From the monthly archives:

June 2009

Feed is Full Text Again

June 30, 2009

After experimenting with making the feed a capsule summary, I’ve decided (at the suggestion of Stephanie Chasteen, aka sciencegeekgirl) to go back to a full-text RSS feed. So if you unsubscribed because you were annoyed by that, it’s OK to resubscribe! If you’re already a subscriber, refresh the feed to see the full text of [...]

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Nice Legs

June 28, 2009

Sometimes evolution moves quickly and groups of organisms change radically over very short spans of geologic time. Think of modern horses, which evolved from dog-sized creatures over the course of the last few tens of millions of years. Or take humans — we only evolved about 150,000 years ago, and if you look at our [...]

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Lacy Double Take

June 25, 2009

The other day I was walking by the coffee table at work and noticed a Science magazine cover that made me do a 180. First, take a look at this. Now examine this:
Striking, no? And strange as it may seem, neither one of these creatures was the inspiration for the Boston street “grid”. Those Bostonians [...]

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To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before (On Planet Earth)

June 23, 2009

Today I give a Pseudopod Salute to ocean explorer Bob Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, who gave one of the best plain English explanations of tube worms and the importance of ocean research to Stephen Colbert back in February I have ever heard, and seems like a genuinely nice guy to boot:

The Colbert Report
Mon – [...]

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Say, Is That a Stinkhorn in Your Pocket . . . ?

June 18, 2009

All right, gentlemen. Show of hands. How many of you would be proud to have a two-inch, foul-smelling, penis-shaped fungus named after you? Really?
Well, Robert Drewes, curator of herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, was certainly pleased as punch. He was the leader of a biodiversity survey to the African islands of Sâo Tomé [...]

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My First Biodiversity Talk

June 14, 2009

The title of this post was inspired by John Cleese (with a dash of Scrubs). When I was in school in Ithaca, Cornell named him an honorary professor and invited him to speak at our interfaith chapel. I showed up on Sunday to find the title of his talk in plastic stick-on letters on the [...]

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Weird + Cute³ + Old Spice = ?

June 10, 2009

Saw this over at Zooillogix and couldn’t resist.  I cannot believe Jim Henson did not design this creature. I also cannot get over the impression that somehow, this thing looks like a cranky old man with his pants hitched up too high.

According to wikipedia, jerboae are “jumping desert rodents” from North Africa and Asia.  Tasty [...]

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Dude, Where’s My Cod?

June 6, 2009

Anyone who’s spent time fishing can tell you that every so often, after patiently waiting hours for a bite, one will reel in one’s line to discover that somehow, someone has pilfered the bait. Apparently Alaska black cod fishermen have a problem along the same lines(so to speak), although in this case it was the [...]

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A Stirring and Beautiful Journey Through Time

June 4, 2009

It’s been 4.5 billion years since Earth formed, and oh, what a long, strange trip it’s been. National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting has created a beautiful slide show set to music about the evolution of life on Earth to help you experience it in considerably less time.
The online version consists of 86 photographs with crisp [...]

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Voting Opened at 3 Quarks Daily

June 3, 2009

Voting is open in the 3 Quarks Daily Science Blog Post Contest I entered last week. There are over 100 entries (including little ol’ mine!), so if you’re interested, take a look and vote for your favorite! You have until midnight on June 8.

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