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cmcclain | March 18, 2007
The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss by Claire Nouvian is perhaps the most stunning book to grace this planet. Such praise seems superfluous until one views the cover-to-cover photographs of stunning deep-sea creatures that form the core of this hardback. The volume is 12x10 inches and the high-resolution photographs on superb glossy paper are equally large. Many of the photographs extend across adjacent pages. The images cover pelagic, benthic, vent, seep, whale fall, invertebrate, and vertebrate organisms. The reader will be hard pressed to find a neglected group. …
grrlscientist | March 17, 2007The third edition of Oekologie is now available for your reading pleasure.
tqa | March 17, 2007
Dr. Michael Egnor is, once again, trying to explain why evolution isn't important to medicine. This time he's responding to Mark Chu-Carroll's post on Tautology. In his latest post, Egnor continues to challenge the conventional wisdom that an understanding of evolution in general and natural selection in particular is essential to understanding and dealing with the phenomenon of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Here's his latest statement along those lines:
Mark, your dad's illness didn't happen because his doctor didn't know enough about random mutation and natural selection. Our…
tqa | March 17, 2007
This post was originally written on 9 September 2005, and was posted over at the old place. It's relevant to a post that will be appearing shortly, so I'm moving it over here for convenience. I haven't edited the original in any way.
From a story in today's WaPo, I learned that Bayer has withdrawn it's poultry anitbiotic Baytril from the market. This marks the end of a five-year battle with the FDA over the drug.
The FDA first proposed withdrawing Baytril in October of 2000, due to concerns regarding the development of antibiotic resistance. From a 2001 FDA Consumer Magazine article:…
pharyngula | March 17, 2007Little things can expose serious injustice. For example, this story about two women being thrown out of a restaurant for a kiss…we need reminders like this that discrimination is real, and it hurts people.
There is no federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Neither Kansas nor Missouri are among the few states that protect gay people from being discriminated against in areas of employment, housing and public accommodations.
Kansas City does have an ordinance protecting gays, as do St. Louis, Columbia and University City. But if you're anywhere else in Missouri and…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2007
The surface areas of Mars are colored blue to show lots of subsurface hydrogen, indicating the presence of water.
A spacecraft orbiting Mars has discovered deposits of ice at its south pole so thick that they would cover the planet in 36 feet of water if they were melted, said scientists. The scientists used the joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to estimate the thickness and volume of ice deposits at the Martian south pole. These ice deposits cover an area larger than Texas.
The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are…
tqa | March 16, 2007
Neurosurgeon and recent addition to the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division blog Dr. Michael Egnor is at it again. He's responded to Burt's latest response to his prior response to Burt's earlier response to his - you get the drift. Burt's been doing a great job of responding to Egnor, and I don't want to step on his toes, but Egnor says a couple of things this time that I think would benefit from the perspective of someone who is studying evolutionary biology.
First, though, I'd like to address this delightful bit of less-than-honest rhetoric:
In addition, a common Darwinist…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2007For those of you who don't know, I am being sued by a person who took care of my birds while I was hospitalized. She had told me that the hospital Social Work department would cover her per diem costs (while I would cover the food costs), only later to discover that she was mistaken, so now she is suing me to recover her costs. So one night ago, I had my first appearance in small claims court. To say the least, I was incredibly stressed out, and barely able to think, and feeling ready to vomit much of the time.
The court appearance was scheduled for 610pm, but the courtroom did not unlock…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2007This Sunday, Pluto's shadow will be visible in Texas and California as it passes in front of a faint star. This is the first time such an occultation has been seen from North America. Naturally, astronomers are ready for this and will study how the star's light disappears and reappears to gain insight into why Pluto's atmosphere appears to be changing. (Pluto and moon Charon pictured, courtesy of NASA).
It was during a similar occultation, on June 9, 1988, that Pluto was found to be surrounded by tenuous wisps of nitrogen with an estimated surface pressure of just 50 microbars -- less than 1…
cmcclain | March 16, 2007
A Scottish Sea Spider without kilt (from the Metro.co.uk) from the Rockall Trough off NW Scotland.
cmcclain | March 15, 2007
This beautiful, actively venting carbonate structure resembling a snow-covered Christmas tree is about 3 ft high. "The beehive" is perched precariously on the near-vertical side of the 200-ft-tall Poseidon tower. An almost identical structure was inadvertently damaged during sampling during 2003; this one has regrown since that time. Older light gray carbonate cut by white carbonate veins in the background are on the side of Poseidon.
IFE, URI-IAO, UW, Lost City science party, and NOAA
tqa | March 15, 2007
After a great deal of thought, I decided that a large part of the discussion that had taken place in the comments thread of my post on pedophiles and the First Amendment had gone well beyond what I am personally comfortable with having on my blog. I closed the comments section of that post and removed several of the comments.
The comments thread of this post is available to those who want to scold me for shutting down and restricting comments on an article that was about First Amendment rights.
purepedantry | March 15, 2007We're on vacation, so no posts until the 25th of March. Check back then.
pharyngula | March 15, 2007Today is Craig McClain's birthday, and all anyone got him for a present was some magic sea water quackery. Somebody should go say happy birthday without trying to restore his cellular homeostasis by selling him overpriced salt water.
cmcclain | March 15, 2007
Yesterday, I looked out my window* and saw the next part of the MARS project falling into place (previous post 1, previous post 2, BBC story). Currently, the Global Sentinel, a cable laying ship, is anchored offshore as the last bit of cable is being joined to the shore station. This website as an excellent schematic of vessel.
*Literary flourish: Actually postdoctoral fellows at MBARI don't get windows, those are reserved for lead scientists.
tqa | March 15, 2007
New Scienceblogger Rob Knop has written a couple of posts explaining his own religious views and raising one of those questions that usually manages to get people worked up here: are science and spirituality compatible? That's a question that I've found myself thinking about more than usual lately, and with mixed feelings. I'm still not sure exactly where I stand on the whole religion thing, and I don't think I could describe my own views even at gunpoint. But I am comfortable saying this much: for at least some definitions of "spirituality," science and spirituality are compatible.
I…
signout | March 14, 2007This is maybe my favorite and/or the most aggressively nerdy thing on ScienceBlogs so far: it's smoking hot, one-on-one, science competition in the abstract, with brackets and everything. Way more interesting than stupid college sports.
Obviously, I'm most interested in the life sciences bracket, but other flavors of geek should have a look at the other brackets.
Defense! Or whatever.
tqa | March 14, 2007
When I put up my post the other day responding to a Salon article accusing Army doctors of inappropriately changing physical profiles to deploy more people, there were some things that I didn't make clear enough. I did not address mental health at all, and my discussion of the physical standards was very limited - I addressed only the accusations involving doctors altering profiles to make soldiers fit the standard for deployment. I did not address the questions about whether the physical standards for deployment have been lowered. Both of these issues have come up since then - the question…
cmcclain | March 14, 2007 Today is my birthday! And although I won't get the birthday spectacular that PZ did, I share my birthday with some magnificent company, Strauss, Ehrlich, Jones, Einstein, Jones, and Crystal.
Peter decided to get me riled up for the ol' b-day by sending a link to a website of the utmost stupidity. Let's just say Peter knows how to push my buttons!
Original Quinton marine plasma is not just seawater. It is nutrient-rich marine fluid harvested from the depths of an oceanic plankton bloom. When taken orally, this Original Quinton marine plasma can restore cellular homeostasis and mineral…
cmcclain | March 14, 2007It took some mighty fine nets, but scientists who spent two years trawling the world's oceans for bacteria and viruses have completed the most thorough census ever of marine microbial life, revealing an astonishingly diverse and bizarre microscopic menagerie.
More at the Washington Post Hat tip to Dave.