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The Altruism Equation

Skeptically Speaking has this: This week. we’re looking at what science has to say about the origins of selfless – and even self-sacrificing – behavior. We’ll speak to biology professor Lee Alan Dugatkin, about his book The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness. And we’ll discuss altruism from a neurological perspective, with Duke University Neuroscientist Steve Chang, whose research in monkeys looks at how their brains process and record helpful inclinations. Get the podcast here.

Human Subspecies and Race

This is something that started last midweek, but that travels, a cold, and intermittent internet connectivity conspired to distract me from until now. Jerry Coyne was writing about human "race" and in so doing may have made a number of statements that some people disagreed with, and one of those people contacted me and asked my opinion, which I gave, etc. etc. etc. And, of course, the whole conversation got blogged HERE. The conversation in the comments is also very interesting. Go have a look.

NASA to Host News Conference on Asteroid Search Findings

NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) on Thurs., Sept. 29, to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and implications for future research. The briefing will take place at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in December 2009, captured millions of images of galaxies and objects in space. During the news conference, panelists will discuss results from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) that hunted for asteroids. Details here.

Testing Out the Woo, and More.

For a full year, A.J. Jacobs followed every piece of health advice he could -- from applying sunscreen by the shot glass to wearing a bicycle helmet while shopping. Onstage at TEDMED, he shares the surprising things he learned. I always thought it would be interesting to assemble ALL of the warnings and instructions that come with the stuff you get (water heater, iPod, car, children's toys, etc.) and implement all of the instructions, as per the instructions. A.J. should do that next.

Creationists win support of FedEx

So, I watched the SuperBowl last night (mandatory, I think, 'cause Ben Roethlisberger's from my tiny little hometown) and saw this FedEx commercial, which has humans living amongst T. rexes and pterodactyls. Can't wait to see this posted on Answers in Genesis as more proof that people are increasingly being swayed to the "truth" of their message--and during the biggest television event of the year, no less! They're probably being showered with donations to their Creation museum even as I write.

Carnivalia and an open thread

More carnivals, including one that is new to me! I and the Bird #62 Friday Ark #165 Accretionary Wedge #3 (a geology carnival!) And we have a new Tangled Bank coming up at From Archaea to Zeaxanthol next Wednesday—send those links to your science articles to me or host@tangledbank.net. By the way, we're going to run out of hosts in January, so if you're interested in hosting, drop me a line to volunteer. Now say something, anything here in the comments.

Thursday Action Toddler Blogging 040711

A shot from this morning, before SteelyKid had gotten dressed: Why is she balanced precariously on the arm of that chair, you ask? So she could do this, of course: This was the exciting game of the morning: climbing up on the arm of the recliner, then doing a dramatic drop back to the seat. Over, and over, and over, with much giggling. Hey, you might've done the same, if given an armchair of the appropriate scale. SteelyKid sure made it look like fun...

Links for 2011-04-06

The Blog : How to Get Your Book Published in 6 (Painful) Steps : Sam Harris "The process of getting a nonfiction book published by a mainstream publisher--as distinct from an academic press, or a smaller, independent publisher--is quite straightforward. This is not to say that most people understand this process, or that success is likely, but there is very little uncertainty about how an aspiring author must engage the machinery of publishing. Here is the process in 6 steps:" (tags: publishing writing business blogs advice)

Anthologised

One of my blog entries from last spring has made it into a science blogging anthology (a "blook") edited by fellow Sber Coturnix! It'll soon be published as a paperback through Lulu.com. The chosen piece is about the Field-Archaeological Paradox, that is, the curious fact that it is far easier in Sweden to fund expensive excavations at poorly preserved and uninformative sites than at really cool ones. [More blog entries about blogging, publishing, lulu; blogga, förlagsbranschen, lulu.]

17th Century Coin Forgery

Here's a cool thing from my buddy Claes Pettersson at Jönköping County Museum. He's been directing big excavations of the town's 17th century industrial precinct, and his team has found something that appears to be a forged gold coin. It consists of a soft grey metal (tin?) with a thin coating of a yellow metal. So far nobody's been able to tell quite what type of coin it was supposed to look like, only that one side features a crowned head. Any ideas?

The Final POTW

My trip to New York was a lot of fun. Some friends from Kentucky were visiting me this weekend, and that was fun too. But in all the chaos Sunday Chess Problem ended up taking the week off. Sorry about that! It will return next week. POTW, on the other hand, is not taking the week off. Alas, this is the last one for the semester. No more POTW until the fall. It is a great sadness, but try to muddle through.

The Pet Troll Strikes Again

Here's the arch-moron mynym's latest response to me, wherein he still is too stupid to understand the difference between a public form and a private one. I'm not going to bother with a line by line refutation of it. If you feel like it, go there and pick out all the logical fallacies yourself. Most amusing thing about it: he actually thinks he was stopped from commenting here because he was disproving me. I'll take delusions of grandeur for $1000, Alex.

Mostly Mute Monday: The Galactic Plane (Synopsis)

“The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.” -Galileo Galilei It is, in fact, almost exactly as Galileo said. Image credit: ESO / S. Brunier, from the Gigagalaxyzoom project. Galileo missed a few things, though, including a plethora of unclustered stars, dust, nebulae and star-forming regions as well. Image credit: ESO / Stephane Guisard / S. Brunier, via http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0936b/. Want to view it all at once? Check out today's Mostly Mute Monday!

A request

I got a request from Alonzo Fyfe for any written material to counter Intelligent Design creationism that is geared for the younger set, 12-14 years old. I figure there are enough people reading this that some might have suggestions. Along the same lines, I've long thought that a collection of little pamphlets written for people with short attention spans and no background would be useful tools for both promoting biology and atheism — anyone heard of such things? Or are we all long-winded, pretentious babblers?

We Value Your Business, But Not That Highly

We've been having intermittent troubles with our DSL service for the last couple of months, and recently placed a service call to try to get Verizon to do something about it. Just a few minutes ago, I got a "courtesy call" from them, to inform me that they're still working on the problem, and they care deeply about having us as customers. The message was a recording. Yeah, nothing says "We really appreciate you, and want you to be happy" like an 8 AM robo-call.

Get Out the Vote

Two links to speed you on your way to the polls: 1) Jim Macdonald writing to Democrats. 2) John Scalzi writing to Republicans. Now step away from the keyboard, and go vote. The Internet will be here when you get back. (This assumes you're a US citizen, or coincidentally holding an election in your home country today. If you're not eligible to vote in the US, but have the balloting bug, um, well, go vote for your favorite academics, or something...)

The Doggie In the Water

We have a small ornamental pond in the back yard, with a little bubbler in it to keep it from turning into nothing but a stagnant mosquito ranch. Here we find the Queen of Niskayuna contemplating the pond: (I'm not quite sure what she's looking for, but it was cute. Sometimes she drinks the water, but only very, very carefully, because she hates to be wet. It took some serious GIMPing to make this picture look good, but I'm fairly happy with it now.)

'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Otaku

Via Rachel Manija Brown, a Wikipedia page on misheard lyrics in Japan: From Sean Paul's "Fire Links Intro": Mayday! [...] Sean Paul! This one is hot! ç®çã! [...] ã·ã£ã³ãã¼! ãªã³ã¹ã¯ç¡ãã! Me itai! [...] ShanpÅ«! Rinsu wa nai sa! My eyes hurt! [...] Shampoo! There is no hair conditioner! Global pop culture is Difficult. Still, this is probably fair payback for the word salad of the Hellsing theme music, which puts absolute gibberish over one of the coolest theme tunes around.

An Open Letter to the Food Service Industry

When people attending a meeting-- particularly a meeting that starts at 8am on a Saturday-- elect to drink tea rather than coffee, they do so because they do not want coffee. For this reason, it is imperative that you not select the urns at random from a large pile of them, but rather use urns for hot water that have not been used for coffee. If I wanted brownish coffee-flavored hot water, I would drink coffee, and not bother with the tea bags. Thank you.

links for 2008-09-12

Fafblog! the whole world's only source for Fafblog. "As a Jesus-fearing moose-hunting hockey-mom mother of five who hunts moose for Jesus, Sarah Palin is kin to the wild outdoors and appreciates its bountiful splendor as she is gunning it down from her airplane. " (tags: politics blogs silly US) Woot : 10 Things We're Looking Forward To Now That The Large Hadron Collider Is Running "1) Suddenly much harder to get particle beams insured" (tags: blogs silly physics particles)

Sex, Engineering, and the Difficulty of Satire

We live in a difficult era for satire. It's not that there's a shortage of targets deserving a humorous skewering, but the obvious candidates are so quick to dive headlong into self-parody, as with this recent gem from the anti-sex movement: It's been linked in all sorts of places, but I think Matt Yglesias has it about right: "If anything, characterizing the sex-engineering link in this manner seems overwhelmingly more likely to reduce interest in engineering than to reduce interest in sex."

Reuse, Recycle

I was asked recently to write a guest posting for the Reeftank as part of their effort to grow a scientifically minded audience. Not really having any extra time, (newborns will do that to you!) I offered and they accepted a recycling of a previous posting from October last year. It is called "The other CO2 problem" and they published it here. The more geoengineering discussions creep into the mainstream dialogue, the more critical it is to remember this issue. (original posting can be found here)

Rape Crisis in East Congo Tied to Mining Activity

-Activists concerned by this year's escalation of sexual violence in eastern Congo are trying to turn up the heat on those benefitting--directly or indirectly--from illicit mineral extractions. "Conflict minerals power our entire electronic industry," John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, told U.S. senators at a May 13 hearing on sexual violence in eastern Congo and Sudan. The Enough Project is a Washington-based organization campaigning against genocide and crimes against humanity, including rape in eastern Congo. Women's eNews

Ian Musgrave's letter should have been published

What's the matter with New Scientist? Check out Ian Musgrave's smackdown of Douglas Axe and the Biologic Institute is good stuff. If Douglas Axe and his co-signers are so badly misinformed about something as basic and well known as the relations between engineers, computer designers and biologists, can we trust their judgment on any research that comes out of this Institute? The DI claims to be supporting real research…so why is what little emerges from them so bad?

Galapagos Diary

Galapagos Diary: A Complete Guide to the Archipelgo's Birdlife ... Continuing in our look at bird books to consider, I wanted to bring in the Galapagos Diary. I cannot tell you which is the best book for birding in the Galapagos, because, sadly, I've never done that myself. But my daughter, Julia, has, and she recommends this title. She brought a copy home from the Galapagos, and I am personally quite impressed by it. If you are planning a trip to the Galapagos, have a look at it.

What would you pay to make Norm Coleman go away?

A joint project by Democrats has flipped traditional fund-raising on its head, by starting a campaign aimed at collecting $1 a day from supporters "to make Norm Coleman go away." The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a new group working to get like-minded candidates elected, has teamed up with Howard Dean's Democracy for America to tap the wallets of Democrats who are disgruntled by the five-month-old ballot contest in Minnesota between Mr. Coleman, the former Republican senator, and Al Franken, the Democrat. source

Six Bonobos Die in Sanctuary

Six bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, have died from a flu epidemic in a month at the Lola Ya Bonobo in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ten more have contracted the flu. These are apes in a rehab center, and apparently the flu (we'll assume for the moment that the diagnosis is accurate, but keep in mind that the term "flu" has different meanings in different parts of the world) hits hard and the animal dies in a few days after showing symptoms. Details here.

How do you correct the problem of a teacher caught screwing up in the classroom?

Well, obviously, the problem isn't the "screwing up", it's that the teacher was caught, so you make that more difficult. In this case, the Kearney school district has decided to ban tape recorders in the classroom. That sounds smart. It makes me wonder how many teachers other than David Paszkiewicz are peddling ignorant cant in Kearney classrooms, that they have to make a special effort to protect them from exposure. Oh, and my students can tape my classes any time they want.

Alligator Alien in Australia

From the BBC: Wildlife officials in Australia are investigating how an alligator native to North America was found wandering around a campsite in New South Wales. Campers at the site in Pambula managed to snare the beast in a volleyball net and held its jaws shut. Police first issued a press statement saying it was an indigenous crocodile but later corrected their error. The animal's origins remain a mystery as no owners are registered locally either for crocodiles or alligators. Well, that beats my story.

Glow in the dark cell phone straps recalled

The Japanese Education, Science and Technology Ministry have issued a recall notice for 5,500 cell phone straps that contain the radioactive substance tritium. The straps, not surprisingly marketed as "glow in the dark cell phone straps" had been on sale since the beginning of the year, although not with widespread distribution. The Hiroshima couple making the straps was arrested primarily for selling the straps without a license, .... I will refrain from all the obvious things that could be said at this point.... source

Otter Swims Really Far, Amazes Experts

An otter has survived a "perilous" three-mile sea crossing to the Farne Islands for the first time, the National Trust has said. The animal, more commonly found in rivers, has swum from the coast of Northumberland despite rough seas. Head warden David Steel said he was stunned to find 60 yards of otter tracks on Brownsman Island, which is famed for its bird colonies. The mammal has not yet been sighted, but it is thought to be still there. bbc

Engage is Genetic Research and Stuff

Sandy Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World has got an interesting offer: Want to learn more about Parkinson's disease? See why a single nucleotide mutation messes up the function of a protein? I have a short activity that uses Cn3D (a molecular viewing program from the NCBI) to look at a protein that seems to be involved in a rare form of Parkinson's disease and I could sure use beta testers. If you'd like to do this,... ... the click here and get going on it!

First Test Tube Baby Born

The birth of the world's first "test tube baby" has been announced in Manchester. Louise Brown was born shortly before midnight in Oldham and District General Hospital. Weighing 5lb 12oz (2.61 kg) the baby was delivered by caesarean section because her mother, Lesley Brown, was suffering from toxaemia. The consultant in charge of the case, Mr Patrick Steptoe, said: "All examinations showed that the baby is quite normal. The mother's condition after delivery was also excellent." BBC

"Keyboard not present ... Press any key"

... As Homer Simpson once said: "Where's the 'anykey'"... The title of this post is an actual error message spotted on, I presume, a Windows computer. Another: "You lied to me when you told me this was a program" or how about: That makes 100 errors; please try again. Or this: Maybe you should try asking a human? Actually, I lied above when I blamed Windows. These are all examples of Linux or Unix errors, taken from this massive list on one of my favorite web sites. Have a look.

To Baltimore!

Tomorrow I'll be leaving for sunny Baltimore, Maryland. Tuesday evening I will be speaking at Johns Hopkins about the mathematics of Sudoku. To judge from the advertisement, it looks like it will be quite the party! Since its spring break around here, on Wednesday I will leave Baltimore to head over to Washington D.C. for a few days. I'll be seeing the National Symphony Orchestra perform on Thursday night, but that's as far as I've gotten plan-wise. See you when I return!

Pot / Kettle Alert

From last night's Tucker: CARLSON: This was my 20th--literally, I think it was my 20th Oscar night in a row where I didn't watch any of it. WOLFF: It was really bad. I don't know if it's stagflation or bad weather or whatever, but I was just not in the mood, friend. I blame stagflation. CARLSON: Watching rich people congratulate themselves, no. Rich people congratulating themselves. The punditocracy in a nutshell. Oh, and more people watched the Oscars on Sunday than watch Tucker in a year.

Hey to Blind Brook High School, Hickory High School, and Terrill Middle School

It's Adopt-a-Physicist time again, and I've been "adopted" by three classes: Susan Kelly's class at Blind Brook High School in Rye, NY; Lisa Edwards's class at Hickory High School in Hickory, NC (insert your own Hoosiers joke); and Suprit Dharmi's class at Terrill Middle School in Scotch Plains, NJ. So here's a shout-out to all of them, and their students. Amusingly, my fellow adoptees include at least one occasional commenter on this blog, and somebody I know from NIST. Small world.

Half a Year!

SteelyKid is six months old today! To celebrate, here's some video of her bouncing around in her jumper: (That's spliced together from a bunch of shorter clips. You can here me babbling inanely in the background, because my brain turns to cheese whenever I'm within about five feet of her. I was tempted to mute all the audio and replace it with some song or another, but decided it would be too cheesey. Also, I like the happy baby squawk at the end.)

Glory Days

A quick glimpse from the 1993 version of Facebook: See, college students took pictures of each other standing around drinking, even before we had the Internet to post those pictures on... I'm off to my 15th college reunion for the weekend, to see old friends, renew old acquaintances, play a little golf (if it stops raining), and bore the hell out of Kate with long and involved stories about people she's never met. Good times, good times. Play nice while I'm away.

Monday Night Mystery

We haven't done an ant mystery for ages. So here you go: Although I photographed this little ant in Florida, it could just as easily have been in a number of tropical places. Five points each for the first person to pick the genus and the species. The cumulative points winner for the month of May will win either 1) any 8x10 print from my insect photo galleries, or 2) a guest blog post on the (safe-for-work) topic of their choosing.

What does an ant genome look like?

Bits and pieces of an ongoing project to sequence the genome of the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes have started going up on Genbank- Have a look! Of course, these are just raw strings of nucleotides that haven't yet been annotated or analyzed in any meaningful way. The real science won't begin until researchers begin testing hypotheses against the data. But the raw material is there, and this is the first sequence from the ant genome projects to see the light of day. Exciting stuff!

Monday Night Mystery

Tonight's mystery* takes us down into the magical world of scanning electron microscopy. Five points for picking the organism and five for picking the structure. As usual, only the first correct answer in each category collects the points. The cumulative points winner for the month of April gets to choose either 1) any 8x10 print from my photo galleries, or 2) a slot as a Myrmecos guest blogger on a safe-for-work topic of their choosing. *Image by the lovely Jo-anne Holley

Popularity Watch: Dung Beetle vs. Glenn Beck

We here at Myrmecos Blog don't care to voice our opinion of talk show host Glenn Beck. But we are rather enamored of dung beetles, those gorgeously ornamented insects who prevent the world from being buried in feces. Thus, we were pleased to find the following Facebook project in our inbox this weekend: Can This Dung Beetle Get More Fans Than Glenn Beck? If you're on facebook, and you like dung beetles, now's your chance to become a fan. h/t Jesse.

A couple mortraits

I sometimes get requests for stylistic pictures of dead ants.  From pest control industry folks, usually.  And I always have to beg off.  Somehow, with my global image library of hundreds of different ant species, I've had nothing but live insects.  Dead bugs never held much aesthetic appeal, I guess. Well, Pest Control People.  Just for you I've sold out.  Here, at last, is your ex-ant. (Incidentally, this ant wasn't even dead.  It was knocked out with CO2 and walked off 5 minutes later.)

An Announcement: Graduate Student Positions

The lab I work in at the University of Illinois has recently acquired funding for several graduate student positions.  If you are considering a career in taxonomy, genomics, phylogenetics, biodiversity, tropical ecology, or parasitoid wasps, click here for information about the positions. Ponder the following: you'd get your graduate degree from one of the finest entomology institutions in the world.  Plus, it's paid for.  And, if you choose the Heterospilus project, you'll get the rare honor of working with, um, me.

Friday Beetle Blogging: Strategus Ox Beetle

Strategus aloeus - Ox Beetles, female (left) and male Arizona, USA Impressive pronotal horns mark the male in these sexually dimorphic scarabs. Strategus aloeus is found in the southern United States from Florida to Arizona. photo details, top photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D f/9, 1/200sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in a white box bottom photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D f/14, 1/200sec, ISO 200, indirect strobe in a white box

But if Tina Fey were the VP pick. . .

My apologies, dear readers, for having little time to write proper natural products content. I just got home and was watching Olbermann with the Family Pharmboy where clips from Tina Fey's faux Katie Couric interview were mashed up with Sarah Palin's actual one. (See Orac for the SNL clips). Pharmboy: I wish Tina Fey were the Republican VP pick. PharmGirl: I think Tina Fey should have been the Republican candidate. P.S. I would donate to the McCain campaign if they let Sheril Kirshenbaum debate Sarah Palin.

Blogger's code of conduct suggested after death threats

Leave it to the British to suggest bringing civility to blogging, specifically in blog comment threads, with a call for a suggested code of conduct. This follows blogger Kathy Sierra receiving vulgar and graphic death threats on her and others' blogs. (Kathy writes the techie blog, Creating Passionate Users.). As a result, Sierra canceled her appearances this week at a San Diego tech conference. Citing a post from Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, Inc. about this disturbing episode, Jack Schofield of the UK Guardian's Technology Blog notes that The Guardian has adopted a new comments policy…

The 1927 Solvay Conference

I'm on the road today and so can't write up an extensive post. So for today, I leave you with a picture from physics history: the 1927 Solvay conference. It proved that there's no critical mass for genius. If there were, this gathering would have exploded. A large fraction of my "Greatest Physicists" are all in the same place smiling (or glowering) for the camera: (Click for full size) If I had a time machine, that conference would be pretty high on my list of things to see.

Puzzle Fantastica #2 Solved! (Dammit!)

PF#2, as originally introduced. PF#2, the follow-up. The answer was "Mercury" (and we still relish the chance to find that middle puzzle-making ground, between Monday crossword too easy and Sunday crossword too hard). The Queen goes to Queen the band goes to Freddy Mercury. The instruments go to temperature go to Mercury. The number sequence goes to the number of moons for each planet, from the farthest out, to, yep ("..."), Mercury. - - - PF#3 coming by late Spring 2007