Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Happy Blogiversary
Byzantium's Shores just celebrated impressive
fourth birthday. Go say Hello.
Grand Rounds
The latest edition of Grand Rounds is up on
A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure.
Circus of the Spineless #6
Welcome to the
Circus of the Spineless. I hope you all forgot the beauty and elegance of the previous edition of the Circus by now, so you won't say "Yeew, this is, like, soooo con-ven-tio-nal!".
I was thinking of organizing the carnival according to
Borges' Chinese Classification of Animals, but that did not work: "dogs" and "pigs" are explicitely forbidden here. How many Invertebrates are capable of breaking a vase? Not to mention that most invertebrates look like a fly from a distance anyway.
Then, I was thinking of making a similar type of classification myself, e.g., "pretty pictures", "blogs with yellow background", "bloggers with the middle name starting with T", but that did not work either: some categories were very full, and others quite empty.
In the end, I had to go with the conventional classification, which revealed a bias in itself. While we may complain about the propenderance of cat and dog pictures on blogs, why are there no posts about sponges, cnidarians and annelides, not to mention tardigrades, rotifers and chaetognaths? Ah, well, we go with what we have:
Butterflies and Moths
Let's start with
Some tropical lepidoptera from
Urban Dragon Hunters.
From Aydin Örstan's
Snail's Tales lots of kinky stuff:
An upside down butterfly,
What are these butterflies doing? and
Sex on the grass.
Firefly Forest Blog took some great pictures of a
Great Purple Hairstreak,
Gray Hairstreak Revealed and a
Texan Crescent.
Photography Class - Butterflies and
More butterflies (and a moth) from TBG from
Tortoise Trail.
Pharyngula explains a recent paper on the
Evolution of a polyphenism in moths.
Stridulations is an entomologist who adds more to the story in
The amazing polyphenic Manduca.
What
butterflies are these, asks
Annotated Budak.
Follow the life cycle of a sulphur:
Sulphur Chrysalis - "Artsy" Lighting,
Sulphur Chrysalis,
Sulphur Larva - Early Instar (otra vez),
Sulphur Larva - Early Instar,
Pigs (Two Different Ones),
Gorged on the greeenery and
Flower Afficionado on
The Taming of the Band-Aid.
Social Insects
Matt Dowling of
Ontogeny runs a series called Here's Your Moment of Friday Ant Zen. You can see some fancy ants there, including
Temnothorax curvispinosus,
Mexican Honeypot Ants, or
Torture-rack ants.
Matt is not the only one. You can find Friday Ant Blogging on
Henry's Webiocosm Blog, too:
Ants, Pupae and Larvae.
City Bees keeps a couple of hives of honeybees on her rooftop in New York City. You can see the hives in
Snow bees. Then, follow the daily adventures of a novice beekeper in
Let's Not Split Quite Yet,
Battling the Midwinter Mite Menace, Part 2,
The Spaghetti Method and
Dirty Bees.
Have you ever seen bee-swarms in a tree? Carola of
Bee-si-ness saw some
Swarms in January.
Bees Being 'Trained' as Odor Detectors from
Apitherapy News.
From the
Firefly Forest Blog some more:
The Assassinated Honeybee and a
Sweat Bee.
Other Insects
Chaotic Utopia is in a Kafkaesque mood this week. Ecdosteroids and Juvenile Hormone are in just the right alignment for the onset of
Metamorphosis.
From
Rigor Vitae, an illustrated discussion of the Orthoptera's importance to humans, as competitor and food:
If You Can't Beat 'em, Eat 'em! and an unfairly whimsical look at Megarhysa, the queen of North American insects:
Giant Ichneumon Wasps.
Carl Zimmer of
The Loom wrote about the wasp that parasitizes cockroaches in
The Wisdom of Parasites.
I added some more information in
Revenge of the Zombifying Wasp and Carl had an update:
Answers to your parasite questions.
A chorus for raucous souls also
comments.
Michael Brown of
Macro Art In Nature is a professional nature photographer (do not copy or download his pics - they are copyrighted!). Check out these beauties:
Nature's Dragons, And Understanding Them,
The Fly,
Swallowtail Butterfly and
A Final Moment In The Spotlight - Lacewing.
From
Naturally Connected some pictures:
Giant Stickbug and
Mantid Territory.
From
Concrete to Cottages a
Dragonfly At Rest.
From
Invasive Species Blog, Jennifer sends a
gypsy moth and an
ant.
Ben Cruachan shows us a
Tachinid fly.
This is old, but I don't think it was in an older edition of the Circus:
At home with the dragon.
Bug's Eyes caught a
tiger beetle, then wrote some more
about it.
ScienceBase explains
Cannibal Mormon Crickets.
Spiders
Chris Clarke has moved
Creek Running North to a new URL (so change your links accordingly). This month's entry,
The cursorial life, is really worth reading, as long as you are not afraid of spiders.
Annotated Budak, is a blogging duck who went to see a talk - all about
spiders.
Spiderblog ran away from scary and dangerous
assassin spiders to find a comfy new home under the new name of
Points Of Departure, where he observes a spider in action:
The Leaf Curler.
The Saga of a Spider in the Bathroom in two Acts:
Act I and
Act II.
Along Came A Spider and it's a Dockside.
Burning Silo is a wonderful new nature blog. Here are some
Watchful Spiders and
Assassin Spiders.
Ben Cruachan again, this time with a
Wife Frightener.
Firefly Forest Blog again: some
Mealybugs and a
Cricket.
Julie of
Stridulations lists some of her favourite bug-related
websites.
Other Arthropods
Nuthatch of
Bootstrap Analysis finds many legs in
Footloose.
Journal of the Plague Year has nothing but post after post of beautiful photographs of insects and other arthropods.
Nemesiario is a blog in Spanish. I think that
Parasitos refers to mites parasitising bees.
Also from
Burning Silo, you can see
Narceus Millipedes and a variety of
Snow Creatures.
The importance of
Krill Feces, from
Deep-Sea News.
Firefly Forest Blog has found a
Winged Aphid.
Molluscs
What is the meaning of snails?
The other ultimate question asked by
Snail's Tales. The answer? Just look at these beauties:
An alien in Florida: Subulina octona,
A twisted snail,
Gallandina annularis and
Land snails of Turkey: Discus rotundatusThere cannot be a Circus of the Spineless without the grogeous Nudibranchs of
Bouphonia. Check out
Flabellina expotata,
Kentodoris rubescens,
Discordoris boholensis and
Plocamopherus tilesii.
As most of you know, PZ Myers of
Pharyngula is the prime source of cephalopod blogging. First, there is a whole Friday Cephalopod Series:
Moroteuthis robusta,
Argonauta nodosa,
Sepioteuthis sepiodea in flagrante and
Iridoteuthis iris. But there is more, as in cuttlefish mating strategies:
Sensitivity, charm and cleverness: very sexy. PZ has also been moving some old cephalopod sex posts to the new blog:
The cephalopod sex series, most of which have predate the Circus of the Spineless.
If you have not seen this dramatic movie clip before, go to
Lancelet to see the Giant Octopus catching and eating a decent-sized shark.
Deep-Sea News reports on the invasion of
Humboldt Squid.
There are two blogs titled Squidblog. One is COM, the other is NET. From the
Squidblog.com a look into the role
squid are playing in William Gibson's new work. From the
Squidblog.net comes
Squids may help determine global warming impact: scientist.
Other Invertebrates
Snail's Tales messes up my classification by combining an arthropod and an "other invertebrate":
a water scorpion and a peanut worm.
Ragesoss 2.02 is doing us a great favour by scanning in and making freely available the gorgeous
Haeckel's illustrations.
How Vertebrates evolved out of Invertebrates is far from clear. A new study suggests a big reorganization of our understanding of the family relationships between vertebrates, tunicates, lancelets and echinoderms. Carl Zimmer of
The Loom explains in
The Dawn of Brains and Bones.
Since that study involves lancelets, it is expected that
Lancelet would pick it up, and he does:
Old icons will die hard.
And
Evolgen adds his own take in
Long Branch Attraction and the Branching Order of Deuterostomes.
The force that through... is enchanted by organisms that live in extreme environments, including the
Xtreme Worms.
Matt Downling of
Ontogeny explores toxins in
Marine Flatworm + Puffer Fish Toxin = Deadly Invertebrate.
Both
Matt and
Carl comment on the Evolution of Leeches.
Apostropher observes penis-fencing in
Moral degeneracy in flatworms (and
here is the movie).
A duck went to a museum and saw a lot of
different invertebrates.
Fragments From Floyd ponders
Parasites.
Bouphonia brings in some less-represented phila in
the wall charts of Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart.
In this post by
Deep-Sea News, you need to skip the Vertebrates in the beginning before you get to some Guinness record-holding
Invertebrates.
Other Organisms
Premenopaws is taking biology and just went over a cool lab with a bunch of
wonderful creatures.
Pim van Meurs on
Panda's Thumb wrote about humans. I know - these are Vertebrates, not really elligible for this carnival, but those are very Spineless-friendly humans:
Entomologists unite behind evolutionary theory.
I Got Bugs got bugs
of a different kind.
And that's all for this month.
Next month, let's get together again on March 31st. Look at the
homepage for detailed information as it comes in.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Ballot-box stuffing...
Someone accessed 40 Palm Beach County voting machines Nov 2004:
The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Read the rest...
(Hat-tip:
Mungowit's End)
Dennis Weaver, RIP
Sheriff
Sam McCloud rode into the sunset.
My brother and I never missed an episode when we were kids...
And he was fantastic in "Duel"
Koufax Update
Best Commenter category has been posted on Wampum. The semi-finals voting will start in a couple of days, I reckon...
Octavia Butler RIP
Edward Champion and
David Brin have more.
Science News
*
Claim of reversed human evolution sparks skepticism, interest:
Scientists' reactions have ranged from deep doubt to curiosity over last week's report of a mutation whose victims walk on all fours.
*
Jurassic 'beaver' from China found:
A fossil shows mammals conquered the water far earlier than we thought, researchers say.
*
Scientists report new kind of cosmic explosion:
Astronomers say they have detected a new type of blast that has sent scientists worldwide scrambling to telescopes.
OAC Blog
One America Blog had a great makeover - it looks great, it is more user-friendly than before and is full of information. Go and look around.
Carnival of the Green
The latest edition of Carnival of the Green has been posted on
The Naked Vegetarian.
Chris Mooney is starting to write a new book
If you liked "Republican War on Science" you are likely interested to know what the topic of Chris' new book will be. For that, you will have to click
here.
Another one gone to seed....
FrinkTank, a fun-looking blog new to me, has moved from its
old place to the SEED scienceblogs farm at
this new URL.
On John Edwards again
On the heels of
Edwards, Civil Liberties, and Abortion, Neil wrote another two posts that will make you think about Edwards again:
Don't Feed the Regionalism Monster and
Bipartisan Maverick Destruction Advice.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Tar Heel Tavern
The Hope And Perseverance edition of the Tar Heel Tavern is up on
Poetic Acceptance.
You can discuss the Nature research now
Take a look at the new
Nature Newsblog.
Stoat on ScienceBlogs
The Stoat has moved from its old address
here to its new address
here, joining the racing stable of SEED scienceblogs.
Hot Shot
My wife told me she saw this on CBS earlier tonight. A story about an autistic kid who scored 20 points in the last four minutes of the basketball game - the first time ever that he even suited up.
Internet is a fantastic thing - the movie is already online. Watch the
clip.
What is going on?
Is the US smuggling weapons from Bosnia to Rwanda:
US military planes criss-cross Europe using bogus call sign?
(hat-tip:
Yakima Gulag)
Are you a good shot?
Try to hit quail and miss Harry while playing this game at
Quail Hunting School. Also, see what happens if you hit Harry too many times.
Link-love: Catching up with the shifty alphabet of science blogs
Posting the links to the whole series (so far) over on
Majikthise, brought in a number of new blogs to my attention from the commenters. Some of those, of course, start with letters A through S, so I will have to make up for it first, before moving on to T and more the next time....
When averages are misleading,
Intelligent cosmology redux,
First they came for the evolutionary biologists... on
0xDE.
The tragedy of fabrication in biomedical research on
Oncology Updates.
Crappy paper,
Who do you think you are? and
Ferkristsake!!! on
A Scientist's Life.
Biopeer:
New bird flu cases in Cambodia and Germany,
Experimental new drug successful against all forms of TB,
China starts human trials for indigenous AIDS drug and much, much more...
Pursue the diagonal and you lose, my friends... by
Calamus.
Old crop corn starts to move and
Less-beany bean could fit in well in Georgia are just some of the latest offerings at
Ag Moment, run by the same guy who writes on
Common Sense for the Biochemist.David Brin, the SF writer who blogs on
Contrary Brin, sometimes takes a break from politics and posts about science, as in
Cool items... science, innovation move on....
Dotdotdot (or RatLab):
It's snow joke.
How Much Will People Sacrifice To Reduce Greenhouse Gases? and
On Falling DNA Sequencing Costs on
FuturePundit.
From The
Geomblog:
String theory and NP-hardness,
Grants.gov and
Concentration of Measure.
Guns, Germs & Steeled is a blog I recently discovered (in comments on Pharyngula) and like very much:
60 Minutes to Highlight Consequences of Global Warming,
Communication Strategies of the Intelligent Design Movement,
Restoring Scientific Integrity: One Can Make A Difference and
Intelligent Design and Evolution.
X Chromosome Inactivation in the Mothers of Gay Sons on
Ware Farms.
Heaven is not the sky:
Evolution Unfalsifiable? and
Limiting God by opposing evolution.
Humans in Science:
Where do they get the energy? and
Some good news: ID not by G-D but perhaps ET?.
Science: Uncovering and Discovering:
The Colours of Dyes.
The Scientist Errant:
Recycling, Boo! Toward an American Ethic of RestraintYou can get a feed for all of
ScienceBase blogs
here.
Life Science Tools of the Trade:
A Negative is a positive?,
The multi-purpose survival kit,
What the heck?!? and
Sour milk.
Common Rodent Friday: Eastern Gray Squirrel and
Friday Backyard Bird Blogging: Blue Jay - Cyanocitta cristata on
Henry's Webiocosm Blog.
Parsimony: Fisher vs. Wright,
Fisher on Genetic Drift,
Plug Away! and
3 Favorites for the Week on
Hpb Etc.
Qigong 101,
Irreducible Complexity and
6.5e+9 and Growing on
I ♥ Dr. Calvin.
In the Pipeline:
Because I Never Lie, and I'm Always Right,
Gold and Lasers and
NEJM vs. Its Contributors, Round Two.
White Pileated In Big Woods and
Searching Tips on
Ivory-bills LiVE!!Japing Ape is written by
a gorilla. Not always Safe For Work, but funny and insightful.
Google Earth in Nature on
Nascent.
Ear wax revisited,
Technorati for biology,
Why are some papers considered classics? and
Nodalpoint Forums on
Nodalpoint.
And biologists who know no mathematics also know no biology,
Welcome to the House of Books / Have yourself a slice of chocolate cake…. and
But that’s what makes us human! by William Tozier on
Notional Slurry.
A bra made of algae? Eww! and
Bernard (almost) gets it right are some of the recent offerings on
Ernie's 3D Pancakes.
Phawrongula mirrors Pharyngula, but
in verse.
Randy Olson's science communication suggestions, This is, for historians of science, the equivalent of finding one of the original gospels, The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex, then and now on
Ragesoss 2.02. This
post introduces several other History Of Science blogs, as well as
WikiProject History of Science.
Random John reloaded:
One of the funniest things ever …,
Culture wars: elephant vs. humans,
Theories that have gone to ruins and
While other people contemplate the politics of this, I’ll contemplate the statistics.
I have no idea how it happened that I did not link to
RealClimate yet. Here are a couple of the latest posts:
Sir Nicholas Shackleton and
Cloudy outlook for albedo?.
Scientific Assessment is both a blog alliance and a group blog. I should post there more often. Recently:
Earth's Population To Hit 6.5 Billion At 7:16 pm Today,
Scientist's Visa Denial Sparks Outrage in India and
Science Blogger Conference?.
I've never been to
Slashdot in my life, but I just learned that they have a
science section.
Notes from the Lab: Multicore and more and
Guerilla Informatics – Genzyme Style on
Snowdeal.
Have you followed the
Green Blogathon? Several blogs blogging like crazy on all things environmental.
Previously in this series:
Link-Love: A little bit of science bloggingLink-Love: some more science bloggingLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part IIILink-love: more Alphabet Soup of science blogsLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part VLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science BlogsLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part VIILink-Love: Science Blogs Qs and RsLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part IX
Quail Tells All
Watch the
clip of quail's White House press conference.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Weekend Online Quizzes (because everyone is doing it)
| You Were a Snake |
You have a primal energy that drives you to explore the mysteries of life.
A nearly immortal soul, you'll live a very long life. |
| Your Brain's Pattern |
Structured and organized, you have a knack for thinking clearly.
You are very logical - and you don't let your thoughts get polluted with emotions.
And while your thoughts are pretty serious, they're anything from boring.
It's minds like yours that have built the great cities of the world! |
New Carnival!
A Hundred Flowers Blooming is a new carnival for Left/Liberal blogs, organized by Oolon Colluphid of
Cogito, Ergo Sum…Atheos
Carnival of Bad History - call for submissions
Next issue of the
Carnival of Bad History will be held on
Ahistoricality on Monday, March 13th.
Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown
Joe Bageant will make you think. Perhaps even act.
Edwards on Rocketboom
Amanda Congdon interviews John Edwards (I think this is the second time). See the
vlog here (hat-tip:
Benny)
Obligatory Reading of the Day
Read
On Patriotism by Paul Musgrave, one of the final essays before he shuts down the blog. Here is just a short excerpt - go read the rest:
If there is an idealized America–not merely a “purer” version of the United States that exists only in our imaginations like a Norman Rockwell painting, but a concept of the United States in a purely ideational sense–than patriotism for an American must mean loyalty to this idea above all. The leftist slogan “Dissent is Patriotic” expresses one of the implications of this idea, because in certain situations dissent from the policies of an American government will deviate from one’s ideal America; the obverse is that often it is loyalty which is patriotic, an understanding that the bold scribblers of the left (or the right when it is in opposition) are unlikely to champion when it is inexpedient.
(hat-tip:
Ed Brayton)
Friday, February 24, 2006
Circus of the Spineless - call for submissions
This is the last call for entries! I will be hosting
Circus of the Spineless - the blog carnival of Invertebrates - here on February 28th.
Pictures, stories and essays that have something to do with living organisms without spines (no, not politicians) are all welcome. Multiple entries are welcome. There are lots of species of Invertebrates, so there should be lots of posts about them - more than, let's say, cats or dogs.
Send the entries by 27th at 8pm EST to:
Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com
Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions
Despite of all the scary stuff happenning this week, Erin of
Poetic Acceptance intends to go ahead and host the
Tar Heel Tavern this weekend.
The theme of the week, quite appropriately, is Hope and Perseverence. So send your entries to
emonahan AT carolina DOT rr DOT com by Saturday 2/25 at 9PM and she'll have it up on Sunday morning.
South Dakota action
From JREG mail:
South Dakota's Legislature passed a bill today, a bill which if signed into law by the Governor, will set the stage of a new legal battle to attack--and if successful, overturn--Roe vs. Wade!
Governor Rounds of South Dakota has already stated that he is 'inclined' to sign the bill into law at this time!
While this story is still developing, it won't be long before this erupts across the blogosphere & when it does, we'll try to keep you updated on it all.
In the meantime, learn more about this issue by visiting JREG and voicing your concern. You can even contact Governor Rounds through the Address/Links provided in our Action Item on this issue.
Remember, this has not YET been signed into law, so there's still time to persuade Mr. Rounds that to do so would do nothing more than hurt the Citizens of South Dakota who undoubtably would be affected during this long drawn out court battle. A battle that would drain State resources and ultimately be met by being overturned by the courts.
This Bill helps none, but stands to hurt many.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Koufax Update
Award category
Best Blog, Professional/Sponsored Division is up on Wampum.
Messing with kids' heads - what the Right is good at
Do you remember the monstrosity that is
Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, a blatant Republican propaganda disguised as a children's book? I have linked to some good reviews
here and
here.
Well, another one came out, just as bad:
Help! Mom! Hollywood's in My Hamper!All those marginal types that the Right loves to portray as representative of the Democrats, like Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand, Susan Sarandon....hey, where is Ward Churchill?
But there is now one that is even more insidious:
Why Mommy Is a Democrat (it is not on Amazon yet, if it is not an Internet hoax to begin with) that masquerades as a kids' book positive of Democrats, yet it seems to be a plant from the Right. The "values" portrayed in there are not liberal, but the straw-men that the Rightists always put up as being liberal. It is awful!
Nick Gillespie from The Left also thinks it is a plant. So does
Headmistress, zookeeper whose political affiliation I did not catch.
Only the
American Digest from The Right thinks it is serious - well, when did the Right ever have a sense of humor?
Pooflinger Is Back
After a long break,
Pooflingers Anonymous is blogging again. So, if you de-listed Matt it's time to re-list him and pay him a visit to say Hello.
What 'traditional' marriage?
Do the
pop quiz...
On Framing
You can watch George Lakoff give a talk
here (Hat-tip:
Sir Oolius)
Animalcules 1.2
The second edition of
Animalcules, the microbial carnival (microcarnival?) is up on Aetiology. Check out the
homepage and sign up to host if this is up your alley...
It was not PC that lost Summers his job
Neil and
Matt describe the inter-University power struggles that forced Summers to resign.
Pinky and the Brain
Several science blogs have posted
this link to the Pinky And The Brain clip explaining the anatomy of the brain.
While that cartoon is one of my favourites, I have a problem dissociating myself from the notion that these two characters depict Bush and Cheney....
Obligatory Readings of the Day
Incommensurate Worldviews by Allen MacNeill compares the worldviews of mathematical/physical scientists and biologists,
TMTOWTDI by Adam Lerymenko compares worledviews of computer programmers and biologists, while
The Salem Hypothesis by PZ Myers compares the worldviews of engineers and scientists. Now, put those three together...
Science BloggerCon?
There have been so many BloggerCons already that specialized conferences have already sprung up, like
BlogeHerCon and
Podcastercon.
So, why not have SciBloggerCon somewhere within the next year or so? There are apparently
gazillions of science bloggers around the world and it would be so cool to meet each other face-to-face and share a beer and stories.
It could be organized as an
Unconference, or it can have a more definite schedule. I can already think of several appropriate panel topics, e.g., :
- using blogs in popularization of science
- blogging against pseudoscience, medical quackery, bad history and all forms of Creationism
- blogs and other online tools in science instruction in high school and college
- Blogs In Action: fighting back against the Republican War On Science
- blogs and the perilous waters of academic job market
- online open-source journals and blog-posts as cited references: can a blogged hypothesis confer primacy?
- finding collaborators online: effects on scientists in the developing world
Any takers?
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Upcoming Science-Related Carnivals
Animalcules is a carnival collecting posts about microorganisms. It is scheduled to appear tomorrow, so send your entries by tonight - midnight CST - to
Aetiology at: aetiology AT gmail DOT com
Friday Ark collects posts about all living animals. It appears every Friday on
The Modulator and it is fine if you are a little late - it gets updates for a day or two afterwards.
Next
Carnival of the Green, devoted to the environment, will be hosted by
The Naked Vegetarian on February 27th.
Circus of the Spineless is the carnival that is nominally about Invertebrates, but in reality, anything alive that does not have a spinal cord is fair game. It can even have a notochord, or have no nervous system at all.... Pictures, stories, movies, essays. Held right here on
Science And Politics on February 28th. Deadline is February 27th at 8pm EST. Send entries to: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com.
Next edition of the medical carnival,
Grand Rounds, will be hosted on
A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure on February 28th.
Posts about birds go here:
I And The Bird will be held on
The Birdchaser on March 2nd (deadline is February 28th).
The Tangled Bank is the mother of all science carnivals, covering all topics about science, nature, medicine, environment and the inetraction between science and politics. Next edition will be hosted by Tara of
Aetiology next Wednesday (send by Monday night).
Koufax Update
The
Best Single Issue Blog category for the Koufax Awards is now up on Wampum.
The funny thing is, this blog you are reading right now, as eclectic as it is, got nominated by someone in this category...
Carnival of Feminists
The Ninth Carnival of Feminists is up on
Mind the Gap!
Sorry, Sacha Cohen...
Starting today, ice is
not slippery any more. Winter Olympics skating and hockey events cancelled.
Two Views On Erection
Was
Pinnochio an incomplete
genetic knock-out?
It is 6AM. Do you know what your Blood Alcohol Level is?
Well, it depends what you had to drink and when...I think
this is cool.
Balkan War Criminal Watch
So, has Gen.Ratko Mladic been arrested or not?
Developing. Stay
tuned.
Bloggers' Interviews
You may recall that a month or so ago I was interviewed by Simon Owens of
Bloggasm. That blog is carving a nice niche for itself by interviewing other interesting bloggers of all kinds. The blog crashed soon after my interview and had to be rebuilt by hand, post by post. Unfortunately, most of Simon's own posts are gone forever, but at least he has saved all the interviews and re-posted them one by one on the new address. Thus, the permalink for my interview has changed - you can find it
here.
Soon after my interview, Simon interviewed a whole bunch of bloggers from the Left, ranging from moderate center all the way to pure socialists. I was waiting for the new blog to be completely rebuilt before linking to those interviews. All of them got pretty much the same set of questions and it is really interesting to see on what points they all agree and on what points they differ (someone should analyze that!).
I am kinda glad I did not get that same set of questions - I think that questions concerning conservative War On Science fit me better than pure partisan politics.
Among the interviewees are some of my daily reads, including Lindsay Beyerstein of
Majikthise on whose blog I am happily guest-blogging this week. You should definitely read her
interview. Then, there is
Echidne of the Snakes and her
interview. NC blogging guru,
Ed Cone has also been
interviewed, as was Dr.Neiwert of
Orcinus (read his
interview) and
Madeleine Begun Kane (check out her
interview).
The list is long, but check these blogs out. While some of them are popular and I read them occasionally, and others are my colleagues on
Liberal Coalition or
The Liberal Prose, frankly, some of these were new to me!
Meat-Eating Leftist (
interview)
American Leftist (
interview)
Busy, Busy, Busy (
interview)
Brian Flemming (
interview)
Angry Bear (
interview)
Off The Kuff (
interview)
Tiny Revolution (
interview)
Talent Show (
interview)
Sirotablog (
interview)
Talk Left (
interview)
Rising Hegemon (
interview)
Dependable Renegade (
interview)
Aintnobaddude (
interview)
Lenin's Tomb (
interview)
Steve Gilliard (
interview)
ConWebWatch (
interview)
Taylor Marsh (
interview)
First Draft (
interview)
Demagogue (
interview)
Terminus (
interview)
Liberal Oasis (
interview)
Xoverboard (
interview)
Carnival of Education
Carnival of Education #55 is up on Education Wonks.
Carnival of Vanities
A DC Birding Blog is hosting the latest
Carnival of Vanities with extra natural history.
Obligatory Reading of the Day
An ongoing series on Mahablog, very much in tune with the
kind of stuff I (used to?) write on my blog:
Patriotism v. NationalismPatriotism v. ParanoiaPatriotism v. Francis FukuyamaPatriotism v. Hate SpeechThe posts are also peppered with links to other good stuff. Fix a lot of coffee before you get started, but start you should.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Science News
*
'Backward evolution' spawns ape-like people:
A newfound mutation is reported to make people walk on all fours and mouth a primitive language, possibly undoing a million years of evolution or more.
*
Galaxy smashups littered early universe, study finds:
Big galaxies formed through repeated mergers billions of years ago, astronomers say.
*
Acidifying oceans could cause mass extinction, scientist warns:
Researchers have found that Earth's oceans are gradually becoming a mild acid.
*
Your DNA may reveal your last name:
A study in Britain has found that men who share a surname are often related, which could be useful to police.
*
Science in images:
A menacing deep-sea anglerfish photographed during a recent Atlantic Ocean expedition by researchers with the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.
More militant fundamentalist jihadist embassy-burning scientists
To follow up on
this, here is another funny cartoon on the same topic (stolen from
One Good Move):
Mananimals
Sen.Brownback introduced a
bill to outlaw human chimaeras.
Daveawayfromhome has a humorous response.
Is this going to be outlawed?
Local Blogging - Local Organizing
I completely agree with
Kos (and so does
Atrios and many others), that the most important role of blogs will be in deciding local races. While blogging the Presidential campaign is exciting and sexy, it is here, on the ground, in local and statewide elections, that the real difference can be made.
Thus, I'd like to draw your attention to the experience of North Carolina bloggers, in many ways on the forefront of exactly that kind of local blogging. I have written at length about the NC blogging community and I'd like you to read and follow the links embedded in
this post in particular.
I hope that other areas of the country, especially those that are demographically similar - in terms of having a lot of small-to-medium-sized cities, towns and rural areas (i.e., probably not applicable to NYC, Chicago and LA) - will take a look at NC blogging and look at what appears to be working so well here.
One of the
best tools for the local bloggers to find out about each other is a state-wide
blog carnival. North Carolina started one first, and the
First Anniversary Edition just got posted last weekend. Other states are following. If you dig through the archives, you may notice that there is not too much politics there, and what there is spans the whole spectrum of political ideology. Don't let the appearances fool you - while enjoying the friendship and camaraderie of people that we generally do not agree with politically, we are also constantly looking for like-minded folks. Once the elections get closer, we'll know who is who and we can immediatelly start organizing. Blogging friendship is one thing - political organizing is different and both can coexist. Carnivals also breed MeetUps and other ways of face-to-face meetings of bloggers.
Out of many, many links in that post I first told you to check out, I'd particularly like to draw your attention to
Orange Politics (a nominee for the Koufax Award in the
Best Blog Community category). That blog is red-hot when it gets close to the elections. Information gets posted there before anyone else has it. People running in local races go there and post comments. Some regular commenters feel compelled to run for local office after the experience there.
It is the center of activity for all Progressive candidates and their supporters in the Orange County, NC (Chapel Hill/Carrboro area). When the Edwards's recently moved here, Elizabeth showed up in the comments clarifying some facts about their move and their intended political activity in local races. That is the kind of local political blog that Kos and Atrios had in mind - the kind that can make a difference in local and statewide races. Orange Politics has already proven that it can do exactly that.
Creationist Troll
This IDiot just left several copies of the same Creationist nonsense on several evolution-related posts here, including some that are almost two years old. He also left the same crap on a post on Majikthise. Is there a way to ban someone on Blogspot?
| Domain Name |
| (Unknown) |
| IP Address |
| 70.161.23.# (Unknown Organization) 70.161.23.123 |
| ISP |
| Unknown ISP |
| Location |
| |
| Language |
| English
en |
| Operating System |
| Macintosh MacOSX |
| Browser |
| Safari 1.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/312.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312.5 |
| Javascript |
| version 1.5 |
| Monitor |
| | Resolution | : | 1440 x 900 | | Color Depth | : | 32 bits |
|
| Time of Visit |
| Feb 21 2006 6:41:20 am |
| Last Page View |
| Feb 21 2006 7:06:44 am |
| Visit Length |
| 25 minutes 24 seconds |
| Page Views |
| 10 |
| Referring URL |
| http://majikthise.ty...2/science_blogs.html |
| Visit Entry Page |
| http://sciencepoliti...cience-blogging.html |
| Visit Exit Page |
| http://sciencepoliti...-discussions-on.html |
| Time Zone |
| UTC-5:00
EST - Eastern Standard
EDT - Eastern Daylight Saving Time |
| Visitor's Time |
| Feb 21 2006 6:41:20 am |
| Visit Number |
| 130,070 |
I have left one copy of his tirade
here, so you can all see what a spectacular concentration of nonsense can be put in a relatively small space - the rest is pure spam.
It would be laughable, if it was not so depressing, even scary, that a human being can be so fearful, so emotionally insecure, so mentally undeveloped, and so intelectually impoverished, to allow oneself to become so thoroughly brainwashed and indoctrinated into dogma spewed by lazy, greedy, parasitic High Priests of fundamentalism. This is no sweet old religion that builds local community and urges old grannies to donate to charity and work in a soup kitchen - this is a politically motivated cult movement designed to engender complete control over obedient masses who can then be used for whatever heinous designs the High Priests have in mind.
This troll, Hilton, did not come here asking an evolutionary biologist questions about evolutionary biology. He has come here to proselytize his bullshit quasi-religion. He is unreachable. Reason does not work on him and his ilk - their eyes are fogged with fear, slef-righteousness and aggression. Fortunately, none of my readers will do more than laugh at his contortions. But I am sick of deleting spam.
Hilton did not come here trying to start a discussion. Discussion involves logic and reason - faculties Hilton does not poesses. I have had conservatives and libertarians come here and discuss issues with me without fear of deleting - they played by the basic rules: use of reason, logic and rational discourse. Hilton is incapable of such thought.
Do you remember the monstrosity that is Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, a blatant Republican propaganda disguised as a children's book? I have linked to some good reviews here and here.
