gregladen | August 19, 2011I have written before of insects in the Ituri Forest. (Oh, and here too.) When it comes up that I've spent time there, certain questions often come up, and one of them is: "Did you eat bugs."
Every one has seen those National Geographic specials where some natives somewhere are eating insects, and of course, Westerners who think they generally don't eat insects are fascinated with the idea. Of course, Westerners eat a lot more insects than they think. You should really consider any processed food you eat that started out as a plant crop to be part insect. If what you are eating is made…
gregladen | August 19, 2011Until I was sent this paper, I had no idea that Kangaroo DNA had not been sequenced before. How did we even know they had DNA?!?!
This is the fourth Marsupial genome, after the Tasmanian Devil and and some other non-Australian marsupial, to be sequenced. According to Professor Marilyn Renfree of the University of Melborune, "The tammar wallaby sequencing project has provided us with many possibilities for understanding how marsupials are so different to us."
Macropus eugenii is the tammar wallaby. This aninal has the longest period of embryonic diapause of any known mammal, highly…
gregladen | August 18, 2011that has wandered into their camp if they don't know anything about it a priori is ... according to what they told me when that happened once ... is ...
Many, though certainly not all, insects are linked to important things in life. This is true of many things that are not insects as well. For instance, one does not walk to the right of a young male Canarium tree in the afternoon, because he who shall not be named could be sitting in the tree, and then you're screwed. Or, one should not handle the fetus of an antelope if any females in your family are planning on getting pregnant soon…
gregladen | August 18, 2011I knew a couple who had spent a lot of time in the Congo in the 1950s. He was doing primatology, and she was the wife of a primatologist. And when she spoke of the Congo or Uganda, where they spent most of the time, she always said two things that always put me off a little. First, she would Uganda and Congo as "Africa" (which is technically correct, but I've yet to hear of someone saying "I'll spend Spring Break in North America" on their way to Cancun) and she'd always say "The thing about Africa is that there's no place to sit down."
It turns out that there are plenty of chairs and…
gregladen | August 18, 2011See Case Study: How a notorious spammer was brought down via Twitter for a rundown on the recent events related to Dennis Markuze a.k.a. Dave Mabus.
I still don't agree that it was Twitter that brought Mabus down. Yes, it was the medium, and a very powerful one at that, but it was carrying a very important message. Those tweets could have been phone calls to similar effect, I think.
Anyway, thanks to Tim for all his great work on this. This is an excellent work of documentation and analysis.
Now, with respect to Mabus himself .... we play the old waiting game...
gregladen | August 18, 2011Recently, a paper came out with research indicating that Archaeopteryx, the famous feathered fossil, may not be on the bird lineage after all. This paper was discussed briefly in the blogosphere, but I was fairly unsatisfied with the level of treatment it received. The research is a little difficult to understand unless you are a specialist in the field. Essentially, a different species (not Archaeopteryx) was being studied, and in so doing, it knocked Archaeopteryx off the phylogenetic branch on which it has been resting tenuously in recent years. The other fossil species didn't displace…
gregladen | August 18, 2011Plymouth, Minnesota plays a fairly important role in my life. It is a big suburb to the west of Minneapolis, a mainly liberal or progressive middle class bedroom community linked to first ring extra-urban commercial development based mainly on corn. Kellogs, Cargill, Mosaic, other companies that grow corn, use corn in making products, sell corn based products and generally control a large percentage of the corn market have their Headquarters out in the Western Suburbs and many of the people who work in those places live in Plymouth, which is fairly large.
When I first moved to the twin…
gregladen | August 17, 2011"Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it."
-Proverbs 22:6
This is a report of a Fundamentalist Christian couple who beat thier 7 year old child to death as part of the practice of corporal punishment to which they subscribed as per instructions given them by God. They were following the detailed methodology of child torture supplied in a book called To Train Up A Child. Which may or may not be related to a book called Train Up a Child: Successful Parenting for the Next Generation.
Nine children were subject to this abuse over several years…
gregladen | August 15, 2011I've known very few real Iowans. I know people who live there now but are from the Twin Cities, but I've only met a handful of native Iowans. One of them is a dear friend, most are only vague acquaintances. Six of them were landlubbing pirates of no value to humanity whatsoever.1 But I'm sure Iowans are mostly wonderful people who are well intentioned, hard working, intelligent, and are just as good as anyone else. Nonetheless, states have personalities and personalities have reputations, and people who live in states contribute to making those personalities and reputations. And for…
gregladen | August 14, 2011Several strange creatures including a psychedelic octopus have been found in frigid waters off Antarctica in one of the world's most pristine marine environments.
Others resembled corals and shrimps. At least 30 appear to be new to science, said Julian Gutt, chief scientist of an expedition that was part of the International Polar Year research effort set to launch on March 1. The researchers catalogued about 1,000 species in an area of the Antarctic seabed where warming temperatures are believed to have caused the collapse of overlying ice shelves, affecting the marine life below.
"This is…
gregladen | August 14, 2011Dennis Markuze aka David Mabus on a Television News Story ... the story is inaccurate in a number of minor ways that obscures an interesting truth, but it is a moment in time worth savoring:
The story is inaccurate in the following ways:
There has not been a "recent escalation" of threats. The threats come in cycles. He's on an average up-swing. It is true that there are a few new people are on his list, and they are making a stink about it. That, however, has happened before. Why did this cycle of threats cause the police to actually do something? See below for a guess.
It is also not…
gregladen | August 12, 2011Things at Fukushima are about as interesting as they've ever been. We want to talk about specific problems at the reactor site, with radioactive material, cooling systems, etc. but first a few words about things happening more broadly, beginning with the largest and work towards the smallest scale. Everything we discuss here is based on the material provided in "Ana's Feed" below. There, you will find detailed notes from media and other sources since our last posting, and links. (See here for all of our postings on Fukushima.)
Globally, it is interesting and disconcerting that Japan…
gregladen | August 11, 2011After a journey of almost three years, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached the Red Planet's Endeavour crater to study rocks never seen before.
On Aug. 9, the golf cart-sized rover relayed its arrival at a location named Spirit Point on the crater's rim. Opportunity drove approximately 13 miles (21 kilometers) since climbing out of the Victoria crater.
"NASA is continuing to write remarkable chapters in our nation's story of exploration with discoveries on Mars and trips to an array of challenging new destinations," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Opportunity's…
gregladen | August 11, 2011
3D Image of Vesta's Equatorial Region
This anaglyph image of Vesta's equator was put together from two clear filter images, taken on July 24, 2011 by the framing camera instrument aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft. The anaglyph image shows hills, troughs, ridges and steep craters. The framing camera has a resolution of about 524 yards (480 meters) per pixel. Use red-green (or red-blue) glasses to view in 3-D (left eye: red; right eye: green [or blue]).
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. It is…
gregladen | August 11, 2011People who watch birds identify them, and that process is integral to what makes birding interesting. But the best practices for identifying birds appear on the face of it to conflict with evolutionary concepts of birds, and this can lead to both sloppy thinking and missed opportunities
People who watch birds identify them, and that process is integral to what makes birding interesting. But the best practices for identifying birds appear on the face of it to conflict with evolutionary concepts of birds, and this can lead to both sloppy thinking and missed opportunities.
You need to know…
gregladen | August 11, 2011Can a person be scientifically literate without accepting the concepts of evolution and the big bang? To many scientists and educators, the answer to that question is an unqualified "no." But the National Science Board--the governing body of the National Science Foundation (NSF)--isn't sure that rejecting evolution for religious reasons automatically undermines a person's scientific literacy.
yes it does
The paper in question is behind a firewall, but I may be discussing it later.