Evolutionary Conversations…

A lot of interesting posts appeared over the past day or two concerning evolutionary theory, what evolution is and how it works.
It all started with Jonah Lehrer’s article in SEED Magazine on the ideas of Joan Roughgarden:The Gay Animal Kingdom to which PZ Myers responded with Evolution and homosexuality and Jonah responded with agreement: PZ vs. Roughgarden.
I responded with a post in which I linked to my old review, Books: ‘Evolution’s Rainbow’ by Joan Roughgarden, and ended with a minor quip that switched the discussion from homosexuality to the question of units of selection: Sexual Selection is not dead yet!
Razib responded with: Levels of selection: controversies no one cares about? to which Robert Skipper responded with excellent post: Apathy About the Levels of Selection.
Then I rattled Razib (again – he’s read them before…we go waaay back!) with two reposts from my old blog, each taking sideways stabs at crude genocentrism: How To Become A Biologist and Lysenko Gets A D-Minus On My Genetics Test.
This gave Razib an idea to ask for a 10-word definition of evolution: Evolution in less than 10 words – give it a shot! John Hawks was the first to respond with Evolution in less than 10 words
RPM did much better: Evolution, the Population Geneticist’s Perspective. And Robert Skipper did much, much, much better: 10 Words About Evolution. I left my own definition in the comments on both of these posts. [Update: John Wilkins offers his own interesting definition: Evolution in less than 10 words]
On a somewhat different topic, the new study of evoluiton by hybridization in butterflies was ably explained by Carl Zimmer in Darwin, Meet Frankenstein and John Wilkins in Homoploid speciation – what is it, and why does it matter?

SEED question: time for blogging

The new question-of-the-week was just beemed down from the mothership:

How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?

I do not have a day job! I am a stay-at-home dad.
I occasionally teach – but that is either on Saturday mornings (lab) or evenings (once a week), so that does not take too much time. Preparation also does not take much time.
I am supposed to be writing my Dissertation, but I’ve been very, very lazy for far too long. Most of the writing and statistics is done, but making graphs – hundreds of graphs – is a killer. One of the programs I have to use for many of my graphs works only on Macs and, furthermore, new Macs do not like it. It was last updated in 1982! So, I have a 10-year old PowerMac just for making those graphs. It takes a good dog-walk for that computer to start up. Many minutes for the program to open. Hours to get a single graph looking good…. It’s a major pain. Still, I am going to crack down on it this summer (which may reduce some of my blogging time).
Most of the blog-posts do not take much time to write: you see something cool, grab a link or two, write a brief comment and publish. Even the longer posts do not take that much time away from work – I build them in my head while driving, walking the dog or taking a shower. Once a post is fully formed, I sit down, type it down, and post.
Finally, my sleep schedule is crazy. Thus, I am often awake while everyone else in the house is either asleep or not at home – having peace and quite is quite conducive to blogging.
Once I do get a real job, whatever and whenever it may be, I assume that my blogging frequency will drop somewhat, but I do not see myself ever being so overwhelmed to stop blogging altogether.
This post took less than 15 minutes to write.

Bush Falls In Love With Dolphins!

Bush to Create World’s Largest Marine Protected Area Near Hawaii

“…..A turning point came in April, when Bush sat through a 65-minute private White House screening of a PBS documentary that unveiled the beauty of — and perils facing — the archipelago’s aquamarine waters and its nesting seabirds, sea turtles and sleepy-eyed monk seals, all threatened by extinction.
The film seemed to catch Bush’s imagination, according to senior officials and others in attendance. The president popped up from his front-row seat after the screening; congratulated filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau; and urged the White House staff to get moving on protecting these waters….”

The power of the well-made nature documentary!
(Hat-tip: somewaterytart on Shakespeare’s Sister)

DonorsChoose Update

Janet has the update on our educational fundraiser. People are pitching in, a little bit of money at a time. But….but, where are my readers?! Only $10 so far?! Come on – I know you can do better than that! Click here:
Help public school kids through my DonorsChoose challenge!

Five Fists of Science

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Can it get any better than this! The Five Fists of Science, starring Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla in a race to save the world from Thomas Edison and J.P Morgan! I immediatelly pre-ordered the book and can’t wait to read it. 5fistsofscience.jpg
Update: I just got an e-mail from Amazon that the book is finally out and that my copy has been shipped. I’ll be able to read it just in time for the celebration of Tesla’s 150th birthday on July 10th.
(Hat-tip: Science Librarian, via Boing Boing)

The Webbed Feet

The Aquatic Ape theory is bunk, but Aquatic Sparrow theory just got a huge boost. There is no way I can explain the Big Evolution News Of The Day as well as Grrrlscientist did, so please go here and enjoy the amazing news of the wading/aquatic ancestors of all modern birds, with the beuatiful pictures of excuisitely well-preserved fossils from China.

Banner Update

When I first uploaded the banner it was kinda mrky and muted. Look at it now! Clear and gorgeous!
Thanks for the banner go (again) to Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen. You may want to visit his website to check his artwork (and perhaps buy some, or comission your own banner). You can see some of his art also on this webpage.
He has also recently published a gorgeous book, which you can buy either here or here.
Finally, you are surely going to enjoy his beautiful blog. I hope he gets invited to be in the next wave of new SEED sciencebloggers.

Teaching Update

This Monday night I taught lecture #7 of the 8-week Intro Biology course (adult education at a community college). First, I gave them their Exam #2 (on Diversity, see my lecture notes on those topics here, here and here). The flat distribution of the first exam has now turned bimodal: some students are making big improvements and I will probably end with a nice cluster of As and Bs, while other students are falling and may end up with a few Ds and Fs, with nobody left in-between.
Then, I continued with the physiology topics. The week before, I covered nervous, sensory, endocrine and circadian systems. This week, I covered the muscular, circulatory, respiratory, excretory and reproductive systems. How does one teach all of those systems in such short time? By sticking to the basics of the basics, of course, skipping a lot of stuff that textbook deems important. I am late at writing and posting here my lecture notes for those two lectures, but once I do, you’ll see the strategy I took, putting emphasis on how all those systems are intertwined and work together in solving challenges posed by the environment.
Next week is the final exam on anatomy and physiology. The students will then give oral presentations on an organ system each. Unlike me, they will keep the systems separate from each other, and focus entirely on the human body. One student will do the immune system which I did not have time to cover at all. This will be an opposrtunity for me to add teh information that I could not sqeeze into my formal lecture before.
Last week, they also gave short presentations on diseases. I have to say that I learned a lot about Shingles, Grave’s disease, Herpes Simplex, Osteoporosis, etc. They did a great job, all of them. Finally, they will do the evaluations and the class will be over. Later this summer I will teach the lab only, then in Fall it’s back to both the lecture and the lab again.
Technorati Tag: teaching-carnival

The Three Rs

This is my first ever post on education. I wrote it on the John Edwards’ primary campaign blog on December 23, 2003, and later re-posted it on http://www.jregrassroots.org/ forums. I republished it on August 23, 2004 on Science And Politics and republished it again on December 05, 2005 on The Magic School Bus. It’s time for it to move into the new archives here:
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The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon!

You will see (almost) identical text below on many SEED science blogs because we are all doing this together, as a team, so it is not a case of mass plagiarism:
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you’re reading the blogs here, chances are you feel the same way.
A lot of us fell in love with science because of early experiences in school — teachers who made science intriguing, exciting, maybe a little bit dangerous. But tightening budgets are making it harder and harder for public school teachers to provide the books, equipment, and field trips to make science come alive for kids.
DonorsChoose.org gives us a way to help teachers get the job done. A bunch of us at ScienceBlogs have set up Bloggers Challenges which will let us (and that includes you) contribute to worthy school projects in need of financial assistance. We’ll be able to track our progress right on the DonorsChoose site. And — because we like a little friendly competition — we’ll be updating you periodically as to which blogger’s readers are getting his or her challenge closest to its goal.
You don’t need to give a barrel of money to help the kids — as little as $10 can help. You’re joining forces with a bunch of other people, and all together, your small contributions can make a big difference.
Who’s In:
Here are the ScienceBlogs bloggers who are participating with Bloggers Challenges:
A Blog Around the Clock (challenge here)
Adventures in Ethics and Science (challenge here)
Aetiology (challenge here)
Afarensis (challenge here)
Cognitive Daily (challenge here)
Evolgen (challenge here)
Gene Expression (challenge here)
Good Math, Bad Math (challenge here)
Island of Doubt (challenge here)
Mike the Mad Biologist (challenge here)
Neurotopia, version 2.0 (challenge here)
Pharyngula (challenge here)
Pure Pedantry (challenge here)
The Questionable Authority (challenge here)
The Scientific Activist (challenge here)
Stranger Fruit (challenge here)
Terra Sigillata (challenge here)
Uncertain Principles (challenge here)
The World’s Fair (challenge here)
How It Works
Follow the links above to the DonorsChoose website.
Pick a project from the slate the blogger has selected (or more than one).
Donate.
If you’re the loyal reader of multiple participating blogs and you don’t want to play favorites, you can donate to multiple challenges!
When Donors Choose sends you a confirmation email, forward it to: sb.donorschoose.bonanza@gmail.com This is your contest entry.
Sit back and watch the little donation thermometers inch towards 100 percent (each participating blog will have one in the sidebar – look at mine where it says “I Support”). Once the Challenge ends, we’ll select winners at random.
Contest you say? What’s that about?
Just in case you’re on the fence about helping the kids, we thought we’d provide some incentives to randomly drawn donors. It dies not matter through which blog you donated and to which educational programs, if you send in teh e-mail you will be in the pool of potential winnder. The prizes are:
Subscriptions to Seed magazine
ScienceBlogs mugs
Subscriptions to TIME magazine
Books:
What We Believe But Cannot Prove, edited by John Brockman
The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney
Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World, by Michael Chorost
Blogging in a Snap, by Julie Meloni
Galileo’s Daughter, by Dava Sobel
The Scientific Renaissance: 1450-1630, by Marie Boas Hall
Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, by Judea Pearl
Paleoanthropology (1st ed) by Milford Wolpoff (gently used)
Administrative Details
The contest will run from June 15 to July 1. Email your entries by July 1! Prize notification will start by July 5.
And, credit where credit is due: This drive was inspired by Sarah D. Bunting’s wildly successful Tomato Nation DonorsChoose fund raiser this past March. Sars, you’re an inspiration to us all.

Obligatory Reading of the Day

Amanda reviews the lies about sex and contraception that are peddled by the Catholic church in their pre-marital classes:
Pandagon goes undercover the lazy way on a Catholic anti-contraception seminar
and
Pandagon goes undercover the lazy way on a Catholic anti-contraception seminar, Pt. II

Carnival of Education – call for submissions

Henry and Janine Cate of Why Homeschool will be hosting the next edition of Carnival of Education. If you write something appropriate for this carnival by by 7:00 PM PST on the Tuesday, the 20th of June, send your entry to them at: cate3 AT panix DOT com

Call him Doctor!

I was checking sporadically his blog throughout the day to see when the good news will get posted and, lo and behold, here it is! Reed Cartwright has successfully defended his PhD dissertation and, next month, is coming to my school for his postdoc. Go say Hello and Congratulations to Dr. Cartwright
(OK, am I going to be next?)!

Lysenko Gets A D-Minus On My Genetics Test

I wrote this post on February 27, 2005. Provocative? You decide….ClockWeb%20logo2.JPG

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EduCarnivals

Carnival of Education #71 is up on What’s it like on the Inside.
Carnival of Homeschooling #24 is up on About: Homeschooling.

Transgenic Chicken

SEED Magazine has an interesting article on the advances in avian transgenics….

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Brain Region Linked To Fly Slumber

When a news release states that a brain region is crucial for something, one is led to believe that this is the MAIN center controlling that function. If it is crucial for thermoregulation than it is the center for thermoregulation and without it the animal does not thermoregulate. Or am I misunderstanding English (it is a second language for me, after all)?
So, when the article starts with: “Researchers at Northwestern University have pinpointed a brain area in flies that is crucial to sleep, raising interesting speculation over the purpose of sleep and its possible link with learning and memory,” I expect to see total sleep loss when the brain region is deleted. But, “How the mushroom bodies control sleep is uncertain, but Allada and colleagues show that if the area is destroyed chemically, flies sleep less,” suggesting that a sleep center (if such exists at all – it may be a distributed brain function even in insects) is elsewhere.
Both the Allada study and the Seghal study are excellent and the information is really exciting, but why does a news release have to go beyond, far beyond…

Obligatory Readings of the Day

Archy on ‘belief in evolution’.
Lance Mannion about the Godless.

Sexual Selection is not dead yet!

A few months ago I reviewed Joan Roughgarden’s book “Evolutions Rainbow”. Now that SEED magazine has published an interview with her, I thought about writing about it again (or just republishing the old one), but now I see that I do not have to, because PZ Myers did a much better job at it than I could ever dream of doing, so go and read it.
The only sentence I did not like was: “There are objections that this requires group selection, which always puts an idea on shaky ground….” As someone who has studied group selection (both biological and philosophical literature) intensely over the past few years, I do not think it is on a shaky ground at all, though some people (mostly those who believe in mathematical models more than real data) may tell you so.

Grand Philosophers, Round Philosophers

Grand Rounds Vol 2 No 38 is up on Haversian Canal.
Philosophers’ Carnival XXXI is up on Kenny Pearce’s blog.

How To Become A Biologist

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This post is kinda personal. I wrote it first on July 27, 2005 on Science And Politics. Later, it was professionally edited and published on LabLit.com on March 3, 2006. Here is the unedited version:

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SAD is a different kind of depression

So, Wellbutrin is now officially a drug for treating Seasonal Affective Disorder. And chocolate is so unofficially. But, those may only take the edge off of the symptoms – they cannot affect the underlying causes.

A Quick Rundown.

I gave the second exam today. I have not graded them all yet, but I have a feeling that the grade distribution will move from flat to bimodal: some people going up into As and Bs, others falling to Fs, and nobody remaining in the middle. Some people put an effort in it, some don’t. That’s life.
Since the last meeting of the class (and the Final Exam) is next week, I’ll have to quickly write down the notes for my last two lectures so the students can have sufficent time to study. I will post the notes here, as usual. I hope to get both lectures written tomorrow, but life may interfere if I get to have lunch with Neil the Ethical Werewolf tomorrow.
Speaking of Neil, he should have a new post up soon on the OAC blog. And speaking of OAC, the latest poll of possible Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa placed John Edwards in the lead (30%), ahead of Clinton, Kerry and others. It’s early, but it’s nice to know that people on the ground are not buying the “Hillary is the nominee” trope pushed by the media.
In other news, someone put my Sleep post on Digg and Stumbleupon, which is making my Sitemeter feel good. It was moving so fast at one point that Abel, who tried to be my 2000th visitor at this new blog, only managed to be the 2001st.
Speaking of blog-love, I like compliments like anyone, but this is just amazing – made me blush! Thank you, Madison Guy!

Dr.Fun has retired

He’ll be missed
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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

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This post is perhaps not my best post, but is, by far, my most popular ever. Sick and tired of politics after the 2004 election I decided to start a science-only blog – Circadiana. After a couple of days of fiddling with the templae, on January 8, 2005, I posted the very first post, this one, at 2:53 AM and went to bed. When I woke up I was astonished as the Sitemeter was going wild! This post was linked by BoingBoing and later that day, by Andrew Sullivan. It has been linked by people ever since, as recently as a couple of days ago, although the post is a year and a half old. Interestingly, it is not linked so much by science or medical bloggers, but much more by people who write about gizmos and gadgets or popular culture on LiveJournal, Xanga and MySpace, as well as people putting the link on their del.icio.us and stumbleupon lists. In order to redirect traffic away from Circadiana and to here, I am reposting it today, under the fold.
Update: This post is now on Digg and Totalfark. I urge the new readers to look around the site – just click on the little SB logo in the upper left corner. Also, several points made briefly in this post are elaborated further over on Circadiana, as well as here – just browse my Sleep category.

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Carnival of the Green #31


Welcome to the thirty-first edition of the Carnival of the Green. I am still trying to figure out the details of Movable Type after my move here last Friday (and please look around – there are 45 fantastic science bloggers here at SEED’s ScienceBlogs), so fancy graphics and creative hosting will have to wait for some other time. Let’s just take a straightforward look at this week’s entries.
Is it sexual repression that’s behind the religious right’s obsession with gay marriage? Or are they just plain evil? Either way, they are using it to distract us from the far more serious issue of global warming. Says Future Geek in You know what they say about homophobes…
Although the primary elections that this post specifically refers to is now over, Green LA girl thinks that as enviro bloggers, we can really help people make better voting choices by researching and writing about candidates’ commitment to the environment. This is especially true for local elections, for which info’s tough to come by. So, Vote prep for 6.6.06 and beyond.
My new blog-room-mate here, Grrlscientist of Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) wrote a review of the new film about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, hosted by Al Gore.
Two of the PSD Blog authors have sent their posts this week. As part of Green Week the European Business Awards for the Environment were announced. This year had some very creative winners, and Christine Bowers reviews some of them in Rewarding innovators in green business. Richard Caines’ post – Carbon: think global, act local was written in honor of World Environment day. It gives some suggestions to those who care about big-picture global environment issues but also want to help make a difference in their day-to-day activities. It also announced that the World Bank Group has gone carbon neutral.
Harlan Weikle of Greener Magazine reports that nation’s largest bank launched a pilot program for associates wishing to make things a little greener on the commute: Bank of America pilots hybrids.
Marigolds2, aka Mary Ellen blogs on The Blue Voice. A New Generation Coming On is a post about the Tennessee music festival Bonnaroo, and how it is greening the music festival scene, partnering with NRDC, Stop Global Warming, and others.
Elsa of The Greener Side feels guilty about posting a bad word when describing Vegan Vixens, a cable access show that aims to get people to flirt with veganism: Veganism with legs, nice legs…
Al and the rest of City Hippy editors have produced a collective review of 10 soaps that are green in one way or another: Editors Choice: 10 Green Soaps. Have they missed your favourite? Feel free to add your own reviews.
Judy of Savvy Vegetarian found some good articles in the Organic Consumers Association newsletter. Every once in a while – well, quite often actually – Organic Consumers Association publishes a blockbuster newsletter, in which every item is major news. Read and take heed on The EPA, Dead Sheep & Goats, German Owned Water, Ethanol, GE Corn In Your Gut, Canadian Health Care, Conagra Survey, and Obese Kids
Laura Lynn Klein of Organic Authority asks Is the EPA Safeguarding Public Health?. It recently cut a deal with Amvac, the manufacturer of the pesticide DDVP (a known carcinogen) to allow the toxic pesticide to stay on the market.
Sludgie, written by Francis Stokes, takes a humourous look at environmental issues, this time about the way Global warming threatens famous wine regions: Global Warming Threatens Wine Sippers’ Ability To Be Completely Annoying.
Daniel Collins of Down To Earth sent two nice posts: Reading weeds on Aldo Leopold’s reading list, and Redesigning Yosemite Falls about protecting National Parks, and impacts of climate change.
With some minor modifications (or the use of a special additive), your diesel-powered car or truck can run on used vegetable oil, potentially saving you lots of money on fuel. The most Interesting Thing of the Day is Vegetable Oil as Diesel Fuel: Fries and a fill-up.
NC Conservation Network is a local blog dear to me. Heather wrote a post about the Smart Energy Primer, while Grady assumes that Everybody Likes Clean Water, Right? Right?!
Thank you all for coming here. If Carnival of the Green is new to you, you should check out the archives of previous editions. Also, please look around my new digs and also visit my neighbors once you’re done reading the carnival entries.
Special thanks goes to Dee’s ‘Dotes for hosting last week’s carnival which you should check out if you happened to miss it. Next edition (COTG #32) will be hosted at Savvy Vegetarian Blog next Monday.

Upcoming Carnivals

In chronological order so you know how much time you have to write and submit your posts:

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BIO101 – Lecture 5: Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology

After three lectures on the basics, a long lecture on diversity, and a hard first exam, it is time to turn our attention to anatomy and physiology for the rest of the course:

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Playing soccer with a huge baseball!

New World Cup Soccer Ball Will Unsettle Goalkeepers, Predicts Scientist:

The Adidas ‘Teamgeist’ football has just 14 panels – with fewer seams – making its surface ‘smoother’ than conventional footballs which have a 26 or 32 panel hexagon-based pattern.
This makes it aerodynamically closer to a baseball and, when hit with a slow spin, will make the ball less stable, giving it a more unpredictable trajectory in flight.

This will make for some interesting viewing, to say teh least!
So far, I only caught about half of the Sweden vs. Trinidad match yesterday. I need to make an exam for tomorrow and a lecture for tomorrow, and write some blog posts, but I will have to take a break and watch the first Serbia&Montenegro game against Netherlands today at 3pm.

Sunday Carnivals

The newest edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up on The Atheist Mama. If you are unfamilirar with this carnival, check out the Archives here.



Heard the Word of
Blog?

Also, if you are interested in local blogging, check out The Tar Heel Tavern, a blog carnival of North Carolina bloggers. The latest edition is up on 2sides2ron.

New Neuroscience Carnival – The Synapse

The Synapse is a new neuroscience carnival. The first edition will appear on Pure Pedantry on June 25th, and the second two weeks later here on A Blog Around The Clock.
Anything involving the brain, nervous system, behavior and cognition is fair game for this carnival, from brand new research to historical studies, from pure basic science to applications in medicine or robotics. Please send the links for the first edition, including your name, your blog’s name and a short blurb about the post, to Jake at: jamesjyoung AT gmail DOT com.
Then, once your post appears in an edition of the carnival, you are eligible to become a host, so tell Jake on the above address and he’ll put you on the schedule. He is going to make a post that will serve as Homepage/Archives. All we need now is a really nifty logo, so if you have Photoshop talents, send your ideas to Jake as well.
BTW, it appears there is also a move to start a genetics carnival, which, should it become reality, should promptly lose the word “carnival” from its title. RPM (personal communication) has a great suggestion – “Mendel’s Garden”
Update: The genetics carnival has officially changed its name to Mendel’s Garden. The deadline for submissions is 11:59 pm on June 15. Use the Blog Carnival submission form.

On republishing my old posts

According to Blogger Dashboard (which cannot be trusted, but there is no other source), I have written a total of 2420 posts (Science And Politics – 2124; Circadiana – 220; The Magic School Bus – 76). Many of those posts are too irrelevant to move to the Archives here – things like carnival announcements, linkfests with lots of dead links, outdated news, etc.
But, there are perhaps somewhere between 100 and 200 posts that are, in my opinion, good, timeless and thoughtful. [more under the fold]

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Viagra – The Future

Shamelessly stolen from Cyberspace Rendezvous:

In pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name.
For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen.
Amoxil is also call Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.
The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin.
Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.
Pfizer Corp. announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power Beverage suitable for use as a mixer. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one. Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of “cocktails”, “highballs” and just a good old-fashioned “stiff drink.” Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: “MOUNT & DO”
Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

Dixafix? Is that a friend of Asterix? I thought it was a different kind of potion the idomitable Gauls were brewing!

Science Blogging Questionnaire

If Janet says something, we better listen! So, a little introduction is in place:

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New York City trip – Part V: Central Park

Friday, May 26th.
Morning
After such an exciting and exhausting first day, we gave ourselves the luxury of sleeping late on Friday. After grabbing some bagels and pretzels from street vendors, we took the kids on their first ever ride on the Underground. They were excited. Of course, we got on a wrong train which took us to Brooklyn. After we realized we have crossed a bridge, kids got nervous, but we just got out, crossed to the other side of the tracks and got on the same line in the other direction and back to Manhattan in minutes.

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Ask a ScienceBlogger: the alternative career

Hey, I just came here – don’t even know where the bathroom is, yet the SEED overlords are already making demands – the “Ask the ScienceBlogger” question of the week. At least they picked a relatively easy one for us rookies this week – no need for a two-part post of 4000 words each, written after hours of research on the topic….Here it is:

Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?

Something outdoors. Anything outdoors! Get me out of the house and lab, please! Now!
If I was not doing what I am doing (and believe me, I cannot wait to get back in the lab and do again what I am doing), I doubt I would leave biology for another science altogether, but it would be something completely different, something involving the Great Outdoors in wild and crazy places on the planet. So, let’s not nitpick on the precise definition of “discipline”…
Choice #1, appealing to the child in me, is digging dinosaurs. Can you imagine spending one summer in Montana, next summer in Sahara, and the next one in Gobi, then plan for the following one in Argentina?
Wonderful! Do I really need to go into the “Why” part of the question or is it obvious enough?

Carnival of the Green – call for submissions

Carnival of the Green has nothing really to do with the Green Party, but is a blog carnival that focuses on sustainability, ecology and conservation.
Next week, June 12th, the carnival will be hosted by me, right here on my new digs! I hope that means more exposure for all the entrants.
Check out the archives of previous editions of Carnival of the Green and see if you have written (or can write) something that fits with the theme.
You can send your entries to: carnivalofgreen AT gmail DOT com, or directly to me at: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com. I’d like to have all the entries by midnight (Eastern Time) on June 11th.

Project Exploration

You may have noticed a button on my sidebar (under the heading “I Support”) that looks like this:
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If you click on it, you will be transported to the homepage of one of my favourite science educational programs – the Project Exploration. This project is the brainchild of paleontologist Paul Sereno and his wife, historian and educator Gabrielle Lyons.
More under the fold….

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What is ‘Coturnix’?

Where did I get my Internet handle? Answer below the fold…

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The Banner Art

I hope you like my new banner. It was commissioned from a real artist,….

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A Coturnix Sampler…

The Big Blogging Gurus suggest that one should often link back to old posts. I do that, actually, quite often, but now that I have moved my blog here, all the old posts are elsewhere. Over the next few months I will re-publish some of my best posts here so they get archived on this blog. In the meantime it is nice to have the permalinks of the best (and most likely to be linked) posts, or at least most interesting posts all in one place.
I noticed that, when they moved to their new digs at SEED, several science bloggers posted their lists of “best of” posts. I found those lists very useful, even with bloggers I’ve been reading for quite some time, and even more for those new to me. I never dug through their archives before so this was an easy and quick way to get to know their older stuff.
I have compiled a list of “best of” political posts here, if you are interested, but since this is a science blog, I should showcase here the best, or at least most characteristic science-related posts. This is an attempt at such a list, putting together some of science blogging from “Science And Politics”, “Circadiana” and “The Magic School Bus”. I hope you find it useful. See it “under the fold”…

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Who Am I? And What Am I Doing Here?

I am Coturnix.
If that is insufficient information for you, click on “Read more…”

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Welcome, welcome, please feel at home and look around….

So, the Big Day has finally arrived – the inauguration of the new SEED scienceblogs homepage and the addition of 24 new bloggers to the stable, including me – yeay! So, go check out the brand new front page and all the old and new bloggers there.

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Testing, testing…1-2-3,… is this thing on?

OK, let’s try to figure out this Movable Type thingie.
Let’s see how bold looks like.
…and italics
How about I put something in

blockquotes?

Or try to embed an image:
Early%20bird%20gets%20the%20worm.jpg
That is the early bird that got the worm (which, as R.A. Heinlein said, just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed). So, PZ, Tara and the other early birds here caught worms. Now, we in the second eshelon may not get a worm, but we may get some seed, or SEED…
Hmmm, the “Under the Fold” function is not working….
And “Comments” are not working…
The MovableType thingie apparently gives individual posts wrong permalinks, i.e., instead of the date, it places the category in it, or nothing if I do nto assign a category. Ah, well, hopefully the tech gurus of SEED will get to me eventually…
Update: Thank you Tim – it is all working perfectly now!