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grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: PZ Myers, Pharyngula trailer
I have noticed with dismay that certain people around here have been bashing PZ Myers (not naming any names, but you know who you are), and I find that upsetting. For the past few years, I have considered PZ and his wife to be good friends of mine, although we do not communicate as frequently as we have in the past (but we're all busy, whatever). But, as with all good friends, I know that they are there for me whenever I might call on them, and I would absolutely do whatever is in my power to help them out as well.
What cemented this friendship? I had long…
revere | July 12, 2007Maybe someday I'll get tired of posting stories like this, but that day has yet to come. This is from BoingBoing, on how to smuggle dangerous liquids onto an airplane. The dangerous liquid in this case was a bottle of Vidalia Onion salad dressing. It is dangerous because it was more than 3 ounces and not in a single, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag," as per TSA rules. Three ounces is the rule, because, according to BoingBoing, that is the size ll liquids become high explosives (unless they are bought at duty-free store). Here is how to do it. Warning: reading further will make you…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: cockfighting, animal cruelty, First Amendment, free speech
When I learned recently that my neighbors regularly engage in cockfighting and dog fighting (illegally, of course) I was thoroughly disgusted with them. But I learned just today that cockfighting is also streamed over the internet, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who is familiar with the 'net, but nonetheless, I think it is absolutely disgusting and distressing, since it serves to underline the basic lack of compassion and empathy that some people have for animals in general, and for birds specifically.
However, the…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: online poll, scienceblogs
While we are talking about online polls, I'd like to point out that ScienceBlogs is conducting a poll on the right sideboard that they will use to improve the site based on reader feedback. Their poll is kinda fun and will only take about 5 minutes or so of your time to answer. Not only that, but you have the chance to win a free iPod nano in a drawing. Of course, I can't win this, because I am a SciBling, but I'd sure love it if one of my readers won!
grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: Harry Potter, books, reading
As many people have said, the Harry Potter books were wonderful for getting kids to put down that GameBoy and curl up with a book. However, a recent study has shown that as kids grow up, they rarely read for fun "almost every day" as they did when they were younger. The reason? They are becoming more socially active as they get older, and that apparently precludes them from reading books.
However, another study, commissioned by Scholastic books, the American publisher for the Harry Potter books, showed that more kids were reading as a result of the Harry…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: birds, bed and breakfast, investment opportunity
Okay, do any of you want to help make an investment with me? Would you like to buy a house that I would turn in to a bed and breakfast? It is very cheap .. er, affordable .. because of one extra feature it has .. nesting vultures on the premises. Yes, indeed, it would be a fascinating place for bird watchers and nature lovers to visit, and I would love to host them, and I would love to be a proud steward of the black and turkey vultures who nest there (I have a soft place in my heart for vultures, after having met several tame turkey…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: birds, blog carnival
The 53rd edition of I and the Bird blog carnival is now available for you to enjoy. Even though they did link to a piece that I wrote (yippee!!), I was a bad grrl because they wanted me to write a 20 word descriptor about my blog, which I did not do because I was being a dork.
sb admin | July 12, 2007The Kaiser Family Foundation has launched the website health08.org âto provide a central hub for resources and information about health policy issues in the 2008 election.â In a Boston Globe editorial, KFF president and CEO Drew Altman observes, âIn a short period of time health has gone from an issue that was not even included on the list of seven issues voters were asked about on the national exit poll in last November's election to the number one domestic issue and the number two issue overall behind Iraq on several recent polls.â Even so, he goes on to state, âThere will no chance at…
cmcclain | July 12, 2007Spanish police intercepted a ship belonging to US deep-sea explorer firm Odyssey on Thursday, officials said, in a row over a 370 mln eur treasure haul recovered from a sunken wreck in the Atlantic.
The Ocean Alert, which had been docked in Gibraltar until recently, was picked up in Spanish waters at about 6 am, on the orders of Spanish authorities.
The ship is to be searched, and may have committed an offence against Spanish heritage laws, the civil guard said in a statement.
An Odyssey official on board the ship was quoted on the net by the Gibraltar Chronicle as calling the boarding '…
cmcclain | July 12, 2007I guess not. In 1999, a study led by Peter Herring found evidence that noted that shrimp eyes from heavily visited vents were opaque because the light-sensing tissues had been destroyed. The potential culprit? Large megawatt lights on submersibles. A new study, soon to be published in the UK's Marine Biological Association journal finds these effects may not be detrimental to shrimp populations. According to the BBC news, the new study finds that the TAG vent site no population change was detectable when data from 1994 and 2000 were compared. This suggests that the shrimp can rely on other…
grrlscientist | July 11, 2007tags: religious, online poll
I have recently been conducting online polls on my left sideboard in an effort to learn more about my audience as a collective without putting any of you "on the spot". The first question that I asked seems rather obvious, but I thought I got some surprising answers anyway.
I did not expect so many atheists and agnostics in my audience, nor did i expect to see any readers who were fundamentalists or evangelical. When writing up the quiz, I expected to see a large number of respondents who were "spiritual, but don't go to church."
Anyway, I have a new question…
cmcclain | July 11, 2007*note Global Warming is VERY BAD and title is sarcasm.
Flashback to 1992, it's early in the morning and a decrepit high school teacher stands before a class discussing the finer points of history. In the back row sits a smart ass, me, not listening and telling himself why should a future marine biologist pay attention in history class. Fast forward 15 years and the marine biologist wishes he remembers more about the discussion on the Northwest Passage. Unfortunately, all that runs through my brain are Charlie Brown's teachers.
If you are like me and bit foggy on the Northwest Passage…
cmcclain | July 11, 2007A potential new record holder for the largest giant squid washed ashore in western Tasmania. The individual came in at 550 lbs (250 kg) and stretched 26 ft (8 m) from head to the end of its severed tentacles. The specimen was extremely damaged and might measure longer. In the standard metric of body size of sea giants, the school bus (SB), this would measure about 0.9 SB. "It's a whopper," Genefor Walker-Smith, curator at the Tasmanian Museum, told the Reuters news service. Interestingly, giant squid rarely, if ever, was ashore on the western Tasmanian beaches being more common on the…
cmcclain | July 10, 2007
Readers probably know by now I am skeptical of Nautilus Mining's commitment to the conservation of the deep ocean. They are currently poised to begin large-scale mining efforts with a bus-sized ROV off extinct hydrothermal vent chimneys off Papua New Guinea. This week 2000 tribe members from Bagabag Island urged the government to put end to exploration and mining on the seabed in a paid advertisement in the national paper. In the piece they voiced
their frustrations and absolute disgust over the manner in which the provincial and national governments have issued license to Nautilus Minerals…
grrlscientist | July 10, 2007tags: recurve-billed bushbird, Clytoctantes alixii, ornithology, birds, avian, endangered species
Chris Sharpe, an Associate Researcher with ProVita in Venezuela, contacted me (initially through my friend, Ian) regarding this entry about the "smiling bird" that I wrote and he would like to clarify several things for all of you. This message is especially intended for the ornithological and conservation communities;
[I wish to thank my Seattle bird-pal, Ian, for his concern about this issue as well as his long-term attention to my Birds in the News newsletter. I am more than happy to set the…
moleculeoftheday | July 9, 2007Potassium permanganate, or KMnO4, is one of the most well-known oxidizing agents in chemistry. Unfortunately, it's a bit like taking a gun to a knife fight...
One of the big downsides of permanganate is the fact that it's a very polar ion. Crown ethers to the rescue.
Permanganate is a beautiful purple color in solution (almost black as the solid, partly because it's such a rich purple, partly because of MnO2 contamination), which I maintain is responsible for at least part of its popularity. It is a beast, as I alluded to earlier - it will take toluene down to benzoic acid (or even generic…
grrlscientist | July 9, 2007tags: books, blog carnival
The Books Blog Carnival is now available for your reading pleasure. If you love books, and I know that most of you do, then this is the blog carnival for you!
petnoyer | July 9, 2007 Even if you're not pregnant, you have to be worried about toxic mercury levels in fish.
Mercury is a highly reactive heavy metal that's present in raw fish, like sushi, and in canned fish, like tuna. Exposure to toxic levels of can cause damage to the nervous system and the renal system, but long term exposure at lower levels hardens arteries by inactivating antioxidant mechanisms.
In fact, high mercury content can diminish the cardiovascular benefits of fish consumption, so eating fish may not benefit your health after all (Guallar et al, 2002, N Engl J Med).
So how safe is your sushi?…