laelaps | September 25, 2008I don't have very much to say tonight; the drizzly, cold weather and a late-night math class have put me in a bit of a foul mood. I added a few more pages to the birds chapter today, although this also means I will have to do some heavy editing given that I am 22 pages in and haven't even gotten to Beebe's "Tetrapteryx" or Heilmann's Origin of Birds yet (much less Deinonychus, Sinosauropteryx, etc.).
I will share one amusing quote that may or may not make the final cut, however. It is from an article in Gentleman's Magazine by W.T. Freeman, in which the author preferred a "second creation" to…
laelaps | September 25, 2008
Part of the head shield of a dead horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), photographed at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Delaware.
laelaps | September 24, 2008After brooding for an unnecessarily long time over a temporary title for the book project last week, I've decided to scrap The Pulse of Life as a contender. As my wife pointed out, it sounds like the title of a school filmstrip, and I wasn't very happy with all the vitalistic baggage that came along with it.
I have instead formulated a title that (I think) comes closer to the gestalt of the book I'm working on. Unless something better springs to mind, I am going to call it Life's Sublime Riddle.
If for no other reason to keep track of my own thoughts, I will briefly recount how I came up with…
laelaps | September 24, 2008
During his 1876 tour of the United States, the famed anatomist and popularizer of science Thomas Henry Huxley stopped to see the American paleontologist O.C. Marsh at Yale. Marsh provided his esteemed guest with access to his ever-growing stores in the Peabody Museum, showing Huxley toothed Cretaceous birds and an array of fossil horses that convinced Huxley that the horse was a creature that had evolved in the New World, not the Old. Indeed, Marsh had collected an impressive array of fossil horses, from tiny forms with many toes to the familiar one-toed Equus. Given the transitions that…
laelaps | September 24, 2008Next Wednesday, October 1, I'll be at the Apple Store in SoHo, NYC, talking about science blogging with Jessica, Jake, Steinn, Grrl, and Katherine. You can find out more about the event at the Apple Pro Sessions website, and you can get directions to the SoHo store here.
laelaps | September 23, 2008Apparently the #1 threat to America (as far as Beck & Norris are concerned) is poorly-paid immigrant workers screwing up their orders at the drive-thru. I guess you don't have much time to cook if you're busy publishing vapid, conservative screeds;
laelaps | September 23, 2008
This is an illustration of the skull of Ceratosaurus, as included in O.C. Marsh's famous volume The Dinosaurs of North America. The book has been notoriously difficult to find, often fetching high prices from booksellers, but now you can download a scan of it from the O.C. Marsh archives for free. There's plenty of other treasures there, too, although it does make me think that we at least need archives for E.D. Cope and Joseph Leidy to compliment it.
[And while you're at it, why not have a look at Gilmore's monograph on the osteology of carnivorous dinosaurs?]
laelaps | September 23, 2008Even though discussions of it on the web has generally dwindled (it seems some people just can't bear to watch it anymore), Jurassic Fight Club is still generating a few comments and critiques. Over at his recently-minted blog, Sean Craven has posted a series of his thoughts on the show (parts 1, 2, and 3), including ideas about what could have been done better. For those of you frustrated with the show, it is edifying reading.
[Update: Sean has posted an update based upon some responses to his review. Have a look.]
laelaps | September 23, 2008How do the conversations that occur on science blogs foster the development of science in academia? While conferences and papers are certainly an important part of the current scientific infrastructure, conversations about those more formal sources of information have always played a pivotal role in the development of science, and according a new paper published by my fellow ScienceBloggers Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith in PLoS, science blogs are a good way to extend those dialogs.
The paper starts out with two well-known success stories; the rapid rise of Pharyngula to…
laelaps | September 23, 2008
Another photo of a a wave coming over a little barrier of sand, photographed at Ocean Grove, NJ.
laelaps | September 22, 2008We're fast approaching the date for the next Boneyard, which will be posted on October 7th. The only problem is that we don't have a host! If you're interested in hosting the next edition send me an e-mail (or say so in the comments of this thread), as the 24th edition deserves a good home.
Update: And we have a winner! The next edition will be hosted at The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Big Lie, so send your submissions in to that blogger or to me within the next two weeks.
laelaps | September 22, 2008Lately Chad has been pondering the lack of science majors in colleges, paying particular attention to societal factors. The image of scientists as socially inept dweebs who try to find the answers to questions no one asked is certainly a problem, but there are also substantial proximal problems within colleges themselves.
[I am, of course, speaking from my own experience. Still, I propose that what I have gone through is not unique to my own university.]
Many science classes require prerequisites, particularly precalculus and 100-level introductory courses designed to weed out non-science…
laelaps | September 22, 2008Here's a short video about the famous Edmontosaurus specimen named "Dakota," focusing on how NASA technology was used to look inside the slabs containing the skeleton. There are a few things about Dakota that have been taken a little bit too far (i.e. just because Edmontosaurus had a deep tail does not mean that all hadrosaurs did, and it will be interesting to see how the Brachylophosaurus specimen "Leonardo" differs from Dakota), but the video is a good general overview of what has been released about the fossil to date;
laelaps | September 22, 2008
A wave comes over a little barrier of sand, photographed at Ocean Grove, NJ.
laelaps | September 21, 2008I'm about halfway through Keith Thomson's book The Legacy of the Mastodon: The Golden Age of Fossils in America, and so far I have learned quite a bit. Even though the book covers already well-trodden ground (the "American incognitum," Cuvier's mosasaur, Mary Anning, the discovery of Hadrosaurus), Thomson also pays attention to some lesser-known paleontological personas like Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden and G.W. Featherstonhaugh.
Although Thomson's prose is easily accessible, the book isn't particularly well-written (the short chapters are essentially outlines of particular events or persons in…
laelaps | September 21, 2008
A sandpiper, photographed at the Prime Hook Natural Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.
laelaps | September 20, 2008For all the talk of the rise of Rutgers football being a "Cinderella story," the course of the present season is making many boosters eat their words. The first two games were disasters, particularly the second against the University of North Carolina (the score was 44 to 12, ouch). As the team prepares to face off against Navy today (with John McCain watching, no less), many people are starting to wonder if the near-flawless 2006 season was more of a fluke than a "triumphant return."
The team's recent lackluster performances only serve to underscore the bloated football program here at…