new jersey
laelaps | June 15, 2010The skull of Mosasaurus hoffmani. From Lingham-Soliar 1995.On my first trip to the Inversand marl pit in Sewell, New Jersey, I didn't find the wonderfully preserved Dryptosaurus skeleton I had been dreaming of. I picked up a number of Cretaceous bivalve shells and Paleocene sponges, but other than a few scraps of "Chunkosaurus" my excavations didn't yield very much. Before my paleontology class left the site, though, we took a walk by the spoil piles - great green mounds of sediment that had already been mined for glauconite. It had recently rained, and little pillars of the sandy green stuff…
laelaps | April 10, 2010An eastern painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
laelaps | April 7, 2010An eastern painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
laelaps | April 6, 2010An eastern painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
laelaps | April 4, 2010A short-billed dowitcher (Limnodromus griseus), photographed in Cape May, New Jersey.
laelaps | March 24, 2010Our temporary houseguest, Rusty, playing in a stream in northern New Jersey.
laelaps | March 22, 2010The skull of Mosasaurus maximus, photographed at the New Jersey State Museum.
terrasig | September 11, 2009[Here is why I will always remember. This was posted here originally on 11 September 2006.]
Let me tell you about John Michael Griffin, Jr.
Griff, as he was known in high school, was a friend of mine.
Late in the first half of our lives, he stood up for me physically and philosophically, for being a science geek. John's endorsement was the first time I was ever deemed cool for wanting to be a scientist.
Griff died an engineer and hero in the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers five [eight] years ago today.
We lost touch almost twenty years before, but his kindness and…
terrasig | March 12, 2009Today marks 12 years since you died.
Well, it might have been today, possibly yesterday, I hope not too many days ago.
You see, you died alone in your apartment you rented from your sister downstairs. Yet no one checked on you as your mail accumulated Monday and Tuesday. One of your drinking buddies from the Disabled American Veterans post told me proudly at your funeral that he probably had with you your last beer that Saturday night. So, maybe it was the 8th or 9th?
When I think back, though, I believe you died some eight years earlier, just after your 50th birthday party. For your…
sporte | October 4, 2008Long Branch, NJ, is a lovely town on the Atlantic Ocean, with long beaches and brand new shops and condos. It is also part of an area in, central New Jersey, where biotechnology education is entering an exciting time thanks to efforts of NJBEC, Bio-1, and a WIRED grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
NJBEC, Bio-1, WIRED? What do all these acronyms mean?
I get these things confused all the time, so I'll take a quick moment and explain.
NJBEC is the New Jersey Biotechnology Educators Consortium. Bio-1 is a partnership between five counties and several schools in central New Jersey, that…
sporte | September 29, 2008This First Annual Conference for New Jersey Biotechnology Educators will be held on Saturday, Oct. 4th at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey.
I'm excited about attending this conference, not only because of the biotechnology part, but because I've reading Sarah Vowel's book Assassination vacation and I'm looking forward to seeing the last resting place of President James Garfield. Sarah Vowel is an incredibly funny commentator on NPR's "This American Life" and so, even though I don't usually read about people making pilgrimages to famous presidential sites, I had to read…
laelaps | November 1, 2007
This past July my wife and I left at 2 AM on day to reach the southernmost point in New Jersey by sunrise, and after a long 3 hour drive this was the sight we were greeted with. It's not the best photo I've ever taken, but I like it all the same, and it reminds me of the cover of my copy of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac.