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tqa | April 16, 2009
After reading the torture memos, this quote seems somewhat apropos:
The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.
Douglas Adams
Last Chance to See
gregladen | April 16, 2009Lynn Fellman, the Ira Flatow of the Twin Cities, has a guest post at Quiche Moraine about her recent trip to the Origins Symposium.
Rusty-red rocks against an electric blue sky were an exact color match for the mix of brilliant intellect I knew to be in Phoenix on Monday. I had just flown into Sky Harbor Airport from Minneapolis, and any Minnesotan will tell you that we don't waste a day like that indoors. It was a sparkling spring morning alive with color and radiant sunshine. But I happily joined 3,000 other science fans inside a dark auditorium for a full twelve-hour day of physics,…
dgmacarthur | April 16, 2009Mary Mangan at Open Helix predicts that personal genomics will trigger the appearance of a brand new eating disorder: geneorexia nervosa.
...there will be a proportion of people who take their genetic information
(which I know is of varying utility at best right now to those who have been sequenced ), and they'll change
their diets. They'll upend their and their family's lifestyles. They will be
in fear of substances, of foods, of fabrics, of everything-beyond reason. And
they'll buy products and services of dubious quality-even potentially dangerous
ones.
I do agree that widespread…
sb admin | April 16, 2009In today's New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal highlights an intervention that can slow global warming while improving people's respiratory health: cleaner-burning stoves. Primitive cooking stoves emit black carbon (or soot), which researchers now estimate is responsible for 18% of global warming. How does it work? Rosenthal explains:
Like tiny heat-absorbing black sweaters, soot particles warm the air and melt the ice by absorbing the sunâs heat when they settle on glaciers.
These black airborne particles aren't good for the lungs of those who breathe them in, either. In fact, the World…
grrlscientist | April 16, 2009Here's the latest carnivalia for you to read and enjoy;
Joanne Jacob's Carnival of Education, which includes a piece that I wrote along with another interesting piece, From Charter Schools to Charter Colleges? That essay explores the usefulness of the charter school structure for creating small, independent, residential colleges within large, impersonal universities.
Book Review blog carnival, #15. This blog carnival focuses on our favorite thing to do: reading really good books!
grrlscientist | April 16, 2009I am writing an OpEd argument against HR 669, The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, and I have pitched an analysis of HR 669 to a magazine where it will be published very rapidly. One thing that I want to include in my writing is mention of any conservation efforts or scientific research that will be negatively impacted by HR 669, and I thought you might be able to help me. If your conservation program or scientific research (or that of your colleagues) could be negatively impacted by HR 669, can you email a statement that includes these details; (1) your research species (2) a…
mspringer | April 16, 2009Let's say you've got one of these, and you're dusting off your computer:
(img source)
As you spray, you'll notice the can getting cold. You've probably noticed this in similar contexts: propane tanks getting cold, helium tanks getting cold, compressed air tanks running pneumatic tools getting cold, etc. It seems that when air escapes from an enclosure, it gets cold. Well, there's a reason.
Imagine if you will a elementary school gymnasium filled with kids and adults. The principle of the school announces free ice cream in the field outside of the gym and flings the doors open. The kids…
sb admin | April 16, 2009A New Blog in the Health Reform Galaxy
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the biggest names in the health policy world, has launched a new blog, called The Userâs Guide to the Health Reform Galaxy. I donât know if theyâre purposely invoking The Hitchhikerâs Guide to the Galaxy, but like the fictional Guide, they seem to be trying to convey the âdonât panicâ message. Blog editor Minna Jungâs introductory post notes that thereâs lots of feverish activity going on in the health reform arena right now, and promises the blog will âstep back from the scrum, observe, and offer some context…
tqa | April 15, 2009
Because it's not too late to file yet if you're not on the East Coast:
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
Terry Pratchett
Feet of Clay
gregladen | April 15, 2009I am not an anti-Semite. But I did learn how to be one in school. Catholic school, that is, which I attended for first, second, and third grade, in that order.
I was reminded of this by a conversation with a cousin-in-law who had similar experiences. We exchanged our Catholic school stories at the recent Easter gathering. He was enjoying this exchange because his experience has been that people have not believed what he tells them about Catholic school, as it all seems so extreme. It is true that many Catholic school stories do sound unbelievable, or at least, they sound like jokes, and…
gregladen | April 15, 2009.... well, ok, not really the worst. But pretty bad. Only read this if you don't have any phobias related to cartoons, small pets, or zeppelins.
grrlscientist | April 15, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) blog carnival is seeking your recently published blog entries about science, nature and medicine for its upcoming edition on Monday, 20 April 2009. To send submissions to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or send it directly to ScientiaBlogCarnival at gmail. Be sure to include the URL or "permalink", the essay title and a brief summary.
If you are interested in hosting an issue of this…
gregladen | April 15, 2009I told you this Obama dog thing was going t be big. Here's an overview of the situation from NPR. And, you may recall this:
Many of you heard the question at President Elect Obama's first news conference, which was mainly about the economy, regarding what kind of dog the girls would be getting as per a deal apparently made some time ago. The only safe answer to that question would have been to give the secret signal that cuts the power feed to the cameras, then have the reporter bagged and dragged out of the room and appropriately disciplined. But no, instead, Obama answered the question…
gregladen | April 15, 2009"I discovered the new species in 2007 while doing a survey for lichen diversity on Santa Rosa Island in California," said Kerry Knudsen, the lichen curator in the UCR Herbarium. "I named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education."
It's a lichen
pharyngula | April 15, 2009It's a question that makes it hard to suppress a giggle: how many of you are going to be teabagging today?
I think it's awesome that this last desperate gasp of the far right wing to achieve political relevance got tagged with such an appropriately ridiculous moniker. The demented duo of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have made me laugh for the first and probably only time.
It is getting a little old watching the more culturally conscious members of the media making fun of the clueless wingnuts, though. This is just too easy.
(via Sullivan)
gregladen | April 15, 2009It is being suggested, according to this article (which was pointed to by this blogger), that the woman who leaped into the Berlin Zoo polar bear enclosure a couple of days ago was seeking her own death, having become depressed over her job situation. She was an out of work teacher.
It has also been revealed that during the incident, the Zoo staff had already broken out rifles and issued them to staff snipers, who were prepared to kill one or more polar bears.
I didn't think they had out of work teachers in Germany.
Mandy remains in critical condition in hospital.
Flashback to an…
tlambert | April 15, 2009Actually the headline on the New York Times story says Study Says Minicar Buyers Sacrifice Safety. But the study looked at head-on collisions between minicars and larger cars (twice as heavy in the case of Smart vs Mercedes C class). Since momentum is conserved, a car weighing half as much experiences twice the change in velocity in a head-on crash and hence is much more dangerous to the occupants in such a collision.
But whether a minicar is safer or not depends on your perspective. It's more dangerous for the occupants, but it's safer for the people in the bigger car. The NYT article…
gregladen | April 15, 2009Over the last several hours pirates have attacked a US freighter on the way to Mombasa (carrying humanitarian aid). These pirates did not use the usual method of operation. Rather, they ran at the ship with guns blazing and fired rocket propelled grenades right away. The bridge of the ship was apparently badly damaged but none of the crew were hurt.
The US Navy is bearing down on the situation, and have placed armed seamen on board the freighter. The same destroyer that currently is carrying the recently freed US captain is now escorting the freighter to its port.
Elsewhere, news sources…
cortex | April 15, 2009I know the medium is the message, but does every message have to be about the medium? People on twitter love tweeting about twitter, just as people on facebook love writing about the facebook redesign. Sometimes, this navel gazing can get out of hand, which is what I think happened with a recent (and extremely interesting) PNAS paper on the neural substrate of admiration and compassion. The paper, by scientists at USC, has nothing to do with twitter or online social networks or even the internet, and yet that quickly became the main story. Before long, there were a flurry of posts with…
grrlscientist | April 15, 2009
I receive a fair number of books to review each month, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog.
Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds by Olivia Gentile (Bloomsbury USA; 2009). Review copy.
Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2009). Review copy.
Shark by Dean Crawford (Reaktion Books; 2008). Review…