lightcastle

Two stories about bugs.

1) Researches posit that honey bees have individual personalities. Or, more accurately, some are thrill-seekers (more properly "novelty-seekers", it seems) and some are not.

2) Fleeing the rising waters of a flood, thousands of wolf spiders have blanketed a farm in Wagga Wagga.

Combining some obnoxious rich people, the Lucille and Mitt tumblr.

Sleepy Lions

Stealing the heart of a saint? That's a horror movie plot waiting to happen.

The Value-Added Teacher Model sucks. I need to read more Mathbabe, as she has lots of interesting things to say. Quants for the rest of us is good. (And it seems I need to check out Duck Duck Go.

Things to do to stop Google from collecting and using all your information. (I suspect us Android users are out of luck, everything on our phones belongs to Google.

Black Bloc tactics as cargo cult.

So is Libertarianism really just an attempt to preserve older forms of private power and not concerned with liberty at all?

Some advice for doing your own FOIA requests. (USA only.)

We are the stories we tell, or so I am often inclined to think.

In honor of Women's History Month in the USA, Aphra Behn collects stories of women's history that don't get told nearly often enough.

Neal Gabler and Bill Moyers discuss how the stories we tell about politicians in the US makes us disappointed in the reality. "Movies are clean; democracy is a mess."

The American Civil War was one of the first wars documented by the new technology of photography. The Atlantic has gathers the places, the people, and finally the 3-D stereographs from the war.

Explaining scientific concepts in clear language is much harder than most people think. Could you answer the question What is flame? in a way an 11 year old would understand while still being scientifically accurate?

And finally, (mostly unrelated) Nathan Fillion excels at goofy sincerity.

A nice short story about memory in Nature.

The Oatmeal grammar tag is full of fun things, even if many are usage and vocabulary, but not grammar. (I know, I'm losing this jargon fight. I do think we will need to brainstorm up a new word to mean "grammar" since we're losing the one we have.)

More in the we humans may actually be wired to be nice file.

At some point, the rules on academic publishing and access are going to have to change.

Merril Perlman clears up some usage I have always wondered about.

Something improvised as a temporary fix is “jury-rigged.” First used in the seventeenth century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “jury-rig” is a nautical term, not a legal one. A temporary mast to replace one that has broken is a “jury mast”; attaching any rigging to that is “jury-rigging.”

Something that is “jerry-built,” though, is shoddily built, usually out of inferior materials. The OED traces that phrase to 1869. (It’s not “gerry-built,” unless the builder is named Gerry.) The temporary “doughnut” tire that most cars carry these days would be a “jury-rigged” solution to a blowout; let’s hope it wasn’t “jerry-built,” too.

To be fair, things can be “jury-rigged” and “jerry-built,” meaning temporary and lousy, and it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference.

Whether you want to fine tune your interpretation as the Golden Rule, the Silver Rule, or the Platinum rule, it's still pretty much Rule #1 - Stop Being a Dick to People.

All "Top X" lists are debatable, but that's a pretty fine ensemble Den of Geek has assembled for Cult Film Actors.

When the Commetariat attacks.

I am reasonably certain this is the script for releasing Lovecraftian horror on us all.

After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20 million years.

[...]

He said the doomsday scenario for the Russian breakthrough would be if the suddenly released water pushed its way past machinery to block it and shot up the borehole, which is six to eight inches in diameter at the top. The result, he said, could be an enormous geyser that could empty a quarter of the lake. Priscu said he didn’t expect that to happen, but if it did, the sudden addition of substantial water vapor to the antarctic atmosphere could change the continent’s weather in unpredictable ways.

I am not fond of projects that have a "doomsday scenario" written into the script. It's the writer in me.

I'm cleaning out some old tabs I wanted to get back to since I've been sick all day.

I would also like to remind people that punctuation is not grammar.

Here we have an attempt to extend Manhattan over the whole globe using Google Maps. It isn't perfect, of course, which just reminds me of debates over the Mercator projection and the idea that all maps and models are approximations which may or may not be useful. (I remember explaining science this way, once. Science lets you draw maps of nature, but maps are not the territory.)

I know you all know about it now, but I still kind of love that they are going to clone a wooly mammoth.

I have to admit I have a weak spot for nested demotivational posters.

Femme fatale Cthulhu. (sort of) None of the other pieces by Ray Ceaser have really grabbed me, but I haven't hunted through the whole gallery.

It's back to work and I keep glancing at interesting things but don't have time to write. So you get a link dump from tabs.

(One of my 2012 quasi-resolutions is to set up a proper reading system. I will solicit "you should be reading these" suggestions, as well as asking what to use to manage them.)

Carbon nanotubes create wearable sensors. This kind of thing has been kicking around for a while, and seems to really getting to the point where smart clothing could be pretty commonplace.

From Obsidian Wings, some useful German words we could use in English:

Verschlimmbesserung, noun [from Verbesserung (improvement) and Verschlimmerung (deterioration/worsening)]: intended improvements or upgrades that end up making everything worse. Verb form: verschlimmbessern

kaputtreparieren, verb ("kaputt" + "repair"): repair or tinker with a thing to the point that it becomes broken.

The Occupy Movement (and I'm still iffy on whether I like that term, but it seems to have stuck) has been fascinating to watch, although why anyone is surprised they are having some of the problems they are having surprises me. The fact it exploded quickly and that it pretends to be non-hierarchical almost guarantees some form of these "do any of you realize you didn't invent social justice movements or protesting" moments.

Barbie trashes her dreamhouse.

The two types of sloth may be an example of convergent evolution. (Also, Sloth babies are cute)

Add this parasitic fly to the list of possible causes of colony collapse disorder. (Also, do not read if the whole "larva then eat their way out of the insect's head" thing is going to bother you.)

Three New Hampshire republicans have proposed a bill that says “All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived”.

A reminder, correlation does not mean causation, although it allows you to imply all kinds of things.

I was going to write something about the Hugo Schwyzer dust up over the holidays, but since I always thought he was a douchebag anyway...

A collection of things I've read/seen over the last little while.

A ranking of Earth-like and habitable worlds we've discovered. This came out before the recent confirmation of Kepler 22b as highly Earth-like.

From a few years back, but since Andrew Sullivan brought up The Bell Curve again, some discussion on what "heritability" means in this context and why g is a statistical myth.

And just in case the whole whitewashing of Akira wasn't enough, it looks like Tom Cruise will play the lead for the adaptation of All You Need is Kill. Because in a novel where one of the three lead characters is not white, you better make that sucker white for the movie. :/

A couple of links

The Neuroanthropology blog picks its favorites of the Society for Neuroscience's Brain Awareness Video Contest.

I like the Dopamine Film Noir.

Secondly, the Smithsonian presents Five Historic Female Mathematicians You Should Know.

No shock to see Hypatia and Lovelace there, but was happy to learn of the others.

And as a bonus, Hugh Jackman and Jimmy Fallon throw water on each other.

Humans playing an online game have untangled the structure of a key protein in the virus that causes AIDS, a protein causing AIDS in rhesus monkeys
that hadn't been solved for 15 years was resolved and confirmed by x-ray crystallography.

The game is called Foldit, I am sad I didn't already know about it, and this is their second paper published in Nature.

Go Team Science.

Hey, There is a new Type IA supernova nearby, and it is less than a week old!
People have already been able to take pictures through a 20" telescope.

From the linked blog:

All in all, this is pretty much a big deal. The galaxy is close, pretty, a bit odd, and is hosting the nearest Type Ia supernova seen in decades which was caught when it was less than a day old.

An interesting article out of MIT about an anti-vaccine approach that seems effective against many viruses.

No, I have not written it.

However, while mentioning that there is no established mechanism of action for viscosupplementation and that therefore I am tempted to ask a question which is, essentially, "make up an interesting MoA for this, since there is no established clinical proof of one", my coworker piped in with,

"They could make it an epic poem of the battle in the knee. All the cells can have heroes. Behold the hero of the cytokines.

It would be The Cytokinead."

I am such a nerd for wanting this.

The Failure of Gender-Neutral Parenting

Echidne is reposting her series on gender science from the turn of the year as part of her summer re-runs. As I enjoy her reporting on science popularizations, and as I am in agreement with her on the sorry state of what gets reported about gender difference, I am going to link to it.

The introduction is here.

A question from my co-worker for the language geeks. Is there an equivalent term for socioeconomic status for urbanity? (Is it urbanity?)

In other words, the disease is known to more commonly affect those of lower socioeconomic status and those who live in cities (and larger cities).

So those of lower socioeconomic status and those of higher urbanity? Lower pastoralism? Is there a social science term for degree of living in cities?

I really wish I could remember my formal math and logic.

From a comment thread on an article about a bad sexual science study, this was proposed:

"Really, Really Hot" does not always equal "Awesome Sex", but "Awesome Sex" often equals "Really, Really Hot".

So the property is not transitive? Or is it not reflexive? Or am I completely misremembering and it simply is some sort of special case of affirming the consequent?

The New York Times discussed the cognitive protection of bilinguilism.

via shadesong - Potentially the world's oldest museum. And since it seems Princess Ennigaldi curated it, that means the oldest known museum we owe to a woman of the city of Ur *in addition* to the oldest known author (Enheduanna).

Or basically, Ur gave us some awesome.

Well, I tend not to go all zealot even when I do convert, but still.

Hypatia posted a link to Simply Noise, which is a free colour noise generator.

I pointed out I didn't see much point, but the brown noise sounded like it would be nice to sleep to.

Now I have converted half the content department to the benefits of white noise to enhance focus while on a deadline.

Just another reminder that hypatia is orders of magnitude smarter than me.

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Entries tagged with science

Bugs

Friday: Lions, Libertarians, no Limbaugh

Culture, History, Science, and Narrative

Knowledge

A mix of things you should know.

Is this wise?

Link roundup - Manhattan, Mammoths, and More

Link Dump - Correlation does not Cause Sloths.

Random Links - Habitable Planets, Tom Cruise is not Asian, etc.

Brain Awareness, Famous Mathmeticians You Should Know, and men in wet shirts

Better Science Through Playtime

New Supernova!

Broad-spectrum Virus fighting?

Epic Biology Poetry

On Ballerinas and Football Players

Gender Science

Urbanism? Urbanity?

Logical properties of hotness

Random science-y things

No zealot like a convert