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Harper's Magazine on Washington Lobbying

Watch your newsstand for the July issue of Harper's Magazine. Today's Wall Street Journal reports today that Harper's Ken Silverstein has written an article describing his experience posing as a businessman with interests in improving the image of Turkmenistan. He approaches lobbying firms, and hints that he represents a front company that can direct oil revenues to officials in Turkmenistan. The results are very revealing. They show how lobbying and public relations strategies work--attack opponents as "biased," hold bogus conferences to lure journalists hosted by others (the so called "…

Milton Keynes: where giant pterosaurs go to die

During the June and July of 2010 I and a host of friends and colleagues based at, or affiliated with, the University of Portsmouth attended the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. As you'll know if you saw the articles and pictures I posted here at Tet Zoo, our research group set up and displayed the extremely popular Dragons of the Air exhibition. Devoted to the study of pterosaurs, it had an indoor component but also featured several life-sized, walking and flying azhdarchids. Many people noted here and elsewhere that it would be neat, and appropriate, for these models to form part…

Archimedes Integration of the Circle

A lot of people have asked me to write something about "Archimedes Integration", and I'm finally getting around to fulfilling that request. As most of you already know, Archimedes was a philosopher in ancient Greece who, among other things, studied mathematics. He invented a technique for computing areas that's the closest thing to calculus before Newton and Leibniz. Modern mathematicians call Archimedes technique "the method of exhaustion". The basic idea of the method of exhaustion is to take the figure whose area you want to compute, and to divide it into pieces whose area you already know…

An Introduction to Fractals

I thought in addition to the graph theory (which I'm enjoying writing, but doesn't seem to be all that popular), I'd also try doing some writing about fractals. I know pretty much *nothing* about fractals, but I've wanted to learn about them for a while, and one of the advantages of having this blog is that it gives me an excuse to learn about things that that interest me so that I can write about them. Fractals are amazing things. They can be beautiful: everyone has seen beautiful fractal images - like the ones posted by my fellow SBer Karmen. And they're also useful: there are a lot of…

Basics: Modal Logic

I've received a request from a long-time reader to write a basics post on modal logics. In particular, what is a modal logic, and why did Gödel believe that a proof for the existence of God was more compelling in modal logic than in standard predicate logic. The first part is the easy one. Modal logics are logics that assign values to statements that go beyond "This statement is true" or "This statement is false". Modal logics add the concepts of possibility and necessity. Modal logic allows statements like "It is necessary for X to be true", "It is possible for X to be true", etc. The…

The Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique

Many of my fellow ScienceBloggers have recently declared their membership in Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique. I've been busy, so I haven't been able to get around to signing up until now. That's a shame, since some of the badges appear to have been designed specifically for me! So, here's my list of badges. The "Talking About Science" badge. Just ask my wife, my parents, my friends, strangers who've bumped into me on the street... The "I Blog About Science" badge. Ok, so I really blog about math - even if you don't really believe that math is a…

Duck humps dog, and other stories from the world of waterfowl sex

I was sure I'd written about the wonderful subject of duck sex on Tet Zoo before. However, having searched the archives I can't find much, which seems odd. Male ducks have large - often very, very large - penises. The text-book example is the Argentine lake duck Oxyura vittata, originally reported to have a 20-cm-long penis (McCracken 2000) (this in a bird about 40 cm long in total), but later shown to sometimes have a penis that hangs for a length of 32.5 cm but stretches to 42.5 cm when fully unwound (McCracken et al. 2001). The Argentine lake duck is a stifftail, a group of ducks that…

Death by lightning for giraffes, elephants, sheep and cows

A few posts ago the subject of giraffes and lightning came up in the comments (go here, and scroll down to comments 7, 9 and 10). Thanks to an aborted book project that I've mentioned once or twice (I try not to talk about it too much, it still hurts), I have voluminous files on accidental or surprising deaths. I said I have something on death by lightning and - here - I deliver. It's not much, but then, that's not much of a surprise is it? Lightning represents a significant hazard in the natural world and animals large and small may be killed during storms. The death of elephants following…

Dead baby birds: why here, why now?

Here is a mystery I'd really like to know the answer to. On the way to school this morning, Will discovered a dead baby bird. Here it is: the photo (which I took on my phone) is atrocious, so there's little point in showing it at larger size. Clearly, this is an altricial, nidicolous passerine chick, probably of a Blackbird Turdus merula. The question is: how does an altricial nestling like this - barely able to walk in its own nest, least of all out of it - get to be dead in the middle of the pavement? No, it didn't fall out of its nest, because there were no overhanging trees or bushes…

Stuffed megamammal week, day 3: Okapi

Welcome to day 3 of Stuffed Megamammal Week. So far (day 1, day 2) we've looked at bovids. Now for something completely different. Yes, it's that wonderful, charismatic, beautiful African mammal, the Okapi Okapia johnstoni. Again, this specimen is on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, and sorry the photos aren't that great: the specimen is faded relative to the real thing, and this photo has been further muted by my atrocious camera skills [Gareth Dyke in background]. Okapis are very neat beasts, well known for their velvety, dark brown to purplish, striped coat. Their fur…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Deepest Lovin'

According to the referrers pages of my Sitemeter, a lot of you are excited by strange penises, strange penises, strange penises and strange penises (or something like it). So, today we have to move to a different topic, traffic-be-damned, for those without phallic fixations. So, read on (first posted on July 21, 2006).... If science is all you care for you can skip to the bottom of the post because the main character of today's story will be introduced with a poem (also found here): The Conjugation of the Paramecium by Muriel Rukeyser This has nothing to do with propagating The species is…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 10 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Targeted Destruction of Photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells with a Saporin Conjugate Alters the Effects of Light on Mouse Circadian Rhythms: Non-image related responses to light, such as the synchronization of circadian rhythms to the day/night cycle, are mediated by classical rod/cone photoreceptors and by a small subset of retinal ganglion cells…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There were 6 new articles published last night and another 14 new articles published today in PLoS ONE. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: The Effect of Diet Quality and Wing Morph on Male and Female Reproductive Investment in a Nuptial Feeding Ground Cricket: A common approach in the study of life-history trade-off evolution is to manipulate the nutrient content of diets during the life of an individual in order observe how the…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Ancient Odor-detecting Mechanism In Insects Discovered: In work to be published in the January 9 issue of Cell, the team reports the discovery of a new family of receptors in the fly nose, a finding that not only fills in a missing piece in the organizational logic of the insect olfactory system but also unearths one of the most ancient mechanisms that organisms have evolved to smell. Evolution In Action: Our Antibodies Take 'Evolutionary Leaps' To Fight Microbes: With cold and flu season in full swing, the fact that viruses and bacteria rapidly evolve is apparent with every sneeze, sniffle,…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 24 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Evolutionary Patterns and Selective Pressures of Odorant/Pheromone Receptor Gene Families in Teleost Fishes: Teleost fishes do not have a vomeronasal organ (VNO), and their vomeronasal receptors (V1Rs, V2Rs) are…

Weekend update

Allow me to recap. Jerry Coyne set a few people on fire with a post arguing that national science organizations have gone to far in blithely conceding the compatibility of science and religion. He strongly suggests that they stick to complete neutrality on the topic, something they all promise to do, but then ignore what they say to tout a philosophical accommodation that doesn't really exist. He does not argue that they should go the other way and advance an atheistic position (even though we know that that is the only correct stance), but wants them to back off on the misleading happy…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Explaining Dog Wolf Differences in Utilizing Human Pointing Gestures: Selection for Synergistic Shifts in the Development of Some Social…

Why people don't care about newspapers dying?

Because they write lies? Bill Clinton actually used signing documents way more than George W. Bush. But No. 42 is a Democrat and his wife currently works for Obama. So No. 44 is on a big tear right now to distance himself instead from No. 43, the Republican, who's back in Texas and doesn't care but just hearing his name trashed makes Democrats feel good. (See, also more Bush distancing in The Ticket on today's stem cell changes here.) B-b-b-b-ut!!!!??? Bush challenges hundreds of laws: President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 12 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Estimating Mass Properties of Dinosaurs Using Laser Imaging and 3D Computer Modelling: Body mass reconstructions of extinct vertebrates are most robust when complete to near-complete skeletons allow the…

PLoS ONE Second Birthday Synchroblogging Competition - entries so far

The entries for the PLoS ONE Second Birthday Synchroblogging Competition have been coming in all day. Here are the posts I found so far. If you have posted and your post is not on this list, let me know by e-mail. I will keep updating this post and moving it to the top until the competition closes at dawn tomorrow: Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science: Predatory slime mould freezes prey in large groups about the article: Exploitation of Other Social Amoebae by Dictyostelium caveatum Scicurious of Neurotopia (version 2.0): Why Did the Dolphin Carry a Sponge? about the article: Why Do…

The worst liberal impulses

Amanda Marcotte on Pandagon discusses Sam Harris on Alternet, and they've both got smart things to say…but you have got to read the comments. Sam Harris says things like this: On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them. Propositions like "Jesus is going to come back in the next fifty years and rectify every problem that human beings create"--or, in the Muslim world, "death in…

New and Exciting in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine

It's Monday afternoon, time to take a look at the brand new articles in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology: Tasting the Bitter Sunlight: Have you ever had that gut reaction to your surroundings, some physical sensation that something isn't quite right? Maybe a squirmy, uneasy feeling in your stomach or an acrid taste on your tongue that makes you want to leave the scene? When the nematode C. elegans encounters an offensive sensation--whether a pungent, potentially dangerous odor (such as those associated with fungal parasites), extreme temperature, or the poking probe of a researcher--it wastes…

Friday Weird Sex Blogging - Deepest Lovin'

According to the referrers pages of my Sitemeter, a lot of you are excited by strange penises, strange penises, strange penises and strange penises (or something like it). So, today we have to move to a different topic, traffic-be-damned, for those without phallic fixations. So, read on (first posted on July 21, 2006).... If science is all you care for you can skip to the bottom of the post because the main character of today's story will be introduced with a poem (also found here): The Conjugation of the Paramecium by Muriel Rukeyser This has nothing to do with propagating The species is…

Hot Peppers - Why Are They Hot?

(First posted on July 21, 2006) Some plants do not want to get eaten. They may grow in places difficult to approach, they may look unappetizing, or they may evolve vile smells. Some have a fuzzy, hairy or sticky surface, others evolve thorns. Animals need to eat those plants to survive and plants need not be eaten by animals to survive, so a co-evolutionary arms-race leads to ever more bizzare adaptations by plants to deter the animals and ever more ingenious adaptations by animals to get around the deterrents. One of the most efficient ways for a plant to deter a herbivore is to divert…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Nurture Over Nature: Certain Genes Are Turned On Or Off By Geography And Lifestyle, Study Suggests: Score one for the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, as North Carolina State University geneticists have shown that environmental factors such as lifestyle and geography play a large role in whether certain genes are turned on or off. By studying gene expression of white blood cells in 46 Moroccan Amazighs, or Berbers - including desert nomads, mountain agrarians and coastal urban dwellers - the NC State researchers and collaborators in Morocco and the United States showed that up…

New and Exciting on PLoS-ONE

A bunch of papers just went live on PLoS-ONE and, after a quick scan, these three papers caught my eye: The Durability of Public Goods Changes the Dynamics and Nature of Social Dilemmas: An implicit assumption underpins basic models of the evolution of cooperation, mutualism and altruism: The benefits (or pay-offs) of cooperation and defection are defined by the current frequency or distribution of cooperators. In social dilemmas involving durable public goods (group resources that can persist in the environment-ubiquitous from microbes to humans) this assumption is violated. Here, we examine…

Survivor: Pharyngula! Day Five.

Yet more internet melodrama! Several of our unwilling contestants took a shot at the immunity challenge, to comical effect: they either completely failed to be aware of what people find irritating in their posting habits, or in one case, even plagiarized his answer. The result of the vote by the readership: none met the challenge, although several thought Facilis made a good effort, so no one has immunity. What about the vote to see who would be banned? Once again, John Kwok saw an ember of a possibility that he might be selected, and chose to fight it by repeatedly throwing buckets of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

First Finding Of A Metabolite In One Sex Only: Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a chemical compound in male blue crabs that is not present in females -- the first time in any species that an entire enzyme system has been found to be activated in only one sex. How To Share A Bat: New research shows how different species of plants evolve unique floral adaptations in order to transfer pollen on different regions of bats' bodies, thus allowing multiple plant species to share bats as pollinators. Global Warming Threatens Moose, Wolves: Global warming is…

The Impacted Factor in need of Cleansing

I buried this among a bunch of other cool links yesterday, but there was a study the other day, in the Journal of Cell Biology, that seriously calls in question the methodology used by Thompson Scientific to calculate the sacred Impact Factor, the magic number that makes and breaks lives and careers of scientists. Apparently, it is really a magic number calculated in a mysterious way, not in the way that Thompson Scientific claims they do it. Who knows what subjective factors they include that they do not tell us about? When we examined the data in the Thomson Scientific database, two…

New and Exciting in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology

Circadian Remodeling of Neuronal Circuits Involved in Rhythmic Behavior: Circadian systems evolved as a mechanism that allows organisms to adapt to the environmental changes in light and dark which occur as a consequence of the rotation of Earth. Because of its unique repertoire of genetic tools, Drosophila is a well established model for the study of the circadian clock. Although the biochemical components underlying the molecular oscillations have been characterized in detail, the mechanisms used by the clock neurons to convey information to the downstream pathways remain elusive. In the…

New and Exciting in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology

Last week's crop of PLoS ONE articles enjoyed quite a nice buzz in the media and on the blogs. But today is a new week, and we start, as always with new articles in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology - here are some of the article that caught my attention: Could an Open-Source Clinical Trial Data-Management System Be What We Have All Been Looking For: In Europe, it is a legal requirement to conduct clinical trials in accordance with the International Conference on Harmonisation's guidelines on good clinical practice (see http://www.ich.org/). A recent editorial reported that this directive has…

Why are dinosaur fossils' heads turned up and back?

OK, it's been about 20 years since I was last in vet school and I have fogotten most of the stuff I learned there. But I remember a few things. I clearly remember the Pathology class (and especially the lab!) and the Five Signs (or stages) of Death: pallor mortis (paleness), algor mortis (cooling), rigor mortis (stiffening), livor mortis (blood settling/red patches) and decomposition (rotting). The linked Wikipedia articles are pitifully anthropocentric, though, and there is much more cool stuff to learn when comparing various animals. The most interesting of the five signs of death is…

Court Date, Part One

For those of you who don't know, I am being sued by a person who took care of my birds while I was hospitalized. She had told me that the hospital Social Work department would cover her per diem costs (while I would cover the food costs), only later to discover that she was mistaken, so now she is suing me to recover her costs. So one night ago, I had my first appearance in small claims court. To say the least, I was incredibly stressed out, and barely able to think, and feeling ready to vomit much of the time. The court appearance was scheduled for 610pm, but the courtroom did not unlock…

Father Knows Less

tags: book review, children's questions, Father Knows Less, Wendell Jamieson Why do ships have round windows? Can a crow peck your eyes out? Why do policemen like donuts? When Wendell Jamieson's four-year-old son, Dean, began asking questions, odd questions, Jamieson was amused by them. So amused that he decided to write down those questions and share them with his son after he'd gotten older. But after thinking about it, Jamieson then decided that he would give his son the gift of .. knowledge, by giving him a truthful answer. So Jamieson set out find the answers to every one of his son's…

Muggle Judge Agrees that JK Rowling's Copyright was Infringed by 'Harry Potter Lexicon'

tags: Harry Potter Lexicon, copyright infringement, JK Rowling, Steve Vander Ark A little while ago today, I heard a special news announcement on the radio that JK Rowling won her lawsuit regarding infringement to her copyright by the Harry Potter Lexicon and awarded $6,750 in statutory damages to Rowling and Warner Brothers. The U.S. district court judge, Robert Patterson, ruled that Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon" would cause Rowling irreparable harm as a writer because it "had failed to establish an affirmative defense of fair use." Patterson stated that reference materials…

I Get Books ..

I receive a fair number of books to review each week, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog. You may have noticed that some weeks, I am at the top of my game and read one book per day and review it within two or so days after I've finished it. Other weeks, like this one, I am unable to concentrate long enough to read a paragraph, so obviously, reading these books, all of which are worthy of a careful reading…

Morris in the news

Seeing ourselves as others do can be a strange experience. Here's an article in the Humboldt County Times Standard that discusses Morris, Minnesota, and pretty much exclusively praises us. Recently I was listening to Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion." I had to pull my car over to the side of the road after he said that Morris -- a city located in Stevens County in his home state of Minnesota -- had a high school dropout rate of less than 1 percent. In addition, 95 percent of the high school graduates in that city and county go on to some kind of postsecondary education. Well, yes…

The Complaints Department is open

You little scamps in the comments have been acerbic and rude and loud again, haven't you? I've received a little threat in the mail about your activities, and you know how threats get me all trembly and weak in the knees. Dear PZ Myers. My name is Petter XXXX and I am a graduate student in biology at University of XXXX, as well as active as an ecology consultant in XXXX. I would be grateful for the removal of slanderous comments directed personally at me on your blog Pharyngula. I have nothing but admiration for your work with not allowing creationism or ID be a part of education, although…

FDA Scientists Pressured to Exclude, Alter Research Findings

Image source. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists revealed that they were pressured to exclude or alter research findings. Further, they said they fear retaliation for voicing safety concerns and they think that public health and safety will suffer without leadership from the FDA and Congress. (Press release below the fold) The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today released survey results that demonstrate pervasive and dangerous political influence of science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of the 997 FDA scientists who responded to the survey, nearly one fifth…

The Usual Suspects

I travel a lot, mostly by air. More than I would like, actually. But less than I should. I spent a number of years in the UK, during "the Troubles" - one day in London, three buildings I had been in earlier in the day were blown up. Strangely enough my wife had the same experience, possibly the same day - we were children then, but both visiting London, separately and of course unbeknownst to each other. Airport security was high, especially when Icelandair had check-in counters next to El-Al (Iceland, Israel - it all made sense). One day at Amsterdam airport, just after Heathrow was…

Science is not hard enough, and that is why they leave

Chad has kicked off a thematically linked discussion: A response to Jonah on why science is so much work and, Why they're leaving a pointer to an InsideHigherEd article My very personal response: poor math prep, lack of professional opportunities, acute labour shortages, and It Is Not A Lot of Hard Work, but it is Difficult To Do. Chad and Jonah respond from the perspective of experimental work, which, to be fair, is the bulk of work in science; but, the same problem exists, arguably to a greater extent, in theory. People who ought to be able and eager to do science walk out on it, and it is…

bushehr fueled?

There is a claim that the Russians have delivered the fuel for Iran's Bushehr reactor. The source is DEBKA, which is interesting in and of itself. The story is quite detailed, both in timeline and claims of political motivation (Putin pissed off at Bush, natch), but DEBKA is not entirely reliable on these matters - they tend to err on the paranoid "airplane novel" side of things. But, their stories also appear to be politically purposed, either as deliberately leaked intelligence to trigger action in the US conservative masses, or to send a signal to see what a response to a possibly fake…

Giving up the ghost

Guest Blogger Danio: When I began to seriously question organized religion, years ago, it didn't take long to conclude that the myths I had been taught as a child were no more tractable than any of the other thousands of belief systems that have come and gone throughout human history. While I quickly and cheerfully discarded all god-belief without regret, the concept of the soul, a consciousness of some kind that could persist beyond the physical life, was significantly harder for me to relinquish. The idea that the essential 'me' would cease to exist upon my death was not nearly as…

Murphy's Supernova

I confidently predict when the next galactic supernova will take place... Late 2008 or early 2009. Supernovae occur on average once or twice per century in the Milky Way. But we have not seen one for over 300 years now. Not counting SN1987a - that was in the Large Magellanic Clouds. It is quite possible that there were supernovae within the Milky Way that we missed in the 18th and 19th centuries, most likely on the far side of the Milky Way, obscured by the galactic center. It is tempting to think there might have been some in the galactic center, but I think we would have seen the…

Political Paranoia

There is a lot of speculation in the non-US press and in blogs about an imminent US strike on Iran, what with two US carriers in the Persian Gulf (and two Marine amphibious groups), the incident with the UK and the fact that Iran and Russia seem to have made up on the deal for enriched uranium (reactor grade) for the Busher reactor.Except for the bit where the Russians "rotated out" most of their staff for a pause... I don't think so. Not as an imminent threat - two carriers (Eisenhower and Stennis) aren't enough, they need three on the Gulf side, I'd think, and at least one in the Med,…

Holistic Yarn Theory

Bee asks: "when you write: but we missed on the deep guiding principle which tells us how to select the true theory (such as it is) and where the exact theory came from and leads to. Do you have anything specific in mind? " Uh, yeah, sure... er, well, I did, but the boxes of this 'ere blog were too narrow to fit it... (I should note that one of Backreaction's recent blog entries is on an apparently non-existent topic Bother that. I don't know, honestly, obviously I have some ideas, but if they were even half-baked I'd write them up for GRF or something. So, here is the half-assed bloggy…

Four days to war?

kos diaries are buzzing about rumours that the admin will roll out casus belli against Iran the current rumour is that we're in the pre-amble (cf recent Bush speeches and press stories), that they'll go into "not August any more" ramp up next week (after Labour Day of course), and gear for confrontation/incident/strike on-or-after Sep 11th. Interesting. Paranoid. Possibly some truth to it. Sep 11-13 are a good time for doing silly things, new moon, start of Ramadan, and start of major political turmoil in DC as reports, hearings and subpoenas all come together and Congress settles in for the…

KITP: neutron stars in globulars

Phil tutors us today on neutron star formation and retention in globulars. So we expect neutron stars to be made in globular clusters. Massive metal poor stars should undergo supernovae and make neutron stars for a mass range of ~ 8-15-or-20 solar masses, maybe more or less, and depending a little bit on whether they are in a tight binary. More massive stars may, or may not, make stellar mass black holes. But we are not here to talk about black holes, at least not this part of this morning. So, when type II supernovae go bang (and we're not totally sure yet of the details of how that works,…

KITP: ye olde globular clusters

we go back in time, to when the universe was young and ponder when the globulars got made, how, why and why some are blue and some are red but very few are greenish and we learn the globular cluster formation is not transitive hah, and some people are impressed with mere non-commutation relations... Jay is on deck, and he had drawn a lot of pictures. I immediately conclude that not everything to do with globulars is monotonic or even convex. I also conclude Jay talks faster than I can type... Bimodality generally see blue metal poor clusters and red metal rich(er) clusters usually (…

KITP: concentration and truncation

how big is a globular cluster? There are many ways to measure the size of a globular cluster, both observationally and theoretically. This causes some confusion, especially when theorists try to talk to observers, or vica versa. rc - the core radius there are at least three definitions of this: 1) the observer definition is that this is the radius at which the surface brightness has dropped to half its central value; this assumes the surface brightness is flat at small radii and the core is resolved, otherwise the central surface brightness is underestimated by the convolution of the point…