Uncategorized
revere | June 21, 2007Today there is a terrific post by economist Les Boden of Boston University School of Public Health over at The Pump Handle. It's about something many people here probably aren't interested in -- workers compensation. But the underlying issue should be of interest to everyone in the US and many other places.
It's about a giant and influential international industry. The insurance industry:
If something bad happens to an insured person or company, the insurer is supposed to help soften the financial blow. You need a $50,000 operation and your medical insurer is supposed to cover most, if not…
tlambert | June 21, 2007Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine likes to import the ideas for her anti-environmentalist screeds from America. (For example, DDT ban kills millions, and hockey stick is broken.) Her latest import is the claim that low-flush toilets don't work.
Here it is in a 1998 column from a Competitive Enterprise Instituter:
Included in the numerous provisions of the massive 1992 Energy Policy Act was a requirement that, by 1994, all new toilets sold in the United States must use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf in Washingtonspeak), well below the 3.5 gpf models most Americans are…
cmcclain | June 21, 2007So any wine is good, great wine is better, and great wine from the murky depths is the best.. Great wine aged on the ocean floor in perfect humidity, absence of UV rays, stable temperature of 9-12 C , and a ever so gentle massaging of the bottles by the currents and tides is the best.
cmcclain | June 21, 2007Our second day at sea was brought to close on much calmer seas. We again dove on Pioneer
Seamount, the northernmost station during our cruise and approximately parallel with San
Fran Cheezy. We continued to explore the volcanic cones. In contrast to the deeper
habitats on day 1 where corals dominated, the shallower regions we visited today were
characterized by dense sponge meadows. What corals did appear, they were stunted in
growth possibly related to the rather fragile volcanic substrate. We found more of the
new nudibranch, Tritonia sp., and addittionaly collected a Neptunea.
Today,…
pharyngula | June 20, 2007Stanley Fish is complaining about atheists again. As you might guess from the last time we went through this, his arguments are poor, and worse, are the same tired apologetics for religion we've all heard a thousand times before. Come on, Fish, I expect better from the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor than a warmed-over platter of scraps left by creationists!
In short, Fish's argument is that if religion has no evidence, then evolution doesn't have any either; if the religious rely on a Holy Book, then so do the biologists in Darwin's Origin of Species; and everything is built…
cmcclain | June 20, 2007
if I look pretty. Whenever I travel, inevitably I come across a shop or two selling red coral jewelry. I know what the red coral means...pillaging of the oceans. My first thought however is who wheres this tacky stuff. Are there people who think this stuff is beautiful. Luckily, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species put the coral on a list of protected wildlife, meaning exporters will now have to prove that the coral was harvested without threatening the species' survival before they can sell it. Corralium is a slow growing deep-water species.
petnoyer | June 19, 2007
Bathymetric image of the Nazare Canyon off the coast of Portugal. Photo courtesy of the BBC.
The BBC has released a short news piece on an underwater expedition to the Nazare canyon off of Portugal expedition by their ROV ISIS, (a ROV talked about previously on DSN). One of their discoveries thus far is shark at over 3,600 meters depth, possibly setting a new depth record for sharks. Read the news article here.
grrlscientist | June 19, 2007Okay, this is for those of you who are easily entertained. I know I fall into this category, so I hope you do, too. I was recently challenged by Matthew to participate in a "sicko" Google search terms contest to list the sickest search terms used find my blog. Here are a few search terms for you, starting with the top search term (drum roll, please);
Harry Potter
Hey, who would'a guessed that?? Seriously, if I had to guess what my top search term was, I would guess "Birds in the News" or birds or something like that.
Anyway, as expected, most of my search terms are bird, dinosaur or fossil…
sb admin | June 19, 2007Most public health advocates are probably already aware that U.S. funds for international AIDS relief come with counterproductive strings attached â specifically, requirements that one-third of HIV prevention money go to abstinence-only education and that entities receiving PEPFAR grants explicitly denounce prostitution. (Laurie Garrettâs recent LA Times op-ed provides a good summary of the policies and whatâs wrong with them.)
The strings attached to food aid donât get as much attention, but itâs another situation where U.S. policy overlooks a lifesaving solution while pleasing an…
grrlscientist | June 19, 2007Today, I made the very disturbing discovery that the sound card in my laptop has ceased to function. It was working fine last night, but today .. nothing! Of course, I find this to be very upsetting for several reasons; my computer is my entertainment system because I don't have a TV or stereo, so now I have nothing to keep me entertained outside of reading books. Also, I am not sure how to pay for the replacement of this sound card, and the thought of being parted from my laptop -- even for a few days for the replacement to occur -- is unbearable to me. My laptop is my only connection with…
cmcclain | June 19, 2007Most tales of the open sea begin with some classic line about the
seas being as rough as scorned lover or a furious ocean goddess
unleashing her fury. Both the scorned lover and furious goddess in
unison at sea welcomed our first full day out. Swells were at 20
providing a rough first night of sleep and rewarding me with multiple
skull contusions. The weather also endeavored to keep the ROV
Tiburon on deck but alas we succeeded in deploying. The newbies this
morning participated in the safety briefing with the long-standing
tradition of climbing into the survival suits which gives one the…
pharyngula | June 19, 2007There are two subjects that I know stir up a few dedicated commenters here: abortion and circumcision. Most articles, when they fall off the front page, fade away from continued discussion fairly rapidly. Abortion and circumcision proponents and opponents have endurance, though, and comments will continue dribbling along for months. So I hesitate to bring this up, but…
An infant died, slowly and unpleasantly, of an infection and septic shock after an ordinary circumcision.
I know this is a rare occurrence, but it's the pointlessness of the death that jars. This poor kid died for a silly…
cmcclain | June 18, 2007Behind the scenes Kevin and I are making fun of Peter which now that he is out of town I will do online. See Peter is a bit of traitor toward our invertebrate cousins. You think somebody who studies corals would perhaps name them after some such species. But no...Peter named his computer after a fish. I am so disappointed. On the other hand Kevin, with a computer name after good ol' invertebrate phlya. Mine? Name after the world's largest and second largest invertebrates. I guess we know where loyalties lay. Now that I think about it...Peter was the one who pushed for Megavertebrate…
grrlscientist | June 18, 2007tags: poetry, The Summer Day, Mary Oliver
A person sitting next to me noticed that I was working on my blog. Upon learning that I was writing about science, he challenged me to read a poem, so this is the one that I chose. He had never read it before, and loved it very much, so of course, I thought I'd share it with you, too.
Carolina Grasshopper, Dissosteira carolina.
This insect is sometimes called the Carolina locust. It is less destructive than most other species in the genus. One distinguishing characteristic is the high, narrow ridge down the center of the pronotum. They are found…
grrlscientist | June 18, 2007tags: blog carnival, Family Life
Another blog carnival is available for you to enjoy; the latest edition of the Carnival of Family Life. There are a bunch of interesting entries there, including the amusing "Daddy Look Penis, Penis!!" and Fun with Shaving Cream (well, I thuoght it looked like fun).
grrlscientist | June 18, 2007tags: blog carnival, Encephalon
The 25th edition of the blog carnival, Encephalon, is now available for you to read. They include a bunch of pieces, including Pigeons playing ping pong - a little help? and The faculty of Imagination: Neural substrates and mechanisms.
cmcclain | June 18, 2007 BP's Statistical Review of World Energy published last week boldly stated we have enough oil. Specifically, there is enough proven oil reserves to last us 40 years. The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre in London disagrees as you might expected from their name. They say we are doomed that peak oil will hit in 4 years and we will crash hard. Did I mention the part about global economic collapse. Apparently the problem is that the cheap and easy to extract stuff - has already come and gone in 2005. Even when you factor in the more difficult to extract heavy oil, deep sea reserves, polar regions…
cmcclain | June 18, 2007Chinese police recovered 21 pieces of porcelain from a fishing boat and another 117 pieces from others. When asked where the porcelain came from, the owner claimed that divers recovered the relics "by accident". Apparently, they just fell into their wetsuits. Happens to me all the time.
In actuality an illegal salvage operation was being conducted. Chinese archaeologists discovered the wreck, now referred to as South China Sea II, laden with Ming Dynasty porcelain in 20m of water. The ship is over 400 years old and probably struck a reef.
tqa | June 17, 2007
So-called "junk DNA" has been much the buzz lately. A recent (and outstandingly lousy) Wired magazine article on the topic uncritically printed assertions by the Discovery Institute's lead hack Stephen Meyer that the discovery that some regions of DNA once thought to be functionless do have functions is, "a confirmation of a natural empirical prediction or expectation of the theory of intelligent design, and it disconfirms the neo-Darwinian hypothesis," The author of the Wired article does not provide us with any explanation of how ID "theory" made that prediction, but a more recent article…
sciencetolife | June 17, 2007Scientists from The Johns Hopkins University have identified two proteins, CCSA-3 and CCSA-4, found in blood that would allow detection of colon cancer and precancerous polyps without the need for a colonoscopy.
Read more about it here and here