grrlscientist | July 19, 2006... fighting with himself over a bone (below the fold).
Would you want to live with a dog that behaves like this?
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tags: streaming video, dog, animal behavior, humor
grrlscientist | July 18, 2006
Well, well, well, will wonders never cease? It seems that I have been offered a job. Of course, no papers have been signed yet, so anything can happen between now and the time that the job starts.
Basically, I was asked to teach evolution to non-majors at a private Catholic college this autumn. Of course, I have to stay alive until September when the semester begins and then, if they haven't changed their minds and they keep their promise to hire me, I will earn approximately half (or less) of my monthly rent, along with absolutely no medical/dental insurance benefits whatsoever, nor any…
grrlscientist | July 15, 2006
New York Movie
by Edward Hopper, 1939.
Oil on canvas (The Museum of Modern Art, New York City).
Rough times, my peeps, rough times.
You all sit together in darkness while I stand hidden in bright light,
listening to you enjoy the unfolding story.
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tags: New York Movie, Edward Hopper, American Art
grrlscientist | July 11, 2006There's some interesting articles in the first issue of the new journal, Integrative Zoology, which is freely available online. You can also register with Blackwell Synergy to receive free email alerts for new content published in a large variety of research topics ranging from medicine to the humanities.
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tags: Zoology, research, open access
grrlscientist | July 11, 2006
Dontcha love photoshop?
(more below the fold)
I didn't get to see the last match in the World Cup. Needless to say, I was disappointed. But a friend emailed this really cute picture, which I had to share with all of you (of course). I also wanted to include a link to an online game where you could make Zidane headbash Italian players to earn a score, but it appears that site has been temporarily shut down due to excessive web traffic. Bummer.
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tags: World Cup, futebol, soccer
grrlscientist | July 11, 2006Caught on video; even lifeguards need to take a break now and again.
So .. do you think all those people went back into the pool after that performance? Would you go back into the pool if you were there?
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tags: streaming video, humor, prank, hotel pool, lifeguard
grrlscientist | July 8, 2006
Surprisingly, especially considering what was at stake, this was a rather uninspired game, don't you agree? But it appeared that Portugal could not get their shit together and they paid, terribly, for that; the final score was 3:1. There were a tremendous number of yellow cards awarded in this game, although I don't remember any red cards.
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Image source.
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tags: World Cup, soccer, futebol
grrlscientist | July 8, 2006
How far will you go to protect your prized cattle from "cattle terrorism" and from theft by aliens?
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tags: cattle abduction, cattle terrorism, streaming video, humor, silliness, parody
grrlscientist | July 7, 2006The annual "Stella Awards" have been announced for this year. The Stella Awards were inspired by 81 year-old Stella Liebeck of New Mexico, who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's for her injuries. That lawsuit inspired the Stella Awards, which recognize the most frivolous, ridiculous, and successful lawsuits in the United States. Even though these awards recognize truly outrageous examples of people successfully abusing the system, ask yourself; are these reports true? Or are they simply a way to sell books?
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This year's Stella Awards Winners;
7th Place: ⨅
grrlscientist | July 7, 2006For those of you who are bird watchers, and those of you who research birds, you will be interested to know that the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) just published its 47th Supplement to their Check List of North American Birds -- its 6th Supplement since the seventh edition was first published in 1998. This Supplement is published after new data -- mostly DNA data -- becomes available to the AOU.
(below the fold)
According to this paper [free PDF], nine main changes are noted in this Supplement;
three species were added because AOU split them from species that already appear on the…
grrlscientist | July 6, 2006200 years ago in 1806, Noah Webster published his very first dictionary. A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language contained 37,000 entries, thousands of which were not listed in any other dictionary. In 1843, upon Webster's death, the Merriam brothers acquired the rights to Webster's dictionary.
Keeping with the spirit of Noah Webster and the Merriams, Merriam-Webster adds new words as it releases new editions. The company just released nearly 100 new words that will appear in the fall in the best-selling Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.They have a quiz…
grrlscientist | July 6, 2006The new BMC Evolutionary Biology open access journal just received its first Journal Impact Factor rating. This Impact Factor of 4.45 places it 6th out of 33 journals in the Evolutionary Biology category. Impact Factors are a standardized measure of the frequency that the "average article" in a particular journal has been cited within a year or other specified period of time. The higher the Impact Factor, the greater number of citations the "average article" receives and thus, the more "important" the journal itself is.
BMC Evolutionary Biology is open access and publishes original peer-…
grrlscientist | July 6, 2006I and the Bird, issue 27, the first year anniversary edition, is now available.
tags: blog carnival
grrlscientist | July 5, 2006
This was the most exciting of all the World Cup games I've watched so far. But at the end, the French prevailed over the Portugese. Astonishingly, I predicted the score of this game correctly (see comments)!
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Image source.
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tags: World Cup, soccer, futebol
grrlscientist | July 5, 2006An issue of the Food Insects Newsletter reports that 80 percent of the world's population eats insects intentionally and 100 percent eat insects unintentionally. In fact, if Americans tolerated more insects (you know, like, BUGS) in their food, farmers could significantly reduce the amount of pesticides applied to their crops each year. Additionally, by weight, termites, grasshoppers, caterpillars, weevils, house flies and spiders are better sources of protein than beef, chicken, pork or lamb according to the Entomological Society of America. Also, insects are low in cholesterol and low in…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2006
Say Cheese!
VENUS Image of a squat lobster at a depth of 90 meters using the instrument's digital camera.
The Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) facility, led by the University of Victoria, Canada, recently opened a data portal that provides access to scientists and the general public to an online warehouse of images, sounds and live data from the ocean floor.
The $10.3 million VENUS facility offers the world's first interactive, real time portal to the ocean. The underwater network of fiber optic cables and instruments, connected to the Internet, provides a portal to the…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2006Forgive my self-indulgent navel-gazing essay, but the upcoming issue of the blog carnival, I and the Bird, is celebrating its first anniversary. In honor of that auspicious occasion, they are linking to essays that conform to a specific theme. The theme consists of the response to one (or more) of several questions that they posed to anyone who has contributed to making the first year of that blog carnival into a success.
The Questions: Why do you blog, why do you watch birds, or why do you blog about birds?
I write a blog because I enjoy the community of blog writers that I unexpectedly…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2006My favorite blog carnivals were published today.
The Tangled Bank, issue 56, is now available. There are lots of contributions for you to read as you recover from your holiday weekend.
The Carnival of the Vanities, 198th edition, which celebrates the best blog writing on any topic, also includes a contribution from me.
tags: blog carnival
grrlscientist | July 4, 2006
Today's World Cup futebol game was spectacular. It epitomized everything that I hoped for in a World Cup game.
The crowd gathered in my local watering hole were (mostly) supporting Italy (yes, even the Germans!), but everyone agreed that Germany would beat Italy because they enjoyed the home-crowd advantage. But like those pleasant surprises that are often only brought to light after plenty of drunken speculation combined with wishful thinking, our confident predictions were not to be: Italy had other plans.
After an exciting but scoreless game, Italy managed to kick a goal near the end…
grrlscientist | July 3, 2006
As some of you might remember, I lived in Tokyo for awhile when I was a grad student. When I left the States, I had never eaten Japanese food before and, as a microbiologist, I was worried about my impending death after being eaten alive by parasitic worms that I would get from eating raw fish. I worried about this until I had my first taste of sushi. After my first taste of sushi, well, I didn't care if I died as the result of eating Japenese cuisine; I simply knew that I had to have more and that, if I did die, it would be with a smile and tuna sashimi on my lips. The food was fabulous…