Mike Dunford
tqa
Posts by this author
July 18, 2006
OK, I've been behind the times lately. I've got to admit it. I haven't had the time to check the news as much as usual. I haven't been able to keep up with the blogs. I have virtually no idea what's been going on in the world lately, except for a vague sense that the entire Middle East is just a…
July 16, 2006
Ever have an almost perfect day?
I'm not talking about a perfect day - there are lots of those. I'm not talking about the kind of day where everything was fantastic, right up until cousin Jimmy puked in the punchbowl - those happen with alarming regularity. The kind of day I'm talking about is the…
July 10, 2006
A few of you might have noticed a drop-off in posting activity over the last week or so. My wife is preparing to deploy to Iraq - we've got a couple of weeks left before she heads out. She took some leave, so we were enjoying some family time. Posting will continue to be a bit erratic for the next…
July 8, 2006
Over at The Island of Doubt, James Hrynyshyn has a brief post up about this Guardian article. The article in the Guardian discusses a large rockfall that is expected to happen in the next few days - about two million cubic meters of Mt. Eiger in the Swiss Alps are expected to take a short, quick…
July 5, 2006
I'm not the biggest Hillary Clinton fan on the planet, but this time she almost got it right. In a statement yesterday, Clinton said that while she hopes that Joe Lieberman wins his senate primary in August (OK, that part she didn't get right), she will ultimately support whoever does win the…
July 3, 2006
The ScienceBlogs Bloggers' Challenge was wildly successful, raising well over 30,000 dollars in 15 days to fund education projects at individual schools. The challenge here at The Questionable Authority was also successful, bringing in a bit over $650.00, meeting the goal that I set.
Thanks to…
June 29, 2006
Religion's been on my mind a lot lately. It's come up in a number of blog posts and articles I've read recently, and there have been some acrimonious debates on the topic at Panda's Thumb and elsewhere. All this thinking about religious issues has sparked a crisis of belief for me. That's nothing…
June 28, 2006
The rise of factory farming over the last half-century has resulted in a crisis for family farms. Factory farming benefits from the economy of scale, producing much, much more of whatever their product is - milk, beef, pork, whatever - at costs per unit that are far lower than a family farm can…
June 27, 2006
It's taken me a while to take a swing at this particular Ask A ScienceBlogger question, mostly because I just don't know the answer.
It's definitely true that some science teachers are better than others. The best teacher I had in high school was my physics teacher. The worst teacher I've ever had…
June 27, 2006
I've been rather lax in promoting my Donors Choose challenge, and it's time to change that. The initial three challenges I picked have all been funded, mostly by people not involved in my challenge. That meant that I hadn't come close to fulfilling my goal, but didn't have any projects left on my…
June 26, 2006
Here's a nice bit of breaking news from the conservation biology front: The birth of two Whooping Crane chicks in Wisconsin. (Scroll down this page at Operation Migration's site to the June 23rd entry for pictures of the birds.)
This is absolutely tremendous news. These birds are part of the…
June 26, 2006
Remember Ward Churchill? He's the apparenty-soon-to-be-former University of Colorado academic who stirred up controversy when he referred to 9-11 victims as "little Eichmanns" in a 2001 essay. Today, the UC Boulder Interim Chancellor announced that the university, following a very lengthy…
June 26, 2006
Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, I find this Washington Post article about the effect of the Daily Show on attitudes towards politics and politicians. The article reports on the results of a published study that found that people who watch the Daily Show regularly are more likely to be cynical…
June 26, 2006
In the first post in the Hawaiian Evolution series, I wrote a bit about why evolution is so readily apparent on Islands. Today, I'm going to shift away from the biological a little bit, and talk about a different type of evolution - the evolution of the islands themselves. Because of the way that…
June 23, 2006
In the latest news from the planet the Republicans wish we lived on, weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. This news comes to us courtesy of a couple of Congresscritters - Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan , and Senator Rick Santorum, Theocrat of Pennsylvania.…
June 22, 2006
Today's episode in the ongoing tragicomic farce that is the American Congress involves the renewal of several provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Over the years, the VRA has gained a wide base of bipartisan support, and renewal of the act has typically been relatively easy. This time wasn't…
June 21, 2006
There are a number of places on this planet where the signal of evolution is readily apparent to anyone who cares to look. Most of those places are islands. It's no coincidence that Darwin made the Galapagos famous, or that Wallace did his most important work in the Malay Archipelago. As helpful as…
June 19, 2006
One of the things I've been thinking about doing in this new version of the blog is a series of posts on the biology of the Hawaiian Islands. The designation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a National Monument earlier this week gave me both a kick in the right direction, and a geographical…
June 18, 2006
Japan managed to buy enought votes at the recent meeting of the International Whaling Commission to pass a resolution declaring that the moratorium on whaling was meant to be temporary and is no longer needed. The resolution is not all that significant from a practical standpoint - it takes a super…
June 16, 2006
I'll be more or less out of the loop this weekend, due to some family things in another state. (That's one of the downsides to living in Hawaii. Any out-of-state travel requires a minimum of 10 hours in the air roundtrip.) I'm hoping to have a few things go up on the blog while I'm away, but…
June 15, 2006
This weeks' Ask A Scienceblogger is a relatively simple one, which would explain why I'm getting to it so quickly. We're asked to take on the following question:How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (…
June 15, 2006
Today, President Bush invoked the Antiquities Act to create the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument. In so doing, he has created the single largest marine protected area in the world - at 360,000 square kilometers, the new national monument is slightly larger than the 348,000 km2 Great…
June 15, 2006
Pick a Scienceblogger - any Scienceblogger - and you'll find someone who loves science, and thinks that everyone should be exposed to it. That's one of the reasons that we spend time hammering out these posts. We also, as a group, have this funny belief about science education. We think it's…
June 14, 2006
The latest issue of Seed Magazine - the print product brought to you by the same folks who bring you us - has an article about Dr. Joan Roughgarden's work. The main topic of the article is Roughgarden's opinions on sexual selection - she thinks that it is entirely wrong, and that she has come up…
June 12, 2006
With Tropical Storm Alberto nearing landfall, this seems like as good a time as any to talk about hurricanes and global climate change. With legions of reporters standing by to cover the storm, and scrambling for things to talk about while they're waiting, someone's bound to talk about the question…
June 12, 2006
This weeks question:Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
Tough question. I've got lots of ideas about what I'd do with limitless funding within my own area, but until the question…
June 11, 2006
Janet tagged all of us new SBers with a mathematically themed meme. I put off answering this long mostly because I have a massive aversion to math - that's why I went into evolutionary genetics. I'm also not a big fan of the whole self-reflection thing. It makes me think too much. But I'm also…
June 11, 2006
Dr. John Marburger, the current Presidential Science Advisor, has a little question-and-answer piece over at Newsweek. Nick Anthis has some comments on the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of the article over at The Scientific Activist. On the whole, I agree with Nick, but there is one point that…
June 9, 2006
This is the first time I've been associated with a website that sells advertising space, and what with them paying the bills and all, I figured that clicking on the ad was the least I could do in return. I wasn't planning to actually post anything about it, but there's a cool little applet over at…
June 9, 2006
As I mentioned the other day, some of the kids in the neighborhood and I decided to conduct some experiments into the Mentos + Coke = geyser phenomenon. I thought I'd have pictures and/or video to show you, but due to technical problems (technically, I was the problem) the experiments didn't get…