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petnoyer | September 9, 2008
Corpus Christi is in the center of Hurricane Ike's projected trajectory. He's coming at us like a fastball over home plate. This is a bit scarier than being on the periphery of the strike zone. TAMU-CC started issuing updates yesterday. One scientific expedition is recalled.
If there's anything good that came out of Katrina it's better hurricane preparedness in the Gulf of Mexico. Should the storm bear down on us, we'll shutter up the house, pack up the car, and head for hill country in Austin, TX. My wife can drive while I crunch data and the kids fall asleep in the back. Right. I wonder…
eklemetti | September 8, 2008
Well, I'll be taking one more break before summer ends here in California (yes, we run on the quarter system, so classes don't start until the end of September). This trip is decidedly non-volcanically related, but I will likely not be posting again until 9/16. As always, be sure to check the Volcanism Blog and the USGS/SI Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for your volcano fix.
pharyngula | September 8, 2008Then you should sign up for the Steve list. They're trying to get 900 qualified evolution supporters with names that are variants of "Steven" — I think they should aim for a nice round one thousand.
cortex | September 8, 2008The great Laurie Colwin, on learning to cook and eat without salt:
After a few weeks I felt I had gotten the hang of my new regime. I had discovered saltless bread, smoked mozarella, green peppercorns and fresh sage. I felt I might venture out into the real world for a meal. I did, and I was shocked. How incredibly salty everything was! A bite of ham seemed almost inedible. A Chinese meal brought a buzz to my head and tears to my eyes.
She goes on to describe how cooking without salt made her more sensitive to the other flavors of food, much like a blind person who develops an especially…
mspringer | September 8, 2008There's got to be what, probably one or two Metalocalypse fans in the readership? The rest of you will probably be pretty confused, but bear with me. Quick primer: the show is about an absurdly successful but actually incompetent death metal band called Dethklok.
The season finale was last night. Holy cow that was a great episode. The last five minutes are worth their weight in gold. I won't say what happens for the benefit of those who watch the show but haven't seen the finale yet, but it's brutal stuff. The body count is even higher than usual and my own favorite character is at…
gregladen | September 8, 2008Cuba is taking the brunt of the storm as Hurricane Ike travels along its very spine. Remarkably, Ike still had a visible eye this morning, and is showing fewer signs of weakening than expected.
It is remotely possible that will be so ripped up by the time it finished with Cuba and enters the Gulf that it will not reform, but the smart money is on what would then be Tropical Storm Ike reforming to a Hurricane pretty quickly, staring late Tuesday and overnight to Wednesday AM. Mot likely, as people in the Eastern and Central Time Zones in the US wake up Wednesday AM, they will be hearing…
tlambert | September 7, 2008Well, everyone's doing it, so let's have a ScienceBlogs millionth comment party in Sydney. Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future might be able to come, so there could be two bloggers from SceinceBlogs there. We're looking at some time between 14 and 21 September. If you have any suggestions or preferences for a time or place, leave a comment or drop me an email.
Update: We've decided on Wed 17th from 7pm at the Arthouse Hotel. RSVP here.
gregladen | September 7, 2008
The Boneyard is at When Pigs Fly Returns
Cancer Research 13 is at Highlight Health
Friday Ark 207 is at The Modulator
Carnival of the Green is on LifeGoogles
The Carnival of Cinema Episode 91 is at Good News Film Reviews
Tangled Bank is at En tequila es verdad
I and the Bird is at Wrenaissance Reflections
Carnival of the Vanities is at Dodgeblogium
petnoyer | September 7, 2008"Flow velocities of ocean-ending outlet glaciers would have to be about 49 km/yr, 70 times faster than those glaciers move today" for Greenland to raise sea level 2 m, says Tad Pfeffer about his new research in Science. That's three times faster than he and his colleagues have ever observed an outlet glacier to move. This doesn't mean sea level isn't rising due to glacier melt. Actually, the oceans could rise more and faster than International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists believed possible.
Image from Free Geography Tools
There is a nice write-up on the latest and greatest…
grrlscientist | September 6, 2008Here's a (relatively) newly published blog carnival along with something interesting that you might enjoy;
Carnival of the Vanities, 4 September issue. This is the oldest of all the blog carnivals and was the inspiration for the massive number of them that are now posted.
London's Lexicon, issue #15. Not exactly a blog carnival, but an ongoing internet photographic meme, nonetheless.
mspringer | September 6, 2008Friday I met my first ScienceBlogger in person. Nick Anthis from The Scientific Activist was in town, and as he's a former Aggie we got to trade a few stories about the university and the different kinds of work we're doing. He's a cool dude! It was very nice meeting him, and I think it might just inspire me to try to organize a reader meet-up at some point. College Station is tiny and in the middle of nowhere, but I think there's a few other Texas ScienceBloggers as well so maybe we could have a group meet somewhere big and convenient like Dallas or Houston. We'll worry about that later…
petnoyer | September 5, 2008Shrimp fisherman and environmental activist Diane Wilson gave a talk today at the Harte Research Institute. She speaks without script or slides. That's probably what makes her such a great speaker. Stories of her life as a fisherwoman turned activist invoke depressing, humorous, and inspiring emotions all at the same time.
Diane's best known for sinking her own shrimp boat in protest of toxic discharge at a Formosa Plastic industrial plant here in South Texas, but she's taken on Union Carbide and others like a One Woman Army. She is the author of An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of…
gregladen | September 5, 2008
A steady stream of devoted evolutionists continued to gather in this small Tennessee town today to witness what many believe is an image of Charles Darwin--author of The Origin Of Species and founder of the modern evolutionary movement--made manifest on a concrete wall in downtown Dayton.
"I brought my baby to touch the wall, so that the power of Darwin can purify her genetic makeup of undesirable inherited traits," said Darlene Freiberg, one among a growing crowd assembled here to see the mysterious stain...
source
Apparently, the image is the product of differential growth patterns of…
grrlscientist | September 5, 2008Here's a bunch of blog carnivals that have either been published recently, or that I've missed in my previous Carnivalia;
Carnival of College and Finance, sixth issue. This blog carnival focuses on the finances of people who are in college or who are academics.
Cancer Research Blog Carnival, issue 13. This carnival discusses cancer and health policies that affect cancer research and treatment.
Carnival of Sexuality, which discussess all aspects about human sexuality.
cortex | September 5, 2008We shouldn't be surprised when every presidential election - even an election between two candidates committed to some vague post-partisan future - veers into identity politics and the culture war. I can't help but watch these conventions through the lens of Jane Goodall, as a gathering of social primates affirming their role within the tribe. Politics is an emotional sport, defined by teams with visceral identities, and not some rational arena in which issues and analysis take center stage. Of course politics always degenerates into some version of Us versus Them: that's just human nature.…
mspringer | September 5, 2008I've taught seven recitation sections as a graduate student, and this semester I'm teaching three more. Between them it's several hundred hours of standing in front of a classroom teaching. That's nothing compared to career teachers and professors, but it's a decent bit of experience as far as TA teaching goes. I put a fairly large amount of effort into teaching, with preparing lectures and example problems, grading quizzes and lab reports, conducting extra review sessions, and answering questions by email. Does that make me a good TA? I'd like to think so. But what do my students say…
pharyngula | September 5, 2008I don't know…should I reward her with a link when I'm seething with envy as GrrlScientist is in London?
pharyngula | September 5, 2008I'm going to be on Atheists Talk radio on Sunday morning to talk about the Galápagos, and as long as I'm in the big city, I was also going to join the godless gang at Q. Cumbers at 11:00am Sunday for a little brunch. If you want to join us, come on down!