Laelaps

This Blog Has Moved

Category: Administrative

Laelaps is back up and running at my author website, http://brianswitek.com. Go there for new posts and updates on where this blog will ultimately settle. - Brian

Update (09/14/10): After a few months of blogging on my own, I'm proud to say that Laelaps has made the jump over to the new WIRED Science blogging network. Click here to check it out.

Posted by Brian Switek at 12:02 PM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

A Pepsi-Induced Hiatus Exodus

Category: Administrative • Blogging • Idiocy • Personal

Important Update: The time has come to close things up here. I will no longer be blogging for ScienceBlogs.com. I am not sure where Laelaps will end up - perhaps back on Wordpress, perhaps elsewhere - but you can be sure that I will keep on writing about saber-toothed cats, whales that walked, early humans, and other cool bits of paleontology. With any luck, I will be able to confirm my plans in a few days. Keep your eyes on my author website or follow me on Twitter to find out where I'll be headed next. This is not farewell - just a brief break in transmission.

By now you have probably heard about my new neighbor here on ScienceBlogs, a nutrition blog called Food Frontiers. It is a corporate blog run by PepsiCo. I wish I were kidding.

The offending blog, which has already been operating for some time on the PepsiCo website, greatly diminishes the credibility of ScienceBlogs by providing a corporation with a platform to advertise to readers without actually calling it advertising. A newspaper or magazine would not allow PepsiCo to write articles about global health or nutrition - there is a very clear conflict of interest there - so I am absolutely dumbfounded as to why the SEED management team thought it acceptable to give the corporation space here. If PepsiCo wants to have their R&D scientists blog on their own site, that's fine, but in moving Food Frontiers to ScienceBlogs, the company is trying to trade in on the reputation I and other Sb bloggers have built while simultaneously tarnishing that reputation.

The launch of the PepsiCo blog sharply underscores my mounting frustration with SEED. The SEED management team has repeatedly failed to treat me and my fellow bloggers with courtesy and respect, and this latest event goes beyond disrespect into actively undermining our credibility. Hence I am putting Laelaps on hiatus until I determine what is best for my writing. This is not the end of Laelaps - I will keep writing somewhere, and you can always check out my blog Dinosaur Tracking on the Smithsonian website - but if SEED insists on valuing corporate money over creativity, honesty, and integrity, then I will have no choice but to move elsewhere.

For more on this controversy, see these posts from PalMD, Abel, Isis, Janet, Zuska, Blake, Christie, Sharon, Jason, Greg, Orac, PZ, Mark, and GrrlScientist, as well as the notes from James H., Alex Wild, Scicurious. I am also sad to say that Blake and David Dobbs have left Sb, but I am glad that they will both continue to write at their respective blogs.

Posted by Brian Switek at 10:18 AM • 95 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Funky Worms Cause Ants to Mimic Fruit

Category: Behavior • Birds • Inverts

In one of my favorite episodes of the animated TV show Futurama, the chief protagonist - delivery boy Philip J. Fry - becomes infested with worms after eating a dodgy egg-salad sandwich purchased from the restroom of an interstellar truck stop. Lucky for Fry, the parasites are beneficial - they repair his injuries and greatly enhance his cognitive abilities. ("Of all the parasites I've had over the years," Fry explains to his coworkers, "these worms are among the... - hell! They are the best!") The giant gliding ants (Cephalotes atratus) of Central and South American rainforests are not so fortunate. They, too, often become infested with a peculiar kind of worm, but these worms trigger a startling metamorphosis which transforms the ants into walking transports for the next generation of nematodes.

Read on »

Posted by Brian Switek at 12:23 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Photo of the Day #953: Collared brown lemur baby

Category: Mammals • Photography • Primates

Posted by Brian Switek at 7:56 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Pleased to meet you

Category: Blogging • Personal

I have been writing here at ScienceBlogs.com for about two years and nine months now. Some of you have been reading my posts since I started here (thank you for sticking with me!), but readers come and go over time, and so I am jumping on board with the "Who are you?" meme recently restarted by DrugMonkey, Pal, Janet, Bora, and Jason.

Everyone is asking different questions of their readers - some more detailed ones than others - but I think I'll keep it relatively simple: who are you (feel free to comment anonymously or under a pseud, and be as specific [or not] as you prefer), what do you like about this blog, and is there anything you would like to see here in the future? I admit, straight-up asking for positive feedback might seem a little self-serving, but I am hoping that by doing so I can foster the community of regular readers here and further improve my writing. (Even if you don't want to comment here, please send me an e-mail.) As Pal noted in his own post on this, "As bloggers we can get an idea of how many people are reading us, but not that much else", so getting some good feedback from readers can be both helpful and encouraging.

Posted by Brian Switek at 4:58 PM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Photo of the Day #952: Bryce Canyon

Category: Geology • Photography

Posted by Brian Switek at 9:32 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Photo of the Day #951: Dinosaur toe

Category: Dinosaurs • Paleontology • Photography

Posted by Brian Switek at 5:52 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

What's eating you? - Bugs, bacteria, and zombies

Category: Anthropology • Cheesy Movies • Inverts • Mammals • Taphonomy

Not all zombies are created equal. The most popular zombie archetype is a shambling, brain-eating member of the recently deceased, but, in recent films from 28 Days Later to Zombieland, the definition of what a zombie is or isn't has become more complicated. Does a zombie have to be a cannibal corpse, or can a zombie be someone infected with a virus which turns them into a blood-crazed, fast-running monster?

For my own part, I have always preferred the classic George Romero zombies from the original Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead films (as well as my most favorite of zombie films, Shaun of the Dead). The shuffling, groaning masses not only deliver social commentary in spades - i.e. our transformation into mindless consumers inextricably drawn to shopping malls - but the prospect of slowly being closed in by a seemingly unstoppable horde is far more frightening than any sprinting zombie. Nevertheless, there is one thing that bugs me about zombie movies in the classic vein - where are all the flesh-eating insects?

Read on »

Posted by Brian Switek at 11:08 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Eureka!

Category: Blogging • Dinosaurs • Paleontology • Shameless Plug • Written in Stone

My contribution to the Sb-wide Zombie Day will soon be posted, but if you need something to sink your teeth into before then, check out today's new issue of the Times of London science magazine Eureka (included inside the Times, for UK readers). Inside you will find two stories by me - one on paleobiology in the 21st century and the other on our changing view of tyrannosaurs - and you can access them online behind a free registration wall. It was a wonderful opportunity to write for Eureka, and I am indebted to editors Mark Henderson and Antonia Senior for their support and the freedom to really run with these stories. It was a pleasure to work with them, and I hope to do so again in the not-too-distant future.

Anyway, I hope you like the stories, and, if you do, be sure to check out my forthcoming book on paleontology and evolution, Written in Stone (pardon the shameless plug).

Posted by Brian Switek at 9:03 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks