Armchair Musings
j7uy5 | February 21, 2010James Gunn, the director for the movie
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slither_%282006_film%29">Slither,
seems to be enthralled by creepy crawly things. He also has a
blog-like website, on which he posted
href="http://www.jamesgunn.com/2009/07/02/evolution-fucked-your-shit-up-the-worlds-50-freakiest-animals/">Evolution
Fucked Your Shit Up: The World's 50 Freakiest Animals. (HT:
href="http://charlierb3.blogspot.com/2010/02/friday-lists_19.html">Interesting
Pile.)The creature pictured above, by the way, is
an ajolote. The term ajolote can refer to either the
href="http://…
j7uy5 | February 14, 2010Sometimes I see sad-looking plants on clearance, buy them, and try to
heal them. This activity provides me with a gratification that is
similar to that which comes from healing sad-looking people, but
without the tribulations that occur if it does not work as well as we
had hoped.
I even have some of these plants in my office (although none of the
worse cases go there). At stressful times, I may go and look at
the parts of the plants that are growing well: apical meristems, leaf
primodia, and axillary buds -- or green shoots, in the vernacular of
our time. I just look at them. I don't…
j7uy5 | January 19, 2010Susanne Sternthal, a writer based in Moscow, has published an article
about the ecology of stray dogs. The article is in Financial
Times, of all places. Why is that?
href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c-11de-a677-00144feab49a.html">Moscow's
stray dogs
By Susanne Sternthal
January 16 2010 00:04
...They also acted differently. Every so often, you would
see one waiting on a metro platform. When the train pulled up, the dog
would step in, scramble up to lie on a seat or sit on the floor if the
carriage was crowded, and then exit a few stops later. There is even a
website dedicated…
j7uy5 | December 7, 2009This is a
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=41500">high-resolution
photo of Pearl Harbor (click to enlarge). When I saw that it had
been posted to the NASA Earth Observatory, I wondered -- momentarily --
why they would post a photo of Pearl Harbor. Then I remembered:
December 7th.
style="display: inline;">
My father was 14 on 7 December 1941. He studied in high school, got
good grades, and enlisted when he turned 18. Didn't think about it.
There was nothing to think. Every able-bodied young man did it,
unless there was a compelling reason to do otherwise.
He…
j7uy5 | November 23, 2009Is there some kind of especially violent undercurrent right now, in the
right-wing river of hate?
Ed Brayton just
href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/11/missouri_republicans_call_for.php">posted
about a billboard put up by the GOP, specifically the
href="http://lafayettecountyrepublicans.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-i-70-billboard-replaces-famed.html">Lafayette
County
(Missouri) Republicans:
style="display: inline;">
src="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/I-70%20Billboard%2011_19_09.jpg"
class="mt-image-none" style="" height="300" width="400">
The
sign
href="http://4.…
j7uy5 | October 31, 2009The world's largest shopping mall boasts some impressive statistics:
7.1 million square feet (659,612 square meters) of leasable
space and 890,000 square meters of total floor space; attractions,
including a roller coaster and a Venice-like canal; and over 1,500
shops, with an occupancy rate of 0.8%. That's right.
Although it opened in 2005, 99.2% of the shops are empty.
class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;">Attraction: A bored
attendant makes a phone call next to the ghost train ride at the mall(Photo:
href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/…
j7uy5 | October 21, 2009I spend a lot of time working with gang kids.
One of the amusing things, is to see some of these kids strutting
around,
feeling like a million bucks, because they are so smart. In
actuality, they have IQs in the 90-100 range. But the rest of
their crew is down in the 70-80 range. Such is the life of a
genius.
style="display: inline;">
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/10/21/the_warning.jpg">Tonight I watched the PBS Frontline special,
href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/">The
Warning. It's about the warning that
href="http://en.…
j7uy5 | October 9, 2009This is from an open-access article in the Canadian Journal of
Psychiatry: an article featuring a debate about the relevance of
randomized, controlled trials to clinical practice. It is mostly
about research on psychotherapy, but with some treatment of
psychopharmacology.
href="http://publications.cpa-apc.org/browse/documents/468&xwm=true">Are
Randomized Controlled Trials Relevant to Clinical Practice?Can J Psychiatry. 2009;54(9):637-643.
Steven D Hollon, Bruce E Wampold
There is no abstract. Click on the title to go to the journal
page, then click on the title there to download the…
j7uy5 | September 3, 2009The odd thing about the Pfizer story is that it is old news.
Fierce Pharma
href="http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/pfizer-takes-2-3b-bextra-charge/2009-01-26">wrote
about it on 26 January 2009, and Neuron Culture
href="http://scienceblogs.com/neuronculture/2009/01/pfizer_takes_23b_bextra_charge.php">posted
about it, on 27 January 2009. Yet it just appeared in the New
York Times:
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/business/03health.html?sq=pfizer&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print">Pfizer
Pays $2.3 Billion to Settle Marketing Case
By GARDINER HARRIS
WASHINGTON -- The…
j7uy5 | August 23, 2009Some irreverent souls have taken to Sunday blogging on a freethinking
themes. I choose to Ozymandize* that which we worship the most:
our economic system.
That plant in the middle is
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/07/color_of_the_year_mimosa.php">my
mimosa (
href="http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=ALJU">Albizia
julibrissin) tree, the one I am growing from seed. It is,
literally, a green shoot (although the leaves close and droop at night).
style="display: inline;">
"They" say that green shoots are everywhere these days. Do we
believe "them"?
href="…
j7uy5 | August 2, 2009Botanical names drive me nuts, sometimes. Every plant that is
worth anything has many names. The supposed gold standard, the
(Latin) Linnaean taxonomical name, gets changed every so often.
So there is no constancy. You'd think it would be easier to
research something if it has an unusual name that you can use as a
keyword. But that is not always the case. Especially if the
names are changed.
Last week, I noted that I am familiar with one kind of tree, called a
mimosa tree. This tree has blossoms of an unusual color.
But that color is not mimosa. There are other trees, also called…
j7uy5 | July 27, 2009Natalie Angier has another
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/21angier.html?sq=behavior%20what%20animals%20do&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print">interesting
article in the NYT. In the article, she discusses the meaning
of the word behavior. Apparently, this all came from the
realization that even standard works on the subject did not contain a
"point-by-point definition."
The realization came to
href="http://dlevitis.org/dlevitis/Research.html">Dan Levitis, a
grad student in zoology at Berkeley. Levitis happens to have a
Blogspot blog: Blog of
Science; he's…
j7uy5 | July 24, 2009
style="display: inline;">The
href="http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?pg=20634&ca=10">Pantone
color of the year for 2009 happens to be: PANTONE 14-0848
Mimosa. Something about this captured my attention.
I was casually sipping from the Internet firehose when I encountered
this tidbit of information. Why, I wondered, would I even notice
this. Color matters not to me. I'd be just as happy,
perhaps more so, in an Ansel Adams world of black, white, and shades of
gray.
The human mind works by association. (A
href="http://www.acpa.nche.edu/comm/ccaps/midaward04.htm…
j7uy5 | May 8, 2009I've been trying to figure this out. I don't think I need to
include any links to the evidence, because it's all over the place.
Some people think there is a ridiculous amount of hysteria
about H1N1/2009, others think people aren't worried enough.
It is abundantly clear that nobody can predict the future; nobody knows
if there will be a pandemic, and if so, how lethal it would be.
It is not even possible to make a meaningful guess.
What perplexes me are these two questions:
Why do people get so emotionally invested in their assessment of the
risk?
Why do they feel a need to criticize…
j7uy5 | April 29, 2009Well, maybe not Malthus, but Garrett Hardin and Paul Ehrlich -- the
1960's-era neomalthusian academicians -- have been right on the
money. There are hard limits to growth, and those limits are
upon
us. This is the contention of Charles A. S. Hall and John W.
Day,
Jr., two systems ecologists who have published a paper in American
Scientist.
The paper is still behind a pay wall at the publication site, but a PDF
copy can be obtained
href="http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/2009-05Hall0327.pdf">from
Professor
Hall's web site. (HT:
href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5330#more">EROI Guy…
j7uy5 | April 14, 2009Michelle Obama's White House garden has
href="http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/1309/">attracted some
attention, as noted on La Vida Locavore:
Did you hear the news? The White House is planning to
have an "organic" garden on the grounds to provide fresh fruits and
vegetables for the Obama's and their guests. While a garden
is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made Janet Braun,
CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I shudder. As a result,
we sent a letter encouraging them to consider using crop protection
products and to recognize the importance of agriculture to the entire…
j7uy5 | March 17, 2009Dr. Richard
Friedman, professor of psychiatry at Weill Medical College of
Cornell University, has an article in the New York Times. In it,
he claims that reforms in medical residency training may be leaving
young doctors "a little more hesitant and uncertain than you might
like."
At first I was hesitant to write about it, because I was uncertain as
to what point he is trying to make. But then I decided to go
ahead.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/health/17mind.html?pagewanted=print">Accepting
the Risks in Creating Confident Doctors
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.
Published: March…
j7uy5 | March 1, 2009There you go again, Mr. George Will.
In case you've somehow missed the fray, George Will has posted two (
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514.html">2/15/2009,
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/26/AR2009022602906.html">2/29/09 2/27/2009
) columns containing misinformation about climate change. These
have been debunked and otherwise criticized on
href="http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=george+will&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=search">ScienceBlogs
and elsewhere. …
j7uy5 | February 16, 2009This is a photo of an embarrassing misattribution. It features a
quote often misattributed to Charles Darwin: It is not the
strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but
rather the one most adaptable to change.
title="Click this link to find out details of the Creative Commons license associated with this image.">
src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif"
alt="There is a Creative Commons license attached to this image."
style="border: medium none ;" align="left" border="0" height="31"
width="88">photo by
href="http://www.flickr.com/…
j7uy5 | January 22, 2009Today I received an email from the hivemind, saying, in part:
In
his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama
reminded us of the promise of "a world connected by our own science and
imagination." He recently stated, "promoting science isn't just
about providing resources--it's about protecting free and open
inquiry... It's about listening to what our scientists have to say,
even when it's inconvenient--especially when it's inconvenient. Because
the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a
greater understanding of the world around us. That will be…