voltagegate | April 15, 2007Carnival of the Godless #64
Oekologie #4.1
This was the biggest edition of Oekologie yet and Matt did a great job compiling it. We're still looking for hosts from October 2007 on.
voltagegate | April 14, 2007I usually despise laying out the newspaper on the weekends, but this weekend might be a little fun. The entire issue, with the exception of sports, is focused on Earth Day.
The Sierra Student Coalition at FSU has pushed their Earth Day celebration up a few days to be held on the same day as our new president's inauguration, where they will ask the new pres to sign a commitment to combat global warming at Frostburg, an excellent political move by the Coalition.
The Bottom Line happens to come out on the same day. We have the columnists writing themed pieces, reporters covering Earth Day…
voltagegate | April 13, 2007PNAS will print a study next Tuesday that takes a closer look at the effects of deforestation at specific latitudes. The study suggests that deforestation of higher latitudes may lead to a greater cooling effect than leaving areas intact or implementing afforestation plans. Needless to say, their findings have riled some folks.
Part of what they found was already accepted. Forests on and around the equator (mostly rain forests) are exceedingly good at cycling water back into the atmosphere. When the forests are removed en masse, this evapotranspiration is greatly reduced, allowing the…
voltagegate | April 12, 2007Our video game columnist has picked up the blogging bug again and is posting like mad at The AT Wire. I've always been a fan of the column as a guy who was playing when the NES was new, and still plays to this day. Gaming culture needs a serious analyst who isn't 13 years old or 25 and acts like they're 13 on G4.
At Derek's request, I will actually be writing a guest post at The AT Wire within the next week about my first couple of weeks playing my first MMO. More details on that later.
It's also Derek's birthday. Go over and check out the digs.
voltagegate | April 12, 2007I'm sure everyone has heard by now that the life of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut has been cut short:
His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
He was an ornery man and an ornery writer; if the fall had not have happened, I wouldn't have been surprised to see Vonnegut live well beyond 90 years. In fact, after seeing him on the Daily Show some months ago, he seemed invincible.
I have always held Vonnegut in my elusive and incomplete top [insert number] favorite authors list. He…
voltagegate | April 11, 2007Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head.
And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him.
-from "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov
Before spring break, I received a packet in the mail from one of my readers--a member of the faculty. Inside I found a photocopy of "Superiority", a science fiction short by Arthur C. Clark, a memo from the FSU bookstore to the faculty addressing textbook ordering protocols and a note from the professor, believe it or not, that tied it all together…
voltagegate | April 11, 2007My news editor wrote a great column (filling in for me) about the politicization of science and Climate Crisis Action Day last issue that I meant to link but never got to it:
As a science columnist, I would guess that I would be ignoring a pretty specific requirement of the Voltage Gate without addressing the scientific implications involved. Climate change is a scientific issue, one that will require the collective knowledge and drive of many of the world's best. However, the lines between science, politics and culture are becoming increasingly blurred. The overwhelming dedication to…
voltagegate | April 10, 2007"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."
-John Hope Franklin
voltagegate | April 10, 2007Heather, my fiance, finally found a few hours between painting, printmaking, throwing pots, writing papers and taking exams to draw up the second biomes banner in the series, this time, as you can see, representing an African savanna. I'll be working on a tabbed page (like contact, about, etc.) to compile her work. Heather is willing to take commissions (for blog art or other media), and can be reached at haravenscroft0 [at] gmail.com.
From left to right: A Spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), a male Greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), Meerkats (Suricata suricatta), an African White-backed…
voltagegate | April 9, 2007"A major environmental issue is the question of lowering carbon dioxide emissions to ameliorate the greenhouse effect.
Those who profit from foul air and a poisoned atmosphere will profess to worry about more expensive automobiles. But I see no percentage in gloating over a few hundred dollars saved while dying of lung cancer and emphysema, and while the Earth warms, the ice caps melt and the coastal regions drown."
-Isaac Asimov, 1990
voltagegate | April 9, 2007Is anyone else biting at the bit to play this game?
I have been following the progress of Sims guru Will Wright in his latest creation, Spore, which attempts to make a game out of evolution.
Life and eventually culture is playable in a succession of phases, which are linked on the timeline of guided development: molecular, cellular, creature, tribal, civilization, terraform and galactic. Wright has incorporated much of his previous projects into Spore, heavy on the SimCity once you hit the tribal phase. More below the fold, including a longer video tutorial.
Development seems to rely on the…
voltagegate | April 7, 2007The ESA blog posted a thoughtful contribution about the philosophy of and a possible solution to "diagnosing" the ecology of endangered species, the author presenting his own work with the endangered Marbled Murrelet as an example:
It's a simple question that I often get asked about an endangered species: "What caused it to decline?" but I find it to be one of the hardest to answer without giving a hand-waiving response. Determining causes of decline for a species based on data-driven conclusions rather than informed opinion is challenging because it first requires figuring out which…
voltagegate | April 6, 2007From "Land of the Falling Lakes", Nature's look at the Croatia's amazing Plitvice Lakes National Park, land of the bizarre, sightless olm, sometimes called the "human fish":
voltagegate | April 6, 2007The nature of the comment thread is ultimately predictable. It's a like a Great Catharsis.
voltagegate | April 6, 2007Bev has compiled a link list of useful webpages - keys of all kinds - for identifying all kinds of animals. The list should be immediately useful for our upcoming Blogger Bioblitz, but it's a good page to bookmark for future reference too. Thanks Bev!
voltagegate | April 5, 2007"It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into; harshly and beautifully colored, broken and worn until its bones are exposed, its great sky without a smudge of taint from Technocracy, and in hidden corners and pockets under its cliffs the sudden poetry of springs. Save a piece of country like that intact, and it does not matter in the slightest that only a few people every year will go into it. That is precisely its value."
-Wallace Stegner, referring to the deserts of Southeastern Utah