voltagegate | July 16, 2007Don was supposed to have it up yesterday, but I have yet to hear from him. A bit of patience, please.
voltagegate | July 16, 2007At least they're letting some students finish up before they pull the entire rug out from under them:
The beleaguered Savannah River Ecology Lab hopes to remain open - but with vastly reduced staff and resources - through the end of the year due to commitments that require some scientists and graduate students to fulfill obligations associated with research grants.
"One of our main concerns right now is with these students," said Whit Gibbons, a senior ecologist and University of Georgia professor who has spent decades at the Aiken County lab.
The university, he said, has agreed to support…
voltagegate | July 13, 2007So far we have established that spiders are distinct from insects for two reasons: physiology (mouth parts, body plan, respiratory structures) and more importantly, evolutionary history (or phylogeny, as scientists call it).
But where did spider's come from? How did they come to speciate ?
The answer, like many in invertebrate paleontology, is cloudy. Organisms without hard, thick shells rarely become fossilized. In fact, for any organism's parts to become fossilized, even vertebrates, is a profound rarity, as Bill Bryson illustrates in A Short History of Nearly Everything:
Only about one…
voltagegate | July 13, 2007A "green" art show just opened up in Lexington titled "HOT: Artists Respond to Global Warming", where area artists wanted to "participate in the conversation about climate change" through their works.
The objective of the show was to go beyond the informational and factual aspects and allow the artists to become true evaluators of the world around them, she said. The results include numerous media -- pottery, sculpture, oil paintings, watercolor paintings, fabric, and multimedia. The exhibit is laid out clearly, taking visitors from the immediately accessible depictions of global warming to…
voltagegate | July 12, 2007"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere."
-Carl Sagan
voltagegate | July 12, 2007So how is it that spiders are more closely related to horseshoe crabs - marine arthropods that haven't changed much in the past 250 million years - than to a more obvious choice, the insects?
The answer to that question is more complex than you might think.
Up until the middle of the 20th century, before evolutionary theory was completely accepted by mainstream biology and supported by genetic analysis, taxonomists (scientists who place organisms in groups) classified organisms according to their modern anatomy. If organisms shared common physical structures (like chelicerae or mandibles)…
voltagegate | July 11, 2007I'm jealous. Look at him crush that Homer donut.
He's posted a video slideshow of his trip just to rub it in.
voltagegate | July 11, 2007I started this series of posts almost a year ago, incorporating some basics about taxonomy, evolution, and a little genetics while exploring my fascination with the Chelicerates. I'll be reposting the series, which is included in the Basic Concepts list, this week and next.
Perhaps nothing will spark a lengthy dissertation from an entomologist more quickly than calling a spider a "bug." And lengthy can be well, hours.
Truly, spiders do seem rather buggish; they're creepy, have loads of legs and the thick outer structure (an exoskeleton) that other bugs possess. In short, if it looks like it,…
voltagegate | July 11, 2007Here are two neat sites I've been meaning to link for a while. One is called The Miniature Earth, a flash vid of statistics revealing the cultural composition of humans if the world's population was proportionally reduced to 100 people. For example, of the 100, 61 would be Asian, 13 African, 12 European, 8 North American, 5 South American/Caribbean and 1 from Oceania.
The other site, BreathingEarth, projects how much CO2 is being released as we speak, country by country, factoring birth rates and death rates into the model. The census data seems to be a bit dated, but it is an interesting…
voltagegate | July 11, 2007Found this on Google Vids this morning. It features all the regulars in the discussion - Miller, Dawkins - but to me, this doc is valuable and distinct because it features David Attenborough opining on ID and the neocon's dismissal of science, a man who has, for the most part, kept his opinions about this sort of thing to himself over his long career.
As an aside, damn American broadcasting. This is the third doc that has been produced for the BBC that I've wanted to watch for a while and couldn't until it was released online (the other's were A Short History of Disbelief, which I never…
voltagegate | July 9, 2007It's been six months or so since the last time, when I reviewed some enlightenment science history, and the time for Tangled Banking has come again.
I'm thinking Greek or Roman history this time around. I'll theme, you meme. Send your best to me: thevoltagegate [at] gmail.com.
voltagegate | July 9, 2007
I've been playing a relatively obscure SNES Squaresoft title for the past few days, Bahamut Lagoon. The art is reminiscent of FF6, but it plays like a hybrid of FF Tactics and Shining Force (two of my all time favs), where you have units on a battlefield who can cast spells on enemy units from a distance, or enter one on one battle where the gameplay resembles a traditional RPG. Each unit is equipped with a [mostly] computer controlled dragon that fights alongside you, each of whom can be fed different items to boost stats. They even change into different forms, Pokemon style.
The story…
voltagegate | July 4, 2007Science fiction has been the "buzz" in the past few days, starting with PZ's post on how biology gets snubbed by SF authors and followed by thoughts from Chad, Razib, Rob and Janet. The consensus? Science in general gets snubbed by most SF authors.
Why? As many of the commenters correctly point out, SF is still fiction and fiction has its own rules that are usually more important than the science. Bending the laws of physics (arguably the most abused section of science in SF) is not just a playful extrapolation of existing knowledge, it is a tool for the author to further the story. Without…
voltagegate | July 1, 2007The scientifically esteemed Natalie Portman (at least by Jake) led a troupe of celebs in a baby gorilla naming ceremony/fundraiser at Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park the other day, trying to raise awareness to both the conservation of the critically endangered primates and Rwanda's attempts to attract ecotourists. This part of the article caught my eye:
Speaking at the ceremony, Rwandan President Paul Kagame called for strict measures to ensure the protection of mountain gorillas.
But with park entrance fees at 500 dollars, gorilla-watching by high-end foreign tourists is also a key source…
voltagegate | June 28, 2007"You can't always sit in your corner of the forest and wait for people to come to you... you have to go to them sometimes."
-Winnie the Pooh
voltagegate | June 28, 2007It's been slow around here this week, and it's all his fault.
Heather and I have been talking about getting a dog for some time now. I caught her on Petfinder every now and then, perusing the local shelters for dogs. I finally broke down the other day. We applied for a bull terrier mix named Lexie, spent an hour at the shelter that's an hour away, only to come home and find out that someone was "better suited" for her. So, we switched the name on the application for that cute little mutt.
He checked out at the vet the other day. At 16 weeks, he's 17.5 pounds, so we're thinking he'll reach 60…