Social Sciences
tetrapodzoology | January 8, 2010
A stocky, medium-sized (up to 2 m long) and poorly known elapid with notably small eyes, Micropechis ikaheka - the Small-eyed or Ikaheka snake - is the only recognised member of its genus*. It's unique to New Guinea and some of the surrounding islands [adjacent image from Warrell et al. (1996)].
'Ikaheka' means 'land eel' in the local dialect and refers to the fact that it is sometimes associated with streams and other damp habitats. Micropechis is secretive, nocturnal or crepuscular and hunts for reptiles, frogs and mammals in cluttered rainforest and wetland habitats. It is regarded as…
scientificactivist | January 8, 2010If you get the Smithsonian Channel on your TV, then tune in at 8 pm this Sunday (January 10th) to watch the program Zoo Vets: Claws, Paws, and Fins. Not only does this look like a pretty neat program (from my admittedly very biased perspective), but it features--among others--my girlfriend, Meredith Clancy, and her long-time mentor, Kathryn Gamble, the head veterinarian at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The program, which follows vets at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo, Brookfield Zoo, and Shedd Aquarium, was filmed in fall 2008, when Meredith was completing an external rotation at Lincoln Park as part of…
drorzel | January 8, 2010
Strange Horizons Reviews: Avatar, reviewed by Roz Kaveney
"As well as being the Great White Saviour, Jake is that most useful of plot devices, the protagonist who has to be told things; he is also the Man Who Learns Better, and discards earlier convictions; he is also someone who cheerfully signs up for complicity with what he comes to realize is atrocity, and has quite a lot of expiation to do. Yes, the story is about him, but all stories have to be about somebody--Jake is somebody who has been part of the most negative aspects of human society and who comes to understand that he has been…
thusspakezuska | January 7, 2010This evening Marketplace Report had a segment on " A push for Latinos to pursue education". It's a great segment, based on a report from the Southern Education Foundation. (Possibly this one; four page summary of the report, A New Diverse Majority: Students of Color in the South's Public Schools is here.)
The Hispanic College Fund started out funding college scholarships, but found that wasn't sufficient; now they are reaching out to the high school level, as early as ninth grade, to encourage young Latino kids to pursue a college education. Many of these kids are from low-income…
edyong | January 7, 2010
If someone at âyour workplace offends a client or a customer, they'd probably get an earful from their colleagues or boss. If someone annoys a friend of yours, you'd probably have a go at them. This capacity to punish those who behave badly, even if they haven't wronged us personally, pervades all aspects of human society. And we're not the only ones - fish punish bad behaviour too.
The bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) operates an underwater health spa for larger fish. It advertises its services with bright colours and distinctive dances. When customers arrive, the cleaner…
palmd | January 7, 2010The following is a collaborative effort by PalMD, the usual author of this blog, and Ames Grawert, JD, a soon-to-be-sworn-in attorney working in New York City.
Proponents of science-based medicine have always had one major problem---human beings are natural scientists, but we are also very prone to cognitive mis-steps. When we follow the scientific method we have developed, we succeed very well in understanding and manipulating our environment. When we follow our instincts instead, we frequently fail to understand cause and effect. This is how people on the fringes of medicine and science…
emjohnson | January 6, 2010To everyone on the political right who is now calling for an invasion of Yemen, take a breath. Reflect on the words of one of the few Presidents in history that actually commanded troops in the field before becoming Commander in Chief:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at…
emjohnson | January 5, 2010Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
Social Darwinism is one of those concepts that everyone knows what it is but few can define. I myself have sometimes reflexively used the concept without fully knowing the history of the term or its use as a political theory. In this series it is my goal to raise some questions about the usefulness of social Darwinism and the way it has been applied. This is a history that is full of contradictions (as history often is) and I encourage people to both challenge and offer suggestions as I develop these ideas.
It is first important to point out that Darwin…
catdynamics | January 4, 2010The annual AAS meeting opened up with the award of the van Biesbroeck Prize of the society to Father Dr George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory.
The van Biesbroeck Prize is for extraordinary service to astronomy, in particular his role organizing the Vatican Observatory Summer Schools, and the role he has played at the juncture of science and religion.
A topic that occasionally stirs sciencebloggers, and their readers, from torpor.
Dr Coyne gave a brief and gracious speech, but touched on what I thought was a bit of a strawman: he appealed, and I paraphrase, for people to…
pharyngula | January 4, 2010I tend to think that most religious people are not interested in flying planes into buildings or making themselves a belt out of dynamite, but that doesn't excuse them: they still make irrational decisions with evil consequences, they are simply a bit more remote and indirect. The same people who would be horrified at the idea of personally lynching someone for blasphemy have no problem with praying that someone else will do the job for them, as we all saw in the reaction to that little cracker incident last year. One of the most revolting examples of this principle at work is the recent…
drorzel | January 2, 2010
Interstellar Cyclers -- KarlSchroeder.com
"To me, the idea that you should expend billions or trillions of dollars to accelerate a starship, only to decelerate it again, is pure lunacy. 90% of the ship's mass is support structures--either power or life support systems. The key to viable interstellar transport, in my view, is simple: if you've got it all in motion, keep it in motion and re-use it. The only thing you want to decelerate at your destination is your cargo."
(tags: space sf astronomy physics relativity energy books)
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog at Barnes & Noble -…
bioephemera | December 30, 2009Many of the commenters on my earlier post about the so-called wisdom of crowds, "Science is not a democracy," have expressed distaste for the phrase "scientific consensus." I don't really share that distaste, and here's why.
To me, it's like being disturbed by the phrase "electoral college." You may detest the way our nation's electoral system works; you may not trust the outcomes it produces; but there is an established system, and the electoral college is part of it. You can object to the existence of the electoral college and criticize its characteristics, and you can try to change the…
jrosenhouse | December 30, 2009My post about science/religion disputes has prompted responses from my SciBlings Bora Zivkovic and Mike Dunford (here and here respectively. Since they are among my favorite bloggers, it pains me to have to disagree with them. Alas, disagree I must.
I will begin with Bora, since I fear he has misunderstood my central point. The starting point of my post was my disagreement with this statement from Thomas Dixon:
Historians have shown that the Galileo affair, remembered by some as a clash between science and religion, was primarily about the enduring political question of who was authorized…
drorzel | December 30, 2009Today is Question Day when it comes to post topics, I guess. Over at Fine Structure, Nick asks about the effect of spotlighting brilliant scientists:
I can't help but think about the repercussions of looking at his clearly above average career as something that's normal in physics. It's a deterrent, I think, for all those students that aren't so completely brilliant that they do Nobel winning physics by 21. And it's not exactly uncommon to hear about these minds anymore. Is it a function of community density when we funnel all the supremely smart people towards math and science? What does it…
aardvarchaeology | December 29, 2009
The Swedish Skeptic Society's annual awards for 2009 were announced yesterday.
Professor emeritus of ecological zoology Staffan Ulfstrand receives the Enlightener of the Year award,
"... for his engrossing and pedagogical books about evolution [such as Savannah Lives: Animal Life and the Human Evolution of Africa] and his many pop-sci talks, particularly during the double Darwin jubilee of 2009. Staffan Ulfstrand frequently appears on nature shows, in Q&A columns and in debates about biology and behaviour. He has also frequently explained evolution in a pedagogical manner when it has…
aardvarchaeology | December 28, 2009The blog entry I had been thinking about and repeatedly forgetting about came back to me. Turns out those story beginnings never went far because I had been thinking about situations where I probably wouldn't survive for long. I've had this scary scenario playing in my head, while awake, for quite some time.
First, imagine that you're dropped into a foreign city with only the clothes you wear. No wallet, no hand bag, no money, no cell phone, no identification. Pretty scary, huh? But still, most of us would get out of the situation fairly easily. We would find the embassy of our country of…
pharyngula | December 27, 2009But then, you elected this profoundly stupid man to be your governor, so it's all your own fault. I was reading an interview with Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana that was just embarrassingly bad.
To me, the core of the Christian faith is humility, which starts with recognizing that you're as fallen as anyone else. And we're all constantly trying to get better, but... so I'm sure I come up short on way too many occasions.
Our country was founded -this is just an historic fact; some people today may resist this notion but it is absolutely true- it was founded by people of faith. It was…
kthompson | December 18, 2009
(c) NDR Naturfilm
Well, almost. Here's some info from the Wildlife Conservation Society's press release:
"With the assistance of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Cameroon Program, a film crew from the Hamburg-based NDR Naturfilm managed to video the elusive Cross River gorilla earlier this year in a stand of montane trees after weeks of effort in the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary. The protected area was created in 2008, with the guidance of WCS, specifically to protect the world's rarest great ape.
"These gorillas are extremely wary of humans and are very difficult to photograph or film,"…
razib | December 17, 2009Apropos of my skepticism of Census projections of 2050 demographic balances, there's a new paper out on Argentina which is relevant. Here's Wikipedia on Argentina's self-conception:
As with other areas of new settlement such as Canada, Australia and the United States, Argentina is considered a country of immigrants. Most Argentines are descended from colonial-era settlers and of the 19th and 20th century immigrants from Europe, and 86.4% of Argentina's population self-identify as European descent. An estimated 8% of the population is mestizo, and a further 4% of Argentines were of Arab or…
gregladen | December 17, 2009It is not possible for anyone to understand every policy-important aspect of scientific knowledge at the level of detail necessary to accept that knowledge as valid, or to defend it against the evil anti-science denialists. So what is a skeptic to do?
Real science happens at the very edge of knowledge. If you go do real science for a while ... a few weeks ... then go back to science geek land where you normally live (and I know you live there because you are reading this blog) and read about the same topic you were exploring in real science land, you will see two different worlds. When a…