Monkey Genes for Teachers
Science has done a cool thing: resources for high school biology teachers, accompanying today’s monkey gene publication. Pass the word.
Archive of entries posted on April 2007
And So It Goes
I cried this morning over my granola. Best explained with something I wrote a few few years back: On Christmas round about 1973 or so, my sister, Lisa, gave me Breakfast of Champions, which changed my life in unaccountable ways. I holed up with the book all afternoon Christmas and into the next day, and …
Land Use Change in the Amazon
Along the lines of the land use change issues Roger Pielke Sr. has been discussing, an interesting paper today in GRL looking at the differences between turning the Amazon rain forest into pasture, versus turning it into soybeans: Results show that the decrease in precipitation after a soybean extension is significantly higher when compared to …
Drought Looms!
From the Daily Express, across the rapidly rising pond, but adjacent to the smaller and rapidly shrinking pond, apparently: BRITAIN could be plunged into drought misery within months because of the record hot summer that’s on the way. Experts gave the warning yesterday as sailors, left, made the most of a full Bewl Water reservoir, …
Framing Me
The vigorous discussion over the Nisbet-Mooney Science piece on science communication (too many to link, see Matt’s blog for a rundown) is a perfect setup for a talk I’m giving Friday at UNM: “Communicating Science: What the News Media Can Do, and What it Can’t”, or words to that effect. For the cognitive misers in …
Water in the Desert
Piping Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. This doesn’t much have the look of the dramatic engineering works you typically think of when you think of western water projects, but at the end of the line, you’ve always got to get the water out that last few miles. In this case, it’s new pipe being laid about …
Eggs
Eggs Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Also from the bike ride: traditional holiday decor at our neighbor’s house.
Wisteria
wisteria Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Nora pointed out the other day how nice it is riding her scooter and smelling the wisteria right now. It’s popping all over the neighborhood. This is from my bike ride this morning, one of the best specimens a block up the street from our house.
P.Z. Myers Just Doesn’t Get It
Update: Oops, sorry Dr. Myers P.Z. Meyers Myers is one of the brightest and most interesting writers out there on the front lines of the evolution-creation wars. He’s obviously a very smart guy, who believes passionately that researchers have learned very important things that need to be incorporated into the way we, as a society, …
Florida Drought
From Robert Clemson’s WaterCrunch, an update on Florida drought: Southwest Florida usually receives 42 inches annually, however, they are missing 13 inches of rain since 2006. The area is now entering a dry season after a year of rainfall so far below normal it ranks as the state’s third-driest year on record. Only four inches …