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Charles Darwin - Notebooks

Darwin published hundreds of pages of text, but he also kept notebooks many of which come down to us today. They can be roughly divided into two aspects, the Beagle field notebooks of 1831 - 1836, and his later notes. Sometimes these notes are found in a single book, and one way they are told apart (when otherwise undated) is by the orientation of the notes themselves. Darwin wrote "portrait" style in the field, but "landscape" style in the lab. repost from gregladen.com Many of the notebooks are preserved at Down House, Darwin's residence. Down House has 14 Beagle notebooks, one…

Yeah, me too. [Christina's LIS Rant]

I'm also leaving ScienceBlogs, but it's not for the reasons some others have given. I don't think Pepsi's blog will hurt my real life reputation and besides, it's been pulled, there have been apologies - it's time to forgive. July was the first month I've gotten enough hits to get a paycheck - and that's completely due to the BYU video - no one is more shocked than I about that. It's also not about the technical support - I mean, look at my old blog. Does it look like I use fancy tricks? Some of the tech support things are related to getting thousands of comments, which I don't. Of course I…

Popular Science Returns as Festival Media Partner, Bringing Famed DIYer and Zombie Hunter Chris Hackett!

Popular Science  magazine -- one of the leading sources of news in technology, science, gadgets, space, green tech and more -- is returning as a key Media Partner with the Festival, bringing to the event not only a vast array of science media expertise, but also a special surprise: famed DIYer-at-large and zombie hunter, Chris Hackett, who is a contributing editor of Popular Science and who also hosted the Science Channel's avant garde DIY show, "Stuck With Hackett"! Popular Science has been a major source of science and technology news since this award-winning publication was founded back in…

Mac McCorkle, Political Consultant for Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue, to speak at Town Hall Grill's 'Village Voice'

Chapel Hill, NC - September 24, 2008 - Mac McCorkle, Political Consultant for Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue and 2008 Democratic Nominee for Governor, will be speaking on behalf of the Lt. Governor on October 6, 2008 at Town Hall Grill in Chapel Hill as part of the Village Voice political forum. Town Hall Grill, located in Southern Village in Chapel Hill, N.C., launched the bipartisan community issues forum, "The Village Voice," in June and has featured political candidates William (BJ) Lawson, Republican candidate for U.S. House District 4 and Ellie Kinnaird, six-term NC State Senator,…

Family hating godlings want to desecrate your Holy Genome!

Pope Ratzi was in charge of a parade yesterday, where everyone pretends to know every footfall of poorly documented Jewish rabbi's execution, so they can re-enact it and make portentous comments at every step. The whole thing is online, if you want to read it. The Seventh Station is the interesting one. But what is it that today, in particular, strikes at Christ's holy body? Surely God is deeply pained by the attack on the family. Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family. There is a move to reinvent mankind,…

Temperature and sex determination

Some interesting new research. The paper is, unfortunately, behind a paywall but they made a video, so it is worth posting. Here's the press release for the paper: Scientists know that temperature determines sex in certain reptiles—alligators, lizards, turtles, and possibly dinosaurs. In many turtles, warm temperatures during incubation create females. Cold temperatures, males. But no one understands why. A recent study sheds further light on this question. The findings of researchers Kayla Bieser, assistant professor at Northland College, and Thane Wibbels, professor of reproductive biology…

The Secular Coalition of America's Big Goof

The Secular Coalition of America is a lobbying group that represents several groups, including American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, Camp Quest, the Secular Student Alliance and so on. A few months ago the SCA made news, in a bad way, by appointing a former Bush White House Staffer, Edwina Rogers, as Executive Director. Many of us did not like that and we complained, and we were essentially told a) the decision is final and b) don't worry, everything will be OK. But it is not. Much more recently, the SCA appointed as a co-director for one of its state groups a guy who has…

Ill take "Tired Atheist Cliches" for $200, Alex.

For some reason, our local FOX affiliate decided to cover a blog post by Sanjay Gupta: Anger at God common, even among atheists Technically they were covering some study by Julie Exline, but considering the fact no one has linked to it, and I cant find it anywhere online, lets be honest. It was opinions on second hand opinions using third hand opinions. High-five there, traditional media! Anyway, the gist of it is that atheists are 'mad' at a god-like creature Christians imagine as their choice of deity. OKC Atheist president Nick Singer rightly noted that that is stupid. Atheists cant be…

links for 2009-05-06

Why Canât You? « Easily Distracted "I had a fun conversation with a student this week who had a number of challenging questions about issues to pose to me. The question Iâm still knocking around: if academic cultural critics understand expressive culture so expertly, why canât they create it? Wouldnât it be better to always have experience in creating the cultural forms that you study? I noted that this is an old and familiar (if legitimate) challenge. It popped up recently in Ratatouille, for example, but this is an old battle littered with bon mots and bitter denunciations. Thinking…

Free DSCOVR

In 1969, after yet another arrest, Flint native href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Ebhl/bhl/refhome/jls/John.htm">John Sinclair was sentenced to 9.5 yrs in prison.  The egregious disproportionality of the sentence led to rallying cries of FREE JOHN SINCLAIR! Last December, I went to a pub in Ypsilanti, to see the guy play his music.  Outside, there were these free-newsletter dispensers.  I saw the juxtaposition, felt moved by the irony, and snapped a picture. Seed Magazine is cool.  The most recent issue (September 2006; not online yet) has a one-pager on a topic similar to the FREE…

First anniversary of Scientiae blog carnival!

It's my great pleasure to congratulate Skookumchick (Rants of a Feminist Engineer) and the world of women bloggers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) on the first anniversary of their blog carnival, Scientiae. With the theme of "renewal," I'll leave it to Skookum to explain how and why she started the carnival: I decided to start the thing-that-would-turn-into-Scientiae (name by Theo Bromine) because I had found it to be meaningful to read all these amazing blogs being written by women in science, engineering and math. I found it helpful to hear their stories, to…

Yeah, me too.

I'm also leaving ScienceBlogs, but it's not for the reasons some others have given. I don't think Pepsi's blog will hurt my real life reputation and besides, it's been pulled, there have been apologies - it's time to forgive. July was the first month I've gotten enough hits to get a paycheck - and that's completely due to the BYU video - no one is more shocked than I about that. It's also not about the technical support - I mean, look at my old blog. Does it look like I use fancy tricks? Some of the tech support things are related to getting thousands of comments, which I don't. Of course I…

The People Want Their Phones Green

There's a discussion I was clued into recently, taking place over at a spiked, a reporting website, which describes it self thusly: spiked is an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms. spiked is endorsed by free-thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, and hated by the narrow-minded such as Torquemada and Stalin. Or it would be, if they were lucky enough to be around to read it. I'm not quite…

Geologic causes vs geologic triggers

There's a great, new online news article by Science's Richard Kerr about the role of the Zipingpu Dam in last year's Wenchuan earthquake. A new article in Geophysical Research Letters (which I haven't read - my library doesn't have access to GRL) tests the plausibility of water as a trigger for the Wenchuan quake, and concludes that the weight of the water, combined with its penetration into the fault zone, might have made the difference. There have been a number of studies in the past decade or so that suggest that earthquakes can be triggered by little things, such as the passage of…

Enough about dogs...who wouldn't like to own a pygmy hippopotamus? They are pig-like and hippo-like with really cute offspring

OK, Pygmy Hippos are really cute. Well, baby pygmy hippos are really cute. And that's kind of strange considering it looks like the morph of a pig and a hippo. I mean, piglets are cute, but grown pigs are certainly not the easiest thing on the eyes. And hippos, well, they're just odd looking. But the pygmy hippo got the best of both worlds, and they are really interesting creatures when you take a look at their adaptations. Just take a look at the photo above of a pygmy hippo that was born just last month at Zoo Miami. She doesn't have a name yet, but zookeepers are doing an online poll to…

Judeo-Christian, an abuse of language?

I've always been ill at ease with the term "Judeo-Christian." As someone from a Muslim cultural background I was minimally familiar with the tenets and principles of the Islamic religion. As someone who was socialized with both Jews and Christians I was reasonably familiar with the outlines of both faiths. When my teachers wouldrefer to the "Judeo-Christian" tradition I simply felt that something was off. Talking to Jews about their religion it seemed, to me, to resemble Islam more than what the Christian children described. Additionally, on occasion my family would purchase kosher food…

Resources and readmissions: a challenging policy for hospitals

Monday was the start date for an Affordable Care Act provision aimed at reducing high rates of hospital readmission among Medicare patients. This year, hospitals determined to have excess readmissions for patients with acute myocardial infarctions, heart failure, and pneumonia can lose up to one percent of their Medicare reimbursements for the year -- and in future years, the list of applicable conditions will get longer and the percentage of payments at risk will rise to three percent. But to what extent are readmissions under hospitals' control? First, a bit of background: Readmissions are…

Classic Edition: The Moon is a Harsh Wossname

Yet another in today's series of reposts of articles about space policy. This is another old blog post from 2004, back when the Moon-and-Mars plan was first announced. As with the previous posts, any numbers or links in the post may be badly out of date, and there are some good comments at the original post that are worth reading. This installment contains my attempt at finding reasons why it wouldn't be completely idiotic to try to put a permanent base on the Moon. I'm not sure this was entirely successful, but it's worth a shot: It's a little foolish to attempt to comment on the merits of…

Attendance at religious services, but not religious devotion, predicts support for suicide attacks

When it comes to discussing suicide bombers, the controversial topic of religion is never far behind. Scholars and pundits have proposed several theories to explain why people would sacrifice their lives to take those of others, and conjectures about religious views seem easy to defend. After all, anthropologist Scott Atran estimated that since 2000, 70% of suicide attacks have been carried out by religious groups, and Islamic ones in particular. But for all the speculation, very few people have examined the supposed link between religion and suicide attacks with an objective scientific eye…

Lacking control drives false conclusions, conspiracy theories and superstitions

"Control - you must learn control!" These wise words were uttered by no less a sage than Yoda, and while he was talking about telekinetically hoisting spacecraft, having control has another important benefit. It protects a person from spotting false patterns that aren't there, from believing in conspiracies and from developing superstitions. Control and security are vital parts of our psychological well-being and it goes without saying that losing them can feel depressing or scary. As such, people have strategies for trying to regain a sense control even if it's a tenuous one. Jennifer…

What is the nonbeliever to make of death?

...the times have been, That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again, --William Shakespeare Macbeth Act 3, Scene 4 PZ just drew my attention - again - to Dinesh D'Souza. Both PZ and I were a bit annoyed by his diatribe against atheists a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, D'Souza is not a man content to drink only once from that bottomless well of stupidity - he just keeps going back for more. Paul already took a few good shots at some of the more ethically impaired aspects of Dinesh's diatribe (for someone who is savaging atheism on behalf…

Another kind of agnosticism

I have delivered myself of all kinds of opinions about agnosticism in the past. One common refrain from (in this case, god) deniers is "Are you agnostic about X?", where X is some obviously non-existent object like Thor, fairies, or Republican environmental policies. And the answer to that is not simple. Why is it not simple? The answer comes in a recent book by Peter van Inwagen, a philosopher, which includes a chapter on "Philosophical Failures" (available from here as a PDF). van Inwagen suggests that philosophical argument is not between two disputants each of which holds an opposing…

Carmona, Former Surgeon General, Too Political?

href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/images/Carmona-CTAGlobalHealthdraft.pdf">This report (PDF 260KB file) is what set off the controversy over the former Surgeon General of the United States.  It is a draft report, entitled The Surgeon General’s Call to Action on Global Health 2006.  It was written by the former Surgeon General, Dr. href="http://www.hhs.gov/about/bios/sg.html">Richard Carmona. In this post, I will review the history of Dr. Carmona's service as Surgeon General, outline the controversy, and end with a discussion of of some recent criticism of the controversy…

Mystery pigs of tropical Asia, and capturing them on film

The increasing availability of automatic cameras (cameras set up to take photos on their own are known in the trade as camera traps) has been a great boon to field biologists, and to people interested generally in the documentation of obscure and elusive creatures. Many animals hardly ever photographed in living state have been documented by these tools, and quite a few taxa never photographed in living state at all have been captured by them too. A few examples of the latter include Lowe's servaline genet Genetta servalina lowei (camera-trapped in 2002, shown at the top of the adjacent…

Science Kids, Fictitious Forces, and Frictionless Surfaces

SteelyKid has started to demand Sid the Science Kid videos, which of course we are implacably opposed to around here. One of the recent episodes available online was "Slide to the Side," talking about friction. While this partakes a bit of the Feynman "Energy makes it go" problem, it was generally pretty good, and prompted a question from Kate that (combined with Rhett's latest. Kate and SteelyKid were talking about how friction keeps things from sliding, then Kate asked me whether it would be possible to keep anything at rest on a truly frictionless surface, due to the rotation of the Earth…

Suminia: Life in the Trees 260 Million Years Ago

Color-coded diagram of a small bone bed containing at least twelve individuals of the Permian synapsid Suminia. From Frobisch and Reisz (2009) When I hear the phrase "early human relative" I cannot help but think of an ape-like creature. Something like Sahelanthropus fits the bill nicely; it may not be a hominin but it is still a close relative from around the time that the first hominins evolved. That is why I was a bit puzzled to see MSNBC.com parroting a story written by the Discovery Channel which proclaimed "Early human relative predates even dinosaurs"! Was this another fossil that…

'Bloggers' vs 'Audience' is over? or, Will the word 'blogger' disappear?

The New Scientist, The Open Laboratory, the journos who just don't get it....those things make me want to write something on this blog! Slow blogging...like slow food. These days, if something cannot wait, I put it on Twitter - from which it automatically goes to FriendFeed and Facebook where I may or may not get feedback. But blog posts - those take some thinking. It may take days, or weeks (or never) for the idea to crystallize enough to deserve a blog post (and for me to find time to sit down and write it). So, I am coming back to this discussion now although all the other players have…

Mark Steyn can get fooled again

Last week the gullible Mark Steyn was busted by Media Watch for basing a column on Johnelle Bryant's crazy story about being visited by Mohammed Atta in early May 2000. She said that Atta threatened to cut her throat and wanted a loan to buy a crop duster. Unfortunately for her story, Atta wasn't in the country until June. And, as I wrote then: Strangely enough, Bryant did not tell anyone else at the time about Atta threatening to cut her throat. A normal person might guess that this was because she made the story up, but Steyn triumphantly concludes that the evilness that is multiculturalism…

Ontogenetic depth

One of the serious shortcomings of Intelligent Design is that it does nothing to provide any new or productive insights into the workings of biology. ID proponents seem to be at least vaguely aware of this failure, in that they do frequently claim to be thinking about working on a preliminary, tentative approach towards the beginnings of a potential research program (my paraphrase), but most of the effort has been directed towards political and legal enforcement of their ideas, rather than actually testing those ideas. One advantage of pursuing only legalisms is that they don't give…

Japan Nuclear Disaster Update 32: "Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in History"

In the old days this was easy. The power plants were melting down but no one knew what was going on inside them; Water was being poured in and cooking off as steam, and every now and then the way they were getting the water in or the way they were powering the pumps would change, or one of the containment buildings would blow up, or whatever. If you've been reading the last few Fukushima Updates, however, you'll know that things related to the crippled nuclear power plant have gotten more, not less complicated, which at first is counter-intuitive, but on reflection, expected. After all,…

The Revolution Will Not be Blogged, Either

There are a lot of inherent contradictions in my life - and for the most part, I stand with Emerson and his claim that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Periodically someone throws at my claims that we're going to have to radically reduce our fossil fuel usage "but you are writing this on a computer" as though the fact that there's an underlying hypocrisy to this that undermines my claims. And there is a kind of hypocrisy, in the adolescent sense of the term - but the reality is that it is impossible to live in this world and the one that is coming without being a…

Birds in the News 113

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Clark's Grebe, Aechmorphus clarkii, in the foreground with a Western Grebe, Aechmorphus occidentalis, behind. Both were photographed on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge (north end of the Great Salt Lake) in the spring of 2005. Similar birds, but the field marks are straw-yellow bill (Clark's) cf. greenish-yellow bill (Western); white feathering around the eye (Clark's) cf black (Western), and whiter flanks on the Clark's Grebe. This pair of birds was hanging out together, and that was not unusual, making one wonder…

On Baby Harp Seals, Coal Plants and Nuclear Power

One of the things I've been arguing for years is that most people in the developed world, given a perceived lack of alternatives and no narrative to explain change and sacrifice, will do almost anything to keep their present way of life. I point out that if they become cold enough most people would shovel live baby harp seals into their furnace to keep warm, while carefully justifying why this is reasonable and necessary and probably convincing themselves that baby harp seals like to be burned alive. I have been thinking much about this metaphor lately, as the tone of the discussion of…

More Tooth Fairy Science: Acupuncture does not improve in vitro fertilization success rates, no matter what acupuncturists say

Here we go again. Oh, well. These things come in waves, and sometimes I have theme weeks. Right now, this week appears to be developing into a week of quackademic medicine involving dubious acupuncture studies. Yesterday, it was acupuncture for lymphedema after breast cancer surgery, a study coming right about what is rapidly becoming the Barad-dûr of cancer quackademia, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. How a hospital that is so awesome in every other way can have such a blind spot bigger than the Eye of Sauron, I don't know, but it does, and the result is a steady stream of…

Peak Oil vs. Peak Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peak Oil is a controversial concept. Some people actually think that the production of oil in nature is continuous (which is a tiny bit, but hardly at all, true) so we can keep pumping oil out of the ground and it will just keep being produced by tiny microbes. But aside from that particular, and annoying, made-up controversy, "real" Peak Oil (or should I say Peak Real Oil) is still controversial. Peak Oil is defined as the moment when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction occurs, and thereafter production declines steadily, like on a bell curve. But that is, in my view, the wrong way…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Who needs statins? Or: Sacrifice the teeth to remove those toxins!

Some woo is very, very complicated. The reason, of course, is that the often self-contradicting complexity of this sort of woo serves to make it harder for people without specialized training to figure out easily that it makes no sense scientifically. It's more a matter of baffling 'em with bullshit than because such complexity is actually needed. (No one that I can think of personifies this better than Lionel Milgrom, a man who's a veritable poet of woo.) Other times, the concept behind the woo is simple. In fact, it's usually just one idea. In fact, this one idea is usually based on an…

Abe Foxman calling for a "hate crime" investigation for Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic remarks? Probably not.

I had seriously considered jumping all over this story when I first saw it early Monday morning. After all, look at the headline: Jewish groups call for hate-crime probe on Mel Gibson A more truly ominous thing to be calling for based on a drunken anti-Semitic tirade I have a hard time imagining. As you may remember from my previous discussions of, for example, the David Irving trial, I am very much against hate speech laws. What I don't recall if I've ever mentioned before is that I'm also very skeptical of hate crime laws. I can see using racial or religious bigotry as an aggravating…

Dances with Wood: Life with My Cookstove

Note: A cold, wet day in November seems like as good a day as any to talk about owning a wood cookstove, re-running a piece I first wrote in 2007. When people come to my house, they are often a little disappointed to see that it looks pretty much like other houses. But the wood cookstove really is different than what most people know - even folks who heat with wood usually don't cook with it as well. And while heating and cooking with wood aren't appropriate in every environment, it is appropriate to mine, and maybe to more people than have given it thought before. I also know it is one…

Caltech: Robotic Ocean Gliders Discover Why Antarctic Polar Ice is Melting

Dear Readers, Find below an interesting press release I may as well share verbatim: The rapidly melting ice sheets on the coast of West Antarctica are a potential major contributor to rising ocean levels worldwide. Although warm water near the coast is thought to be the main factor causing the ice to melt, the process by which this water ends up near the cold continent is not well understood. Using robotic ocean gliders, Caltech researchers have now found that swirling ocean eddies, similar to atmospheric storms, play an important role in transporting these warm waters to the Antarctic coast—…

How Far Away is the Farthest Galaxy?

"Master looks after us now, we don't need you anymore. Leave now and never come back!" -Smeagol, LOTR You all know how to find the farthest galaxy ever, right? You take the most powerful telescope in the world, put it into space, and have it stare into the darkness for days on end. What do you find? Image credit: Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Galaxies! In just a tiny area like this, only about a fiftieth of a single degree on a side, over ten thousand galaxies are visible. And, as you'll notice if you click through, and zoom in on a small section of these, some of these galaxies are much dimmer…

Censorship == They Won't Work For Me For Free!

Sorry, but as a software guy, I just couldn't resist mocking the sheer insane hypocrisy of this. There's a right-wing political site out there, called RedState.com. RedState is serious far-right - constantly bemoaning the nanny-state, the culture of entitlement, the virtues of personal responsibility, and so on. According to RedState, Social Security is bad - people should save for their own retirements, not rely on the government to take care of them. Socialized medicine must be avoided at all costs: people should pay for their own medical insurance, not expect the state to do it for them…

The Utterances of Hollywood Celebrities: Why We Need Better Science Truth Detectors

By Larry Bock Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival Ahh celebrities. From music and acting to the world of supermodeling and sports -- they are respected, admired, even worshiped, for their talent and magnetism. But herein lies the danger when these stars publicly espouse or endorse viewpoints and products in health and medicine without first thoroughly exploring the scientific validity of such claims. Why danger? For segments of the population -- especially kids who are easily influenced by star role models -- celebrity statements and viewpoints (however misguided…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Global Changes Alter The Timing Of Plant Growth, Scientists Say: Different plant species mature at different times. Scientists studying plant communities in natural habitats call this phenomenon "complementarity." It allows species to co-exist because it reduces overlap in the time period when species compete for limited resources. Now, in a study posted online the week of Sept. 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ecologists working at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve report evidence that climate change may al ter this delicate balance. Mother Deer Cannot…

My Last (I promise) on Donohue, Bloggers and Edwards

After writing her side of the story in Salon, Amanda Marcotte is quite busy in the media these days, making various apperances on radio, including NPR's DayTo Day next week. She will also be joining TPM Cafe and has a post up on Huffington Post: Think Tanks, 503s and Rush Limbaugh--What's The Real 'Soft Money' Now, Melissa McEwen published her take on the whole affair in Guardian: My life as a rightwing target. Check the comments and tell me that the Rightwingers are not delusional, dangerous psychopaths. And they are in the White House right now. (Oh, and if anyone thinks that Amanda and…

Epidemiology and social media: conference fail

I have written and deleted this post. Twice. But damn it, it needs to be said. I'm here in charming Montreal for the North American Congress of Epidemiology. It's a good-sized meeting, as far as epi meetings go. The site notes that it's a joint effort between four major Epi organizations: The American College of Epidemiology (ACE); The Society for Epidemiologic Research; the Epi section of the American Public Health Association, and The Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Collectively, those associations represent a lot of epidemiologists. The conference started off well.…

New and Exciting in PLoS Computational Biology

This week's PLoS Computational Biology is chockful of interesting articles, including these: Open Access: Taking Full Advantage of the Content: This Journal and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) at large are standard bearers of the full potential offered through open access publication, but what of you, the reader? For most of you, open access may imply free access to read the journals, but nothing more. There is a far greater potential, but, up to now, little to point to that highlights its tangible benefits. We would argue that, as yet, the full promise of open access has not been…

Repeat violators of mine safety rules targeted in new Labor Dept regulation

In the month's preceding the deadly explosion in April 2010 that killed 29 coal miners, Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine had racked up hundreds of serious violations of safety standards.  In 2009 alone, this included 48 orders from federal mine inspectors to withdraw workers from the UBB mine because of dangerous conditions.  But Massey knew how to game the system.  Mine managers would make a couple tweaks, correct the immediate problem, and it was back to mining coal. usually within an hour or so.   There was no real consequence for their or other mine operator's repeated…

Spider Kama Sutra

I've been savoring this lovely used book I picked up a little while ago, The Book of Spiders and Scorpions by Rod Preston-Mafham, and am appreciating more than the fact that it is full of beautiful photography of spiders and lots of general information on arachnid behavior and physiology; it's also true that spiders are awfully sexy beasts. They are playful and romantic and kinky and enthusiastic and ferocious and savage and exotic, and really know how to have a good time. I thought I'd share a few of the pretty pictures and details of the arachnid sex life with the readers of Pharyngula—so…

VICTORY!

As expected, the Laden/Myers tag team utterly crushed the Nisbet/Mooney team. The decision was unanimous. Only a few crazy people might have found the framers at all persuasive. (It helps, too, that Nisbet/Mooney are on a plane flying away and won't be able to get out their side of the story until later, and even when they do, my blog has more traffic than theirs. I win! Hey, maybe this framing stuff has some virtues.) If you want an independent account, look in the comments. The whole shebang was taped, so I presume it will be online at some time in the near future. And hey, guess what? Your…

Open Access Publishing: When open forums go wrong

As a scientist and a blogger and a science communicator, I luvs me some open access publishing! I can link to a paper everyone can read, people can leave questions or comments or ideas in my comment section-- its interactive and educational and a lot more fun for everyone (I end up learning a lot answering peoples Qs, or by others answers myself). I also love the idea of open comments on papers. I dont have to hunt down an email and hope an author responds to a technical question or point-- post your question/comment, and either someone on the paper or someone else can answer it for you!…