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cmcclain | August 8, 2007More on the race to claim the Arctic. The Russian "scientific" operation was a sham.
Despite the fact that a huge number of people were involved in the mission, it was more of a tourist trip than a scientific expedition. Two foreigners paid a substantial part of the expedition costs. According to Novaya Gazeta, the Swede Frederik Paulsen and the Australian Mike McDowel each payed 100,000 USD per day for their participation. Both men joined the two mini-subs, the Mir-1 and Mir-2, to the 4200 meter deep sea bed by the North Pole. The expedition was headed by Artur Chiligarov, deputy speaker in…
cmcclain | August 8, 2007...munitionsFrom the daily blog of the University of Washington students aboard R/V Thomas Thompson using the ROV ROPOS to conduct seafloor surveys in support of the NEPTUNE Canada cabled observatory and to recover seismometers at Endeavour.
The start of the midnite to 4 am watch marked the completion of the first 24 hours of the ODP 889 cable route survey. Within minutes of beginning our data logging duties, the ROPOS ROV came upon a large object that turned out to be a neatly stacked pile of military ordnance sitting on the bottom right in the proposed cable route. They were artillery…
cmcclain | August 8, 2007Goes to the Yangtze river dolphin...
After a fruitless search lasting six weeks, scientists failed to find a single Yangtze river dolphin, also known as the Baiji, in its natural habitat in China. They will now propose that the dolphin be formally reclassified this autumn as "possibly extinct" and say there is no longer any hope of resurrecting the species using a captive breeding programme.
Published in Biology Letters
tqa | August 7, 2007
Jason Rosenhouse thinks that PZ, Ed Brayton, Revere, and I have reached a "strange conclusion" about the recent Democratic cave-in on wiretapping. It doesn't make sense, at least to him, that we'd blame the Democrats, given that 80% of the Democrats in Congress didn't vote for the wiretapping bill. (That figure doesn't appear to include the substantial number of legislators - particularly in the Senate - who lacked the courage to vote on this measure at all, but I get Jason's basic point.) Given that why are we mad at the whole party?
Mostly, it's because the party leadership really did…
tqa | August 7, 2007
In the news today, we've got two more examples of inappropriate behavior conducted by Evangelical Christians in the military. Both of the stories are very scary, for different reasons.
The first story comes courtesy of Ed Brayton. He reports that a handful of junior enlisted soldiers attempted to hold a meeting of atheist and freethinker soldiers on a forward operating base (FOB) in Iraq. Although they took the appropriate steps required to obtain official permission to hold the meeting, things did not go smoothly. First, vandals kept ripping down their flyers, then their meeting was…
tfk | August 7, 2007Via Salon.com's Broadsheet, we get this helpful reminder of basic facts about human anatomy. Be warned that some parents might not want to explain the picture to small children, or perhaps to their bosses. It's safe for work, though.
Thanks to Dulamae for the poster and to the Duggars for their 17 offspring, all of whose names begin with the letter "J."
petnoyer | August 7, 2007It stands to reason that a place blessed with the mountains, beaches, and emerald forests along the Olympic Coast of Washington State in Pacific Northwest should be equally beautiful, productive, rich, and wonderful on the continental shelf just offshore- 200m or 300m below the tideline.
The Olympic Coast is a highly productive temperate marine environment with shelf waters along the continental margin reaching depths from 100- 600m. The Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS) rests on the continental shelf mostly, but runs all the way from the shelf break to the intertidal zone, with…
nisbetmc | August 7, 2007Talk about facilitating incidental exposure to science. The Boston Globe explains how David Beckham is able to curl a soccer ball around an 8 man wide wall. Hat tip to Knight Science Tracker.
tqa | August 6, 2007
Citizens of the great state of Texas, where I now live, are very proud of their state. Proud enough, in fact, that they've got their very own state pledge of allegiance. We found out about this a few months back while we were researching schools, because every morning all public schoolchildren in Texas pledge allegiance to the United States Flag, then pledge allegiance to the Texas flag, then sit for a moment of silence. We looked up the Texas pledge, and decided that it seemed to be innocuous enough:
Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and indivisible.
The idea…
cmcclain | August 6, 2007Carl Zimmer over at The Loom as a post titled Branded with Science.
So I'm wondering now--have I bumped into the tip of a vast hidden iceberg, or do I just happen to know the few scientists with tattoos of their science? If anyone wants to send me a jpg, I'll post it. If you're worried about tenure, just let me know how the tattoo represents the object of your study. The more personal the link, the better (i.e., not a generic tattoo of pi).
As DSN's resident bad boy...Peter is the pretty one, you can guess I have a tat. Any ideas on what it might be? Below the fold...
The credit goes to…
hrynyshyn | August 6, 2007One of the best environment reporters, not just in Canada but anywhere, died last week at the age of 57. Dennis Bueckert, was one of the best, knowing what constituted a story of importance, like climate change, long before his editors would agree to let him devote serious company resources to it. The official obit is here. A more personal eulogy can be found at this blog. The timing of his passing could not be worse. With climate change rapidly becoming the dominant issue of our time, we need more journalists with his abilities.
sb admin | August 6, 2007Most of us already know that climate change is shrinking glaciers, but two recent articles paint an alarming picture of how quickly glaciers are receding â and what that means for millions of people relying on them.
An Economist article cites a World Bank team prediction that runoff from Andean glaciers may dry up altogether in just 20 years. Peru will be particularly hard hit, since two-thirds of its residents live on the desert coast (Lima, with a population of 8 million, is the worldâs second-largest desert city, after Cairo) and the countryâs agriculture relies heavily on irrigation.…
tqa | August 6, 2007
John Lilyea of "This Ain't Hell" just left a comment on yesterday's post about political speech in uniform. He brings up a couple of points that I'd like to address in some detail. First, here's Lilyea's comment in full:
Funny, you picked the one quote I made in jest and nailed it to your cross.
Now, answer me this - is the YearlyKos a political event or is it a blogger convention (as it was billed)?
Did the sergeant make a political statement, or was he just asking for a little clarification?
Did he bring discredit to the uniform, or did Solz just discredit himself as a non-partisan actor…
cmcclain | August 6, 2007
...go near the QE2
Duke Riley, a heavily tattooed Brooklyn artist, was arrested after his homemade submarine that looked like an 18th century Bushnell Turtle drifted near the restricted waters near the QE2 ship.
cmcclain | August 6, 2007From news@nature.com...
Russian marine biologist was drowned, and an Italian badly hurt, when the research vessel on which they were working was rammed by a cargo ship and sank off the coast of Sicily on 3 August. The ship, Thetis, was measuring marine biomass around seven kilometres off the island's coast when it was struck by the Heleni, a 55,000-tonne Panamanian container ship. It was morning, and the weather was foggy. "The scientists on board say it was like an apocalypse when the container ship came at them out of the blue," says Ennio Marsella, head of the CNR Institute for Coastal…
tqa | August 5, 2007
So far, there hasn't been a lot of good news for the US Military in recently published scientific papers this month. A few days ago, there was the JAMA paper that looked at the increase in child abuse and neglect that happens at home while a parent is deployed. Now, there's a paper in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that reports on the mental health effects of multiple and prolonged deployments.
Here are some of the findings reported in this paper:
⢠Those deployed for more than 13 months were significantly more likely to report problems at home both during and after their last…
cmcclain | August 5, 2007The latest and best of salt-water writing is up at Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets.
tqa | August 5, 2007
Right wing blogs of various types are beating drums on behalf of an as-yet-unidentified US Army soldier who got into a bit of a confrontation with the moderator at a YearlyKos panel discussion. The soldier was a sergeant in uniform; the moderator was (or is, I'm not sure which) a reserve officer. The moderator took exception to the soldier appearing in uniform, and the right is spinning this as a soldier getting "shouted down" at Kos.
Right now, there are two videos of the incident. Neither paints a complete picture of the scene. In the official video, the soldier's comments are almost…
grrlscientist | August 5, 2007tags: cats, carnival of the cats, blog carnivals
The 176th edition of the Carnival of the Cats is now available for your reading pleasure. They included a couple stories from me, too. Meow, meow!
tqa | August 4, 2007
From Paul Kane's column in today's WaPo:
Throughout the spring newly empowered Democrats watched their approval ratings plummet, with a liberal base upset at their inability to stop the Iraq war and independents complaining that not enough meaningful legislation was being passed.
Gee, I guess that makes me an independent member of the liberal base, then, because I'm pissed as hell at them for both reasons. They didn't do enough on Iraq, and I do not for one second accept the weak-assed argument that they couldn't. That's just plain bull. Yes, the President vetoed their measure. Yes, they…