Environment
clock | September 24, 2008An oldie (March 28, 2005) but goodie, bound to stir up the comment section..........
WHAT SHOULD WE CALL THEM?
First, who is "them"? Second, why should they be "called"? Third, who are "we"? Fourth, why "should" we call them anything? Finally, "what" is the appropriate name? These are all interconnected questions, dealing with the current US political environment, and the notion of "framing".
In his book Moral Politics (MP) and later, more explicitely, in "Don't Think Of An Elephant" (DTOAE), George Lakoff struggles with the nomenclature. He is not entirely happy with words "…
clock | September 24, 2008Under the fold....
Neighbors From Hell: Infanticide Rife In Guillemot Colony:
One of Britain's best-known species of seabird is increasingly attacking and killing unattended chicks from neighbouring nests due to food shortages.
GPS Navigation Devices Can Be Spoofed, Counter Measures Not Effective In Certain Cases:
Just like flat-screen televisions, cell phones and computers, global positioning system (GPS) technology is becoming something people can't imagine living without. So if such a ubiquitous system were to come under attack, would we be ready?
Abrupt Climate Change Focus Of U.S.…
clock | September 23, 2008OneWebDay is....
....an Earth Day for the internet. The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy), focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills), and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet. So, think of OneWebDay as an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem. It's a platform for people to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet's future.
There will be events organized around the world,…
cwilcox | September 22, 2008In the scientific community most people I know believe that global warming is a real phenomenon caused by humans starting with the industrial revolution. However, not everyone I know is in the scientific community, and many don't fully believe any notion of human-caused global warming. Well, we can have that argument another day, because it's not the warming that matters - it's the carbon dioxide.
Any marine scientist can tell you that carbon dioxide has a direct effect on salt water. When salt water absorbs the carbon dioxide gas, it reacts with ions in the water to break down into carbonic…
grrlscientist | September 22, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
The cassowary, Casuarius casuarius,
is a large, flightless bird that is native to Australia and New Guinea.
Image: Orphaned [larger view].
Canaries in Our Coal Mine
Common birds are in decline across the world, providing evidence of a rapid deterioration in the global environment that is affecting all life on earth -- including human life. All the world's governments have committed themselves to slowing or halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010. But reluctance to commit what are often trivial sums in terms of…
illconsidered | September 22, 2008 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) September 21, 2008 Melting Arctic, Arctic Geopolitics, Permafrost, CO2 Uptake, Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis, Abrupt Climate Change, Tutorials Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Temperatures, Ozone, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Transportation, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals, Misc. Science Kyoto…
clock | September 21, 2008This post from November 26, 2004 was my fourth (out of five), and longest, analysis of the 2004 election. With Balkans and Creationism sprinkled in. How did it stand the test of time over the past 3.5 years?
Oftentimes, an outside observer can see what a native observer cannot. The native is too deeply immersed in one's own culture, takes too much for granted, sees too many things as "normal" ("doesn't everyone do it this way?") that an outsider finds highly idiosyncratic and unusual.
I spent the first 25 years of my life in a nicest country. Life was great. I had everything I wanted, and…
clock | September 21, 2008The September 2007 issue of JCOM - Journal of Science Communication - (issue 3, volume 7) is online.: Next issue will be online on the 18th December 2008. There are several articles in this issue that I find interesting and bloggable.
Contents:
EDITORIAL - The better you know, the better you make your choice. The need for a scientific citizenship in the era of knowledge by Pietro Greco:
Martin W. Bauer is right, two evolutionary processes are under way. These are quite significant and, in some way, they converge into public science communication: a deep evolution of discourse is unfolding,…
sb admin | September 19, 2008Bloggers are thinking about food:
Elizabeth Cooney at White Coat Notes reports on a study in Boston and Philadelphia that finds food prices outstripping food stamps.
Robert McClure at Dateline Earth points us to a new report that suggests giving fishermen property rights may help imperiled fish stocks.
Jennifer Jacquet at Shifting Baselines argues for eliminating harmful fishing subsidies as a way to encourage more small-scale fisheries, which are less destructive than their large-scale counterparts.
Ezra Klein responds to Big Cornâs commercials defending high-fructose corn syrup.
Tom…
sb admin | September 19, 2008The front page of today's Washington Post announces "Public Health Is a Hot Field," reporting that an understanding of epidemiology, community-based interventions, disease surveillance and study design are high-demand topics on college campuses for undergraduate students.  I learned this exact thing two years ago when I was asked to teach part of the required curriculum for the George Washington University's (GWU) Bachelor of Science in Public Health degree. Wash Post reporter Dan Brown writes:
Public health courses "...are drawing undergraduates to lecture halls in record numbers…
gregladen | September 16, 2008What does the well informed American voter interested in the intersection of science and politics read? Well, not just read, but read to become more informed about current events and controversies. And, I'm thinking here of books that look at the science/politics intersection rather than how politics works or how science works.
I do not harbor the illusion that any one is really looking for something to read in order to pick a candidate or a party. That one of the parties is anti-science (mainly) and the other is pro-science (mainly) is well established. But one likes to become more…
hrynyshyn | September 16, 2008Barack Obama was the first to answer the questions put to the candidates by the Science Debate 2008 team, and now McCain has responded. As I did with Obama's, I will here deconstruct McCain's answers on climate and energy policy. My comments are italicized.
2. Climate Change. The Earth's climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on the following measures that have been proposed to address global climate change--a cap-and-trade system, a carbon tax, increased fuel-economy standards, or research…
grrlscientist | September 15, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
ABSTRACT: Rainbow Lory, Trichoglossus haematodus.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
Birds in Science
UK Scientists have found bird fossils dating back around 55 million years that could help shed light on a period of time before humans and most mammals had evolved. The fossils, including two complete bird skulls, a pelvis and several bones, appear to be the remains of parrot-like birds and were found by a local archaeologist on marshland Seasalter Levels near Whitstable, Kent. "Birds' skeletons are so fragile, the…
illconsidered | September 15, 2008 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) September 14, 2008 Top Stories:Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Permafrost, Morality, Monsoons, Tamino & Grumbine, Late Comments, Open Access Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Temperatures, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…
pharyngula | September 9, 2008We got one in the comments, a pompous ass named Darin Reisler who popped in to announce of evolution that "When the evidence is looked at beyond the surface level- it fails," and to back this up he offered a string of quotes from "prominent evolutionists".
Man, Darin is a contemptible liar, and incompetent on top of that. It's one of the things that annoys me most about creationists: they are anti-scholars, people who lie and distort to reinforce prior erroneous conceptions, and they really think they're scoring points by pretending that great minds in biology agree with them, when they don't…
edyong | September 8, 2008 In September last year, a team of scientists launched a squad of tiny animals into space aboard a Russian satellite. Once in orbit, the creatures were shunted into ventilated containers that exposed them to the vacuum of space. In this final frontier, they had no air and they were subjected to extreme dehydration, freezing temperatures, weightlessness and lashings of both cosmic and solar radiation. It's hard to imagine a more inhospitable environment for life but not only did the critters survive, they managed to reproduce on their return to Earth. Meet the planet's toughest animals - the…
illconsidered | September 8, 2008 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) Information overload is pattern recognition September 7, 2008 Top Stories:Pfeffer, Mann, Elsner, Geoengineering, Garnaut, Monsoon Floods Melting Arctic, Northwest Passage, Markham, Permafrost, Jasons, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Ike, Hanna, Gustav, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Aerosols Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation,…
clock | September 6, 2008Too long, thus under the fold - enjoy, think, bookmark for later, use:
Netroots push back against MSM 'bias':
Criticism from the left can take a variety of forms, including fact-checking, aggregating links and sometimes original reporting. Also, similar to the right's strategy over decades of "working the refs," there are left-leaning bloggers who provide a knee-jerk dismissal of whatever's on the front page of the Times or making the rounds on Sunday chat shows.
Hillary Clinton speaks at convention. The press concocts a story:
What's so startling in watching the coverage of the Clinton…
hrynyshyn | September 2, 2008We still aren't going to get a presidential debate devoted to science. So far, though,we have the Democratic nominee's elaborated responses to 14 questions put to him and his Republican counterpart by the Science Debate 2008 group. Here's two of Barack Obama's responses, with italicized annotation from me, on the subject of climate change and energy, which really should be considered one topic.
2. Climate Change. The Earth's climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on the following measures…
gregladen | September 1, 2008 Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming I've been putting off posting my review of this book until just the right moment. Perhaps that moment is now, with the juxtaposition of a serious storm ... hurricane Gustav ... arriving in the vicinity of New Orleans and the opening day of the Republican National Convention, since both charismatic hurricanes and not so charismatic politicians play such a large role in the book at hand.
Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, by Chris Mooney, is a well written, informative, captivating,…