Monthly Archives: March 2009

What do we do about Michele Bachmann????

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Well, I suppose we could go get guns and knives and bludgeons and just go KILL HER. That certainly would be a kind of ironic justice. But since we are all peace loving non violent types, I suppose we are going to have to make sure she does not win the next election. Whatever. But clearly, one way or another, we have to figure out a way to

REPLACE MICHELE BACHMANN!!!!

Which is what the Replace Michele Bachmann Web Carnival is all about. The new, revived edition of this carnival is up and it is known as:

Revenge of Daughter of the Replace Michele Bachmann Blog Carnival

Submit your posts for future editions here or email them here.

From Graduate School to Prison: What is the rational argument for ELF or ALF?

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i-c6846c4a885cf8ee56c99ef6487a05a3-john_flintnapping.jpgWhen I heard the news that day … Oh boy. I had received an email from a man whom I knew only as the father of a (now former) student. We had met once, a few years ago when his son graduated, and he gave me a very nice bottle of wine, which I shared with a select group of wine experts only last Christmas. The wine had aged well and was outstanding.

He gave me the wine as a gift for having “done so much for his son” while he, the son, was an undergraduate student. It was true. I had done a lot for the young man. I had many long conversations with him about lofty sciency concepts, and he took a couple of my classes, but mainly I had helped him out by setting him up with fieldwork opportunities in South Africa. This young man, whom I’ll call John, was one of a small number of undergraduates that I’ve either taken with me to the field or arranged to go to the field to work with my colleagues there. I am very very careful about which students I might bring or send to the field. I am so careful that sometimes I make the mistake of accidentally chasing away a student that I shouldn’t have chased away.1 John was carefully selected by me for this opportunity, as well as by a colleague of mine who also sent John off to the field (to a different continent).
Continue reading From Graduate School to Prison: What is the rational argument for ELF or ALF? →

One-of-a-Kind Killer Whales Doomed by Exxon Valdez

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Most of Prince William Sound’s animal populations will someday recover from the lingering effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. One, however, will not: a community of killer whales unlike any other in the world.

“It’s a separate population. Their genetics, their acoustics, are different from any other killer whales that we see in the north Pacific,” said Craig Matkin, director of the North Gulf Oceanic Society, who has studied the region’s whales for three decades.

Known to researchers as the AT1 pod, the whales’ home range fell within the 11,000 square miles of crude oil dumped by the ship when it ran aground on March 24, 1989. Nine of the pod’s 22 whales subsequently died, likely from oil ingestion — a blow from which the group, already struggling to cope with pollution and declining populations of the seals on which they rely for food, never recovered.

“It was the last nail in the coffin,” said Matkin.


Read the rest here

Finches Determine Sex of Offspring

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As you know if you read my blog, Trivers Willard is an important theoretical construct which has been tested numerous times. TW works in some species, not in others, and overall, that should be predictable (accroding to TW).

It turns out that finches control the sex of their offspring, and do so in a way that TW would predict, apparently. There is a paper in Science that I’ll probably eventually get to writing up for you, and in the mean time, here’s a quick news report from Scientific American.

See if you can figure out how Trivers Willard is working here, and why the important theoretical aspect of this research is glossed in this news report.

A new blog that could be good

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…I am trying to rid the word dilettante of its negative connotations and use it to highlight my interest in scientific research of all kinds. My area of expertise is chemical engineering and food science, however this does not prevent my interest in any other research.

I like any and all science, so this is my playground where I can properly discuss other areas outside my expertise without getting a bad formal peer review!

We like dilettantes. So let’s see how The Science Dilettante develops!