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cmcclain | March 31, 2007
Several news agencies are reporting today about an interesting phenomenon occurring in the Mississippi River.
The Memphis Flyer reports...
In the last two years hurricanes have ravaged the Gulf coast causing millions of dollars of damage to property and the loss of numerous lives. More powerful hurricanes also destroyed millions of acres of marshes. "The significant loss of marshes on the southern Louisiana coast has allowed for Gulf of Mexico water to migrate up the Mississippi River," stated Dr. April Montgomery of the National Hurricane Center. This increases the saltiness of the…
hrynyshyn | March 31, 2007Ransom Myers had a habit of telling people what they didn't want to hear. In the 1990s, his employers in the Canadian government didn't like it when he told them overfishing was to blame for the collapse of the northern cod stocks. Three years ago it was the U.S. federal government, in a classic example of its anti-science bias, that removed his recommendations on the importance of habitat protection from a report on west coast salmon stocks. But he kept telling it like it is. Until a brain tumor finally got the best of him on March 27.
At 54, Myers should have had many more years of blowing…
cmcclain | March 30, 2007
[The Theme from Chariots of Fire playing]
Craig: From 64 to 32 and now to the Sweet 16. In today's post, we follow the journeys of two strong teams, Invertebrates and Photosynthesis as they navigated the ranks of the Octopus Bracket to face off in the 3rd round of the Spring Science Showdown (S3). We turn to Peter Etnoyer, our man in the field, to discuss the rise of Team Photosynthesis.
Peter: Indeed tree huggers everywhere were angered when photosynthesis was the only team from Division Plantae 1A to be selected for the tournament.
Craig: As I understand it, Photosynthesis…
tqa | March 30, 2007
Via Pharyngula, I just learned what Catholic League president Bill Donohue is pissed about today - a life-size sculpture of Jesus made out of milk chocolate that is going on display in New York next week. According to Donohue, the sculpture is, "hate speech." In the same press release, Donohue also said, "All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don't react the way extremist Muslims do when they're offended--otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off." It's clear that this particular sculpture has aggravated Donohue to the point where he is incapable of reasonable and…
hrynyshyn | March 30, 2007OK. I've read Hansen's new paper, which has been submitted to Environmental Research Letters, but not published. It's basically a review of existing, well-established science followed some personal opinion on the responsibility of scientists to express themselves, so I doubt it will be edited much before publication. And published it should be. The basic thrust is
Reticence is fine for [the] IPCC. And individual scientists can choose to stay within a comfort zone, not needing to worry that they say something that proves to be slightly wrong. But perhaps we should also consider our legacy from…
mikethemadbiologist | March 30, 2007Atrios makes an interesting observation about the decline in newspaper sales and political trend at major metropolitan dailies:
One of the never-discussed dirty little secrets of the newspaper industry is that many editorial pages in newspapers in major cities lean heavily right, especially relative to their potential local audience, and not just because of their heavy reliance on syndicated wingnuttery. With all the fretting about the death of the newspaper, perhaps it should occur to people that maybe people are tired of reading right wing horseshit.
I remember way back when, PIPA released…
worldsfair | March 30, 2007
Recently, I read an interesting piece on something known as "Darwin's Delay." Briefly, this is a mystery which queried why it took 20 odd years for Darwin to take his theory of evolution from his own private musings in the late 1830's, to its publication as the Origin of Species in 1859.
Essentially, the buzz right now, is that a Darwin historian, Dr. John van Wyhe out of Cambridge, has been making a case that the reason wasn't due to Darwin fearing reaction to his work, but simply because he was,.. well... kinda busy.
Most historians argue that Darwin kept the theory secret because he was…
tqa | March 29, 2007
As I mentioned earlier, there's a really interesting paper on mammal evolution in the latest issue of the journal Nature. The authors of the paper compiled a really fantastic sampling of molecular data that included data from about 99% of all currently known extant mammals. The data was then used to conduct an analysis that was by far the most comprehensive look at the molecular evolution of mammals ever undertaken. The researchers concluded, based on this analysis, that mammals diversified a lot earlier then was previously believed - so much so, in fact, that it seems to cast some doubt on…
cmcclain | March 29, 2007
"My son loves hammerheads..I'd like to make sure they are around when he grows up." -R.A. Myers
Ransom A. Myers passed away this previous Tuesday. Coincidently, a reader recently asked how we know that shark populations are declining and what the affect this decline is on other marine populations? Largely, I can answer these questions because of the research that Myers both originated, inspired, and participated in.
In 2003 a study lead by Baum, and coauthored with Myers and others, demonstrated that prompt and considerable declines in large-sized shark populations occurred in the…
cmcclain | March 29, 2007An expedition to the 9N Overlapping Spreading Center that is going on right now! You can catch daily dispatches from Laura Preston, an educator from UNH/Salem High School in New Hampshire.
For a marine geologist, this sonar system helps us realize a fantasy - pulling the plug on the ocean and draining the water out so we can see the seafloor features.
grrlscientist | March 29, 2007The 57th edition of the Skeptic's Circle is now available for your reading pleasure. This edition features a nice picture in addition to all the great reading.
tqa | March 29, 2007
It's one of the curses of blogging - there's no way to control when good stories to blog about pop up. It would be great if we could regulate the flow in some way, and get the stories to show up at nice, regular intervals. Give me one good story a day, and one really good story every second or third day, and I'm a happy blogger. It would be so nice if life worked that way.
Anyway . . .
Today, there are way too many good stories to write about. We've got (in no particular order) mammal evolution in the news, a philosopher questioning the usefulness of lab courses, a good reminder of why…
mikethemadbiologist | March 29, 2007One of the interesting things about blogging is that it has undermined the importance of the punditocracy. In the pre-interenet, and certainly pre-blog era, you had a very different relationship to politics, even if you were aware and relatively active: you were a consumer.
By consumer, I mean that you used to have to wait around and hope that some columnist or editorial board would speak for you. There were some alternatives, such as writing letters to the editor, or in the early days of the internet, posting at electronic bulletin boards (remember those?). But now with blogging, it is…
razib | March 29, 2007Steve Gimbel has a post up where he expresses skepticism of the utility of lab sections. Janet, Chad & Chad and RPM all offered responses. All that needs to be said from the various angles that I would have touched upon has been said, so I won't add much more, except to recall my discussion over at the literary blog The Valve about the testimony of Steve Fuller during the Dover trial. For those of you who don't know, Fuller is a scholar of science (that is, he studies science as opposed to being a scientist) who has suggested that Intelligent Design is a worthy research program, and is…
cmcclain | March 29, 2007
How to video on Giant Squid preparation from the British Natural History Museum. This is the same individual I had the pleasure to visit last year. Click on either image to view a larger version.
photos: Craig R. McClain (2006)
tqa | March 28, 2007
According to widespread media (and blog) reports, the Bush administration is about to release a set of administrative rules changes that would "gut" the Endangered Species Act. Actually, "gut" really isn't descriptive enough to do justice to what they are getting geared up for. They are getting set to completely eviscerate the act. Basically, their plan is to take the thing, slit it up the middle, dump all the internal organs onto the ground and jump up and down on them. Then they're going to stuff the carcass of the Endangered Species Act with straw, and drag it around with them in a…
goodmath | March 28, 2007 So, over at the DI's media complains department (aka evolutionnews.org), it appears that Casey Luskin has noticed how we SBers have managed to tear apart his buddy Dr. Egnor. Given that we did it so thoroughly, though, there's no legitimate way to defend him. He's repeatedly made incredibly idiotic statements, and many people have, quite rightfully, called him on the stupidity of his statements, the degree of ignorance that he's demonstrated, and his astonishing arrogance as he spouts nonsense.
But since when have Casey and friends at the DI ever worried about
doing the right thing? Or…
tqa | March 28, 2007
It's been a few days since I've posted anything here, so I just wanted to toss a quick post up to let everyone know I'm still alive, and haven't abandoned the blog. I had a tooth abscess pop up on me last week, and it didn't get resolved until Monday. For some reason, I had a hard time working up the concentration needed to write well while I was taking painkillers. That's over and done with now, so real blogging will return to this space shortly.