at 4:52 PM • 6 Comments •
Fresh Roadkill
Category: Biology
Its unblinking eye was very clear.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 9 Comments •
Giant Vertebra Belongs To Recent Sperm Whale
Category: Biology
During the big whaling era someone took the vertebra to the lake and threw it in.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Velvet Bolete Orgy
Category: Food
My wife and I made a short mushrooming excursion to Lake Lundsjön after lunch. Little more than half an hour in the woods garnered us only four species, but huge amounts of one: velvet bolete. We went home early...
Posted by Martin R at 10:57 AM • 4 Comments •
Begonia Joined by Spontaneous Mushrooms
Category: Biology
When I left my PhD student office at the Museum of National Antiquities I rescued a couple of angel wing begonias. One has recently been joined in its pot by spontaneously appearing yellow fungus.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 17 Comments •
First Interplanetary Travellers Will Be Little Swedes
Category: Space
Those microdaddies will go to Phobos and back, and then biologists will be able to compare them to their stay-at-home buddies to learn what the environment out there in interplanetary space really does to an Earth creature.
Posted by Martin R at 8:43 AM • 3 Comments •
150 Years of Continual Discoveries
Category: Biology
Sean B. Carroll's latest book, Remarkable Creatures, is a collection of mini-biographies of people who have made important discoveries in evolutionary biology.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments •
My Bird Ring
Category: Biology
On the island I found the dry leg of a dead bird on the seashore, soft tissue almost gone, sinews still holding it together, foot still covered with skin. And around the lower leg, an aluminium ring with a series of digits...
Posted by Martin R at 9:09 AM • 10 Comments •
Tern Island
Category: Sweden
Imagine a flat gneiss and granite plateau criss-crossed by huge faults and crevices. Now run a few glaciations across it, sanding it down real good, so that everything is rounded.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
North European Natural Caffeine Source?
Category: Biology
Most psychoactive substances only occur in a small group of closely related plants. But caffeine pops up in widely divergent branches of the floral kingdom.
Posted by Martin R at 9:53 AM • 7 Comments •
Biodiversity in Artificial Wetlands
Category: Biology
The press release claims that on one hand natural wetlands are not more biodiverse than recently dug ponds, on the other hand that biodiversity in wetlands increases with age.
Posted by Martin R at 8:47 AM • 0 Comments •
Signs of Spring
Category: Biology
Signs of spring so far around where I live, apart from the obvious sunshine and disappearance of the snow & ice:Crocus Snowdrop Scilla Blackbird singing at sundown (ah!) Magpies brawling...
Posted by Martin R at 9:11 AM • 15 Comments •
Early Archaeological Darwinism
Category: Archaeology
A less well-known way in which Darwin's great idea was misunderstood or misappropriated.
Posted by Martin R at 9:58 AM • 11 Comments •
Inventive Gay Dolphins
Category: Biology
I am impressed by the gay dolphins' invention of nasal intercourse.
Posted by Martin R at 7:21 AM • 14 Comments •
The Ethics of Overpopulation
Category: Biology
Our goal should never be to rid the planet of humans.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 91 Comments •
Only Population Size Really Matters for the Environment
Category: Biology
There is no way of life that is ecologically sustainable for a global population of more than a billion.
Posted by Martin R at 5:17 AM • 68 Comments •
Non-Chicken Laid First Chicken Egg
Category: Biology
Somewhere, sometime, the first bird that fulfilled a genetic definition of chickenhood hatched.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 22 Comments •
Irate Christian E-Mail
Category: Skepticism
A rare piece of irate e-mail.Hi Mr. Rundkvist, This is Gregory from the US. I was reading your thoughts on Dr. Moller and the Exodus Case. You criticize Moller for not trying to disprove his hypothesis. Tell me; do evolutionists...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 73 Comments •
"Sapiens" Is Not A Plural
Category: Biology
It is an adjective ending in an S, just like erectus, afarensis and neanderthalensis.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 26 Comments •
Mushroom Harvest
Category: Biology
Today we had eleven kinds, most of them hedgehogs and boletes.
Posted by Martin R at 9:15 AM • 16 Comments •
Fireweed
Category: Biology
Wind-borne seeds like thistledown that can sprout anywhere.
Posted by Martin R at 3:21 PM • 11 Comments •
Giant Vertebra Found in Swedish Lake
Category: Biology
The find spot hasn't been near the sea since the end of the latest ice age.
Posted by Martin R at 5:29 PM • 10 Comments •
Snakes and Saints and Ants
Category: Art
Got up early this morning, six thirty, and slipped out for an hour's walk. The sun was already pretty high but still veiled in mist. I walked past vineyards and olive groves toward a farmhouse until yapping guard dogs made...
Posted by Martin R at 4:58 PM • 8 Comments •
The Work of Beavers
Category: Biology
The beavers are rallying in Sweden, multiplying and repossessing old habitat.
Posted by Martin R at 7:54 AM • 4 Comments •
Rupert Sheldrake Stabbed by Madman
Category: Skepticism
The attacker struck during a break in the 10th International Conference on Science and Consciousness.
Posted by Martin R at 9:58 AM • 1 Comments •
Ctenophores Oldest Animal Phylum, Not Sponges
Category: Biology
New research from the University of Gothenburg shows the oldest phylum among the animals to be the ctenophores.
Posted by Martin R at 3:02 PM • 6 Comments •
Live Spruce Roots 8000 Years Old
Category: Biology
To learn what the spruce genome was like 8,000 years ago, we needn't look for deadwood in bogs.
Posted by Martin R at 2:37 PM • 18 Comments •
Tap Water is Not a Naturally Occurring Substance
Category: Biology
Water suppliers use natural water to make tap water.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 25 Comments •
Book review: Prothero, Evolution
Category: Books
In the US you can't popularise evolutionary biology without taking a stand against obfuscating fundies,
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 15 Comments •
Tangled Bank 96 - Toadally
Category: Carnival
Hey everyone, and welcome to the 96th Tangled Bank blog carnival! This is where you can toadally catch up with the best recent blog writing on the life sciences. BeastiesGrrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life explains why bright blue...
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 1 Comments •
Toxic Dump Too Close For Comfort
Category: Environment
This was one of those paper mills that used mercury in a big way.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 7 Comments •
Felicia Likes Bees
Category: Biology
"I have been a beekeeper for eleven years now, having sort of tagged along when my father first bought two hives..."
Posted by Martin R at 4:07 PM • 3 Comments •
Wart-Biter Cricket
Category: Biology
Longer than my little finger and shiny green.
Posted by Martin R at 2:39 AM • 7 Comments •
Red River Hog
Category: Biology
These cool-looking omnivores make their home in sub-Saharan Africa.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 4 Comments •
Faith-Based Cactus Care
Category: Biology
The thing to note here is that I didn't know what I was doing.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 12 Comments •
Brief Mountain Summer
Category: Biology
Everything hurries to bloom and procreate before the cold and snow returns.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 7 Comments •
Lamprey's Spinal Cord Modelled
Category: Biology
Huss has built software models of bits of the lamprey's spinal cord.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 0 Comments •
Are Humans Polygamous?
Category: Psychology
Some people screw around a lot, some very rarely, and some not at all.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 40 Comments •
Ophistokont
Category: Biology
Something that forms the basic element of a snake-like thing, maybe?
Posted by Martin R at 9:05 AM • 4 Comments •
