voltagegate | May 7, 2007Oprah makes me sick. She recently had another uber-hypocritical show about environmental issues and I thought it would be appropriate to repost my reaction to her first show about "going green", which was aired last June. Hey, at least her blouse is green, right?
Has anyone noticed how Oprah collapses into a pool of plasmodium when her guests start talking science? Sure, when it's relationship issues or the inner child, she's all over it, wielding advice like a psycho-babble hammer.
I got a phone call from my mother yesterday afternoon."Turn on channel four, Oprah's talking about global…
voltagegate | May 4, 2007It's beginning to look a lot like spring in Maryland, which means that the suburbanites will be out in their yards clearing dead brush and leaves, sculpting unkempt hedges and painstakingly homogenizing their lawns. I wrote this post last May, asking why lawns are treated like an extension of the carpet.
If I have to see another white middle-aged actor stroking "his" lawn, I'm going to (insert drastic measure here)!
Ortho's latest pesticide claims it will kill over 100 specific insect types on contact.
The problem is, there are a lot of invertebrates that keep a natural lawn in great shape.…
voltagegate | May 4, 2007David at the World's Fair has been unceremoniously sucked into Facebook. After wrestling with Its vast networking powers (as well as Its opioid addictive properties), he has brought the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique to Facebook.
If you're on Facebook, join. If you're not, join Facebook and then join.
voltagegate | May 4, 2007The Ecological Society of America published a special open access issue of Frontiers in Ecology on Wednesday, focusing on sustainability in light of unprecedented human mobility, aka globalization.
All of the articles agree on one thing: Ecology itself needs to be more effectively globalized, placing sound science in the hands of effective communicators and policy makers.
Two articles discuss this in greater detail, both worth a look: the introduction and a short paper reviewing applied ecological knowledge.
voltagegate | May 3, 2007E. Jean Carroll, the infamous advice columnist for ELLE magazine, picked 40 sex columnists from student newspapers across the country, and our own Amanda Baldwin was one of them. Carroll set all 40 columnists up on her website, giving them space to post their columns for the nation to read.
To see Amanda's contributions, select her name from the drop down list (one of the first on the list; the site is javascripted, so there's no direct link).
I feel like a proud parent. Amanda has gotten so much crap over the past couple years as our sex columnist, from English professors giving her a hard…
voltagegate | May 3, 2007Sorry for the lack of substantial updates this week. I'm graduating in about three weeks and looking down the barrel of tests/papers-before-finals-week as well as finals.
In addition to that, I've been gathering data (and posts) from the Blogger Bioblitz. I'm hoping we can have everything tabulated in the next week or so.
I should have a bit more substance up by the weekend, including the next in the biomes series.
voltagegate | May 2, 2007Julie MacDonald, the Bush appointee accused of suppressing the Endangered Species Act last year has resigned after proof of her corruption was brought to light:
Julie MacDonald left her position as the Department of Interior's deputy assistant secretary of fish, wildlife and parks, from which she controlled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species program.
Her resignation follows a finding March 29 by the agency's Inspector General Earl Devaney that she violated federal ethics rules by sending "nonpublic information" to industry lobbyists.
MacDonald repeatedly leaked internal…
voltagegate | May 1, 2007"All we have yet discovered is but a trifle in comparison with what lies hid in the great treasury of nature."
-Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
voltagegate | May 1, 2007I caught an episode of National Geographic's Wild Chronicles discussing the Wollemi pine, a rare, ancient contemporary of the dinosaurs that was discovered alive in Australia in the '90's. The stand is the only one known in the entire world, and conservationists are trying to find ways to preserve it.
Australian officials hope to bolster the tree's numbers by encouraging gardeners around the world to each take one home and plant it. Unlike other nonnative species, the Wollemi doesn't grow or reproduce fast enough to be an invasive threat, experts say.
In the U.S., the tree is sold exclusively…
voltagegate | May 1, 2007For the kids, of course. I got this comment on my basics post about tropical dry forests last night around midnight:
Hey, I just wanted to say Thanks for being a GREAT resource for my school project on the Tropical Dry Forest Biome. This has helped greatly and I hope in the near future I do some more research of my own to see how I personally can help save these biomes around the world. Once again Thanks for your help.
~*hugs*~
I'll throw down for the sake of any late night school project; I've certainly had enough of those myself.
voltagegate | April 30, 2007From Ontario to Greece to Panama, what are participating bloggers finding out in the field? This thread will be constantly updated throughout the week, blog carnival style, compiling all of the bioblitzes that are being conducted. Please contact me if you have something up; I'll make sure I add it to the list.
Don't forget to check out all of the participant's photos at the Flickr group (over 300 photos now).
For info about the Blogger Bioblitz, follow the links:
Read more about the blitz
Visit the forum
See submission guidelines
Join the Flickr group
Find a field guide online
Download a…
voltagegate | April 29, 2007After the past month of planning, promoting and actually surveying, today is the last day of the Blogger Bioblitz (B3). But that doesn't mean we're quite done.
Sara, Jenn and I will be tabulating data over the next week or so, getting a final count of species and shipping the data off to Madhu and Greg for mapping. We're hoping to have everything complete in the first couple weeks.
The link list of B3 posts will be updated tomorrow morning, when I'm sure all the posts are in. If I have missed anyone, e-mail me.
I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone involved. It started with just one idea and…
voltagegate | April 28, 2007Zuska blasted some moron at SciAm for referring to our own Shelley Batts as "attractive" during his summary of Shelley's recent run in with the lawyers at Wiley over the reproduction of a research figure:
Excuse me? "Seems to be attractive"? WTF???
I mean, what the f*ck does that have to do with anything in the story? Why the gratuitous mention of Shelley's appearance?
Oh, I know why. Because she's a WOMAN. And women, at all times, you must remember that you are women first and foremost. Your appearance is ever and always an issue, and no matter what the hell you are ever doing - be it…
voltagegate | April 27, 2007I love to read old science books, especially those that discuss biology before the discovery of DNA (aka the "mechanism of heredity"). I found this particular book in a small antique store in Pennsylvania and was struck by a small passage affirming the viability of evolution.
From The Outline of Science: A Plain Story Simply Told, published in 1937:
The Evolution-idea is a master-key that opens many doors. It is a luminous interpretation of the world, throwing the light of the past upon the present. Everything is seen to be an antiquity, with a history behind it - a natural history, which…
voltagegate | April 26, 2007"Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, our school, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life."
-E.O. Wilson
voltagegate | April 25, 2007Tangled Bank #78 at About: Archeology
Carnival of the Green #74 at Evangelical Ecologist
I'll be hosting the next edition of Oekologie on May 15th. See the tab above for more info.
voltagegate | April 25, 2007Man, this game sucks. They show you what amounts to be an extra depressing trailer of An Inconvenient Truth and then unleashes you on the world - to stop emitting so much CO2.
Usually when a game is set in a post-apocalyptic world, you at least get a gun or a blade (or a gunblade) and have to undermine the oppressive, corrupt regime that has risen in the absence of order. In Planet Green Game, in the face of utter destruction, you take your car in for an oil change.
Everyone knows that the only good educational game ever made was Oregon Trail. Sure, my oxen always drowned while pulling a…
voltagegate | April 25, 2007"There should be more attention paid to scientific research in the ecology area, and I think that such attention to proper environmental concerns would make the public feel much better about it."
-Thomas R. Cech