grrlscientist | April 6, 2006April 5, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
written by Shelley Bluejay Pierce
freelance writer from Bozeman, Montana
ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA- A peaceful day golfing in Florida brought humans face to face with two Red Shouldered Hawks defending their nesting area. In Orange County Florida, this past week brought human-wildlife conflict to a head that left the two hawks dead and federal wildlife agents in turmoil over how the issue was handled.
After more than a dozen human attacks, the red shouldered hawks were killed by shotgun blasts Wednesday morning at the Villas of Grand Cypress Golf Resort…
grrlscientist | April 6, 2006tags: birds, South Pacific Islands, Philippines, ornithology, new species, conservation, Camiguin, parrot
.
Camiguin Hanging-parrot, or Colasisi, Loriculus camiguinensis,
is newly described and is found only found on the Philippine Island of Camiguin.
This tiny island is especially rich in biodiversity but is increasingly threatened
by logging, agriculture and human settlement.
Click image for much larger view in its own window.
Note: this a live pet.
Photo by Thomas Arndt, Courtesy of The Field Museum of Natural History.
Hey, dear readers, a colleague of mine, Jose Tello, co-discovered a…
grrlscientist | April 5, 2006Another new blog carnival (for me) has been published. The 39th edition of the Carnival of the Clueless is now available. This blog carnival celebrates blog writing about clueless idiots everywhere. Needless to say, with the current administration in place, there is plenty of material out there to write about, even if you aren't pretending to be a 14-year-old girl on the internet. Despite the fact that this is primarily a right-wing blog carnival, I managed to slip one past them anyway. Hrm.
Okay, after a little more investigation, I found that they do publish stories of cluelessness that…
grrlscientist | April 5, 2006One of three newly-discovered specimens of the 383 million-year-oldTiktaalik roseae.
These specimens fill a gap in the fossil record between aquatic and terrestrial animals.
Image: Ted Daeschler.
Making that transition from aquatic life to living on land was very important for vertebrates. However, there has been a gap in the fossil record at precisely that transitional point -- up until now, that is. Today, a group of scientists report that they found a group of three fossils from "crocodile-like" animals that neatly fit into the evolutionary progression as animals moved from water to land…
grrlscientist | April 5, 2006
Every wicked fan of the Harry Potter series can appreciate this bumper sticker! They also sell t-shirts (I want one!!).
Thanks, Peter!
tags: humor
grrlscientist | April 5, 2006The 185th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is now available for your reading pleasure. The Carnival of the Vanities is the first blog carnival that was ever instituted, and it focuses on the best writing recently published on a blog on any topic. This week's host, Iowa Voice, accepted no more than 15% of all submissions received, so you can be assured that only the best of the best writing on any topic was included in this carnival. So considering the high rejection rate, I was surprised to learn that the host included not one, but two (!!), of my essays in this prestigious carnival,…
grrlscientist | April 4, 2006Do you have opinions about the future of science in the USA? What does that future look like? What should the role of science be in America and how is your vision different from today's reality? What should America do to preserve its role as a leader in scientific innovation?
I know that many of you, dear readers, are good writers and that you think deeply about these and other topics, so now you have the chance to share your opinions with the editors and readers of SEED Magazine.
Seed Magazine is pleased to announce its first annual science writing contest. This contest is now accepting…
grrlscientist | April 4, 2006Birding Babylon -- does the title of this book sound familiar to you? If so, then you, like me, are one of thousands of people who have been reading the author's blog with the same name. Birding Babylon: A Soldier's Journal from Iraq by Jonathan Trouern-Trend (2006, Sierra Club Books), is one of only a handful of published books out there that began as a series of entries "posted" on a public blog instead of a proposal sitting on an agent's desk. But even when it was "only" a blog, excerpts were quoted in the media and the author was interviewed at least once (by National Public Radio) while…
grrlscientist | April 3, 2006The Carnival of the Green is a new blog carnival for me, and probably for you, too. It is a weekly blog festival that discusses Green Politics and sustainability issues, and shares ideas for living in a more earth-friendly way. The 21st edition was published today with 14 interesting essays, including one written by me.
tags: blog carnival
grrlscientist | April 3, 2006Let's face it, most of my weeks begin the same way that they end; with a whimper. However, today was different. As some of you know, I love reading and recently, I have been publishing book reviews on my blog. Considering all the limitation$ on my life during these past few years, requesting review copies of certain titles has been the only way I have devised whereby I can obtain at least some of those newly published books about birds, science and nature that I dearly wish to read. Well, without having to fight for the same priviledge with all the other unemployed people hanging out at the…
grrlscientist | April 3, 2006According to an opinion poll from late 2004, only 13% of all Americans think that humans evolved without any guidance from an all-powerful divine being. In view of this surprising lack of knowledge, I think it is essential that the public is presented with more details about evolution, and this is exactly what this book strives to accomplish. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 2009, Niles Eldredge, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, designed a wonderful traveling exhibition that documents and discusses the development of Darwin's…
grrlscientist | April 2, 2006
The 37 issue of the Carnival of the Godless is now available. It is crammed with lots of essays that you will enjoy, including one of mine. As an added bonus, this issue also includes a video of J. Huger's comedy sketch, Kissing Hank's Ass.
tags: blog carnival
grrlscientist | April 2, 2006Oxygen-starved patches found within the world's oceans and coastal regions apparently trigger the development of more male than female fishes, reveals a recently released study by Rudolf Wu and colleagues at the City University of Hong Kong. This study not only has dire implications for the future of fish populations, but it also suggests that hypoxic conditions -- water containing less than 2.8 milligrams of oxygen per liter -- may be interacting directly with the hormones of the reproductive system, experts say.
Wu and his colleagues studied a common and easily-kept freshwater fish, the…
grrlscientist | April 1, 2006I have been sitting on this particular entry for so long that I almost forgot that it was languishing in my "unpublished" category. But due to the shenanigans today, I thought I would be different by publishing something that is true. Annoying? Yes (depending upon who you are), but true, nonetheless.
In my web wanderings, I ran across EgoSurf, a nifty site that uses mysterious criteria to rank the importance of blogs (my hypothesis? They rely on pecking pigeons to determine their rankings, just as Google does. Because I love birds, this would explain my own site's results). I subjected the…
grrlscientist | April 1, 2006So one of my blog siblings and fellow evil genius, Janet, poses a simple question; what are you going to do with your idiocy/genius? She then proposed this test as a means of quantifying this. Considering that I am unemployable, and therefore, doing nothing worthwhile whatsoever with my energy, rumored brain space or heck, with my life (well, except entertaining you, dear readers!), I decided to give her proposed test a go.
I am 59% Evil Genius.
Evil courses through my blood. Lies and deceit motivate my evil deeds. Crushing the weaklings and idiots that do nothing but interfere in my…
grrlscientist | April 1, 2006While we are on the topic of intelligence, or lack thereof, I thought you might enjoy this test (I certainly did). The DENSA test is a response to MENSA, I suspect. Unfortunately, this test doesn't give you a cute graphic to add to your blog, but it is a rather fun test, so I stole the site logo and posted the link to the DENSA test anyway.
What was your score?
My score was 11 out of 12 - I am above normal! (Question 1 gets them every time!!) .. and indeed, it was question 1 that got me, even though I knew it was a trick, even though I knew the answer was "yes", mysterious forces caused my…
grrlscientist | April 1, 2006
I am 13% Idiot.
I am not annoying at all. In fact most people come to me for advice. Of course they annoy the hell out of me. But what can I do? I am smarter than most people.Take theIdiot Test@ FualiDotCom
What was your score? And I want to know how I managed to score 13%? Was it because I answered "yes" to those Kurt Vonnegut questions?
tags: online quiz
grrlscientist | March 31, 2006It has just come to my attention, dear readers, that two days ago, on Wednesday, federal agents from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Orange County, Florida, shot and killed a pair of nesting red-shouldered hawks, Buteo lineatus (pictured, photo by Bob Gress), after they had previously removed the birds' nest and eggs. [NOT TRUE: several readers later told me that the nest and chicks remained in place until days after the adults were killed. The chicks, of course, died.]
The birds made the unfortunate choice to nest on the grounds of a hoity-toity golf course, Villas of Grand…
grrlscientist | March 31, 2006WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
Sound, flash, gratuitous use of vulgar language, including the dreaded c-word.
Pretty funny, though. Seeks to answer all your questions about public transit.
Original source: London Underground.