sheril | July 29, 2008
The vice chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee has been indicted 'on charges he lied about receiving gifts worth more than $250,000 from an Alaska-based energy company on whose behalf he intervened in Washington.'
More at CNN...
sheril | July 29, 2008When this hit my inbox, I thought it was a bad joke:
She's plump, powerful and ready to cause more controversy than "SuperSize Me." She's Fat Princess, the star of Sony's upcoming video game of the same name. Debuting at last week's E3 expo, the colorful Fat Princess is a capture-the-flag game with a twist: you can thwart capture attempts by locking the once-thin princess in a dungeon and stuffing her full of cake, thereby increasing her girth and making her harder for your enemies to haul back to home base.
Games have sure changed since the days I played Nintendo and I'm wondering whether…
cmooney | July 29, 2008The "two cultures" effect that we're seeing with the responses to Sizzle continues: Now the famed industry rag Variety loves the film that has many scientists scratching their heads (or worse). From the Variety reviewer:
The film emerges, more skillfully than "Flock of Dodos," as an exceedingly clever vehicle for making science engaging to a general audience, and also presents climate-change science in a more complex light than the overtly partisan "An Inconvenient Truth."
Does the film perpetrate stereotypes? Variety:
Silpa and Clark push the flaming-queen stereotype right to the edge…
sheril | July 29, 2008by Philip H.
[Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog piece are the opinions of the author alone. They do not represent the opinions, policies, procedures, or sentiments of any government agency for which he currently works or has worked in the past. If you disagree, please contact the author, not your Congressmen.]
Now, here's some interesting news about American voters. It turns out that they are not, generally, policy wonks. Nor are they truly ignorant about important issues. Rather, they vote based on a small handful of issues, often selecting party affiliation based on…
cmooney | July 28, 2008Not to be outstaged by Juno, over the past two days I spent most of my energies on this:
Note to Philip H.: Sydney thanks you for blogging and providing me some relief. At 10 weeks, this Boston Terrier needs much of my attention...
sheril | July 28, 2008We've invited some excellent 'intersection personalities' to contribute here while we devote necessary time to completing our book. While we'll continue posting on politics, science, culture, and storms, our first guest is ready to make his debut tomorrow...
Introducing Philip H.
A coastal fisheries oceanographer, Philip left the boat bound life for ocean policy work in our nation's capitol. He is an LSU graduate, and thus nearly impossible to reach during college football season (though rumor has it he sometimes comes up for air when he runs out of snacks). Philip is also a newlywed,…
sheril | July 28, 2008
I love books. Some of my favorite authors are Robbins, Allende, Homer, Vonnegut, Sagan, Burroughs, Tan, and on and on...
Lately I've been reading and reading and reading, but it's been awhile since getting lost in a good story.
Intersection readers are encouraged to make recommendations here in an open thread. Share the titles you couldn't put down, tell us why (without giving too much away!), and together let's come up with ideas for embarking on the next great literary adventure!
sheril | July 26, 2008
A one-month-old Ferruginous Pygmy-owl, Glaucidium brasilianum, at the National Zoo in Managua, in the spring of 2008. The owl was brought to the zoo after its nest fell from a rotten branch at a construction site.
Bonus points if you recognize the quote in the title.
sheril | July 25, 2008
From Jonathan Crow:
If movies were completely scientifically accurate, they'd probably be as interesting as a Physics 101 lecture. In real life, there are no explosions in space, gas usually doesn't explode from a lit cigarette, and Bruce Willis/Jackie Chan/Will Smith would most likely be in a coma after getting kicked in the head. Some movies, though, put science front and center in the story and more often than not the science proves to be head-slappingly bad. Here are some of the worst offenders.
sheril | July 24, 2008Carbon: Seems it's the subject on everyone's mind these days... and for good reason!
It's in the food we eat, the gasoline that fuels our cars, our clothes, jewelry, and beyond. It's us! C is the sixth most common element in the universe and intimately important in the tale of life on planet earth. And fortunately for us, Eric Roston (full disclosure, a colleague and friend) is a spectacular storyteller and has composed it's balanced, structured narrative across 12 chapters (coincidentally carbon's atomic mass) in The Carbon Age.
Admittedly, when I opened the book I had my doubts. It…
cmooney | July 23, 2008
So: Dolly, which is now lashing southern Texas as a borderline Category 1/Category 2 storm, wasn't the big one. It wasn't a Katrina or a Rita--a storm capable of shutting down all Gulf oil production.
On the other hand, if you're the type to worry then it's not irrelevant that we're staring down what could be a very bad hurricane season--and one Gulf storm in the wrong place could lead to a dramatic gas price spike. Given the vulnerability of our economy right now, that's not something we could easily handle.
My latest Science Progress column, entitled "The Perfect Storm," addresses this…
sheril | July 23, 2008This week's question at NexGen asks us about what policies are necessary toward diversification of energy sources on a national and international level. Are we ready--economically, politically, and technologically--to accept and expand in so many directions?
Many have predictably taken issue with Gore's vision toward 2018, and I discussed the challenge with friend and colleague Eric Roston--author of this summer's must read, 'The Carbon Age'* and blogger at Carbon Nation. For our perspective, read my post at NexGen...
* If you haven't picked 'The Carbon Age' up yet, do! Roston's book is…
cmooney | July 23, 2008This is not good. The pressure reported by the National Hurricane Center was 976, then 972, then 967....meanwhile, the storm has developed a perfect eye:
The Advanced Dvorak Technique, a computer program being run by folks at the University of Wisconsin that assesses storm intensity, now shows a major rapid intensification burst:
I can only expect that when the National Hurricane Center next reports, it will be calling this storm a Category 2 or even perhaps a Category 3....
cmooney | July 22, 2008
This storm, heading for the Mexico-Texas border, is now a hurricane. Our second of the 2008 season, and it's not even August yet....
Eric Berger has some interesting discussion of just how busy this year is starting out. Only three years in recorded history have been busier so early, and two of them are the busiest two years in history: 2005 and 1933.
Did I mention I was worried?
cmooney | July 22, 2008
[From Sizzle: No caption needed.]
On Saturday night, along with Molly and two friends, I attended the opening of Sizzle at the Fairfax theater here in Los Angeles. The movie was airing at Outfest, a gay and lesbian film festival, and the woman introducing the film remarked on its pioneering attempt to find shared ground between the environmental and gay communities--to, in short, bring concern about global warming to a broader audience.
There were some 200 people in attendance, along with the entire cast and a few personages from the film--Dr. Naomi Oreskes of the University of California-…
sheril | July 22, 2008Remember the 2007 Scibling meetup? Well it's that special time of summer once again for Seed's science bloggers to gather in Manhattan and take the city by storm! Unfortunately, Chris can't make it this year, but I'll be in town with Jennifer, Bora, Razib, Grrl and many more of the colorful characters that inhabit the interwebs here at Sb. No doubt chaos will ensue...
And for the first time, readers are invited to meet us on Saturday, August 9th, around 3pm. The overlords will decide on the venue when they get an idea of how many readers may come so comment or email if you'd like to be…
cmooney | July 21, 2008
[Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures: A Whole Lot of Energy Just Waiting for a Storm]
I've just blogged over at the Daily Green about the latest tropical developments. I'm a bit stunned that we're on our fourth named Atlantic storm--and likely soon enough, our second hurricane--and it isn't yet August.
This isn't good people. This is almost on pace with 2005, and we all know what happened in August, September, and October of that year.
You can read my full worried statement here.
sheril | July 21, 2008If anyone's perfected the science of music, it's Girl Talk.
Regular readers know how I feel about music's power to move and motivate people. Well I've just discovered Gregg Gillis who began as a student of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University. Regardless of whether his art is your style, what Gillis has accomplished on his laptop convinces me he's nothing short of a savant. In what I can only describe as an auditory museum, he samples from Nirvana, Jackson 5, Of Montreal, Metallica, Ludacris, Rick Springfield, Fergie, The Beach Boys, Rage Against the Machine, Missy…
sheril | July 18, 2008It's no secret, I love space. From following the Mars Lander to cosmic collisions, I call it 'my dark side' along with complex adaptive systems theory. And now's our chance to shuttle up to the moon! Well, sort of...
NASA is inviting all of us to send our names along board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) later this year. It's mission:
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is the first mission in NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, a plan to return to the moon and then to travel to Mars and beyond. LRO will launch no earlier than November 24, 2008, with the objectives to finding safe…
sheril | July 17, 2008The latest from JibJab reminds me of the night we covered Dylan in NYC at the 2007 Sb blogger meetup... Chris, I think it's time for an encore.