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Stupid is as stupid does

DaveScot, apparently just having figured out PZ Myers' first name, has a problem: I have a problem with these people in that they arbitrarily limit what science can potentially explain. The so called supernatural remains supernatural only as long as there’s no metric by which to measure it. Once a metric is discovered the supernatural becomes the natural. The limits on science are not arbitrary. Science cannot study the supernatural. IDolators like to claim that people are arbitrarily limiting science to testable hypotheses about the natural world, but those limitations come from the nature…

"Stay the course"

This summer, after his first visit to Iraq in three years overseeing the war effort from his slot on the Armed Services committee, Jim Ryun told the press that "They [soldiers] feel it's very important that they stay the course." Doesn't Jim Ryun know that "we've never been stay the course"? More importantly, doesn't he know that most soldiers aren't either? According to a Zogby poll: The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave…

I want my country back

Gitmo guards brag of beatings: Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press. A sergeant talking with a group of soldiers reported their nonchalant recollections of beating prisoners with no consequences. "From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees." Bear in mind that a report based on DoD numbers showed that 92% of the Gitmo…

Lies and the lying liars

Attorney general misrepresented sex-crime case: Atty. Gen. Phill Kline had nothing to do with a Sedgwick County case he has repeatedly used to defend an investigation that entangled him in a lengthy legal fight with two abortion clinics, the county’s top prosecutor said Monday. Kline has pointed to the case of Robert A. Estrada, who pleaded no contest in July to nine criminal charges stemming from the rape and sexual abuse of two young girls. … Sedgwick County Dist. Atty. Nola Foulston, a Democrat, said no abortion records were involved in Estrada’s case, only records of live births involving…

Coulter, plagiarist

Normally, I'd get indignant at plagiarism and any student who tries it with me is likely to get axed on the spot. In Ann Coulter's case, though, while not disagreeing with the assessment, ripping off "33 word passages" and such just doesn't get me worked up. That she literally transcribed scattered chunks of her book is nothing compared to the wholesale intellectual dishonesty of the work. Why get upset that she lifted a sentence, when whole chapters are exercises in numb-skulled vacuity? I flunk students out of a course when they plagiarize. When they do things on a level of stupidity…

In lieu of a rant...

... a ring-tailed lemur; I found Chris Mooney's latest piece about Sizzle so aggravatingly condescending that I was set to pen a lengthy, ill-temptered response. I thought better of it, especially since it is clear that any negative comments or criticisms about the film will be ignored. (Instead you're just getting a shorter ill-tempered one and a photo.) Apparently anyone who didn't like the film is a boring, humorless soul who can only find joy in endless streams of scientific data. The notion is absurd, but that's what's coming from the Sizzle soapbox, Randy Olson telling audiences that…

Dolphin "saves" two pygmy sperm whales

According to a news report released by CNN, a dolphin named "Moko" led a mother and calf pair of pygmy sperm whales back to sea after they had repeatedly stranded themselves on a sandbar near Mahia Beach off New Zealand. The story hails the dolphin as a hero, and while such anecdotes might be heart-warming there's no way to tell from the report just what happened. It could be that Moko came in to investigate, swam out back to sea, and the whales followed (bypassing the route that had previously led them to be stranded). Perhaps Moko did try to communicate something, but whether any signals…

Berkley hyenas need some help

The UC Berkley hyena colony is facing a funding crisis; after being sustained for 22 years by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, the organization has decided not to renew funding for the studies undertaken at the institution. An emergency grant from the NSF will keep the colony going for about another year, but many animals have already been shipped to zoos and two older animals have been euthanized in order to make things more manageable in the present situation. You can learn more about the dilemma via this article in Science (hat-tip to Behavioral Ecology Blog), but I sincerely…

Photo of the Day # 80: Lion Pair

Lions (Panthera leo) are big cats most famously known for their social structures, a pride consisting of many females (two females from the Philadelphia Zoo picture above) and one male (or a coalition of several males) living together. Unlike other gregarious carnivores like the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), however, lions lack a well-defined social hierarchy, something that becomes readily apparent when these cats feed. In terms of feeding males are dominant and eat first (and may be entirely selfish if they captured some prey on their own), but beyond this the females do not have any…

Photo of the Day #66: Snow Leopard

As of yesterday the fall semester came to an end, although I still have a bit of work set out before me. Aside from the final exams, I have on term paper due tomorrow for my African Prehistory seminar involving a topic of my choice, and my subject involves what the Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) pictured above is doing: eating meat. Many of the books I read didn't discuss carnivory in our ancestors until it became more prevalent in Homo erectus, but obviously the behaviors had to start somewhere, and the more I thought about it the more the capture and consumption of small animal prey in the…

I really need to get a JVP subscription...

Update: I was able to get a copy of the Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis paper, I just need to school myself on allosaurids a little bit before I pot something about it. So many fossils, so little time. For those of you with Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology subscriptions, there's a new paper out today describing a new species of theropod; Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis from Niger. That's not all, though. In the same issue of new species of glyptodont called Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis is described, so you'll definitely want to have a good look at the December issue. I haven't been…

Photo of the Day #58: Baboon Skull

In honor of the presentation I'm delivering today (which comprises about half the subject of my term paper), here is the skull of a baboon (Papio sp.), baboons sometimes eating meat when they can get it. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), however, incorporate much more meat into their diet and have been known to steal kills from baboons at Gombe, the famous location in Tanzania. There is a problem with these observations, though, and that is that the events took place in the provisioning area where chimpanzees and baboons often had antagonistic interactions and don't try to steal baboon kills…

Photo of the Day #56: Binturong

"What is that thing?" "Says here it's a bearcat." "Well which is it, a bear or a cat?." "I don't know, it's just weird." Short conversations such as this seem to pop up every few minutes around the Binturong (Arctictis binturong) enclosure at the Bronx Zoo's "Jungle World" exhibit, many people not knowing what to make of the hairy black creature sleeping on its platform. Even the popular name "bearcat" is confusing as the Binturong in neither bear (Family Ursidae) nor cat (Family), instead belonging to the Family Viverridae, which includes civets and genets. Binturongs are also nocturnal,…

Photo of the Day #42: Protoceratops

Although the dinosaur halls of the AMNH are perhaps the most popular of all the exhibitions in the museum, the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs usually doesn't get as much attention as the Hall of Dinosaur Superstars Saurischian Dinosaurs. A few stop and look, but most pass right on through. "Triceratops? Great. Stegosaurus? Wow. Hadrosaurs? You've seen one, you've seen 'em all." This is a shame, especially because tucked away on the left hand side of the hall is a growth series of Protoceratops this is simply amazing, and right across from it is the famous diorama of a male and female…

Photo of the Day #37: Juvenile Snow Leopard

Up until a few years ago I had never seen a Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) in captivity, but the Bronx Zoo has had great success in keeping the big cats as well as breeding them. In addition to taking in "Leo," a male Snow Leopard on loan from Pakistan, on June 7, 2006 the adult female Mei Mei gave birth to two females, one of which is pictured above. In fact, over 80 snow leopard cubs have been born at WCS zoos so far, the group expanding their snow leopard habitats with a new exhibit at the Central Park Zoo due to open in 2009. Snow Leopards are still threatened in the wild, however, and as…

Photo of the Day #35: Cold Fish

What's this? A photo of a creature that isn't a large charismatic mammal? Although my affinity for carnivores and artiodactyls is difficult to miss, I have taken many photographs that I'm quite pleased with of other sorts of animals, although I don't often post them because I'm not entirely sure what they are. The above photograph is one such case; at the Tiger Mountain exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, the Amur Tigers are provided with a large pool up against the viewing pane filled with fish. (From what I understand the tigers don't eat the fish, and so the fish have things pretty easy overall.)…

Ethics and Animal Testing

Mark of SB's own Denialism Blog has asked other science bloggers who use animals in their research to speak up and discuss what they do either in their own posts in the comments. I do not participate in lab research involving animals, but I have taken an interest in the subject, especially when non-human primates are used. While I don't doubt the importance of animal testing, I do have reservations about the ethics of using non-human primates in medical research. This is not to say that I advocate the acts of terrorism by extremists as related in Mark's posts, but I do have concerns about…

I'll be there

I still am a bit disappointed that I had to miss SVP this year, but fellow paleo-blogger Amanda has suggested that everyone who wants to attend the 2008 meeting put a little progress bar on their blog to remind themselves to start saving up for the trip (you can make your own using this word cash meter). I'm setting mine at $1,500, and although registration is only a fraction of this amount, I'm going to need to save a lot for gas, hotels, food, extra activities, the money I won't be making since I'll have to take off from work, and the armful of books I'm sure to come home with. Indeed, I'm…

Photo of the Day #15: Pizote

Yesterday's photographic subject, the cougar (Puma concolor), has plenty of common names by which it is known by (some of which are better than others), and the White Nosed Coati (Nasua narica) is another mammal that is known by many other monikers. Pizote, Antoon, and Harrington all sound more like the names of places rather than a long-nosed member of the Family Procyonidae (which also includes raccoons, the Kinkajou, and Olingos), but that is precisely what they are. One should also be mindful that there is at least one other species of coati, distinct from the Pizote, being known as the…

Happy blogiversary to me, sort of...

Me and the cats (Chase is the white one, Charlotte is the black one), taken one year ago. It's October 18th, which means that I've been blogging about science for one year now. It all started over at ProgressiveU.org, where I started writing as a way to win a scholarship (which I did), but by the time the contest was over I decided to take my writing in a somewhat new direction on Wordpress. I recently posted a somewhat longer version of the various transitional forms this blog has assumed during the past year for those interested, although I'm not quite sure that I would say today truly…

What is this #2: Answer

Reader Fruity was the first to correctly name this device - on just the 9th comment. Impressive. Honestly, when I found this thing I had no clue. I asked other physicists and none of us were sure. However, I did find the answer. Let me show you my secret. I don't know how old this thing is, but it is old. When I open it, my nose and eyes get all tingly - probably from the mold. Here is that apparatus in the book (tome): I can't show you the whole page because it has other stuff of awesomeness that I want to show you later. But, I can show you the description for that item. I am…

The third arrrrrrrr

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Ned Ryun, the nepotistic son of Jim Ryun, a consarrrrrvative runner and formerrr Congressman lately marooned by his crew of Republican seadogs, needs a lesson in arrrrrrithmetic. Arrr nashnul debt be held by: Japan, China, the United Kingdom and Oil Exporting nations, in that order. You combine all four of those nations’ holdings and they have $1.577 trillion of our debt. That’s about 1/8th of our debt. You combine China and the Oil Exporters, and that’s almost $700 billion between the two, or about 13% of all our debt." So now 700 billion…

The "What kind of scientist is Batman" problem

This new strange question is sweeping the scienceblogs: "what kind of scientist is Batman?" The answer is obvious. He's a fictional scientist. He's a member of a long and distinguished lineage, from Tom Swift to Grissom of CSI, of imaginary scientists written by people who don't know any science, and who imbue their characters with cross-disciplinary super powers and give everyone a false impression of just how easy and unambiguous scientific research is. Not all fictional scientists have to be so cartoonishly omniscient, though. I recommend Allegra Goodman's Intuition(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)…

More Expelled reviews

Someone at the same screening of Expelled: No Intelligence that PZ Myers was tossed out of has two very contradictory things to say about the movie: the entire audience, minus Dawkins’ posse, agreed that that the film’s main point was that Intelligent Design should be taught in conjunction with Evolution. And also: In fact, Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany. Teach the outrageous and shoddy attempt to trivialize the Holocaust! As the ADL's Abraham Foxman has said before: "…

Lend a hand to Chris Comer

Chris Comer, fired last November for having the temerity to think that the Texas Education Agency's Director of Science Curriculum might be allowed to tell people about a talk about why intelligent design isn't science, is going through a rough patch. Her politically motivated ouster has made it hard for her to find new employment in Texas (at least within her chosen career path), and she's asking for a little help from the pro-science community while she puts together her finances. If you wish to contribute, you can send a donation of whatever amount to Chris's PayPal account. Go to PayPal.…

Move South, Live Longer

It turns out that moving to the sun belt will help you live longer. Here's the NBER abstract: We estimate that the number of annual deaths attributable to cold temperature is 27,940 or 1.3% of total deaths in the US. This effect is even larger in low income areas. Because the U.S. population has been moving from cold Northeastern states to the warmer Southwestern states, our findings have implications for understanding the causes of long-term increases in life expectancy. We calculate that every year, 5,400 deaths are delayed by changes in exposure to cold temperature induced by mobility.…

Campaign Songs

Help Hillary pick her campaign song. The music fan in me would vote for U2's "City of Blinding Lights" or The Staple Singers "I'll Take You There". The political strategist in me would vote for The Dixie Chicks "Ready to Run," since they give you credibility with the anti-Bush, anti-war bloc and have that charming Top-40 Country sound that plays so well in the battleground states. What song would you pick? If I was thinking outside the box, I'd go with a solemn classic: Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changin". That song (one of the few protest songs from the 60's that has aged well) would…

B Flat

Who knew B flat was so strange? Robert Krulwich explains, as only he can: During World War II, the New York Philharmonic was visiting the American Museum of Natural History. During rehearsal, somebody played a note that upset a resident live alligator named Oscar. Oscar, who'd been in the museum on 81st Street, suddenly began to bellow. Naturally, with so many scientists in residence, an experiment was quickly devised to see how to get Oscar to bellow again. Various musicians -- string, percussive and brass -- were brought to Oscar to play various notes. It turned out the culprit was B flat,…

Julia Gillard inspires a lot of polls

The godless Australian PM, Julia Gillard, has sure riled up the pollsters. Here's three polls at once to slam. Start clicking! Do you care at all about Julia Gillard's lack of religious faith? * Yes 33.71% * No 66.29% Hey, what's the difference between "No" and "Don't care" in this poll? And what does it mean that it will affect their vote? This is a remarkably meaningless and uninterpretable poll. Will your vote be swayed by Julia Gillard's stance on religion? * Yes, it will affect my vote 29.35% * No, I'll still vote the same 45.21% * Don't care 25.45% This one is the…

Fetch with Ruff Ruffman uses a laser to measure temperature?

I am sorry to point this out, but I can't help it. My kids watch this show "Fetch with Ruff Ruffman". It's mostly an ok kids show. However, there was a problem. In one episode, some kids were in the desert and measuring temperature with (they said it several times and it was even a quiz question at the end) - a LASER. Here is the device they used:  This is an infrared thermometer with a LASER aiming system. The laser is only there to help you aim. The temperature is determined by measuring the infrared…

Cat in the Hat sits on a throne of Lies!

My kids like books. Especially when they are going to bed. I let my daughter pick a book and she picked "Clam-I-am. All About the BEACH" by Trish Rabe. It is nice, it rhymes. The pictures are pretty. Then I get to this page:  So, the ocean is blue because of the sky? How do you get green oceans? How about brown (I live in Louisiana, trust me - the gulf of Mexico can be brown)? What about when you are underwater, everything looks blue. The best answer to why the ocean is blue is that that is what color does…

Oliver Sacks and NOVA

Just a quick reminder to watch the season premiere of NOVA tonight on PBS. It features Oliver Sacks and a few of the patients described in Musicophilia, including Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon who became obsessed with classical piano after being struck by lightning. I found the show quite compelling - NOVA was kind enough to send me a preview DVD - so be sure to tune in. For me, the most affecting story was that of Matt Giordano, who suffers from a severe case of Tourette's syndrome. Matt is hard to watch, if only because his ordinary movements are constantly being interrupted by tics…

Has it come to this?

Henry Farrell offers a wingnut manifesto. The loonier corners of wingnuttia, including some sections of ABC News, have determined that the only response to the prospect of a small marginal increase on income over $250,000 is to stop working altogether. Fine. Henry suggests the following a "Go Galt, Go!" manifesto: We proudly salute “Dr. Helen,” Glenn Reynolds, and Michelle Malkin, for identifying the only possible response to Barack Obama’s victory – ‘going Galt.’ By withdrawing their creative and intellectual achievements from the economy and stopping tipping waitstaff, the schmibertarian…

The sound of silence

Martin Cothran, bigoted Disco. Inst. blogger and staffer with the Kentucky affiliate of Focus on the Family, is very worried. Having pitched a hissyfit when his bigotry was called bigotry, he is now worried about What McCarthy would do if he were gay. He does this without any jokes at all about Roy Cohn: That sound you hear may be goosestepping from the Tolerance Police. Now someone has posted a "blacklist" of individuals and businesses that contributed to the effort to pass Proposition 8. If a conservative did this, they would be skewered. That silence you hear is the media completely…

McCain advisor votes for Obama

Wow: Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January. This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked…

Error in the age of personal genomics

Over at Genetic Future Dr. Daniel MacArthur points out some errors in deCODE's interpretation services. Dr. MacArthur presumably knows his maternity, though if the X chromosome results were correct one would guess that Dr. MacArthur is actually adopted and that his mother might be a Lumbee Indian. But it makes me wonder how confused people are going to be due to problems with false results. In particular, as these technologies become very cheap many families with make recourse to them. Sometimes this will highlight "extrapair paternity events," but sometimes there will be errors and…

Mohammed's dead hand still ruins lives from the grave

I'll be going to the Atheist Alliance International 2010 Copenhagen Convention to listen to a fine group of godless speakers, but there's one who won't be there — there was going to be a surprise speaker, not mentioned for security reasons, and now he has decided it would be too dangerous. The meeting is being held in Denmark, so of course they were going to have Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who infuriated so many Muslims, speak about his experience. But not now. The threats and the risk are too great, and he has withdrawn. That is genuinely disgraceful, that the idiots of Islam can rely…

"Bipartisan" opposition to Bush immigration plan

OpenCongress reports Republican Reps. and Boyda Come Out Against Bush's Path to Citizenship Plan. Ninety-seven representatives signed a letter asking Speaker Pelosi not to bring any bills to the floor allowing people already living in this country a path to citizenship. As OpenCongress explains: Where they state, in the first line, that the group of supporters is "Democratic and Republican," they are referring to the fact that one Democrat , Nancy Boyda (D-KS), accompanied 96 Republicans in signing the letter. Immigration was an issue the Congresswoman ran on, and it's good to see her…

The Best Science Books (Redux)

Last week, I mentioned that the Royal Institution in London had come up with short list of the best science books of all time. After some excellent feedback from readers, and because I love making lists of my favorite things (just in case I'm ever stranded on a desert island), I'd thought I'd offer up an amended list. Here are the top ten science books, in no particular order: Microbe Hunters: Paul De Kruif The Double Helix: James Watson The Periodic Table: Primo Levi The Selfish Gene: Richard Dawkins Chaos: James Gleick The Beak of the Finch: Jonathan Weiner The Making of the Atomic: Bomb…

More Porn Leads to Less Rape

A few days ago, I linked to an article documenting a connection between reduced crime and increased exposure to violent movies. Now it appears that porn has a similar effect, and that the increased availability of porn has led to a significant decrease in rape and attempted rapes by young men: The arrival of the internet caused a large decline in both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of accessing pornography. Using state-level panel data from 1998-2003, I find that the arrival of the internet was associated with a reduction in rape incidence. However, growth in internet usage had no…

Mules are Smarter

A mule is a biological hybrid, an offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. According to a new paper, all of this cross-pollination has real benefits: mules are significantly smarter than either of their parents. No regression to the mean here: Six of each animal were shown sets of two food buckets, each marked with a different symbol.In order to gain access to the food, the animals had to pick the correct bucket. The mules learned to discriminate between more pairs of symbols than the horses or donkeys, and did so more consistently. The scientists argue that the intelligence of mules…

Who the heck are you?

Blame Ed Yong. He started this business of asking readers to speak up, and now it's all over the place, so I guess I need to join in . In the comments below, tell me who you are, what your background is and what you do. What's your interest in science and your involvement with it? How did you come to this blog, how long have you been reading, what do you think about it, and how could it be improved? You need some music to listen to while you're composing your answers. There are a couple of lines there that are so appropriate here: I staggered back to the underground And the breeze blew…

Poem of the Day

And it comes with recipes, too! Here's Billy Collins: As soon as the elderly waiter placed before me the fish I had ordered, it began to stare up at me with its one flat, iridescent eye. I feel sorry for you, it seemed to say, eating alone in this awful restaurant bathed in such unkindly light and surrounded by these dreadful murals of Sicily. And I feel sorry for you, too -- yanked from the sea and now lying dead next to some boiled potatoes in Pittsburgh -- I said back to the fish as I raised my fork. And thus my dinner in an unfamiliar city with its rivers and lighted bridges was graced…

America and Science

Our eighth graders might not understand basic scientific concepts, but America is still a beacon for the "stars" of science, at least according to a new analysis by two social scientists at UCLA: America has 62 percent of the world's stars as residents, primarily because of its research universities which produce them. Of course, there is nothing inevitable about this fact. Americans take it for granted that we're an aggregator of research talent, but that could quickly change. (Or has it already changed?) Unless we can find a way to improve science education (and fix our visa problems, so…

Membrane Vesicles

As heard recently on The Daily Show: Those guys don't know membrane vesicles from their taint. It's a funny line, but membrane vesicles are serious stuff. Just ask Jack Szostak: Our goal is generate a nucleic acid system that can replicate accurately and rapidly, without any enzymatic assistance. We have already developed a membrane vesicle system that allows for the repeated growth and division of the vesicles, without the involvement of any biochemical machinery. We are just beginning to do experiments in which we combine the nucleic and membrane systems, and we can already see the…

Predicting Technology

The transition from basic science to useful technology is so unpredictable. Look, for example, at DNA. Ten years ago, everybody assumed that the payoff of the genetic revolution would arrive in the form of gene therapy. We'd cure disease by tinkering with our genome. Well, that didn't work out so well. Who could have guessed that one of the most important contributions of the genetic revolution would be the use of DNA in the criminal justice system? We know so little about what our new knowledge will do. State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice…

Reawakening Redoubt?

The steam plume from the new dome on Redoubt, taken in January 2010. Image courtesy of USGS/AVO, taken by Dennis Anderson. News comes out of Alaska that a small earthquake swarm has begun under Redoubt. This is the second such swarm since the volcano's 2009 activity ceased. Most of the seismicity appears to be near the summit of the volcano, which would suggest that magma might be moving underneath the new dome that is still steaming. AVO describes the unrest: "This morning, at roughly 01:44 AKDT (0944 UTC) a series of small repetitive earthquakes began occurring in the vicinity of the…

Eruption on Mars?

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of a potential plume on Pavonis Mons. There are reports tonight that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographing the Martian surface noticed an odd plume near the summit of Pavonis Mons. The initial guess was that this plume might have been fog or an new impact on the Martian surface, but the continued presence of the plume might suggest that it is not a transient feature. One suggestion is that these could be a volcanic plume. Now, Mars has been very volcanically active in the past - in fact the youngest flows could be as young as 20 million years old, so…

29th Anniversary of the Mount Saint Helens Eruption

Mount Saint Helens less than 30 seconds after a sector collapse that triggered one of the largest eruptions in the Cascades in the last 500 years. Today is the 29th anniversary of the dramatic eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Washington state. The eruption dramatically changed the landscape around the volcano along with greatly increasing our understanding of volcanic sector collapses and explosive eruptions. I was going to write a larger entry on the event, but alas, I will instead be lecturing to 100 UC Davis students about the event today instead (sorry folks!) Instead, if you want to…

Quiet week in volcanoes

  Not much news in the world of volcanoes this week so far. Must be the mid-summer lull in activity as the northern hemisphere heats up (just kidding!) Anyway, I thought I would post a picture of a recently erupting volcano that a friend of mine shared with me. This shot (above, picture by Arkadiy Groshev) was taken on July 25 of this year as Karymsky volcano in Kamchatka was erupting. The volcano emitted ash for ~1 hour that day and it almost seems like a volcano-as-tourist-attraction type of eruption! The group in the picture is the PIRE (Partnership for Volcanological Research and…