voltagegate
Posts by this author
April 19, 2007
"What right has any citizen of a free country, whatever his foresight and shrewdness, to seize on sources of life for his own behoof that are the common heritage of all; what right has legislature or court to help in the seizure; and striking still more deeply, what right has any generation to…
April 18, 2007
Today is my one year blogiversary and I will be celebrating by helping the Sierra Student Coalition and other conservation groups on campus celebrate Earth Day 2007 a few days early, to coincide with our new president's inauguration.
The new pres has promised to sign the Talloires Declaration,…
April 17, 2007
"No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal."
-Jacques Yves Cousteau
April 17, 2007
Maniola jurtina
Another study was published recently in Ecology that sought to tease out and analyze environmental factors (the other regarded deforestation and albedo), this time with a concentration on species diversity, specifically different native butterfly populations in Britain.
The…
April 17, 2007
The scientists are at it again, conducting horrible experiments on the cutest, sweetest Easter treat: Peeps.
What happens when you put a Peep in a vacuum? How does a Peep react to microwave radiation and temperature extremes? These quacks even justify their research by claiming that Peeps have no…
April 17, 2007
Probably when they find a Playstation in the kid's bedroom.
Derek has more.
April 16, 2007
No, really. It is. Deep Sea News has the scoop, complete with a nifty marine diversity graph.
April 16, 2007
James has a busy month of PhD finalization coming up and won't be able to host Oekologie #5 in May. Fortunately, I have nothing better to do (certainly not finals and graduation - j/k) than host my favorite blog carnival on the planet a few months early.
James will be taking my original spot in…
April 16, 2007
There's a great thread at the Google Group where folks are previewing their Bioblitz plans. Check it out to get a sense of what you'll see in the next couple weeks.
Still time to join. Shoot me an e-mail.
April 15, 2007
Carnival 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.
April 14, 2007
I 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…
April 13, 2007
Just one more: The rain forest, soybean farming and albedo.
April 13, 2007
PNAS 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…
April 12, 2007
Our 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…
April 12, 2007
I'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…
April 11, 2007
Nine 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…
April 11, 2007
My 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…
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
April 10, 2007
Heather, 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…
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…
April 9, 2007
Is 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…
April 7, 2007
The 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…
April 6, 2007
From "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":
April 6, 2007
The nature of the comment thread is ultimately predictable. It's a like a Great Catharsis.
April 6, 2007
Bev 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!
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…