If not, you missed one of the great moments on the intertubes. These kids are Krazy In Love!
Now, CLICK HERE and shell out five loonies for the happy couple!!!!
Monthly Archives: January 2010
The human ACTN3 gene
Soccer practice was brutal. The hot summer heat made every drill twice as hard as usual. Everybody was a little bit off of their game, however I was particularly sluggish. The coaches called for a water break after finally noticing that our dehydration was significantly affecting our performance. I was dragging my feet on the way to the water cooler when one of my coaches, Brett, pulled me aside from the rest of the players.
Berry Go Round #23
..The Janus Edition is now up at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. Click here to read this plant blog carnival.
Tuna High
A tuna has been sold at auction in Tokyo’s fish market for 16.28 million yen ($175,000, £109,000), the highest price paid in Japan for nine years.
The bluefin tuna weighs 232 kg – nearly four times as much as the average Japanese man.
It was caught off the northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, in waters famed for high quality fish.
Mind boggling.
Whenever I see something like this I go and read the Guilty Planet blog for a while. Today I will eat salad garnished with tofu for lunch.
What to do with Bible thumping students (a repost)
…. Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it’s early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about “carbon dating.” This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you’ve gotten to the “evolution module”…
The student is talking about C14 dating and how it “has problems.” But you are a life science teacher and can’t think of a single point in your class that you really touch on C14. Dating in the evolution section does not involve C14. This is for later time periods, more in the area of archaeology, and you know nothing about it. So you brush off the question but are left with an uneasy feeling.
Next class, probably just after class, the same student, again at a moment that gives you zero warning and usually no time to think of how to respond, mentions something about the Laws of Thermodynamics. This question you find more interesting and possibly even useful as the starting point of a “teachable moment…” The nature of life itself includes the fact that life works upstream against entropy. That one utterly mind-blowing aspect of life is really all you need to define life itself. If that was the only thing you used to define life, you would have very few non-life entities or events accidentally included. If you can truly understand … I mean really, really truly at a detailed level understand …. how the heck life works against the gradient of entropy, then you will understand a LOT (like, at the MA level, at least) of what is going on. To get a believable and reasonable level of understanding of this, you must get more than just basic cell function … it is not good enough to just say “The mitochondria are the tiny little powerhouses of the cell” because you have not explained how that works. You need to know about ATP and stuff. Really, you even need to know why cells use ATP as energy but none of the other obvious forms of energy that they could use … the phylogenetic effect at a very
Continue reading What to do with Bible thumping students (a repost)
Using Social Media to Promote Atheism
Social Media and Atheism …. an Atheist Talk Conversation with Mike Haubrich, Stephanie Zvan and Greg Laden.
We talk about trolls too.
The rug really ties the conversation together.
Click Here to see or download the MP4.
Embedded version may or may not be below the fold:
Coturnix on Civility and Politeness
I don’t agree that civility is action and politeness is language. Politeness is formal arbitrary cultural convention, while civility is also arbitrary cultural convention but as dictated by Westernonormative agents. Both apply to language and behavior.
But whatever.
This post by Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock is Bora’s take on online civility as well as an excellent link farm pointing to all the other stuff out there on this topic, and this is what you should read in preparation to the civility session at Scionliten, this year’s Science On Line conference.
Nyamulagira Volcano and Human Evolution
I had mentioned earlier that the volcanoes of the Virugna region in the Western Rift Valley (as well as other highland spots) have often been islands of rain forest separated from each other by different habitats, including grasslands and wooded savannas. this has produced an island effect that has been a laboratory for evolution, and it is likely that these forest islands (and others in the greater region of east Central Africa and western East Africa) have been the loci of evolution of many endemic species. (See Island Africa: The Evolution of Africa’s Rare Animals and Plants
It is probably not a coincidence that two of the three subspecies of gorilla live within sight of each other (and of the main subspecies, the lowland gorilla) within this region. The Virunga volcanoes are not old enough to have supported island forests for the evolution of these specific subspecies, but other highlands in the region, or other volcanoes (perhaps in the Eastern Rift) may well have been the location in which they evolved.
And, as it turns out, there is reason to believe that the split between chimps and humans occurred on one of these volcanic mountain tops several million years ago. Or, at least, in an environment geologically similar to the upper reaches of the Virunga Volcanoes. But to tell this story right, I have to go back a few years.
Continue reading Nyamulagira Volcano and Human Evolution
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
.. because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homepage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
– Thomas Jefferson
Continue reading Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
My bell is bigger than your bell
The other day there were cops in front of my local grocery store cajoling people to put money in the Salvation Army bucket. This might be worse:
More on Science Online 2010
Yet another blogger is calling for your input and involvement in relation to a session planned for Scioten, the Science Online 2010 conference coming up later this month.
Janet Stemwedel writes: #scio10 preparation: Is there a special problem of online civility?
Science: There is no g-spot, so stop looking for it!
In a recent study, 56 percent of the women interviewed in a sample of 1800 claimed that they had a “g-spot” which is an area inside the vagina with increased sensitivity with respect to sexual arousal.
(Added: See THIS write up of the original research)
Continue reading Science: There is no g-spot, so stop looking for it!
Matters of size
One of those cool size videos:
Continue reading Matters of size
The Volcano Nyamuragira: Some Context
Nyamuragira, just now erupting, is one of the numerous Virunga Volcanoes, which form a large cluster of volcanoes spanning the border of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, between Lake Ex-Edward (a.k.a. Lake Rutenzege) and Lake Kivu. The largest population center is Goma, on Lake Kivu, along the southern margin of the lava fields from these volcanoes, and made famous in recent years as the site of numerous excursions of warfare, refugee movements, and volcanic lava flows. I’ve written about Goma and a little about the Volcanoes in the Congo Memoirs.
Have a look at the following map: