Tag Archives: Uncategorized

The Furry and Creepy Creatures of Britain

Animals, Books

A Field Guide to Britain’s Spiders

No, this is not a new Harry Potter story. It is a pair of books on British Wildlife.

I wish I had Britain’s Spiders: A Field Guide (Princeton University Press (WILDGuides)) Lawrence Bee, Geoff Oxford & Helen Smith for the United States.

The Chelicerata include the Arachnids, which in turn includes such as the scorpions, harvestmen, mites, etc. The largest single group of Arachnids is the spiders (Araneae). They all breath air, they all have eight legs, they all have venom injecting fangs (see THIS for more on that). Of all of the orders of organisms, spiders are seventh in terms of total species diversity, with over 45,000 species. (For reference, there are about 5,400 species of mammal and about 10,000 species of bird. Continue reading The Furry and Creepy Creatures of Britain →

Venomous: How the Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry

Books

You can read this book review, or you can just go HERE and listen to our interview with author Christie Wilcox. I promise you in advance that you will want to read her book!

But, if you want to read the book review, here it is…

Did you ever do anything that hurt, then you had to do it again and you knew it would still hurt, and you didn’t like that? Like getting your teeth cleaned, or licking a nine volt battery. OK, maybe you didn’t have to lick the nine volt battery, but you get my point.

When I was working in the Ituri Forest, in the Congo, taking a walk in the forest was one of those things. All sorts of things hurt. Your feet hurt because of jungle rot combined with sandy gritty stuff permanently indurated in your shoes. The leaves and branches you would have to move through hurt because it was early in the morning and they were cold and wet. And so on.

But one of the things that was not inevitable, but nearly daily, was being stung by a venomous beast of some kind. The most serious threat, of course, was snakes but that never happened to me. Much more common, but more common a night, was to be bitten or stung by a venomous ant. But that only happened, maybe, once a week or so. But nearly every day, if I would walk far enough in the forest (hundreds of meters) especially early in the morning, would be the venomous caterpillars.

Cute little caterpillars with some extra long furry thingies sticking out of them. When you brush against them, there is instant local pain, a bit like a bee sting (but different) followed quickly by shooting pains from the site of contact to the nearest major lymph node (usually the arm pit), followed by pain in the lymph node. The pain would eventually go away, after minutes, sometimes a bit longer.

Continue reading Venomous: How the Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry →

A guide to the butterflies (book review)

Books

A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America is a field guider’s field guide. It is the shape and size of a traditional field guide. The designers of this book said “we don’t need no stinking margins” so there are no margins. Color bleeds on the page edges allow a quick index to major butterfly categories. There is a two page spread visual index. A no nonsense introduction give you the basics about how to use the book, how to be a butterflyer, and how to not be a jerk about butterflies (like, don’t net them and kill them). The front covers even have those flaps that you can use as bookmarks.

Ranges are an interesting problem with butterflies, since their biogeography is both very heterogeneous and in some cases rapidly changing. Also, a key feature of their breeding ranges is not so much when they are there, but how many times they cycle through broods over the warm months. So the maps are interesting: Continue reading A guide to the butterflies (book review) →

Monarch Butterflies and Milkweed: An amazing new book

Books

Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution by Anurag Agrawal is a fantastic, readable, scientifically rich, detailed monograph about – you guessed it – the monarch butterfly and the milkweed plant.

The monarch butterfly begins a springtime northward migration by flying a good ways north, where females lay eggs and die. Then the eggs hatch, the caterpillars feed and metamorphose, and the newly minted butterflies then fly further north, and this cycle happens again. This happens a few times. The southward migration is different. The butterflies, which are across large areas of temperate North America, fly all the way south to their Mexican wintering grounds.

Continue reading Monarch Butterflies and Milkweed: An amazing new book →

New Book by Michael Mann and Meg Herbert

Books, Climate Change

The Tantrum that Saved the World is a kickstarter fueled campaign to produce a children’s book about climate change.

The book will come in two parts. the first part is the story about a small girl child who finds out about, and attempts to address, global warming (more or less … you’ll have to read the book to find out the details!). the second part is about the science of climate change, expanding on the first part.

According to Michael Mann, “We wrote this book because, in our view, nothing like it exists. It educates by entertaining kids. It encourages action by inspiring them.” For her part, illustrator Megan Herbert wanted to turn her “frustration about climate inaction into something positive, to tell myson that I care about the world that I’m passing onto him. I want all kids to understand the challenges ahead and to be inspired to act positively rather than be overwhelmed.”

The book will be printed in an eco-friendly way, especially the eVersion of it!

Click HERE to visit the Kickstarter page and get in on this during the first hours of the campaign, which just started!

Check out the video:

Other books by the same authors:

GRANDMOTHERS CHAIR by AH

The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy by MM

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by MM

Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change by MM

Minnesota Candidate Proposes Cost-Cutting Single Payer Health Insurance Plan

Politics, , , , ,

And why not? Minnesota tends to lead when it comes to finding ways for government to do good.

Minnesota State Auditor Rebecca Otto is running for Governor in Minnesota, and moments ago she announced the details of her much anticipated “Healthy Minnesota Plan.”

Here’s the link for the details.

Obamacare was good, better than what was there before, but it came out of the gate as a compromise between the usual opposing forces in Washington. Many of you not in Minnesota may not know this, but Continue reading Minnesota Candidate Proposes Cost-Cutting Single Payer Health Insurance Plan →

Mythbusters on Head-on Collisions

Falsehoods and Skepticism, Physical Science and Math, ,

I’m sure you all have cable and/or satellite setups and thus see the Mythbusters, which is clearly one of the best things on TV, as they produce them. But I am always a couple of years behind because I watch them on Netflix. Two more seasons were released on Netflix very recently, so I’ve been watching them, and I thought one of the Myths addressed was worth bringing up.

Here’s the Myth: Continue reading Mythbusters on Head-on Collisions →

How to handle your out of control toddler

Politics, , , ,

You need to get a copy of How to Discipline a Toddler: A Parent’s Essential Guide to Disciplining Toddlers, Dealing with Toddler Tantrums, and Addressing Other Toddler Behavior Problems, even if you don’t personally have a toddler, and send it to someone who does, preferably anyone working in Washington DC

Things that work on toddlers: Continue reading How to handle your out of control toddler →

The Best US Electricity Generation Graphic Ever, No Kidding

Energy, , , , , , , , ,

Carbon Brief has produced a US based (sorry, rest of the world) interactive graphic that accesses an extensive underlying database that shows everything about the electricity generation that there is to know. Each generation plant, each type of electricty, capacity, etc. and you can view the information by state, by type of energy, and with some other toggles.

Here is an example. Continue reading The Best US Electricity Generation Graphic Ever, No Kidding →

The FL Park Service and the Coast Guard Fight Over Russian Bouy

Other, , ,

Interesting, amusing, a story involving Russia that will probably not make you cringe.

It is presumed that the object in question was brought from Cuban waters to Florida by Irma, the Hurricane.

From here:

A 1,200-pound Soviet buoy that surfaced off Dania Beach looks like it belongs in a James Bond movie. Script — which the Library of Congress says is Russian for Hydrometrical Service of the USSR — is painted in black on its side.

Exactly where the rusty, Cold War-era relic came from, and what it was used for, remain a mystery.

Workers at Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park pulled it off the beach just days after Hurricane Irma swept through town. They think it floated 350 miles from Cuba, given Cuba’s historically close ties with the Soviet Union.

Bill Moore, the park’s maintenance mechanic, locked eyes on the 12-foot buoy at the same time Coast Guard members did. He marveled at it, thinking, “You don’t find that too often.”

The Coast Guard’s administrative offices are next to the park’s headquarters. “They came running down here with their dog,” he said. “They tried to confiscate it.”

But Moore retrieved it before the Coast Guard could, he said. The buoy was too heavy to budge, so Moore tied a rope around it and with a skid-steer loader dragged it up the embankment and then brought it to the park office’s parking lot.

New Book: Democracy in Chains

Books, , , , ,

I’ve heard the story a half dozen times, and every time it is different. But only a little different, and most if not all of the versions I’ve heard are basically correct. Very wealthy individuals and corporations have a stranglehold over the government, and in many cases, call the shots. The only time they are not calling the shots is when a strong movement opposes them, and such movements inevitably weaken and die.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean is a book much hated by the right wing, and that is very much under attack by them, so it is a fair guess that MacLean is on to something.

The enemy in this particular story is not Barry Goldwater, or the Koch Brothers, but rather economics James McGill Buchanan. Of course, Charles Koch ends up being a disciple of Buchannan’s approach, ad do others. And that is where the money comes from.

MacLean’s key point is that this is not Continue reading New Book: Democracy in Chains →

Tragic and Unprecedented California Deadly Fire

Climate Change, Severe Weather and Other Disasters, , , ,

The news is bad, and is being widely covered. Here I just want to make a remark or two about the link between big fires and global warming.

As of last report, there are 15 known dead and 150 or more missing. Hopefully they are only virtually and not actually missing; there is a lot of confusion and communication resources are in many cases down.

Wild fires are tricky in more ways then one. It is easy to get caught in one (I’ve manage that myself), and it is hard to predict or fully understand why some years have more than others. There has been a long term trend nationally towards fewer wild fires, for several reasons, most of which have to do with human activities. The most significant part of that trend is that humans caused many, huge, often deadly wild fires in the past. The worst wildfire ever in Minnesota, in terms of Death toll, was during World War I and had mainly to do with farming and railroads being a bad mix. Cutting lots of land to farm provides the fuel, and in those days, railroads were travelling tinderboxes sparking fires everywhere they went. Continue reading Tragic and Unprecedented California Deadly Fire →

Is Facebook Covering Up Russian Hacking Of The 2016 Election?

Politics, , , , ,

Facebook apparently knew quite early on that Russian agents were manipulating Facebook feeds and Facebook users in order to influence the American election, favoring Trump and working against Clinton.

But they publicly denied that they had any of this information, and went so far as to delete information about this in a report. The report contained details about Russia that Facebook legal and marketing teams removed before the report’s release.

Then, as you may know, they eventually admitted it.

The result of this long and inexplicable delay may have set back by months our understanding of the whole Trump-Russian scandal.

Watch this for all the gory details:

Continue reading Is Facebook Covering Up Russian Hacking Of The 2016 Election? →