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cmcclain | April 4, 2007
Greenpeace map suggesting that areas proposed for clousre by the NZ Seafood Industry are unfishable and thus not under threat.
Back in over a year ago the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council proposed the establishment of 30 Benthic Protection Areas (BPAs). The combined area of these would be 1.2 million sq km (4x the size of New Zealand) and 30% of NZ Exclusive Economic Zone. What does a BPA mean? These areas would be off limits to trawling by fishing companies.
Marine biologist Dr Steve O'Shea [of giant squid fame] said he was blown away by the proposal, the likes of which he…
cmcclain | April 4, 2007
Bathynomus giganteus (Arthropoda: Crustacea: Isopoda: Cirolanidae)
You know those cute little roly-poly bugs you found under rocks as a kid? You poke at them and they curl up into a little ball? Well, magnify that times 1000, take away the functional role of the eyes, head to the deep-sea and you've got the Giant Isopod, Bathynomus giganteus!
Description Bathynomus giganteus was first discovered in fishermen's nets in the Gulf of Mexico and was described as the type species of the genus by Alphonse Milne Edwards in 1879 (12). It is the largest known isopod, reaching lengths up to 50cm…
cmcclain | April 4, 2007Ransom Myers' sister, Susan Myers, has started a blog Fans of Ram that has great information about his life and work.
tqa | April 3, 2007Update - I've written a second post on this topic in response to the President's speech at Fort Irwin earlier today.
Mr. President, meet the Constitution. Constitution, I'd like to introduce you to President George W. Bush. It's been a long six years since Mr. Bush took office, and it's high time the two of you got to know each other - especially with that whole oathy-type thing. It's probably going to be easier to do all that "preserve, protect, and defend" thing if you have some sort of vague sense of what it is you are defending.
This overdue introduction is particularly necessary today…
grrlscientist | April 3, 2007Okay, as I read this story, I was laughing so hard that all my parrots stopped what they were doing and stared at me. This story proves once again that truth is stranger than fiction. Keith Richards, guitarist for the Rolling Stones, took some of his father's ashes, mixed them with cocaine and snorted them.
Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all.
In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine.
"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My…
cmcclain | April 3, 2007
At the high end of invertebrate intelligence is the almighty Cephalopods, but maybe an additional 512mb of free memory would help. Makes me want to learn Japanese over the weekend so I can decipher this page and order one.
zooillogix | April 3, 2007A four-legged duckling named Stumpy has beaten the odds and survived into adulthood. Born with two extra legs behind his normal pair at the Warrawee Duck Farm in Hampshire, England, Stumpy has appeared in countless television shows and photo shoots across the globe. When Nicky Janaway, his owner, saw Stumpy's extra legs for the first time, she was "gobsmacked." As for the future? "We're making a very big pen for him to make sure he is kept very safe..." says Mrs. Janaway, "...He seems a very happy duck." (credit to H. Hancock)
"And this bird you cannot chaaaaaaaannnngggee!"
VIDEO OF STUMPY…
tqa | April 3, 2007
Senator (and Presidential candidate) John McCain toured parts of Baghdad the other day. He wasn't alone, of course. He had a few friends with him. Senator Lindsey Graham was there, too. So were Representatives Mike Pence and Rick Renzi. Oh, yeah, and they had some security with them, too - judging by descriptions, at least a full rifle company's worth of ground security, not to mention the air support.
The purpose of their visit? A demonstration that it is safe to walk the streets in parts of Baghdad. Seriously. No, this really isn't a late April Fool's gag. After the Congresscritters…
zooillogix | April 3, 2007Dr Melody Clark of the British Antarctic Survey recently presented two bizarre adaptations that arthropods use to stave off cold temperatures. At the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting in Glasgow last week, Clark showed how the Onychiurus arcticus, an Artic arthropod, copes with the freezing winters. As the surrounding temperatures fall, the Onychiurus arcitus literally dries up, leaving what Clark describes as "a normal looking head, and a body which looks like a crumpled up crisp packet when it is fully dehydrated. But add a drop of water and it all goes back to normal!"…
catdynamics | April 3, 2007The poisoned pet food story keeps getting bigger and more worrying.
Pretty clear that some food grade (as opposed to feed grade) wheat gluten was in the contaminated batch and that the FDA is worried it got into the human food chain.
FDA summary page
They still don't really know what the contaminant(s) were.
One comment I noticed is that melamine is used as coating for slow release pesticides or fertilizer granules (can anyone confirm that?), which would explain why it was found and maybe contributed to toxicity, but may not be the main cause (since it is just not that toxic).
FDA still won'…
cmcclain | April 3, 2007
Coming off an unbeaten road trip and with one of their star players frozen, it would have been easy for the Invertebrates to have a letdown against the lowly Photosynthesis. Instead, Invertebrates continued its strong play and rallied to win in the final moments its third straight game - 260th of the season - with a 105-103 victory over the Photosynthesis in the S3.
"To talk about 260 is pretty impressive, especially with the loss of players before the game," coach Seth O'Dowd said. Indeed, several Invertebrate players were expelled from the league not a week ago for grazing on…
tqa | April 2, 2007
Another gem from the West Wing - this time from the season finale from Season 3:
TOBY: He's at the Yankee game right now?
SAM: Local news covered it. He said this was how ordinary Americans got their entertainment.
TOBY: I've been to 441 baseball games in Yankee Stadium. There's not a single
person there who's ordinary.
nisbetmc | April 2, 2007On April 24, investigative reporter Brooks Jackson and UPenn professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson are set to release a new book that is sure to be of interest to Framing Science readers...from the news release:
Friday, March 30, 2007
UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, a new book described as "the secret decoder ring for the 21st-century world of disinformation," will officially be released by Random House on April 24. Co-authored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center's Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the paperback lays bare the art of spinning - rampant in the world of…
nisbetmc | April 2, 2007The Free University Berlin has an associate professor opening in Science Communication, as part of their Department of Political and Social Sciences and their Institute of Media and Communication Studies. I have posted the full description below the fold. Contact Markus Lehmkuhl at kuhle@zedat.fu-berlin.de for more information.
Freie Universität Berlin
Department of Political and Social Sciences
Institute of Media and Communication Studies
invites applications for a tenured
Associate Professorship in Media and Communication Studies, with special emphasis on Science Communication / Science…
worldsfair | April 2, 2007I dunno. I'm curious what the verdict is and how much of depends on whether the phrase Boots the Monkey means anything to you.
tqa | April 2, 2007
The Supreme Court of the United States has, in a 5-4 decision (pdf), just ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency's decision not to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the clean air act was, "arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law."
The decision does not require the EPA to begin regulating greenhouse gasses, but it does send the case back for further considerations, and it does tell the EPA that none of the justifications that it attempted to use to avoid regulating CO2 is a legitimate basis for refusal. The ruling clearly has massive implications in…
grrlscientist | April 2, 2007The Carnival of the Godless is now available for your reading pleasure. This is the long-awaited "You're Going to Hell" edition.
tqa | April 1, 2007
Me: "It's about a DVD"
Child #1: "What gender is it."
Me: "I wasn't aware that DVD's have a gender."
Child #1: "The gender. You know, is it comedy, or drama, or action?"
grrlscientist | April 1, 2007Did you hear the story about the pet duck named Peepers? It seems this duck fouled up a robbery yesterday in Lynwood, Washington. With store security hot on his heels, a 35-year-old man jumped into his car just as his 39-year-old girlfriend came out of the pet store carrying her pet duck. Unaware that her boyfriend was on the run, she tried to open the passenger door but was knocked down. She was not injured, but she dropped her duck.
A Petco employee saw that the duck was in danger and raced into the parking lot to save the bird. As police tell it, the man in the car stepped on the gas and…