The Voltage Gate
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"All we have yet discovered is but a trifle in comparison with what lies hid in the great treasury of nature."
-Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
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Tue, 01 May 2007 11:00:46 -0500 - Saving the Wolemi Pine
I caught an episode of National Geographic's Wild Chronicles discussing the Wollemi pine, a rare, ancient contemporary of the dinosaurs that was discovered alive in Australia in the '90's. The stand is the only one known in the entire world, and conservationists are trying to find ways to preserve it.
Australian officials hope to bolster the tree's numbers by encouraging gardeners around the world to each take one home and plant it. Unlike other nonnative species, the Wollemi doesn't grow or reproduce fast enough to be an invasive threat, experts say.
In the U.S., the tree is sold exclusively by the National Geographic Society.
It's a good video; even Attenborough weighs in on the issue (the man is everywhere at once!).
NG is hoping that if the tree becomes widely available to the international market, then the original stand of less than 100 trees will be less prone to poaching.
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Tue, 01 May 2007 10:00:26 -0500 - Environmental/Child Abuse
Karmen had a particularly disturbing experience while sketching geese at one of her Blogger Bioblitz sites:
As I sat, softly sketching, watching the geese out of the corner of my eye, I noticed one of the guys who was fishing across the cove had started "exploring". He walked right across the narrow strip of land that I was drawing, and marched right up to the goose's nest. I watched, horrified, as he bent down and picked up an egg out of the nest. The geese went nuts, honking at him, but he ignored them, and started to walk back, egg in hand. I was pissed. I put down my pastels, and called out.
"Hey! You do realize that you are on a wildlife refuge, and that bird and its eggs are protected by the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, right?! You're breaking the law!"
He sneered at me. "It was already broken," he drawled, with a thick accent that seemed to match his cowboy hat.
I didn't really know what to say. I sat there, watching and shaking with anger, as he brought his buddy and kid over to stomp around on the nest. Not only was he going to raid the poor bird's nest, but he was going to teach his little kid how to do it, too. What a way to teach your kids to respect their environment. As they walked, the pile of sticks (one of the focal points in my painting) collapsed under them, sending debris spilling into the cove. They kept poking around the nest, while the geese shouted angrily. What could I do? I grabbed my camera, and took pictures of their despicable desecration of my bioblitz site.
Karmen handled it much better than I would have. She stayed calm, found the guy's car and snapped a pic of his plates, reporting him to Colorado's Operation Game Thief. You can see her pics here. Go over and give Karmen some props for standing up for wildlife.
I hope, at some point in the child's life, he has a positive influence that will show him some respect for wildlife and the outdoors. His father, obviously, has none.
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Tue, 01 May 2007 09:50:49 -0500 - Why Blog About Basics?
For the kids, of course. I got this comment on my basics post about tropical dry forests last night around midnight:
Hey, I just wanted to say Thanks for being a GREAT resource for my school project on the Tropical Dry Forest Biome. This has helped greatly and I hope in the near future I do some more research of my own to see how I personally can help save these biomes around the world. Once again Thanks for your help.
~*hugs*~
I'll throw down for the sake of any late night school project; I've certainly had enough of those myself.
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Tue, 01 May 2007 08:40:41 -0500 - Bloggers Bioblitzing Across the Sphere
From Ontario to Panama, what are participating bloggers finding out in the field? This thread will be constantly updated throughout the week, blog carnival style, compiling all of the bioblitzes that are being conducted. Please contact me if you have something up; I'll make sure I add it to the list.For info about the Blogger Bioblitz, follow the links:
- Read more about the blitz
- Visit the forum
- See submission guidelines
- Join the Flickr group
- Find a field guide online
- Download a button for your blog/website
- See the updated list of participants
Blogger Bioblitzes are below the fold. New blitzes are in bold.
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Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:30:50 -0500 - Denialism Comes to ScienceBlogs
Well, the blog anyway.
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Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:57:09 -0500 - Carnival Updates
Carnival of the Godless #65 is up at Light Remembered.
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Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:52:32 -0500 - Cinching Up the Blogger BioblitzAfter the past month of planning, promoting and actually surveying, today is the last day of the Blogger Bioblitz (B3). But that doesn't mean we're quite done.
Sara, Jenn and I will be tabulating data over the next week or so, getting a final count of species and shipping the data off to Madhu and Greg for mapping. We're hoping to have everything complete in the first couple weeks.
The link list of B3 posts will be updated tomorrow morning, when I'm sure all the posts are in. If I have missed anyone, e-mail me.
I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone involved. It started with just one idea and blossomed into a working systems of dozens in a matter of weeks. They say the internet is breaking down community. I think that's inaccurate. More people are realizing that our community is larger than our hometown, from Ontario to Panama to Germany and around the world. I hope more of the world community will join us for next year's blitz.
This week I will start a thread at the Google Group to discuss B3 '08, expanding on our successes and troubleshooting '07. Stay tuned.
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Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:50:53 -0500 - Sexism at Scientific American
Zuska blasted some moron at SciAm for referring to our own Shelley Batts as "attractive" during his summary of Shelley's recent run in with the lawyers at Wiley over the reproduction of a research figure:
Excuse me? "Seems to be attractive"? WTF???
I mean, what the f*ck does that have to do with anything in the story? Why the gratuitous mention of Shelley's appearance?
Oh, I know why. Because she's a WOMAN. And women, at all times, you must remember that you are women first and foremost. Your appearance is ever and always an issue, and no matter what the hell you are ever doing - be it analyzing a gel, delivering a talk, or taking on a publishing giant in the blogosphere - how you look will be an important factor in whatever story there is to tell about you.
Zuska left similar comments at the SciAm blog in response, and their resident sexist has replied:
Honestly, with the strong responses to that, frankly, off-hand and silly comment, I would take it out. But, that would be pretty weak. I wrote it. I didn't mean it to be condescending. I read Batts regularly--since I cover the neuroscience beat at sciam.com--and I find her insights helpful and I sometimes get ideas for stories from them. So, knives down everyone. Or not. I'll take the criticism I deserve for my uninspired attempt to pair an alliterative term with "avian-friendly." My bad.
"My bad"? "Pretty weak"? Is this Maxim or SciAm? Don't try to blame it on your lack of poetry skillz; you obviously thought it was okay to say what you did or you wouldn't have published it.
My question is, why is he cringing now, after the fact? Shouldn't something have gone off in his brain while he was typing the post? I know what its like to be at a loss for introductory material, but come on; he should know, as a professional writer, that relevance is his foremost priority, and his aside was completely inane and irrelevant.
I'm sure this will be brushed off as just a small infraction, which is unfortunate; this says something about his perception of people. He sees Shelley as a woman foremost and predominantly, and it influences his presentation and interpretation of the issue. This guy deserves a slap on the wrist. Perhaps SciAm needs to be a bit more choosy about who they permit to opine on their blog.
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Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:05:08 -0500 - Reading Back 70 Years
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I love to read old science books, especially those that discuss biology before the discovery of DNA (aka the "mechanism of heredity"). I found this particular book in a small antique store in Pennsylvania and was struck by a small passage affirming the viability of evolution.
Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:50:53 -0500 - Clips
"Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, our school, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life."
-E.O. Wilson
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Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:25:50 -0500 - Recent Carnivals
Tangled Bank #78 at About: Archeology
Carnival of the Green #74 at Evangelical Ecologist
I'll be hosting the next edition of Oekologie on May 15th. See the tab above for more info.
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Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:00:07 -0500 - Worst. Game. Ever.
Man, this game sucks. They show you what amounts to be an extra depressing trailer of An Inconvenient Truth and then unleashes you on the world - to stop emitting so much CO2.
Usually when a game is set in a post-apocalyptic world, you at least get a gun or a blade (or a gunblade) and have to undermine the oppressive, corrupt regime that has risen in the absence of order. In Planet Green Game, in the face of utter destruction, you take your car in for an oil change.
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Everyone knows that the only good educational game ever made was Oregon Trail. Sure, my oxen always drowned while pulling a Conestoga wagon of infection, but it actually made me think... about how much I wanted to hang out in the computer lab instead of going to class.
Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:00:52 -0500 - Clips
"There should be more attention paid to scientific research in the ecology area, and I think that such attention to proper environmental concerns would make the public feel much better about it."
-Thomas R. Cech
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Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:16:40 -0500 - Questioning the Sincerity of Envangelical Environmentalists
This is the first of a series of popular conservation and ecology book reviews to be posted at The Voltage Gate.For the past several months, I have been following the recent surge of evangelicals shedding their anti-liberal and anti-environmentalist stances, accepting the facts about global warming and other environmental dangers, and becoming part of the existing environmentalist movement.
I have been extremely skeptical of the sudden change of attitude, especially after the fundamentalist evangelical involvement in political maneuvering for neo-cons over evolution/creationism in the science classroom.
When I saw that Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action was to be released, I immediately e-mailed the publisher for a copy.
The book is written by a J. Matthew Sleeth, a medical doctor who gave up his materialist ways and turned evangelical, buying a house in the country and making a commitment to "ministry." He retained and strengthened his love of nature and now tours the country, teaching other Christians what they can do to save "the creation", a turn of phrase Sleeth uses throughout the book, probably taking a cue from E.O. Wilson's latest. The book is, I'm assuming, the hard copy of those lectures.
Praise and criticism below the fold.
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Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:00:49 -0500
