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Moonlit Beach

Moonlit Beach. Orphaned Image. Please contact me for proper creditation. I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited. . tags: moonlight, beach, nature, geology

Ingenuity

Ingenuity Orphaned Image. Please contact me for proper creditation. I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited. . tags: canary, Ingenuity, bird

Poppies

Poppies. Orphaned Image. Please contact me for proper creditation. I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited. . tags: flower, poppy, flowering plant, botany

Ambush Bugs

Ambush Bug, Genus Phymata. Found on a raspberry bush, Upper Arlington, Franklin County, Ohio. Summer, 2006. Image: Dave Schreiber. I have been receving some gorgeous images from you, dear readers, images that I can hardly wait to share with you! If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited. . tags: ambush bug, insect, Phymatidae, zoology

Pale Male and Lola: on Eggs!

NYC pair of Red-tailed hawks, Buteo jamaicensis. Pale Male (left) and Lola (right). Photo Courtesy of Lincoln Karim. Click image for a much larger view in its own window, or go to PaleMale.com to purchase it. Spring is in the air and, as of 8 March 2006, Pale Male and Lola are incubating eggs on their Fifth Avenue Penthouse overlooking Central Park! The eggs should hatch approximately 28 days from now. Here is a NYTimes story about our celebrity birds. tags: Pale Male, NYCLife

DataBase Problems!

I am sorry to tell you this, but the SB database is experiencing some problems at this moment that prevents essays and comments from publishing at odd moments. So even though I have essays in the queue, they are not appearing as they ought. Be patient; I think that the SB god, Tim, is working on this issue as I write. (If not, we all promise to riot, now wouldn't that be fun to watch?). Hopefully, this comment will publish ... ? Well, I guess this is a test.

Preaching to the choir

I got this video from Orac's blog where an interesting comment thread is developing. This also goes against those who lament the "echo chambers" but those tend to be the same people who write HeSaidSheSaid articles every day - they live in a binary world where only "who wins the two-horse horserace" matters and anything more sophisticated than that is 'elitist' and to be ignored as 'outside of mainstream' which - the mainstream - they, the savvy Villagers with nice hairdos on TV, get to define.

Good article about the history and current state of Open Access

US seeks to make science free for all by Declan Butler: The push to open up scientific knowledge to all looks set to go into overdrive. Over the past decade, the accessibility offered by the Internet has transformed science publishing. Several efforts have already tried to harness the web's power to make research papers available for free. Now two parallel efforts from the US government could see almost all federally funded research made available in free, publicly accessible repositories..... Read the whole thing....

Various PLoS news

For those of you not subscribed to the PLoS Blog or everyONE blog, here are some of the latest news: Introducing the PLoS Medicine iPhone application A new search server is powering the PLoS journal websites Author Spotlight: Interview with Joseph Sertich and Mark Loewen PLoS ONE reviewed by leading library journal Weekly PLoS ONE News and Blog Round-Up Paleontology Research Articles in PLoS ONE PLoS ONE Publishes 10,000th Manuscript! You can get updates from PLoS on Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook.

Welcome the newest SciBling!

Wow! I often get the vibes and hints in the background and through the grapevine when the Borg is about to swallow yet another unsuspecting science blogger. But this took me totally by surprise! And it could not have happened to a worthier blogger. Go say Hello to Christie Wilcox who just moved her delicious blog Observations Of A Nerd from here to its new digs here. Welcome to the Family! (you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave....)

Colliding Galaxies

The latest spectacular image from the Hubble Space Telescope: the sharpest picture ever of the merging galaxies known as the Antennae. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies may be doing something very similar in about 4 billion years. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited. . tags: galaxies, astronomy, "outer space", science

Has anyone been updated recently?

So, for various obscure reasons I was browsing the NASA select schedule, and I noticed there are no scheduled SSUs - Space Science Updates from NASA HQ. Thinking about it, I didn't recall any recent SSUs on anything I had noticed... I don't see any on the Hubblesite, Chandra or JPL Mars website and I don't see an SSU tag on the Cassini press releases. Have there been any SSUs this year? On what topics and when? Because I can't find any by googling and I don't recall seeing any.

Globalization hits the AAS

The Astrophysical Journal is on the move! Word. The Astrophysical Journal, a primary reasearch publication outlet of the American Astronomical Society is moving. Publication will apparently be done by the Institute of Physics, UK! And the Editor's office is moving to Canada, we hear (anyone care to confirm that...?) Third hand reports suggest the University of Chicago Press is doing things differently, and not in an entirely good way, at least from the academic publishing perspective. One too many MBAs methinks.

ea$ter egg$

we had the dynamic kids on a neighbourhood easter egg hunt, with a twist, it was a math hunt I wish I could say I had thought of this, but I didn't... So usual stash of eggs was, er, stashed, but rather than sweeties, the eggs contained small slips of paper - each with a simple arithmetic problem (K-3 crowd). The kids had to solve all the problems, and when they had done so they got to pick a couple of small easter candies from a bowl. And they liked it.

John Wheeler RIP

Holz at Cosmic Variance comments I only met Wheeler once that I recall. Interesting man. Many years ago, I was in Japan and needed some assistance from the US embassy. The INS officer looked at my papers, looked up and said: "you're a physicist? Do you know John Wheeler?" Fortunately, I had then met him, that one time... We had an interesting chat about black holes, bits and careers in relativistic astrophysics, and he then cleared my paperwork and gave me some lasting advice. Small world.

head in the sand

The US government is shutting down EconomicIndicators.gov effective March 1st Due to "budget constraints". Natch. The data comes from the Economics and Statistics Administration at the Department of Commerce. It will still be collected, bundled and analysed, just not made available in a trim, compact and readily accessibly web format for anyone who is interested. It is a nice little web site, the marginal cost of posting the data must be in the tens of thousands of dollars per year... h/t Calculated Risk

Complete Scienceblogs Survey; Win valuable prizes!

Guest Blogger Danio: Orac has posted a directive from the Seed Overlords regarding a survey they'd like us to conduct. As my distinctiveness has been temporarily added to the collective (I'll be implanting the "sleep" command into their subroutines next week though, oh yes...) I am dutifully passing it on. It takes less than 10 minutes to complete and you can enter to win stuff at the end of it. _______________________________________________________________________ Whoops! The survey has been closed already. Sorry about that. Here's a pointless poll instead.

Against mob rule and pandering to ignorance

Keith Olbermann rips into a certain "unstable congresswoman from Minnesota," Rush Limbaugh, the politics of divisiveness, the McCain campaign, and places the ultimate responsibility on John McCain himself, and demands that he address the smears and bigotry of his supporters. It is great stuff. I have to say that I am personally more than a bit tired of the yahoos on the right constantly telling me that I'm not a real American and that I hate my country. And of course Jon Stewart charges in, too.

Big Dig Begins

The Phoenix lander on Mars has touched the soil and is getting ready to do some digging Images from beneath the lander show spots of what appear to be bright consolidated surfaces, possibly sub-surface ice exposed by the lander view underneath more on the "Snow Queen" feature and the arm has made the first gentle scoop to see what is down there... Not down to ice yet at this spot... They also did a rather nice panorama composite image around the lander

Best Science Books 2009: New Zealand Listener

The New Zealand Listener has a few good suggestions from two different categories: Science and Journalism & Essays. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins Innocents in the Dry Valley: An Account of the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition, 1958-59 by Colin Bull On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction by Brian Boyd The Best of New Zealand Geographic: Exploring our Land and Culture

Best Science Books 2009: Barnes and Noble Review

A nice list from The Barnes & Noble Review: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Joseph Kanon Michael Specter The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann Ivory's Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants by John Frederick Walker The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars by Christopher Cokinos A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana by JoÃ£o Magueijo

linkedy links ix

yet more flu university politics and whatever else I tripped over on the net Revere beats a dead horse wot needs beatin' Revere: not just a statistic LOLpigs Tara: swine 'flu deja vu Digital Biologist: what goes around comes around very cool viral sequence alignments and family trees Digital Biologist: this is how you do it Wired: flu genomics Flu Redux: from Making Light University As We Know It: End Thereof Incoherent Ponderer dismantles the preceding FSP takes on the University As We Know It

Who has been a Naughty Banker then?

An Icelandic Norn Curses the Head of the Central Bank. With pictures. From "Surviving Iceland" blog. Yes, she is spanking the Head of the Central Bank, in effigy. You worried yet Ben? Click for full size at "Surviving Iceland" Here is the back story: "....So what was happening was that there was a witch inside the central bank, putting a spell on our central bank governor..." It must have worked, the exchange rate of the króna surged in early trading this week...

I am a convert

An anonymous contributor, signing himself "An Opinionated Englishman", took umbrage at some passing mention of Lipton tea that I made a while back, and sent me a couple of boxes of genuine English tea from some place called Whittard of Chelsea. Whoa. There really is a huge difference. This is terrible. I can never go back to drinking the domestic stuff now, and am going to have to go looking for a local source of imported teas. Darned snooty Englishmen, waking me up to reality. How dare they?

Tajj, the Talking Ringnecked Parakeet

tags: Ringnecked parakeet, Rose-Ringed Parrot, Psittacula krameri, talking parrot, parrots, behavior, streaming video This video shows Tajj, a male Ringneck parakeet talking with his human. Ring-necked parakeets are also known as Rose-Ringed Parrots, Psittacula krameri, due to the colorful ring on the males' neck. There are four subspecies, distinguished mostly by size, that originate from regions in both India and Africa. This is a sweet video that shows the affection that can develop between a parrot and his human [1:17]

UV Vision in Budgerigars

tags: Parrots in the Land of Oz, parrots, behavior, Australia, nature, ornithology, streaming video Did you know that budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus -- erroneously known as "parakeets" in the United States -- can see UV light? Did you know that female budgerigars rely on the UV reflectance to judge the quality of potential mates? This is a fascinating little trailer about wild budgerigars from the Nature program Parrots in the Land of Oz, which airs on PBS on 19, 20 and 21 October [1:43]

Short-Horned Lizard

tags: Greater Short-horned lizard, Phrynosoma hernandezi, reptiles, Image of the Day My good friend, Dave Rintoul, has just returned from a much-deserved vacation camping in the Chiricahuas and Gila Wilderness area and sent a couple images to share with you. Greater Short-horned lizard, Phrynosoma hernandezi, in Chaco Canyon. According to the photographer, this animal was a very cooperative subject. (NOTE: This species was recently split into the greater and lesser short-horned lizards). Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view].

Our Disappearing Arctic Ice

tags: arctic ice pack, global warming, climate change, environment, physics, streaming video A stunning animation from WWF International Polar Programme, showing the progressive melting of Artice sea ice since 1979. The white is older ice -- five years or more old -- and the blues are progressively younger ice, with the shade closest to the ocean being fresh, or one year old, ice. The red dots are tracking buoys, showing how the ice is shifting further and faster as it melts. [0:34].

Chambers Street Subway Art 20

tags: chambers street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Chambers Street Subway Art #16 as seen at NYC's Chambers Street stop for the A and C trains. I am not proud of this image because it is blurry, but because I snapped it while recovering from a broken shoulder, I guess I shouldn't expect much. I plan to return to retake this image so it is clearer. If I have managed to do this, you will not even be reading this message! Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view].

Chambers Street Subway Art 16

Another Little Brown Job

tags: song sparrow, Melospiza melodia, birds, Image of the Day A friend who is a professor of Biology at KSU sent me a bunch of lovely images of sparrows that he took recently while birding. The song sparrow is one of the species that I studied for my dissertation work, although most of my dissertation focused on the white-crowned sparrow. These images are scheduled to appear daily at 3 pm from 6 November through 16 November. Song sparrow, Melospiza melodia. Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU. [larger size].

Melospiza melodia

Song Sparrow

Made It Into Open Lab '09

The Open Laboratory is an annual anthology of blog writings on science started by Bora over at A Blog Around the Clock. I was very proud to get pieces selected for the 2006 and 2007 volumes, and then I was miffed to not make the cut for the 2008 one. But now I'm proud again, because my blog entry "Making the Archaeological Record" from February has been selected for Open Lab 2009! This year's volume is being edited by SciCurious over at Neurotopia.

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 October 16

An update to the exciting Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 October 6. In which I noted a pile of folk such as Nir Shaviv moving from category "Climate change skeptics (scientists)" to "Climate change deniers (scientists)". After that happened, some people pointed out that wasn't quite right; and it was debated, and the result was to "delete" the category. So the net result is that a whole pile of people, e.g., Jan Veizer loses the "[[Category:Climate change skeptics (scientists)]]". Which is probably a fair result.

The Dancing Beasts of Hvirring

Here's a cool new detector find from Hvirring in central Jutland, Denmark. I've never seen a piece like this before: measuring only 45 mm in length, it must be a top mount for something - box, horse yoke, staff? But the motif, four dancing gripping beasts, and the style they're executed in, place the thing firmly in the 9th century. Note the little round ears and the cross-hatching on chest and rump. Thanks to Dear Reader Jakob for the tip-off.

GCR's, Clouds, and Climate, Oh My!

Head in a Cloud has a post about a GRL paper: Luis Eduardo Antunes Vieira and Ligia Alves da Silva of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Brazil, entitled "Geomagnetic modulation of clouds effects in the Southern Hemisphere Magnetic Anomaly through lower atmosphere cosmic ray effects". Its from July, and this is the first I've heard of it (thanks Hank). I've put a comment in over there - it looks to me like more cloud/enso confusion, which Paul Farrar pointed out, but I'm not sure.

Congrats to Steve Reuland

Steve Reuland, the author of the No Free Hunch ID satire that I posted the other day, has just finished successfully defending his dissertation and has now been awarded a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Medical University of South Carolina. So I guess that increases the number of Steves by one. Another Panda's Thumb contributor, Reed Cartwright, is scheduled to defend his dissertation in genetics at the University of Georgia in June. So congratulations to Steve and good luck to Reed.

Cactus

About once a decade (no, I lie - the last was in 2005), our cactus flowers. Here it is again, only this time it has excelled itself and produced four (yes I know you can only see two in this pic). I also rather like the way you can see the flower structure merging into the leaf. There are more pix if you like. This is also a sentimental cactus: my grandparents used to own it, and more: it was a gift to them from my uncle Roland.

Strangely High Temperatures

David Appell has a rather dramatic graph: It is from Roy Spencer. As DA says: I'm sure those skeptics who pored over every detail of the sea ice this winter will be touting this picture soon :-). [Update: BCL points me to http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/07/pielke-sr-respnds.html which again suggests problems with UAH. Well, we all know we should use RSS anyway. Hopefully they will provide the funky interface Update: Picture post: 'hottest April ever' says Nurture -W]

Sea absorbing less CO2, scientists discover?

So says The Grauniad. It seems eerily familiar to me, and the The shift has alarmed experts, who blame global warming almost seems like a parody. Torygraph tags along. Oh yes, here we were and here. The new study says The results showed the amount of CO2 absorbed during 1999 to 2007 was half the level recorded from 1992 to 1999. This is all very well, but it cant be global, or it would be obvious in the atmospheric CO2 levels. And it isn't.

Would you trust an online store that can't spell "purchase"?

So I thought I might read the JASON report of doom. TokyoTom has the details; abebooks doesn't have it, but google books knows it and even has the contents list and pointed me at dualj who I've never heard of, and who spell purchase as "Purhcase" which seems curious. It doesn't seem to have a very good reputation. I don't mind risking $10 (+$21 for postage...), especially from paypal, as long as they aren't going to rip off my password... ah well,I did it.

043/366: Morning Walk

I'm helping coach SteelyKid's soccer practice tonight, but that's no problem for the photo-of-the-day blog, as I got that out of the way early: Scene from this morning's walk with Emmy. This is what it looks like when Emmy and I go for our morning stroll these days, a little after 6am. Which is sort of pretty, maybe, but it's a little depressing to realize it's not going to be substantially brighter than this until next March, give or take...

Apply for a Teacher Scholarship to Raft the Canyon with NCSE

Apply for an all-expenses-paid eight-day raft trip down the Grand Canyon with the National Center for Science Education! Winners will receive free airfare, lodging before and after the trip, and the trip of a lifetime, exploring the wonders of Grand Canyon with a team of scientists, educators, and science fans. The application form is at the bottom of the page, but please review this information on eligibility, requirements, and what to expect from the trip before submitting an application. Apply here

Friday Random Ten...really

OK, I should balance my non-random ten with a random ten, so here they are: Somewhere In Texas The Raveonettes Strange Fruit Billy Holiday Three Bikes in the Sky Tangerine Dream Woman Of Heart And Mind Joni Mitchell Us Regina Spektor Black Milk Eighth From The Egg Tanaka Sound Saian Supa Truth is (featuring Robert Smith) Tweaker O Skeewiff where art thou? (man of constant sorrow) Skeewiff All Apologies Nirvana Sacala Don Omar, Wisin Y Yandel & Hector You Don't Know What Love Is Chucho Valdez

Looks like someone has a touch of the Caligula

Errm, why haven't we started the impeachment proceedings on George W. Bush yet? Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny." Is it because the Democratic Party is so gutless they can't even legislate against an unpopular war, making a despised president untouchable?

Move Over, Wilt Chamberlain

Here's an incredible story. A female high school basketball player from New York scored 113 points in a game on Wednesday. That breaks the record of 105 held by Cheryl Miller (Reggie's sister). But that's not the most amazing achievement in women's basketball. The most amazing achievement was Lisa Leslie scoring 101 points in the first half of a game in high school. The other team refused to play the second half, so she didn't get to set a record no one would break.

Dale Carpenter at Volokh

Dale Carpenter, one of the most articulate defenders of gay marriage, is guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy this week, after gay marriage opponent Maggie Gallagher blogged there a couple weeks ago. Carpenter is doing an excellent job of rebutting Gallagher's claims and the arguments offered by opponents of gay marriage in general. His latest post takes on the procreation argument and shreds it quite thoroughly. I strongly suggest you scroll through and find his posts from the last few days. Definitely worth reading.

Joke of the Day

An inspired bit from Bill Maher last night: New Rule: For Halloween this year, President Bush has to dress up as either an Indian or a cop. This past week he dressed up as a construction worker for a photo op at a housebuilding project. We've seen him as the navy man landing on the ship. And of course we've seen his cowboy outfit. For a guy who's anti-gay, he sure spends a lot of time dressed up like the Village People. Brilliant.

National Corn Dog Day!

From my ever-slovenly but impishly charming pal Skip Evans comes the news that this past Saturday was National Corn Dog Day. For anyone out there who doesn't know what a corndog is, this webpage explains it: Corn dogs are hot dogs dipped in corn batter, deep fried and served on a stick. Corn dogs were supposedly created in 1942 for the Texas State Fair by Neil Fletcher. Corn dogs are an excellent source of calories, fat, cholesterol and salt. That about sums it up.

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