clock | August 28, 2006Summer is officially over. Kids are back in school. I am pretty much a stay-at-home-Dad these days and this is even more obvious during breaks in the school calendar.
And we certainly had a great summer, starting even before school ended, with our trip to New York City. We went to the pool a lot and generally had a nice laid-back family time together.
Coturnietta spent a week in a science-technology summer camp, then ran off to the beach with her cousins and my mother-in-law for a week. She read a bunch of books (all with cats as main characters - she is a huge cat lover). She had such a…
clock | August 28, 2006My daughter is getting really good at photography. Here is one from her recent set of pictures - our older cat, Biscuit:
clock | August 28, 2006In the ongoing series of fiskings of Jonathan Wells' PIG book over on Panda's Thumb, Andrea Bottaro has posted his verbal destruction of Chapter 9.
clock | August 28, 2006Well, nobody in the comments here or here could help Kevin identify the mystery frog yet (if you are a herpetologist or fancy being one, take a look) and now Kevin caught yet another, even more mysterious frog. Can you help him identify it? Leave a comment here if you recognize what frogs are these.
Anyway, if you are fan of the series of adventures of Kevin in China (and if not, you should start the series from the beginning - you WILL get hooked), the new field report is under the fold.
Dongxi, revisited
22 August
Didn't hear from Linsen about where I am to get a bus or taxi to Yichang.…
clock | August 28, 2006
You probably realize by now that my expertise is in clocks and calendars of birds, but blogging audience forces me to occasionally look into human clocks from a medical perspective. Reprinted below the fold are three old Circadiana posts about the connection between circadian clocks and the bipolar disorder, the third one being the longest and most involved. Here are the links to the original posts if you want to check the comments (especially the first comment on the third post):
January 18, 2005: Clocks and Bipolar Disorder
August 16, 2005: Bipolar? Avoid night shift
February 19, 2006:…
clock | August 28, 2006If you write something related to Hurricane Katrina today (or have already done so recently), let Shakespeare's Sister know so she can include your link in the Big Anniversary linkfest.
clock | August 28, 2006Where does one start with debunking fallacies in this little article? Oy vey!
Dolphins and whales are dumber than goldfish and don't have the know-how to match a rat, new research from South Africa shows. For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins meant the mammals were highly intelligent.
No, we knew dolphins were smart millenia before we ever looked at their brains. The ancient Chinese knew it. Aristotle knew it. And the idea that brain size has anything to do with intelligence is, like, sooo 19th century.
Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand,…
clock | August 27, 2006Educators, i.e., science teachers, are not too unhappy about the change in taxonomy of planets. Some argue they can use it as a lesson in the way science always changes.
clock | August 27, 2006Sara Robinson is on the roll: Tunnels and Bridges, Part II: Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself
clock | August 27, 2006The Tarheel Tavern #79 is up on Kivi Leroux Miller's blog on Freelance Writing.
clock | August 27, 2006Last year, there was so much blogging about Katrina, I thought that the best thing I could do was create a large linkfest of everyone else's posts. That is what I did - check it out here, a nice one-stop-shopping for the analysis and opinion at the time. If you need to refresh your memory that is the place to go. You can also find most of the iconic images collected in one place here.
But I did not entirely abstain from commenting myself, though I was trying to look for angles nobody else covered and news nobody else had - which was hard to find at that time. So, I blogged about how…
clock | August 27, 2006George has posted a last call for submissions for the next edition of the Teaching Carnival - all about Higher Ed, life in academia, etc. He is hosting it on WorkBook this Friday, September 1st, so send your entries on time to: georgehwilliams at gmail dot com
Next Tangled Bank (science, nature, medicine, environment and intersection between science and society) will be held on Epigenetics News this coming Wednesday. Send your entries to: admin AT epigeneticsnews DOTcom or host AT tangledbank DOT net.
Carnival of the Liberals will be on Wednesday on The Greenbelt. Send entries to: cotl…
clock | August 27, 2006Next edition of the Circus of the Spineless will be held on Sunbeams From Cucumbers. Send your entries by August 29th to: sreuland AT gmail DOT com
Next edition of the Festival of the Trees will be held on Burning Silo, so send your entries to Bev by August 29th to: burning-silo AT magickcanoe DOT com
clock | August 27, 2006Amanda, a fellow hot-pepper-lover, reminds me that I have not finished my Hot Pepper series. It is supposed to be a THREE-part series, but I only wrote two parts so far, the introductory (personal) post and answering the question why are peppers hot (quite a popular post of mine, linked and e-mailed around a lot, I noticed) - an evolutionary account from peppers' perspective.
I still owe you the third part trying to explain why people (at least some people, like Amanda and myself) like to eat hot food. It turned out to be a much more exhaustive area of research (and dispute) than I…
clock | August 27, 2006Yup, the Katrina blogswarm is supposed to be tomorrow, but Publius and The Science Pundit could not wait.
clock | August 27, 2006...so I'd have my priorities straight. But checking my Sitemeter referrers list would come in at #2, LOL.
clock | August 27, 2006Childhood Sleep Apnea Linked To Brain Damage, Lower IQ:
In what is believed to be the first study showing neural changes in the brains of children with serious, untreated sleep apnea, Johns Hopkins researchers conclude that children with the disorder appear to suffer damage in two brain structures tied to learning ability.
Constant Lighting May Disrupt Development Of Preemies' Biological Clocks:
Keeping the lights on around the clock in neonatal intensive care units may interfere with the development of premature babies' biological clocks.
----------snip---------------
he finding that…