March 19, 2010
Cordyceps in glass, by glass artist Wesley Fleming -- a strange depiction of a rather horrid business. For more, do go to the source, the lovely Myrmecos Blog, which is all about bugs.
Now, the best of the week's gleanings. I'm going to categorize them from here out, and at least try to keep…
March 18, 2010
The sky before Katrina struck, from Rense.com Correction: I been snookered. As alert reader Alex Witze pointed out, these photos were taken by stormchaser Mike Hollingshead in Nebraska and Kansas in 2002 and 2004, and have passed around the net in other guises ever since. For more amazing storm…
March 17, 2010
Jerry Coyne relates that Birds are getting smaller.
Most students use Wikipedia, avoid telling profs about it When I talk to writing classes, someone will usually ask if I use Wikipedia. I tell them, "It's often my first stop -- never my last."
Carl Zimmer has mashed up the data from his clever…
March 17, 2010
Research paper on returning veterans.
"There are about 1 million veterans of the two current wars in the Veterans Affairs system so far, said Jim McGuire, a health care administrator at the agency. He cited statistics suggesting that 27 percent of active-duty veterans returning to civilian life…
March 17, 2010
BoingBoing loves The Open Laboratory: The Best in Science Writing on Blogs 2009, founded/published by the ever-present Bora Zivkovic and edited by scicurious. Nice pointer to four entires on weightlessness, major medical troubles, vampires v zombies, and how poverty affects brain development. …
March 17, 2010
I'll try doing this now and then, maybe regularly, to gather the more notable tweets I get in my twitter feed.
Darwin2009: Population-level traits that affect, and do not affect, invasion success http://ow.ly/1mMUp
jayrosen_nyu: "The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a…
March 17, 2010
Neither plane crashes nor anti-aircraft fire could kill my namesake uncle, but MRSA did, and it wasn't pretty. Accordingly I take a particular in this nasty bacteria, and am looking forward to reading Maryn McKenna's new book, Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, which I just ordered from Amazon,…
March 16, 2010
The Science of Reading is the Harvard library's nice new site about reading. Lots of great old texts and some history of reading science.
BBC News - Man assaulted female police officer with penis. The court heard he had been drinking heavily and could not remember committing the offence at…
March 16, 2010
it doesn't get better than this. The part at about 1.45 where he gets the stick stuck in the strings: Really takes off there.
;
© Extracts from Ariane Michel's film, Les Oiseaux de Céleste.
March 16, 2010
image Bill Waterson
Ed Yong, responding to a run of recent rumination about the nature and role of science journalism, ponders the value of the "This is cool" science story:
None of this is intended to suggest that "this-is-cool" stories are somehow superior to those explaining the interaction…
March 15, 2010
The Maldive Islands played a crucial role in Darwin's long argument about coral reef genesis. It's nice to see them now play a crucial role in shark conservation by making the entire archipelago -- roughly the area of Maine, but warmer and wetter -- a shark sanctuary.
From Sharks receive Indian…
March 15, 2010
We'll start with the science, cruise through J school, and end with healthcare reform or bust.
Genetic material
Willful ignorance is not an effective argument against personal genomics : Genetic Future Mr. McDonald spanks the frightened.
The American Scientist, meanwhile, takes a shot at Putting…
March 15, 2010
I've been following a new birding blog lately, "The Daily Wing," kept by Vermont bird guide, dragonfly follower, and writer Bryan Pfeiffer. It's a nice mix of
⢠birding how-to, with guidance both basic and intricate, such as his lovely entry on a bird-attraction technique he calls spishing (…
March 12, 2010
Never thought I'd run an ad on my blog. But this is just so ... satisfying. And quite pretty. My favorite part is when the dog's feet leave the ground.
h/t @taylordobbs
March 11, 2010
Chicago Tribune recently banned (sensibly, it seems) the use of 119 cliched words or phrases in Tribune story. NPR blogger Ian Chillag, who apparently either did not get or badly misread the memo, promptly set about using all 119 in a single sentence . Jump the break ('read more") to revel in the…
March 11, 2010
Helen Branswell, ace flu reporter, delivers the goodsl:
TORONTO A landmark study looking at how to limit the spread of influenza has shown what experts have long believed but hadn't until now proved: Giving flu shots to kids helps protect everyone in a community from the virus.
The study, led by…
March 9, 2010
Jonah Lehrer's story on "Depression's Upside" has created quite a kerfuffle. The idea he explores â that depression creates an analytic, ruminative focus that generates useful insight â sits badly with quite a few people. It's not a brand-new idea, by any means; as Jonah notes, it goes back at…
March 9, 2010
I canât find an error in the Fishbowl post, which they rightly point out would constitute an error within an error within an error, but as that would also constitute even less of a story than the current one, its probably for the best.
via blogs.journalism.co.uk
The Fishbowl post is at http://www…
February 17, 2010
Tox Tunes #7 â Gin Bottle Blues
February 15, 2010, 8:43 am
The music of Sam âLightninâ Hopkins influenced many later artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Townes Van Zandt, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. He recorded prolifically â Amazon lists 191 Hopkins albums. Perhaps his most unusual disc is…
February 17, 2010
No one has ever accused Darwin about making a rush to judgement about any topic. Just as he spent years poring over the minutest detail of barnacle anatomy before he published The Origin he gave the topic of marriage careful consideration before singing on. In fact, preserved in his notebooks…
February 17, 2010
I guess people like gigantic snakes.
via replicatedtypo.wordpress.com
More fun finds (that is, new to me) amid the entries I'm reviewing for the Research Blogging awards: A replicated typo looks at culture-gene studies, genetics, evolution of language, and, occasionally, really big snakes.…
February 16, 2010
A salamander with no lungs, which breathes entirely through its skin:
via paracademia.blogspot.com
yet more
Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
February 16, 2010
I made my own homage to Marey and Mili. I will leave it to the reader to judge whether this constitutes any kind of poetry in motion. I fear not.
via network.nature.com
more from the big world of science blogging
Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
February 16, 2010
National Geographic has an interesting report on predator-prey issues in national parks: apparently pregnant moose in Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park tend to shift their activity closer to roads before giving birth, in order to avoid predation by grizzly bears.
via network…
February 16, 2010
I have the pleasure of judging some of the entries to the Research Blogging Awards this year. I can't tell you who the winners will be, because I don't know. But for the fun of it, I'm going to throw a few bits and pieces of some of the entries here.
I will say this: The science blogosphere is…
February 14, 2010
I profiled neuroscientist Eric Kandel for Scientific American Mind a while back; a huge pleasure. Two things stand out.
First, Kandel's work makes a wonderful foundation for an understanding of neuroscience, as his mid-20th-century insights into the dynamics of memory underlie much of the…
February 11, 2010
Sources of subsidy in the production of news: a list
I was asked to speak recently at a conference organized by Yale University with the title âJournalism & The New Media Ecology: Who Will Pay The Messenger?â This irritated me. The question should have been âwho will subsidize news…
February 8, 2010
According to a poll (pdf) conducted in the days before the Super Bowl, "Democrats strongly prefer the Saints, by a 36-21 margin, but Republicans are narrowly going for the Colts, 26-25. Independents lean toward the Saints as well, 33-20." Hopefully, Democrats take some lessons from their favored…
February 5, 2010
By Alex Rowan. This is lovely.
Do the full screen, HD if you've got it.
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
February 5, 2010
From Physorg
Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.
Five cases of Scotch and two of brandy, and all of it heavy. You can see the importance Shackleton put on a…
