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cortex | March 31, 2008The Economist has compiled a really interesting chart on the ideological differences between the American and British electorates. (I've been kind of obsessed with all things Anglo-American since the start of the John Adams miniseries on HBO.) The article focuses on the large gap between the two publics, but I was actually impressed by how, once you removed God and God-tainted issues (like abortion and homosexuality) from the equation, the two countries were actually rather similar in ways I wouldn't have expected. For instance, both British and American voters feel virtually identically…
cortex | March 31, 2008This is from The Paris Review Interviews, Volume 1:
Q: I would like to ask about your having said that you were very timid about beginning to write stories.
Borges: Yes, I was very timid because when I was young I thought of myself as a poet. Then I had an accident. You can feel the scar. If you touch my head here, you will see. Feel all those mountains, bumps? Then I spent a fortnight in a hospital. I had nightmares and sleeplessness - insomnia. After that they told me that I had been in danger, well, of dying, that it was really a wonderful thing that the operation had been successful. I…
cortex | March 31, 2008Someone should really tell the NCAA tournament television commentators that "the hot hand" doesn't exist. I've gotten pretty tired of hearing these tired cliches about Texas going cold, or Stephen Curry catching fire yet again. Never has a cognitive illusion gotten so much play.
The illusory nature of basketball shooting streaks was first demonstrated by Amos Tversky (of kahnemanandtversky fame) and Thomas Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell. They began the investigation by sifting through years of Philadelphia 76er statistics. They looked at every single shot taken by ever single player,…
tqa | March 30, 2008
One of several reasons that my posting frequency has been low lately is that my internet connection has been miserable. As in dial-up speed miserable. As in so slow that the online tools that measure connection speed have been showing me that I'm getting download speeds that I haven't had to experience since I upgraded to a 28.8k modem back in the mid-90s.
So I call Comcast. Yes, their tools also show a big connection speed problem. No, there's probably not anything I can do on my end to fix it. Yes, they can set up a service call to have the problem fixed. They'll be able to squeeze me in…
cmcclain | March 30, 2008
$10 is all you need to give if we all pitch in. We are currently only at 2484% of funding the two classrooms mentioned in the last Just One Thing Challenge. SixTen of you have already donated and you guys totally rock. But the rest of you need to cough up some money!
If your an academic scientists reading this you should feel particularly guilty. If you don't donate, you can't ever complain again about how your undergraduates don't even know basic concepts like benthic and pelagic (or read or write or tie their shoes). If you are John or Joan Q. Public you forfeit your right to…
cmcclain | March 30, 2008
I don't study hydrothermal vents. I rather enjoy the deep muddy ooze, and its organisms, that comprise much of the earth's surface. Not that I don't like vents, I just like the soft bottoms better. I have been often asked what I think the coolest thing about the deep sea, marine biology...and hydrothermal vents is. I guess people expect some Cousteau-esque answer where I describe being in a wet suit riding at top speed on a Zodiac chasing some charismatic vertebrate where I am poised to jump on its back with a satellite tag. Needless to say people are often disappointed with my answers…
cmcclain | March 29, 2008
The battle royal is on with several bloggers choosing colors. The whole thing got started when Sheril at the Intersucktion state "No contest! Cukes would eat squid for breakfast" implying that somehow echinoderms were better than Mollusks. The whole thing got started when this guy, who seems to be a fan of plants, was "joking" about which was cooler. I personally don't find any of this a joke. Mollusks are cool and I've banked my career on it. Bora also wants to start something, but thankfully I realize he is just confused.
I tried to clear the matter up for Sheril and others…
cmcclain | March 29, 2008
Jim has decided that he will join the darkside for the Invertebrate Battle Royale. That's fine! We wouldn't want someone with such poor cognitive processes on our team. Jim's attack centers on the idea that the Aristotle's Lantern is cooler than the radula.
Now I just cannot stand for this. Especially after reading about how the molluscan radula is deemed one of the reasons this phylum is so cool compared to the echinodermata. I'm sorry, but Craig must not be thinking clearly. The radula? A spiky ribbon makes molluscs cool? Please. Don't waste your time, Craig. If we're going to be…
kevin z | March 29, 2008Sometimes we just need a little help to get by in life. A nudge, some encouragement or a simple pat on the back will suffice. Being stuck to a rock is not a real good way to avoid predators, unless that rock can move. Symbioses between sea anemones and snails have been well known for over a century, yet it is not entirely clear where the lines are drawn in this relationship. Are the anemones just happening to settle on the backs of snails as they would any hard substrate or is the anemone mafia running some protection racket?
In the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology…
kevin z | March 28, 2008Catherine Brahic reports on some interesting new research in an online article at New Scientist:
""There are certain limits on swimming speed that are imposed irrespective of power," explains Iosilevskii. One of these is the frequency at which the swimmers can beat their tails to propel themselves forward.
The other is the formation of microscopic bubbles around the tail, a phenomenon known as "cavitation". According to Iosilevskii and Weihs, for animals such as dolphins that have nerve endings in their tails, cavitation can be the most important limiting factor.
The bubbles form as a result…
gregladen | March 28, 2008The Friday Ark on Modulator
and
Carnival of the Liberals # 61 at Last Left Turn...
grrlscientist | March 28, 2008tags: blog carnivals, carnival+of+cities
I know I am a little late with this, but the 26th March edition of the Carnival of Cities is now available for you to enjoy. They link to a piece that I was especially proud of, so be sure to go there and support the carnival!
kevin z | March 28, 2008To piggy back on Peter's ice sheet-o-mania posts today, Marsha Walton reports at CNN.com what it means to the animal life in the Antarctic when an ice shelf collapses:
" Another warming ocean event that scientists are studying closely is the migration of king crabs. Marine remotely operated vehicles have captured photos of these giant crabs on the Antarctic Slope, where underwater land starts to rise up to the southernmost continent.
It's the first time in tens of millions of years that these predators have appeared that close to Antarctica.
Crabs and other marine invertebrates die when the…
esiegel | March 28, 2008There's a movie coming out on Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution, called Expelled, and it's narrated/hosted by Ben Stein (right), a TV/film personality who is an overall intelligent guy (and used to have the TV show Win Ben Stein's Money), and used to be a Nixon speechwriter. Politically, he's quite conservative (for example, immediately following 9/11 he gave a speech where he called abortion "the worst form of terrorism"), but this movie is apparently one of the worst abuses of science since What the Bleep do We Know?! came out.
The movie has an innocuous enough premise: is…
gregladen | March 28, 2008According to a study just out in PLoS, you can learn to be nice. This study, using functional MRI brain imaging, assessed brain activity while meditation experts produced a meditative state called a "loving-kindness-compassion state" (and here I was thinking that the "loving-kindness-compassion state" was Vermont... ).
From the paper:
meditators have more than 10,000 hours of practice in Buddhist meditation and are perceived in their communities as embodying qualities of compassion (see Methods). Experts were compared with age-and gender-matched "novices" who were interested in learning to…
petnoyer | March 27, 2008Spring is in the air. Spring Break is upon us, and the mind begins to wander... to the poles? Well, yes, because the Antarctic is calving enormous glaciers and researchers are predicting a seasonally ice-free Arctic by the year 2030. Break out the kayaks and suncreen. It's "Wild on, Nuuk."
The news wire is full of stories about the rapid melting of the Wilkins Ice Shelf 1000 miles south of South America. If the warming trend continues, the folks on the Patagonian coast of Argentina will be watching icebergs float off their coast just like the Kiwis in the video below. Check it out. Can…
petnoyer | March 27, 2008
New Zealanders impress me at nearly every turn. I mean, when was the last time your local news station sent out a reporter by helicopter to land on an Antarctic iceberg floating by offshore? The guys in this video are from the Otago Daily Times. One of the intrepid chaps sums it up nicely,... "all my life I wanted to go to the Antarctic, now the Antarctic's come to me."