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cmcclain | February 10, 2008
It warms me to see that we are close to 30 in our numbers this week. If you think you can handle the challenge then sign up below! Some people complained last week that the task wasn't hard enough...others moaned I already do this. So this week we kick it up a notch with #3.
The request: Write a letter/email to your local Trader Joe's and the national chain urging them to remove Orange Roughy from their freezers. Get everyone you know to write a letter. Avoid eating Orange Roughy yourself. Address, email, and letter for your use or alteration are below the fold. If you don't have a Trader…
kevin z | February 9, 2008A coworker passed along 7 deep sea cartoons from the comic strip Sherman's Lagoon, who was gracious enough to grant us permission to use on our blog.
Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey
© 2008 Jim Toomey. Used with permission from the artist.
grrlscientist | February 9, 2008tags: blog carnivals, Linnaeus' Legacy
The 4th edition of the new blog carnival, Linnaeus' Legacy is now available for you to read and enjoy. They included two pieces that I wrote, so I am pleased by that.
kevin z | February 9, 2008Not that Darwin, the other Darwin. Erasmus Darwin was Charles Darwin's grandfather. A doctor and naturalist in his own right as well. He also was a poet and penned down many verses in his life, often quite racy and sensual (for the pre-Victorian era). Here is a poem titled The Temple of Nature penned in 1802. Erasmus actually formulated his own theory of evolution which is similar in many ways to Lamarck's but includes the concepts of competition and sexual selection. This poem highlights some of that thinking.
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly…
jlynch | February 8, 2008Here’s a strategy:
Point to some negative consequence, single out a belief system or people group that you don’t particularly like, make a connection--no matter how tenuous--and suggest a solution.
Let’s see it applied using an example we’re all familiar with the Discovery Institute using (paging John West!):
Eugenics -> Darwinism -> Teach ID.
See how easy that is. Except what’s interesting is that the strategy is one that Regis Nicoll feels is one that is being used by the "neo-atheists" (yes, the usual suspects of Dawkins, Harris & Hitchens get hauled out). Nicoll, a Centurion…
gregladen | February 8, 2008From the Wildlife Conservation Society:
Unless major conservation measure are enacted, Madagascar's turtles and tortoises will continue to crawl steadily toward extinction, according to a recent assessment by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups. With their habitat shrinking and illegal hunting worsening, these reptiles now rank among the most endangered on Earth.
The groups, which met for four days in Madagascar's capital city Antananarivo, said there is still hope to save these ancient animals, but time is running out. Five of the nine assessed species have been…
cmcclain | February 8, 2008We asked Jeff Drazen, the exuberant doctor in the video, to pass along his comments about the encounter. The video is credit to Eric Vetter, Craig Smith, and HURL.
From Drazen: This video of a 16-18 ft long six-gill shark, Hexanchus griseus, was filmed from the PICES submersible (operated by HURL) at 1000m depth north of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The dive was part of a project led by Eric Vetter (Hawaii Pacific University) and Craig Smith (UH).
Eric Vetter, Max Cremer and myself were in the sub at the time. We were conducting a bait experiment to examine scavenger abundance and…
kevin z | February 8, 2008I'm not even going to say anything. I want your jaw to drop just like mine did. Major hat tip to the guys at the Neutral Dive Gear: SCUBA Diving Blog. Go check them out!
Update: Comments 11 and 12 below bring to light evidence the video is faked. But we still think it is fun!
And now for a little narcissism. My 15 seconds of fame on the National Geographic Channel's series Naked Science: The Deep. This episode aired last Spring. Don't blink! You might miss me!
kevin z | February 7, 2008We came across these wonderful drawings of deep-sea creatures from artist Ben Lawson. He was gracious enough to let us share his drawings and sketches with you. Be sure to check out Ben's website for many more fantastic and imaginative artwork (I really like the poison plants collection) and be sure to contact him if you are interested in purchasing any of his works. If you have a weird and grotesque animal, he may be interested in drawing too. Enjoy!
More under the fold.
cmcclain | February 7, 2008
...it looks like I could put my knowledge to use sneaking drugs out of Colombia.
In the annals of the drug trade, traffickers have swallowed cocaine pellets, dissolved the powder into ceramics and flown the drug as far as Africa on flimsy planes -- anything to elude detection and get a lucrative product to market. Now, the cartels seem to be increasingly going beneath the waves, relying on submarines built in clandestine jungle shipyards to move tons of cocaine.
gregladen | February 7, 2008If you're ineligible to walk across the stage in your cap and gown, then you should be ineligible to walk on the field with your cap and glove.
I'm not certain that I agree with this argument, but it is worth considering.
There's [a Seinfeld] episode in which a floundering George Costanza is trying to figure out what career to pursue after quitting his real estate job. He hits upon sports broadcaster.
"Well," skeptical pal Jerry says, "they tend to give those jobs to ex-ballplayers and people that are, you know, in broadcasting."
"Well, that's really not fair," George replies.
The joke is, of…
grrlscientist | February 7, 2008tags: blog carnivals, birds, bird watching, ornithology
The 68th edition of the bi-monthly blog carnival, I and the Bird, is now available for you to enjoy. This blog carnival focuses on linking to blog writing about BIRDS BIRDS BIRDS, and they included something from me, too! By the way, I am hosting the next issue of I and the Bird so be sure to send me links to your bird essays, videos, photos and song files so I can share them all with a large and very appreciative audience. Kep in mind that I can only accept ONE submission from each blog (yes, I know, this truly sucks, but there you have…
kevin z | February 7, 2008Hat tip to John Lynch, where you can find a lively commentary on this issue.
"Australia's government on Thursday released graphic pictures of Japanese hunters harpooning whales and dragging the bleeding carcasses onto a ship near Antarctica, calling it evidence of "indiscriminate" slaughter.
Japan denied one of the photographs showed a mother and its calf being killed, and accused Australian officials and media of spreading propaganda that could damage ties between the two nations.
The images were the latest salvo in the new Australian government's stepped-up campaign against Japan's annual…
grrlscientist | February 7, 2008tags: blog carnivals, cities
The 7 February 2008 edition of the weekly blog carnival, Carnival of the Cities, is now available for you to enjoy. This carnival links to blog writing about cities throughout the world, whether you live there or are visiting -- it's almost as good as being there yourself! And they included something from me, too!
grrlscientist | February 7, 2008You might have noticed that my entries have grown sparse these days. Part of the problem is me, but part of the problem is that the "scheduled" setting is not working properly, so those entries that I had written for you are not appearing as they are supposed to. For example, this morning's streaming video appeared three and a half hours after it was scheduled to appear (at 9am) and then, it only appeared after I republished my blog, and then rebuilt it afterwards. GRRR! Needless to say, I am frustrated by this, but our behind-the-scenes computer-tamer, Tim, is working on the problem and…
cortex | February 7, 2008Here's a good test of your critical acumen. This site has a quiz comparing the priceless designs of Donald Judd against cheap furniture from Ikea and Wal-Mart. It's often surprisingly hard to tell the two apart, although I take this less as an indictment of Judd (who I've always admired) and more as an affirmation of capitalism, which has a knack for turning masterpieces into mass-produced kitsch. (Nobody does this better than Target. Adorno is rolling over in his grave.) Here is the one item that I got wrong on the quiz:
via VSL
cortex | February 7, 2008We spend so much time fixating on our genetic differences that we tend to overlook the places where the human genome has converged over time.
In a study published yesterday in Nature Genetics, geneticists from France's Pasteur Institute compared DNA variations in people from Japan, China, Nigeria and northwest Europe. They found 582 genes associated with skin color, hair texture and other physiological characteristics. These are likely just a fraction of the genes historically tweaked by regional variations in selective pressures, producing the differences between -- for example -- an…
jlynch | February 6, 2008Over at The Panda’s Thumb there is a highly informative guest post by Dan Brooks detailing a pro-ID conference he was invited to in June of last year. After the conference, Brooks and others received an email "stating that the ID people considered the conference a private meeting,and did not want any of us to discuss it, blog it, or publish anything about it. They said they had no intention of posting anything from the conference on the Discovery Institute’s web site (the entire proceedings were recorded). They claimed they would have some announcement at the time of the publication of the…
cmcclain | February 6, 2008Beginning with Victorian science and progressing through the onset of modern deep-sea biology, the dominant paradigm was that the deep sea was a stable ecosystem. Organisms, and the communities that contained them, were unchanging because the deep ocean was buffered against climatic variability. Move head to the 1980's and beyond and the picture has changed considerably. Work led by John Gage, Paul Tyler, Craig Young demonstrates that many species exhibit seasonal reproduction. Work by Ken Smith and Henry Ruhl here at MBARI reveals an ecosystem where biodiversity shifts are triggered by…