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grrlscientist | May 1, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish this Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
cwilcox | April 30, 2010Once a year, Christmas Island experiences a red tide completely unlike any other in the world. The roads are blockaded as a swarm of Christmas Island Red Crabs (Gecarcoidea natalis), one hundred million strong, makes its way from the forests to the sea. This massive migration is fueled by the strongest urge an animal has: to reproduce. They must travel from their forest homes to the sea to spawn. The drive is so strong that the crabs will crawl their way onto, into and over whatever they must to reach the water's edge. So many migrate that the horde of legs, claws and carapaces can be seen…
gregladen | April 30, 2010Iran is never far from U.S. news headlines. Nuclear threats, unfair elections, captive reporters, a lack of religious freedom, all seem to demand that we do something. But what is to be done? What are the actual conditions in Iran, and what kind of leverage do we in the Western world, and particularly in the U.S. have to effect change? Last summer, Stephanie Zvan was privileged to chat with Dr. William Beeman, professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and a leading Western scholar of Iran. They discussed the intersection of religion and politics in Iran, U.S.-Iranian relations…
gregladen | April 30, 2010The Island of Doubt was the blog of James Hrynyshyn, and it dealt with environmental issues, and especially the politics of denialism. Well, James has shut down Island of Doubt and started a new blog called "Class M." That new blog is here.
James is one of those people I've come to trust for information about environmental, climate, energy, and related issues. Plus he's a genuinely nice guy. I've had the fortune of spending a fair amount of time with him at the ScienceOnline conferences, and that has been very enjoyable.
Go check out Class M. James intends for this new blog to be fairly…
grrlscientist | April 29, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish this Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
cwilcox | April 29, 2010Zoe, a domestic house cat, has gotten three new kittens to take care of this week. But they're not just any orphaned kittens - they're baby bobcats. Sure, they're small and cute now - about half the size of her other, older babies. But when these little tykes become adults, they'll be twice Zoe's size!
The three bobcat kittens were found this week during the demolition of an abandoned home in Newberry County, South Carolina. The trio were quickly transported to Carolina Wildlife Care in Columbia, S.C., where they were taken in by Zoe, a recent mother cat with plenty of milk to spare.…
gregladen | April 29, 2010This is a pointer and an appeal.
Pointer: Go see the current edition of Berry Go Round, the plant web carnival. It is here.
Appeal: If you blog about plants, please send me your blog posts for consideration for the next edition of Berry Go Round, which will be hosted here, with the target publication date of May 29th.
You can use this submission form if you like.
Thank you very much.
mspringer | April 29, 2010I'm not quite convinced Iron Man is entirely realistic.
"Proposterous!", you say, "Hollywood makes its superhero films to near-documentary accuracy!" No, hear me out. Iron Man can fly, using rockets in his hands and feet. We know from the commercials that the suit can in fact fit in a briefcase and be carried around by hand, so as an estimate let's say the Iron Man suit + Tony Stark weighs 200 pounds even. In more proper physics-style units, that's 889.6 newtons. Just to hover, let alone fly into the air at high speed, his rockets are required to generate at minimum 889.6 newtons of…
gregladen | April 29, 2010
Found Alive: The Loch Ness Monster
Giant spitting worm not so giant
Noah's Ark Finally Found!!!
gregladen | April 29, 2010Over on Quiche Moraine I'm writing up a series of short posts on the influences of 1960s and 1970s TV on the sociocultural growth and development of Ammerican Yoots of the age.
If you follow my facebook feed, you'll know that as apart of the rehabilitation of my knee (the cause is indirect) I've been watching a lot of old TV shows on Hulu. Some of these old shows are only on the very edge of my memory, others I remember viscerally and a few literally. In may cases, I note depictions or portrayals, or models, that represented expectations for behavior or though process, or that indicate…
cortex | April 29, 2010Here's a new interesting new paper on the emotional deficits of the psychopathic brain, via sarcastic_f:
The understanding that other people's emotional states depend on the fulfilment of their intention is fundamentally important for responding adequately to others. Psychopathic patients show severe deficits in responding adequately to other people's emotion. The present study explored whether these impairments are associated with deficits in the ability to infer others' emotional states. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), identical cartoon stories, depicting a subject whose…
grrlscientist | April 29, 2010
I am sick.
I have been working on a bunch of writing projects, but everything has come to a screeching halt because I've been quite ill for the past week. I've been trying to lay low so this doesn't turn into pneumonia (which I've had thrice) or bronchitis (which I've had twice) -- which is the typical outcome of illnesses that I can't shake after a few days. However, just in case I do end up sicker (and thus, visiting a doctor), I've already started a list of terms I might need to describe my symptoms:
English: Respiratory illness German: Atemwegserkrankung
English: Pneumonia German:…
cwilcox | April 28, 2010Anyone who follows me on twitter has probably noticed a lot of tweets about a shark fin bill that was being reviewed in Hawaii. I am glad to inform you that this historic bill has just passed the legislature. It's but a signature by Governor Lingle away from being enacted into law!
Of the 307 shark species assessed by the IUCN, 64 are listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered due to shark finning. As a group, sharks represent the greatest percentage of threatened marine species on the Red List. Despite the overwhelming evidence that these majestic predators are in trouble,…
gregladen | April 28, 2010
The Colbert Report
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gregladen | April 28, 2010According to a recent poll, the vast majority of Americans think that the Teabaggers are ignorant racist dumb-asses. Click here to vote.
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dgmacarthur | April 28, 2010Yesterday's inaugural Genomes, Environments, Traits (GET) meeting was by all accounts a massive success, pulling together the largest number of individuals with fully sequenced genomes ever assembled in the same room for a long day of discussion about the future of personal genomics.
While I was unfortunately unable to attend myself, there was phenomenal coverage of the event on Twitter from several attendees (notably Dan Vorhaus, Jonathan Eisen, Kevin Davies, Emily Singer, and many others). To get a sense of the event yourself there are few better resources than Dan Vorhaus' compendium of…
cwilcox | April 28, 2010In my strolls around the internet, I have found a few things that are so awesome, they're not.
The Sharky Tea Infuser
Duh-nuh. Duh-nuh. Duh-nuh Duh-nuh DUH-NUH - it's the Sharky Tea Infuser! Designer Pablo Matteoda from Argentina created the ocean-inspired infuser for a contest through Designboom.Com. The idea is that you add loose lead tea to the uber-cool-looking infuser, set in it hot water, and watch it bleed brew. The air chamber created by the fin keeps the infuser on the surface, so once your tea is brewed you can easily pull it out.
While totally neat looking, it's not quite genius…