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tqa | January 18, 2007It looks like we here at Scienceblogs are not done talking about Dawkins and The God Delusion just yet. The latest skirmish, which I am about to plunge into, started with a post on Pharyngula, which was responded to at Stranger Fruit. The Stranger Fruit article, in turn, just received a counter-response at EvolutionBlog. The disagreement (this time) is over the relevance of expertise in discussions about the existance (or lack thereof) of a god or gods. PZ and Jason don't think that any sort of special expertise is needed to discuss the question of whether or not there is/are god/s. (They…
grrlscientist | January 18, 2007In a city of 8 million people, who found me out of the blue at my watering hole? A hint ...
tqa | January 18, 2007In a post earlier today, I discussed a case where an astroturf group is attempting to stir up popular objection to a clause in a bill before the Senate that mandates disclosure of this type of lobbying activity. In a comment to a post over at Bora's blog, MattXIV raises a point that requires a more detailed response than I could make in a comment there:
The point of restricting direct lobbying of congress is to prevent quid-pro-quos being worked out between lobbyist and congresspeople. I don't see how attempts to influence the views of individuals independent of direct lobbying of congress…
grrlscientist | January 18, 2007
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I received an early birthday gift of a book yesterday, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and already, I am halfway through it!
grrlscientist | January 18, 2007Even though we will never know for sure, it is estimated that approximately 50 million people died in the 1918 influenza pandemic -- more than died in World War One -- but the reason this virus was so deadly has remained elusive. However, scientists recently discovered that this particular strain of influenza was so lethal because it triggered an uncontrolled immune response in its victims. This hyperstimulated immune system actively attacked the victim's lungs, causing serious damage followed by death within a few days.
"Instead of protecting the individuals that were infected with the high…
tqa | January 18, 2007Via Bora, I found a somewhat alarming article. Apparently, it's being claimed, the Lobbying reform law currently in the senate will require bloggers (among other people) to register and file quarterly reports with congress or face possible jail time, "the same as the big K Street lobbyists." Calling it "the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever," the article in question hopes to stir a grassroots swell of oposition to this particular portion of the law.
Being a blogger, this naturally caught my interest, so I went and looked at the law. Then at the source of the article. It…
cmcclain | January 18, 2007In Search of Giant Squid at the Deleware Museum of Natural History. If you are in the neighborhood check it out and pop me an email with some pictures and tales of you encounter.
cmcclain | January 18, 2007Ocean fm (Ireland) reports that...
Fishermen's lives are being put at risk because of the strict rules that apply to when they can fish in Irish waters. That's according to the Chairman of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation, Martin Howley. He said that better quota management by the Marine Department would mean that fishermen would not have to take risks such as going out in stormy weather. And he has branded MEP Sean O'Neachtain's calls yesterday for a phasing out of deep-sea fishing because of the dangers a 'knee-jerk reaction'.
I am too dumbfounded to respond...but I will. At least…
tqa | January 18, 2007Over at the "ID is nothing but science, we really mean it" Uncommon Dissent blog, there's an interesting little biblical discussion going on right now. In this case, DaveScot's remarkable response to a comment on the After the Bar Closes discussion board does an amazing job at evoking that Ghostbusters kind of feel.
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down…
nisbetmc | January 17, 2007From the news wires:
Calling concerns about building George W. Bush's presidential library there unfounded, Southern Methodist University's president told faculty Wednesday the project would increase the school's visibility nationwide...."Over time, the political components of the library complex will fade and the historical aspects will ascend," Turner told 175 of the 600-member faculty at their spring meeting....Wednesday's meeting came about a week after a Faculty Senate meeting in which some professors raised concerns about the library -- everything from whether it would be a terrorist…
tqa | January 17, 2007Actually, there are two quotes today - one from fiction, and the other from the US Government. The first comes from that all-time classic movie, The Princess Bride:
Vizzini: Inconceivable!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.
The second quote comes from The Hill:
"We are fully committed and it is in our best interest to have a U.S. attorney that is confirmed by the Senate," DoJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. "It is inconceivable for a member of Congress to believe that use of an appointment authority to fill a vacancy is in any way an…
petnoyer | January 17, 2007
Our Best of the Abyss awards were conceived to recognize important deep-sea happenings around the world, and intended to pay our humble respects to all the hard working scientists, technicians, and policy makers that make our postings possible here on the blog. If it wasn't for these people, we would have precious few good things to report.
This post, the "Best of Deep Sea News 2006", is a little different because these awards are intended to recognize our best attempts to deliver something fun and interesting. However, rather than turn the contest into a mutual self-admiration society, we…
tqa | January 17, 2007On January 12th, President Bush signed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006. As he so often does, Bush attached a signing statement to the law, reserving the "right" to ignore certain parts of the law he had just signed. I won't pretend to understand everything in the signing statement, but there is one clause in the statement that makes it clear that the President is reserving the right to appoint political hacks for positions that require some knowledge of science:
Subsection 505(a) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, as enacted by…
cmcclain | January 17, 2007And if no one is around will it still make a sound? Crone and cronies et al. on the open access PLoS One explore the Sound Generated by Mid-Ocean Ridge Black Smoker Hydrothermal Vents. Although theory predicted sound from venting smokers, current thinking was that they were actual silent. But they're not! Indeed smokers "radiate significant acoustic energy." And the coolest part (yes I am a biologist), "Vent sounds will provide researchers with new ways to study flow through sulfide structures, and may provide some local organisms with behavioral or navigational cues." You can listen to…
cmcclain | January 17, 2007As followup to this post, I will discuss what biogeography is. Largely, biogeography can be seen as subdisipline of the fields of ecology and evolution. Biogeography has traditionally been the study of the distribution of species across the globe, why a species occurs or does not occur in a given locality. As ranges of organisms overlap, an understanding of distributions then encompasses diversity or the number of organisms in a location. Modern biogeography includes any pattern of any geographic variation, body size, diversity, morphology, gene frequencies, in any ecosystem-such as the…
grrlscientist | January 17, 2007For those of you who were looking for a lot of good science writing, you should check out the latest issue of Tangled Bank, issue 71. This blog carnival celebrates the best science writing recently published in the blogosphere.
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tags: blog carnivals, tangled bank,science
tqa | January 16, 2007It is rare that I find myself at a loss for words. Anyone who knows me can tell you that. Right now, though, I'm having a very, very hard time coming up with family-friendly language that covers the way I feel about President Bush right now. Why? Because I just saw that half-witted, sneering little lower primate say this:
MR. LEHRER: Let me ask you a bottom-line question, Mr. President. If it is as important as you've just said - and you've said it many times - as all of this is, particularly the struggle in Iraq, if it's that important to all of us and to the future of our country, if not…
integrityofscience | January 16, 2007According to sources close to Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush is going to be signaling a "historic shift" on his administration's climate change policy during next Tuesday's State of the Union speech. According to The Observer
Bush and Blair held private talks on climate change before Christmas, and there is a feeling that the US President will now agree a cap on emissions in the US, meaning that, for the first time, American industry and consumers would be expected to start conserving energy and curbing pollution.
'We could now be seeing the beginning of a consensus on a post-…
integrityofscience | January 16, 2007Two brief entries following last weeks' revelation that the Federal Way (Washington) School Board placed a moratorium on the showing of "An Inconvenient Truth" in its classrooms.
On Friday, the Seattle Post Intelligencer editorial board took the school board to task. In "Climate Change: Teach the science" they write,
Any classroom teacher worth his salt is going to let students know about debates on the science of global warming. But equating the consensus on mankind's role in causing the problem (which even the Bush White House now acknowledges, for crying out loud) with the voices of doubt…
grrlscientist | January 16, 2007Did you know that the first edition of Oekologie was published last Sunday? Well, I didn't, but now I do. Oekologie is a blog carnival devoted to the best ecology and environmental science posts from across the blogosphere, so you will probably find it to be quite interesting.
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tags: blog carnival, Oekologie