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pharyngula | April 12, 2007We all have a request from Kurt Vonnegut.
I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my…
tqa | April 11, 2007
I wrote a little bit about this earlier today, but I was a little too angry at the time to write anything meaningful or coherent. I'm still pretty angry, but I'm going to take another swing at it anyway.
Last night, around this time, I wrote a little rant venting my frustration at the way that the White House has been using the military as political cover. I was pretty angry last night - so angry that I couldn't remember ever being angrier - and I said just that. I'm a scientist, and I pride myself on being a man of reason and rationality, but I've still got a sneaking suspicion that I…
tqa | April 11, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut passed away today at the age of 84.
As John Stewart put it at the start of the interview embedded below, he's the man who made adolescence bearable for a lot of us.
The best Vonnegut quote from the Daily Show interview is, "I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap."
My favorite quote at the moment comes from a 2005 essay:
But I know now that there is not a…
nisbetmc | April 11, 2007Over at the blog Nanopublic, Dietram Scheufele, a professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin, has posted a very useful discussion of our Science Policy forum article.
Scheufele, one of the most widely cited scholars on framing and the media, recently co-edited a special issue on the subject at the Journal of Communication. I encourage readers to check out Scheufele's blog post, along with his article in the special issue of JoC.
I also encourage readers to check out the following study published at Public Opinion Quarterly by Vince Price, Lilach Nir, and Joe Capella at the…
cmcclain | April 11, 2007"Song of the Dredge", presented by Edward Forbes to the British Association at its annual meeting in 1839. Sung in the tune of Cream by Prince (kidding).
"Hurrah for the dredge, with its iron edge,
And its mystical triangle.
And its hided net with meshes set
Odd fishes to entangle!
The ship may move thro' the waves above,
'Mid scenes exciting wonder,
But braver sights the dredge delights
As it roves the waters under.
Chorus:
Then a-dredging we will go wise boys
A-dredging we will go!
A-dredging we will go, a-dredging we will go,
A-dredging we will go, wise boys,
A-dredging we will go!
Down…
cmcclain | April 11, 2007 Musings from Kevin... So you are out on the ocean and need some inspiration for the long nights by the dredge? Well, have I got the CD for you! Here are a few of my favorites that bring me back a mile or two below the surface (metaphorically, as I spend my time usually in front of a computer):
"What Does the Deep-Sea Say?"
Done by Bill Monroe & Doc Watson, Woody Guthrie and Dave Alvin, this song is a harrowing tale of a sailor boy that is now sleeping at the bottom of the deep sea through the wrath and fury of the ocean. It doesn't say anything, but "It moans, it groans, it flashes…
tqa | April 11, 2007
The more you look for news, the more you find, I guess. It's another morning with a lot of interesting stuff happening.
In the quick roundup/commentary today, we've got John McCain's brains continuing to liquify and escape, a really embarrassing White House personnel problem (a new one), an unholy environmental alliance, a hell of a lot of really good blogging (mostly by other people), and a massively cool Google partnership that might just show us how to educate more Americans about global problems.
OK, Egor, Where did you hide McCain's brains?
John McCain just cant figure out when or…
tqa | April 11, 2007
In a just-called Pentagon press conference, Defense Secretary Gates just announced that tours of duty for all Army soldiers in Iraq are being extended from 12 to 15 months. Speaking as someone who has an immediate family member deployed, I would just like to take this brief opportunity to thank the Secretary of Defense for having the compassion and decency to allow CNN and Fox to break the news to me gently, as I strolled past a friggin television in the campus center. I'm sure that a television announcement to the American people is a much more compassionate method of breaking the news than…
cmcclain | April 11, 2007
Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis (Mollusca: Cephalopoda: Octipodidae)
Octopus are one the most fascinating and intelligent of the invertebrates. Yet, little is known about their role in the deep sea, even less is known from methane seeps of hydrothermal vents! In fact, only one species has been described from a hydrothermal vent to date, the "hot water volcano octopus".
Description Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis (1) is a benthic octopus that so far measures up to only 52mm in mantle length (7). Its eyes are greatly reduced in function (i.e. no visible iris) and body lacks pigment and…
grrlscientist | April 11, 2007There was a program on TV a few nights ago called "Rethinking the Dinosaurs". This special program documented how Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History dismantled its entire collection of dinosaur bones and is reassembling them based on advances in our scientific knowledge. Previously, our ideas about dinosaurs were reflected by what one saw in old films -- huge, lumbering beasts, dragging their tails on the ground. However, in recent years, scientists have decided that dinosaurs were probably much more energetic and agile, and that most fossils were displayed incorrectly.
"…
tqa | April 11, 2007
I know what I feel, and I don't like it. I don't know what to say, and I don't like that, either.
I've been trying to write this post for two hours and three beers now, and I've spent most of that time staring at a blank white box on the screen. I've started to write things time after time, and I've deleted them time after time, and for all I know I'll throw out this attempt five minutes from now. Or maybe not. It's been another hour and another two beers and I don't seem to have managed to write anything else, but those few words are still staring back at me as I look into the screen.…
zooillogix | April 10, 2007You never touch me anymore. Is it because you think I'm fat? Damon diadema
Scientists have recently witnessed two species of arachnids that caress family members and seem to enjoy snuggling. Two kinds of whip spiders--dime-sized Phrynus marginemaculatus found in Florida and the larger Damon diadema which live in Tanzania and Kenya--spend their days in constant tactile touch with their relatives. In one experiment, siblings were put in a cage among many other unrelated whip spiders and within minutes had gathered back together in their family group. Mothers were routinely witnessed stroking…
tqa | April 10, 2007
"You are entitled to your own opinions. You are not entitled to your own facts."
-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up to provide a way for leading scientists to sit down together, evaluate all of the available data on climate change, and present the public and policymakers with the best possible overview of the current state of the science. It exists to assess and present the facts. We need to know the facts. We need to know what has happened, what is happening, and what is likely to happen in the future. Without that knowledge,…
tqa | April 10, 2007
Today is another high blogging load kind of day, and like many high blogging load days it coincides nicely with a high workload day, so there's no way I'm going to be able to write about everything cool. So, I'm going to do what I did yesterday - talk about them all really briefly now, and then hit one or two of the best later on.
In the lineup today, we've got some real winners. One of my commenters highlighted a really stupid John McCain op-ed for me. That goes nicely with the White House's continuing demand that Congress stop messing around and bend to the Imperial Will already. The…
petnoyer | April 10, 2007
Eddies are an important nexus between physical oceanography and marine biology because these giant swirling tornadoes of seawater are pervasive in the world's oceans. Passing eddies can accelerate local currents, retain and transport plankton and nutrients, enhance open water productivity, and stimulate fast, deep sinking. Quasi-permanent eddies can retain larvae in the lee of an island, for example. Eddies are easily detectible by satellites. Important charismatic megavertebrates like sea turtles, elephant seals, blue whales, and sperm whales seem to track these pelagic features,…
thescian | April 10, 2007Sure, you have read it already. Read it again. The author answers questions here. A previous post (you'll find NPR link there to Bell's Vocalise).
tqa | April 9, 2007
Bill Dembski says that "framing" is bad. Bill Dembski says that "framing" is bad. Good lord, I feel like I've been hit over the head with a two-ton block of solid irony. Dembski says that people shouldn't try to shape messages. My mind just can't wrap around that one.
It's like Charlie Manson complaining about a drop in local property values. It's like Dick Cheney complaining about politicians being mean to each other. It's like Keith Richards doing a drug abuse prevention commercial.
Un-freaking-real.
tqa | April 9, 2007
I just found the time to read the two different versions of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II's summary for policymakers, and I'm pissed as hell. I'd heard the reports about the epic battle between scientists and diplomats (the final score on that one was a 1-0 victory for the lions), but I wasn't prepared to believe that the report had been screwed with as badly as it was.
The language that's been used in most of the reports has been pretty mild - most commonly, the diplomats are accused of "diluting" or "watering down" the language used in the report.…
tqa | April 9, 2007
During a weekend that was marked by the release of another of the IPCC's summaries for policymakers, the hottest topic here at Scienceblogs was (still) the Nisbet/Mooney "Framing Science" paper. (It's also a bit of a water-cooler debate topic here at UH right now, and I suspect the same is going to be true at other universities.) This is, of course, not unexpected. It's a touchy topic among scientists, and has been for some time. One paper is not going to change that overnight.
Some good points have been raised by people on both sides of this debate, but there's also been a hell of a lot…
tqa | April 9, 2007
It's another one of those days - there's just too much out there to blog about, and not enough time to do the blogging. It's partly my fault this time, of course. I've got this bad habit of taking the weekend off from blogging, so there's a backlog that stretches back to Friday.
In the stack right now, there are multiple episodes of ignorant Egnor, DaveScot highlighting an absolutely superb paper, the Vice-President acting like he understands less about the Constitution than the President does, and the continuing "discussion" on flaming science (bit of a freudian slip just then, I meant to…