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The paucity of libertarianism

A few weeks ago I read Brink Lindsey's The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. One strange thing is that because I've watched Brink on BloggingHeads.TV on occasion could hear the prose with his particular cadence and delivery. Really weird. In any case, The Age of Abundance is a social history of the 20th century which makes the case that despite the persistence of a partisan divide our culture has operationally congealed around a rough libertarian consensus. In short, a free market of money and lifestyle choices. I think there is a strong argument…

The American professoriate: godless liberals?

In short, liberal, yes, but godless, far less so. Religious Beliefs and Behavior of College Faculty: Faculty are, however, not monolithic. There are divisions among faculty ranks. Science and math faculty are the least religious in belief and behavior. Business faculty are the most conservative and most religious. Humanities faculty, though the most politically liberal, are not less religious than other faculty and on some measures are more religious. Faculty, while less religious than the general population, are complex in their religiosity. Am I the only one who has had the experience of a…

Ask a Science Blogger: Brain "drain"

This weeks "Ask a Science Blogger" is: "Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?" A "drain" seems to imply a net outflow, and that doesn't seem to be happening. But, as the paranthetical makes clear what meant is the reduction of the extent of the inflow. And yes, from all I can gather this is an issue in regards to student visas. My father had to pick…

Francisco Ayala & autogenocide

Interesting profile of Roman Catholic evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala. As an aside they note: In conducting the studies he had suggested, Ayala also made the unexpected discovery that the parasite P. falciparum can reproduce not just sexually, but clonally as well: it can fuse male and female gametes - sexual reproduction - or transmit all of its genes as a single unit, the cloning that was an unexpected phenomenon. Ayala's discovery has helped reveal that malaria, which now kills up to 2.7 million people per year - mostly African children - became common only within the last 5,000…

Evo-thugz in the house!!!

About a month ago I asked around for some bio-geek-rhymes. MC Coffee Mug, AKA The Genius, stepped forward. Props to the thug (and PUBMED too). Matako-chan, represent! MC Coffee Mug rap yo I'm down for chuck d like Thomas Huxley where my bulldogs at this shit is getting ugly punk please styles are various and sundry found the game like amerie in jamaica wanting leapt in cos cats wasn't really hungry break ya off a fireball like chun li gave ya girl a dose of oxytocin in her undies trust me fundies do not want to test I got bullets in my power point I'll put'em in a chest tryna get in my head…

The importance of labs?

Steve Gimbel has a post up where he expresses skepticism of the utility of lab sections. Janet, Chad & Chad and RPM all offered responses. All that needs to be said from the various angles that I would have touched upon has been said, so I won't add much more, except to recall my discussion over at the literary blog The Valve about the testimony of Steve Fuller during the Dover trial. For those of you who don't know, Fuller is a scholar of science (that is, he studies science as opposed to being a scientist) who has suggested that Intelligent Design is a worthy research program, and is…

Animal passions

I was chatting with another Neville, and I repeated something which I have observed: Many atheists are as able to be rational about an analysis of religion as many opponents of the "War on Terror" are about a deeper understanding of Islam, Islamism and terrorism. Now, the interesting point is that viscerally, emotionally, I am neither a fan of religion or Islam. But, when speaking of these topics I believe it is important to put feelings aside, as much as humanly possible, and analyze with a cold eye. Allow the data to speak. Unfortunately, I've encountered situations where any discussion…

Small Town America and institutionalize hatred

Constance McMillen is a high school student in a small town in Itawamba County, Mississippi. She's also gay. I think you can guess where this is going. I can see the flames of someone's personal hell from here. It looks like Ms McMillen is a very confident person, though, so I'd guess that her situation has made her stronger. She decide to attend the high school prom with her girlfriend; Ms McMillen was planning to wear a tuxedo. Good for her: she's proud of who she is, and was going to be respectable and decorous about the issue. The flames are licking a lot higher, you can tell already. I…

Is Sidr a sign of progress?

It's almost Friday here in the United States. The latest update I can find is that 200 people have died due to typhoon Sidr. These are almost certainly "early returns," and the numbers will keep going up. Like pre-modern battles most of the fatalities won't be directly due to the cyclone. Social disturbances, and likely outbreaks of disease (cholera) are going to take their their toll. That being said, at this point I think it is important to have a sense of perspective. A cyclone in 1991 killed 138,000 people and left 10 million homeless (I heard from relatives who told of how they had…

"Gay gene part n": Biology != Genetics

Genetics Has A Role In Determining Sexual Orientation In Men, Further Evidence: In other research, Witelson and research associate Debra Kigar, had found that left-handers have a larger region of the posterior corpus callosum -- the thick band of nerve fibres connecting the two hemispheres of the brain -- than right handers. This raised the hypothesis for the current study -- whether the anatomy of the brain of the sub-group of right-handed homosexual men is similar to that of left-handers. They found that the posterior part of the corpus callosum is larger in homosexual than heterosexual men…

Contingency & evolution

If you like the science on this weblog, I highly recommend Laelaps, Brian Switek's contribution to the ScienceBlogs network. Where I am more micro and anthro oriented he is more macro and spans the whole tree of life. I'm really glad he's on ScienceBlogs; Laelaps adds to the diversity in an interesting way. In any case, I wanted to point to this long post, Troodon sapiens?: Thoughts on the "Dinosauroid", it mulls over many concepts and evolutionary processes. Brian highlights the alternative views of the paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris. While Gould emphasized…

Sexual selection @ Chernobyl

About one month ago Ruchira Paul posted on the ecology around Chernobyl and the surprising bounce back of some taxa. The Economist has some interesting detail about the nature of this revival: ...they found that species which relied on a class of chemicals called carotenoids to tint their feathers fared worse when there was more radioactivity around. Intriguingly, that did not apply to birds that used melanin.... Besides acting as pigments, carotenoids are antioxidants that have an important role in protecting DNA from harm. One of the ways that radiation causes harm is by generating…

How swarthy are the Sami?

Someone asked below if the Sami are actually darker than the Finns. Since I've been making this assumption in previous posts I thought I'd check this out. I found this source for the Finnish Sami where they cite a 1936 paper written in German. I've translated the relevant table (hair and skin color) below. The source above also has data on some provinces of central and southern Finland where one presumes the Sami presence is minimal, though I can't vouch for proper calibration of the metrics, I've included the appropriate snippets.   Eye color Hair color     Light Mixed Brown n…

Drinking Muhammad's urine

A few weeks ago I posted on a bizarre fatwa having to do with adult breast feeding. At the time it was kind of a joke, and I wasn't totally sure that it was even a real story (though I did check for multiple sources). Well, today The New York Times has this up: Egypt's Muslims Seek Fatwas on a Variety of Issues: First came the breast-feeding fatwa. It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times, to establish family ties. Then came the urine fatwa. It said that drinking the urine…

Quoted on Radio Open Source

Chris Lydon quoted me again on Radio Open Source on the post election episode. It's in the last 10 minutes of the podcast. He read this whole section from my post last night: The Democrats do not bring a smile to my face. They are lovers of big government and righteous paternalism. It seems entirely likely than in the next 2 years they'll collude with our president in throwing the borders open to masses of future potential voters, a helot caste who will feed the flames of identity politics and class warfare. The multicultural managerial elite and the corporate oligarchs will be smile as the…

The Neandertal child

Since I will be writing a great deal about Neandertals, please keep this image in your mind. I know that most readers of this blog don't view Neandertals as chimps, but I check google news for evolution and genetics related topics and the recent spate of articles on archaic genomics did spawn a few "Neandertals closer to chimpanzees" pieces. Those of you versed in cladistics, or any sort of taxonomy, are likely outraged, but that's just how it is. The photo to the left is of a child, and perhaps "humanized" a bit too much, but Neandertals were clearly humans. The child has light skin, hair…

The Misuse of Journal Impact Factors

I've written about journal impact factors before, largely to argue that there are better statistics than the traditional impact factor. But an excellent editorial in the Oct. 10 issue of Science by Kai Simons points out a very obvious problem with how impact factors are used (italics mine): Research papers from all over the world are published in thousands of Science journals every year. The quality of these papers clearly has to be evaluated, not only to determine their accuracy and contribution to fields of research, but also to help make informed decisions about rewarding scientists with…

Why Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance Must Incorporate Genetics

A recent paper examined if use of the antibiotic cotrimoxazole was correlated with resistance in three different bacterial pathogens, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Moraxella catarrhalis. To quickly summarize, in one species, S. pneumoniae, resistance was correlated with use, whereas it was not for the other two species. While the study is fine for what it is, it inadvertently highlights a problem most surveillance systems have: they don't incorporate genetic information. Without genotypic information, we don't really know what happened. Is the correlation spurious,…

Jonathan Eisen Is Absolutely Right About Science Articles...

...and it's symptomatic of a larger problem too. First, here's what Eisen says about articles published in Science (and presumably Nature too; italics mine): In addition, by choosing to publish the paper there [in Science] but not elsewhere, the field of deep sea symbionts may have been hurt rather than helped. How could a Science paper hurt the field? Well, for one, Science with its page length obsession forced Irene to turn her enormous body of work on this genome into a single page paper with most of the detail cut out. I do not think a one page paper does justice to the interesting…

Profiting from Hunger: The JPMorgan Edition

There's a lot money to be made providing aid to needy people. And where there's money to be madeextracted, there will be an investment bank, in this case JPMorgan: In these hard times, some 43 million American families rely on food stamps. To the surprise of many, JPMorgan Chase is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. The bank is contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The firm is paid per customer. This means that when the number of food stamp recipients goes up, so do JPMorgan profits. Talk about perverse…

We Are Being Overrun by Radical Homosexual Pirates. Or Something.

For those who don't know much about the great Commonwealth of Virginia, Loudoun County is not only the wealthiest county in Virginia, but it has the highest median income in the U.S. ($107,207). These are not stereotypical 'rubes.' Yet Loudoun County has a very serious problem according to Loudoun County Board of Supervisors member Eugene Delgaudio: When the young men are sufficiently intoxicated, homosexuals dressed as pirates whisk them away to God knows where to take advantage of them sexually. There are even countless stories of any number of immoral sex act being performed by open…

The True Face of Compassionate Conservatism: The Lone Star Edition

Sean-Paul Kelley recounts two prosecutions in Texas. First: My wife has defended indigent mothers charged with Food Stamp Crime. She has never pleaded one out as guilty. Here's the typical situation if they do not have a good lawyer, as most do not, because they are represented by public defenders who are just collecting an easy paycheck from the State: $400 a month received by mom for her and two kids. She Fails to report $100 monthly increase in pay where she works 40 hours a week. She is subsequently charged with felony theft By the State. The punishment for the mom is 10 years defd […

Educational Failure Quote of the Day: The Robert Scheer Edition

Robert Scheer comments on Obama's State of the Union speech (italics mine): His references to education provided a convenient scapegoat for the failure of the economy, rather than to blame the actions of the Wall Street hustlers to whom Obama is now sucking up. Yes, it is an obvious good to have better-educated students to compete with other economies, but that is hardly the issue of the moment when all of the world's economies are suffering grievous harm resulting from the irresponsible behavior of the best and the brightest here at home. It wasn't the students struggling at community…

David Brooks on Genetics and Human Intelligence...

...I think he's right (don't tell driftglass). From the NY Times: For a time, it seemed as if we were about to use the bright beam of science to illuminate the murky world of human action. Instead, as Turkheimer writes in his chapter in the book, "Wrestling With Behavioral Genetics," science finds itself enmeshed with social science and the humanities in what researchers call the Gloomy Prospect, the ineffable mystery of why people do what they do. The prospect may be gloomy for those who seek to understand human behavior, but the flip side is the reminder that each of us is a Luxurious…

The Traditional Media Death Spiral Watch: The Brad DeLong Edition

Brad DeLong isn't the only one who thinks the Washington Post's reporting stinks: At a lunch of eight people I was at last week--former cabinet secretaries, newspaper executives, deans, et cetera--somebody (not me) asked what learning-about-the-world reason there was to read the Washington Post. There was silence. Then, after a while, somebody said "the Style section." And then there was more silence. My call for people to nominate reliable reporters--those whose bylines tell you that you can trust the truth, the importance, and the relevance of the matters asserted by the reporter--working…

Appointees to Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives: Anti-Semitic and Corrupt

Who woulda thunk it? It's already well-established that the good souls of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives had a 'No Jews need apply' policy*. Now it turns out that, like so many bigots, they're also corrupt (italics mine): A former top official in the White House's faith-based office was awarded a lucrative Department of Justice grant under pressure from two senior Bush administration appointees, according to current and former DOJ staff members and a review of internal DOJ documents and emails. The $1.2 million grant was jointly awarded to a consulting firm run by Lisa Trevino…

Thoughts on McClellan's Treatment by (Most) Conservatives

There's a superb piece by Mark Schmitt that's been making the rounds. While most people have focused on the Republicans' use of "Americaness" and identity politics, something near the beginning of the piece stuck with me--and I think it has a lot to do with how Scott McClellan is being treated (italics mine): The Republican Party, though, has always had a different attitude about risk, almost courting disaster while the Democrats postponed it. In Building Red America, his slightly belated 2006 opus on the Republican plan for permanent power, Thomas B. Edsall points to studies showing that…

By Every Metric, the Bush Economy Stinks

Even using conservative measures, the Bush economy has underperformed. Mind you, I prefer measures like the real unemployment rates, various measures of economic equality, the median wage, and other Dirty Fucking Hippie statistics. But if you're the kind of person who thinks the economy is best described by the rise and fall of stock indices, well, it sucks to be you too. The Dark Wraith summarizes the markets' from January 22, 2001 through March 2, 2007: The striking results were that real (that is, inflation-adjusted) returns on investment in standard, well-balanced index portfolios had…

Senator Clinton Embraces Anti-Vax Autism Woo

Well, I feel better about voting for Obama already. Actually, what's sad is that she really doesn't support the vaccination leads to autism position: Would you support a large-scale federal study ofthe differences in health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups? Yes. We don't know what, if any, kind of link there is between vaccines and autism - but we should find out. The lack of research on treatments, interventions, and services for children and adults with autism is a major impediment to the development of delivery of quality care. We need evidence-based research on what…

A sudden influx of Young Earth Creationists

I've been hearing a few complaints lately that there has been a shortage of creationist cretins around here — you all need an occasional fool to gnaw on to keep your fangs sniny and your pelts glossy, I know. Well, aren't you lucky: Carl Wieland, head of the Australian contingent of global wackaloons, put up an irate reply to the atheist rejection of his offer to debate us. We're getting a sudden surge because it included this summary of my dismissal: PZ Myers' "in your face, Christians" response PZ Myers, however, while not giving the courtesy of a direct reply, did so firmly and…

It's Not How or Where Rep. Joe Wilson Said What He Said, It's...

...what he said. I was going to write about how Rep. Joe Wilson, who during last night's presidential address shouted "You lie!", shouldn't be criticized for being rude or uncivil. After all, if Obama had advocated sending left-handed people to gas chambers, I hope someone would have the courage to shout him down. But then I read Thers' "I Think You're an Asshole, And I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Act Like an Asshole, But You're Still an Asshole, Asshole" and realized he already said what needed to be said: ...I honestly do not think anyone from the Bush administration should be…

Remember McCain and Beaver Management?

During the battle over the stimulus package, Republican Senator John McCain tweeted: $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi - how does one manage a beaver? I argued at the time that it's quite possible that $650,000 to better understand how to stop the economic damage that beavers cause is a good use of money. Well, a couple of weeks ago, The NY Times published an article about the damage that beavers do: The dozens of public works officials, municipal engineers, conservation agents and others who crowded into a meeting room here one recent morning needed help.…

ASM Needs to Change the Format of the General Meeting

Every year, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has an annual meeting that covers all topics in microbiology (I'll talk about some of the science next week). It's often in pretty good locations--this year, it was held in San Diego. But attendance has been dropping: a few years ago, over 12,000 people attended (it's a big meeting), and this year, less than 9,000 people attended--which is one of the worst turnouts in memory (and San Diego is a nice place, although I still think Philly--yes, Philadelphia--was the best site they've ever chosen). I've heard rumors that the format of the…

State Taxes and How Science Just Got a Lot More Inconvenient

The NY Times has an interesting story about how state tax agencies are stepping up their efforts to collect money from people who earn money in another state, but don't pay the taxes they owe in that state: When Josh Beckett pitches for the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium, New York collects income tax on the portion of his salary that he earned in New York State. But what about a Boston Scientific sales representative who comes to New York to pitch medical products to a new client? New York has decided it wants a slice of that paycheck, too. Anyone who crosses a state border for work -- to make a…

Why Is Larry Summers Indispensable?

There's been a lot of discussion over Obama economic advisor Larry Summers' economic ties to Wall Street (7.2 million such ties in 2008 alone). What I don't get is why Obama sees the need to keep him around. Yes, Summers is an asshole. He was an asshole at Harvard, and I don't see why he would have changed. Yes, he's a corrupt asshole, but we already knew he was getting paid millions by a hedge fund. But what I don't get why Obama considers him to be essential. Consider these speaking fees: GIANT BAILOUT SECTOR Goldman Sachs: $202,500 (two speeches) Citigroup: $99,000 (two speeches) JP…

Then Will He Strip His Sleeve and Show His Scars and Say "These Links I Had on Amnesty Day"

My apologies to the Great Bard. Today is Blogroll Amnesty Day, this year co-hosted by skippy and Jon Swift. According to skippy, we're supposed to link to five smaller blogs. Below the fold, my five choices, and my mauling of Shakespeare in honor of Blogroll Amnesty Day: Rev. BigDumbChimp Drinking Liberally in New Milford Sorting Out Science Phronesisaical Tangled Up in Blue Guy And don't forget to check out the rest of the blogroll. Onto to the Blogroll Amnesty Day speech: He that shall see this day and live t'old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say "To-morrow…

Good for Eric Holder

I'm becoming more enthusiatic about Eric Holder as Attorney General. It's nice to see some clarity about waterboarding--that is, partial drowning interrogation. From Steve Benen: The exchange was helpful in learning about both the senator and the nominee. [Republican Senator] Cornyn wanted Holder to admit that he'd torture a terrorist in a "ticking-time-bomb scenario," in order to "save perhaps tens of thousands of lives." Holder responded sensibly, noting that we have interrogation methods that aren't torture, and that torture wouldn't produce reliable intelligence anyway. Cornyn was…

Cramdown and Why We Need Managed Default

Paul Krugman is absolutely correct about deleveraging: In the end, I'd argue, what must happen is an effective default on a significant part of debt, one way or another. The default could be implicit, via a period of moderate inflation that reduces the real burden of debt; that's how World War II cured the depression. Or, if not, we could see a gradual, painful process of individual defaults and bankruptcies, which ends up reducing overall debt. And that's what is happening now: as this story in today's Times points out, the main force behind the gratifying decline in consumer debt appears to…

Why Are We Duplicating Genome Efforts?

SEQUENCE GENOMES!!! Proflikesubstance has a very good post about PR announcements in science, which stems from the duplicated sequencing of the cacao and Tasmanian Devil genomes. What struck me is this bit: What also seems ridiculous to me is that there are TWO groups sequencing either of these genomes. I can understand the race for the human genome and maybe even things like fruit fly and Arabidopsis, but since when did the Tasmanian devil fan club go all cut throat? And I like chocolate as much as the next person, but two genome sequences*? It's hard to tell whether this is competition or…

Was the Era of Widespread Antibiotic Use Much Earlier Than Previously Thought?

One of the constant assumptions in the field of antibiotic resistance is that the massive exposure of bacteria to antibiotics, and the evolution of resistance to these antibiotics, didn't occur until after the widespread introduction of penicillin and other antibiotics less than a century ago. But ScienceDaily reports that we might have to rethink this: A chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer.... In 1980, he discovered what appeared to be traces of tetracycline in human bones from Nubia dated between…

Ken Mehlman Is No Jackie Robinson

Marc Ambinder reports that Ken Mehlman has admitted to friends and family that he is gay (did anyone really not know?): "It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I…

The War on Science Marches Onward (Is the Administration Serious About Governance?)

Like Digby, I had the same thought pop into my head when I read this LA Times story about the continued suppression of scientific findings in government agencies: this is the work of Bush-era 'burrowers'--conservative apparatchiks who refuse to carry out the mission of the agency. What I don't get is this bit (italics mine): Officials at those agencies maintain that scientists are allowed and encouraged to speak out if they believe a policy is at odds with their findings. The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, John P. Holdren, said in a statement last month…

The 'Neo-Confederization' of the Waffen SS

In Ohio's ninth congressional district, Republican voters have nominated Rich Iott, a wealthy businessman, who has an interesting hobby: he likes to dress up as a member of the Waffen SS, which were Nazi Germany's elite and ideologically motivated shock troops. Here is how Iott's play-date buddies describe the Waffen SS (italics mine): Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a "New and Free Europe", free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other…

This Is Why You Don't Outsource and Privatize the Military

More fun in our military libertarian paradise (italics mine): Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation. The Pentagon's oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent…

Gay conversion works! If you ignore the data and the methods, that is

The fundamentalist community has a strong interest for some bizarre reason in converting homosexuals into heterosexuals. They consider homosexuality nothing but a bad personal choice, and therefore all gay people need is a little Jesus and they'll switch back to finding the other sex more attractive. It never seems to occur to them that that implies that their own sexual orientation would then be an arbitrary matter of a trained esthetic, and that that would imply that they should be easily flipped into homosexuality themselves (probably with a little Satan). It's strange: I'd be rather upset…

'Grab More Science' Graphic Shows Science News by Discipline

tags: Grab More Science, LabGrab, science news, technology, graphic, image of the day Image: LabGrab, 13 January 2010. An American start-up company in Portland, Oregon, announced the release of their new technology that creates a colorful chart to visualize the volume of science and medical stories published by discipline (above). The boxes are defined by discipline and their sizes are determined by the total number of article headlines published by universities, journals, science news aggregators, and science blogs within the given time period (as defined by the user). "We read a…

Mystery Bird: Scarlet Tanager, Piranga olivacea

tags: mystery bird, identify this bird, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Scarlet Tanager, Piranga olivacea, photographed in Newton Hills State Park in South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Terry Sohl, 16 May 2007 [larger view]. Photo taken with a Canon 20D, 400 5.6L. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: Blur your eyes a little and step back from the monitor: what do you see? I see a smallish bird but not…

Mystery Bird: Lesser Yellowlegs, Tringa flavipes

tags: Lesser Yellowlegs, Tringa flavipes, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Lesser Yellowlegs, Tringa flavipes, photographed at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville, Florida. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Steve Dolan, 29 February 2009 [larger view]. Nikon D90 with the 55-200 zoom set to 200mm (auto exposure). Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. I asked my former Master Birder teacher, Dr. Dennis Paulson, about this bird's ID. Dennis is the Director Emeritus of the Slater Museum of Natural…

What Are You Doing Today?

Today is Labor Day in the United States. This holiday is designed to honor those of us who are lucky enough to have employment -- you know, a job that actually pays a living wage. Today, we honor work by ... not working. Most people in America view Labor Day weekend as the last weekend of summer, so those of us who can afford it usually indulge in a mini-vacation intended for rest, relaxation and partying. To help us along in this endeavor are many clothing store discount sales, new movie releases, college football games (often the first official game of the season), parades and fireworks…

Antarctica: Others Think I'd do a Helluva Job, Too

Since I have recently developed quite a history of visiting cold and snowy places, often during the winter, I wish to preserve that tradition. I am competing for the opportunity to go to Antarctica in February 2010 -- a dream adventure that I've always wanted to pursue (and almost did pursue when I was an undergraduate researching Fin Whales and Crabeater Seals at the University of Washington). To enter, all candidates must publish a picture of themselves and write an essay explaining why we think we are the best choice, and solicit votes from the public. Whomever receives the most votes wins…