Green
esiegel | March 17, 2013"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." -Terry Pratchett
Whether it comes from without or within, there are few things in this life that captivate our attention better than a brilliant, hot and colorful display. This weekend, have a listen to The Roots with John Legend, as they sing about
The Fire.
Deep off in the depths of space, although you won't find any stars burning a bright green color, you will find stellar remnants, or star corpses, glowing a brilliant green.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage…
esiegel | June 27, 2012"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for." -Georgia O'Keeffe
When it comes to the Universe, it isn't just the stuff that's in it that's important.
Image credit: 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC).
It's also how all that stuff interacts with itself and everything else. To the best of our knowledge, there are four fundamental forces in the Universe, and they're all essential to our existence.
Image credit: Stichting Maharishi University of Management, the Netherlands.
Some of them are familiar, like gravitation. On the…
esiegel | June 8, 2012"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen." -Larry Niven
Here on the solid ground of the Earth, the Sun and Moon rise and set on a daily basis. During the hours where the Sun is invisible, blocked by the solid Earth, the stars twirl overhead in the great canopy of the night sky.
Image credit: Chris Luckhardt at flickr.
In the northern hemisphere, they appear to rotate around the North Star, while in the southern hemisphere, the stars appear to rotate about the South Celestial Pole. The longer you observe -- or for photography, the longer you…
sciencepunk | July 28, 2011In the early hours of a Wednesday morning two weeks ago, three Greenpeace activists made their way past the perimeter fence at Ginninderra Experiment Station in Canberra, Australia, and destroyed a crop of GM wheat using weed strimmers. A spokeswoman for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the national science agency which runs the station, said the damage was estimated to run A$300,000. In a statement released by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, activist Laura Kelly stated that "We had no choice but to take action to bring an end to this experiment".
Both…
stoat | May 6, 2010Yes, the Greens have got their first UK parliamentary seat [1]. Congratulations to Caroline Lucas in Brighton. And with the current hung parliament, it might even do some good. I wonder how well the GP would stand up to real politics?
More later when the results come in.
Oh yes: as a token gesture towards the real world: shame abuot the Lib Dems. Which caused me to look up South Cambs. This is usually a shoo-in for Lansley. And it was this time too, except that the Lib Dems were very clearly second and Labour nowhere. Maybe some hope for next time.
Incidentally, do you realise I'm not the…
jgoldman | April 22, 2010Happy Earth Day, everyone!
In honor of the day, here's a modified re-post of piece I wrote recently for LAist.
Figure 1: Photo by poloroid-girl via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr.
The great philosopher Kermit the Frog once said, "It's not that easy being green." Maybe he was on to something.
You can't walk three steps down an aisle in any store without running into eco-friendly or "green" products. You probably have many of these products. Is your refrigerator or dishwasher Energy-star compliant? Do you have a paperless Kindle? Maybe bamboo guest towels in the bathroom? A Prius?
Why do you…
zooillogix | November 30, 2009An Indonesian Zooillogix reader, Harianto Talim, grossly overestimated our entomological abilities and asked us to help him identify an Indonesian ant that he has never seen before. In this blurry series of photos, you can see that the ant is bright orange and green and may or may not smoke cigarettes. It should be noted however that when confronted about the lighter in the ant's pocket by its mother, the queen, the ant claimed it just carries the lighter around to light other ants' cigarettes to look cool.
So nerdy readers, time to prove your mettle by identifying this random blurry ant!…
cwilcox | September 23, 2009I believe that most of my readers are very environmentally-conscious people. After all, how could you stand reading the ravings of a clearly tree-and-animal-hugging girl like me unless you had a soft spot for things that are green. So you all might like to know about a brand new, volunteer-based conservation group called OCEAN: the Online Community Environmental Action Network.
Here's what OCEAN's creator, David Shiffman, had to say:
I am proud to live in a time when more people care about protecting the environment than ever before. However, even with all of the amazing people working in…
sciencepunk | June 1, 2009Science blogger and researcher Gimpy has been unravelling the thought process behind the Green's proposal to ban the import / export of all genetically modified organisms:
For those readers unfamiliar with modern biological research, much work involves the use of cells, bacteria or higher organisms whose DNA has been modified to remove, add or mutate genes. Researchers regularly exchange these genetically modified organisms between labs, across borders and continents, as science is essentially a collaborative activity. Preventing the use and exchange of these organisms would effectively end…
sciencewoman | April 21, 2009Like many other public universities around the country, Mystery U has been hit hard by the economic hard times. Most of this year, we heard ominous rumblings that (at some point) there would be a budget reversion, i.e., we'd have to send some portion of our budget back to the state coffers. But all was pretty much business as usual until a few weeks ago when the axe fell. Instantaneously our whole university budget and we were under strict orders to conserve the precious resources we still had...you know, things like copier paper. Because we have no money to buy any more.
I've been biting my…
cwilcox | April 16, 2009The snows are melting (we hope), the flowers are starting to bloom, and here in FL it's not quite obnoxiously hot out. It's spring, and with it comes one of my favorite yearly holidays - Earth Day!
That's right - April 22nd is Earth Day 2009. Started in the 1970s by a smart senator from Wisconsin as a way to "shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda", Earth Day has been pushing for environmental action for almost 40 years.
Lots of communities have organized fairs, festivals, or clean-ups to celebrate. But even if you don't want to join the masses at…
sciencepunk | March 23, 2009
Last week the Independent newspaper reported on the case of Tim Nicholson, a UK executive claiming religious discrimination after losing his job because of his beliefs on climate change. Nicholson had been head of sustainability at Grainger plc, a residential property investment company, but claims his attempts at implementing environmental and corporate social responsibility policies were blocked by fellow executives.
This case is noteworthy because it reveals several things - that someone could be fired for doing their job too enthusiastically, that Grainger plc possesses an asinine…
edyong | December 28, 2008Solar power is a relatively new development for humans but, of course, many living things have been exploiting the power of the sun for millions of years, through the process of photosynthesis. This ability is usually limited to plants, algae and bacteria, but one unique animal can do it too - the emerald green sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This remarkable creature steals the genes and photosynthetic factories of a type of algae that it eats (Vaucheria littorea), so that it can independently draw energy from the sun. Through genetic thievery, it has become a solar-powered animal and a…
cwilcox | December 8, 2008Are you a really dedicated Greenie? Do you eat, sleep, and dream renewable resources? Well then, I think I have a gift you could feel good buying.
Eco-Gifting at its best:Elephant Crap Recycled
How about journals, stationary, and other paper products made entirely from Elephant Dung? No, seriously. The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Comapany Limited offers stylish, affordable recycled paper products that are unlike any other. They've been recycled through an elephant!
"Our purpose is to successfully sell our goods in order to complete a truly creative sustainable cycle" touts their…
cwilcox | September 26, 2008Green is the new black in American society, and one way to see how green you really are is to look at your carbon footprint. But do you ever wonder what the world's footprint looks like? I recently stumbled upon a really fascinating website by David Bleja and the designer of the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival that shows the world's carbon emissions, births, and deaths in real time (well, kind of).
Breathing Earth tries to illustrate the impacts that humanity has on the earth by simulating real-time births, deaths, and carbon emissions by country. Every time, statistically, a person is…