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tqa | February 21, 2007Quite a few of the others here at Scienceblogs have already taken a few minutes to poke fun at the new radical right attempt at creating an encyclopedia - Conservapedia. (See, for example, here, here, here, here, and here for just a few.) I sort of feel bad about joining in, in a way - the site is so pathetic that it's almost more sad than funny - but the key word there is "almost." Conservapedia is worthless as an intellectual resource, but it's a fantastic repository of accidental humor. There's enough there that if I ever find myself at a loss for a source of stupidity to blog about, I…
cmcclain | February 21, 2007I asked Crissy Huffard, a cephalopod biologist, to look over Volume 3 (No. 164 of 307) of Haggis-On-Whey's World of Unbelievable Brilliance: Animals of the Ocean, In Particular the Giant Squid. Here are her impressions.
This book is slightly less biologically accurate than Life Aquatic and significantly more tasteful than Snakes on a Plane, but no less entertaining. I cried with laughter. If you're the type more inclined to tinkle when you giggle, then you should consider changing into a wetsuit whilst reading it, because it's socially acceptable to pee in your wetsuit but not in your pants…
tlambert | February 21, 2007Ed Brayton reports on Conservapedia, set up by Creationist Andrew Schlafly because he didn't like the "anti-Christian" bias of Wikipedia. Andrew Schlafly is the son of Phyllis Schlafly and legal counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which publishes bad science promoting a thimerosal autism link, as well as Rachel Carson was worse than Hitler stuff.
Commenter doctorgoo found this entry on the origins of the kangaroo:
Like all modern animals, modern kangaroos originated in the Middle East and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo…
tqa | February 20, 2007PZ has a brief post up commenting on an article on the Lippard Blog about a "dog" target that is routinely shot by DEA agents training for raids. Both link to an article that provides a list of numerous cases where police have killed pets. I think my take on the situation is a bit different from either of theirs, probably because of my past EMS experience.
At the start, I want to be clear that I am in no way shape or form endorsing the routine slaughter of pets. I am also not endorsing or excusing the examples of violence against animals that were given in the reason.com article. There is no…
petnoyer | February 20, 2007
What's 200 feet long, has 18 ways to reproduce, and breaks into pieces? The worm. Vermes.
National Geographic is running a beautiful multimedia story about Hawaii's Unearthly Worms. This week couldn't ask for better recommended reading material, except... "where did all the words go?". Nat Geo has evolved into a little multimedia jukebox right before our eyes. I remember stacks of old National Geographic magazines filled with text. Not any more. They probably have those online.
You can check out the photo gallery and three videos. They let you copy fotos, like this Hawaiian Chaetopterus sp…
tqa | February 20, 2007Earlier today, I got an email from a gentlemanlawyer named Mark Fitzgibbons. Mr. Fitzgibbons had apparently just read one of my posts about the "astroturf lobbying" bill. (It's encouraging to note that Mr. Fitzgibbons, who claims to be very concerned with the effect of this legislation on blogging, does such a good job of keeping up to date with what blogs are saying about the legislation.)
Since I wrote the original two posts on the topic, the senate (unfortunately) removed the language from their version of the bill. GrassrootsFreedom.com, which is the organization that sent out the…
cmcclain | February 20, 2007From stuff.co.nz...
Nothing gets National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist Kareen Schnabel's pulse racing quite like deep-sea crustaceans.
Oddly creatures of the deep make my heart skip a beat too!
pharyngula | February 20, 2007That's one interpretation, at least. Shelley finds a new item in a disturbing PETA ad campaign. I really don't understand what they're doing; putting up all these ads to associate meat and butchery and experimentation with sex seems counterproductive. What if the ads work, and everybody starts getting horny every time they go by the meat counter at the grocery? I really don't want to have to waste my time fending off mobs of randy young men and women whenever I whip out a scalpel, either.*
The ad also makes a ridiculous scientific claim—par for the course for PETA—that "the cognitive…
pharyngula | February 20, 2007So I lack tact. I would have been pleased if the fellow had left it there, but suggesting I get tips from Dilbert? Bad form.
petnoyer | February 20, 2007
The ocean is a many-layered thing. If you ask a marine biologist to tell you about these ocean layers, they'll talk about the "photic zone" and the "oxygen minimum zone". These gradients in light and oxygen influence the type and variety of animals you will find there. But if ask an oceanographer to tell you about layers in the sea, they'll tell you about "bottom water", "intermediate water", and "upwelled Atlantic water". Precise measurements of temperature and salinity help to discern water mass 'signatures'. Oceanographers use these signatures to track water masses along a three…
grrlscientist | February 19, 2007Advocates against genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said the findings, which showed that lab rats developed tumors, were released by anti-GM campaigners in Wales. Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control, and a colleague used potatoes that had been genetically modified to produce a protein, lectin. They found cell damage in the…
cmcclain | February 19, 2007
Via Akeakamai, I found this gem of a video from JAMSTEC's Shinkai 6500. The video shows several typical scavenging organisms, crabs, eels, and GIANT ISOPODS (Bathynomus giganteus), feeding on what appears to be a sizeable fish (maybe tuna). For scale the isopods are about 9-12 inches in length and yes they are the world's largest isopod. The video is originally from the "Planet Earth" series.
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2007A Merry President's Day to everyone. May our future presidents not suck as badly as the current one. Here are some science links for you:
Here's a bit about an article that discusses the underuse of the word evolution in the medical literature.
Bacterial illness: it's the boring bacteria, stupid.
Here's a great post about the evolution of vampire bats by ScienceBlogling Darren Naish.
I once had the opportunity to swim in a school of dogsharks. Read all about them.
Ampersand explains how the Ryan White Early Diagnosis Grant Program, aka the "Baby AIDS Bill", does virtually nothing to…
sciencetolife | February 19, 2007
1.Vreni Gurd of Trusted.MD writes about the involvement of dietary sugar in the development of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis.
2.Researchers contradict previous U.S. government advice by declaring the importance of eating seafood during pregnancy.
3.NASA Mars Orbiter finds evidence for ancient underground fluids on the planet.
Image from NASA
petnoyer | February 18, 2007
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) scientists working in the Arctic Ocean unraveled the geological origin of many mysterious mounds, called "pingos", off Canada's north coast. Pingos are small, dome-shaped, ice-cored hills about 40m tall, found along the coast of the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula. "Pingo-like features" are submerged along the continental shelf. Earlier studies claimed these features were formed on land, and then submerged when sea level rose following the end of the last ice age, over 10,000 years ago. Apparently, the reverse may be true. The terrestrial features may…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2007By now, stories about how poorly returning veterans are being treated hardly qualifies as 'news' because, shamefully, it is so common. But this story from the Washington Post is shocking:
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings,…
pharyngula | February 17, 2007What a great story—a Japanese whaling ship is disabled and begging for help, and guess who is available to rescue them? A Greenpeace vessel.
cmcclain | February 17, 2007 Why no cry? Because the government is picking up our paycheck! To further prove the economic futility of a deep-sea fishery.
Out of AAAS in San Francisco...
Rashid Sumaila and Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Canada recently studied the subsidies paid to bottom trawl fleets around the world. They found that the fleets receive over $152 million each year and that without these funds, the deep-sea fisheries industry would operate at a $50 million annual loss."From an ecological perspective we cannot afford to destroy the deep-sea," says Sumaila. "From an economic…
grrlscientist | February 17, 2007Japanese firm Fujitsu is perfecting a technology that can hide information in plain sight by encoding data into a picture that is invisible to the human eye but can be decoded by a cell phone camera. Fujitsu believes this technology will have important uses in the publishing industry.
"The concept is to be able to link the printed page into the digital domain," said Mike Nelson, general manager for sales operations at Fujitsu Europe.
The technique was first used 2,500 years ago when the Greeks sent warnings of attacks on wooden tablets and then covering them in wax and tattooing messages on…
tqa | February 17, 2007It isn't possible to adequately describe what a long military deployment is like for those left behind, but I'm going to try anyway. I'm going to try, even though I know that my own experience and my own views aren't necessarily going to reflect what others in similar situations are going through. I'm going to try, even though I've tried three times before now, and chickened out before clicking on the publish button every time. I'm going to try, in my own inadequate way, to describe something I've only recently come to realize - the degree to which my own feelings about the war affect the way…