Robot Chicken, Cartoon Network
A series created in part by comedic genius Seth Green, featuring new takes on some old favorites. Here are a couple of the clips I laughed at this morning:
What I've been reading*
* or watching. "The media I've been consuming"
might be a better title...
August 30, 2007
"Got arachnophobia? Here's your worst nightmare" in the New York Times
A communal spiderweb covers a whole forest in Texas.
August 28, 2007
"Science Times," in the New York Times
The Times' weekly science section, with articles about how daddy longlegs populations provide support for plate tectonics, and bird levels in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Add to that recent reports that bats may be the non-primate reservoir for Marburg virus, and the "palm-up" gesture is evolutionarily ancient.
August 26, 2007
National Public Radio
A variety of stories caught my attention lately: Hawaiian folks who live in a tent, Summer movies, the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
August 25, 2007
Groo the Wanderer, Sergio Aragones
Reading reprints of this classic comic book of my youth, the story of a dimwitted barbarian and his loyal dog. Amazing art!
August 24, 2007
Bob Saget interviewed in the Washington Post
The Aristocrats gave us all a peek at Saget's dark side. Here's more of it.
August 17, 2007
Superbad
I haven't laughed this hard since... Borat.
August 14, 2007
Rising from the Plains, John McPhee
In light of my summer's studies, I figured I would re-read this classic about Rocky Mountain geology.
August 11, 2007
The New York Times:
Christopher Hitchens reviews the final "Harry Potter" Hitch lends his inimitable sense of history and self-righteousness to the review of a kids' book.
...and the growing movement to ditch bottled water. Too much oil gets wasted going into those bottles.
August 9, 2007
Robot Chicken, Cartoon Network
A series created in part by comedic genius Seth Green, featuring new takes on some old favorites. Here are a couple of the clips I laughed at this morning:
August 8, 2007
CNN Demise of the Yangtze River dolphin
The first cetacean to be extinguished by humans.
"The Host"
Korean action movie about a monster that lives in the sewers and then goes out to Seoul's Han River to feed on people. Humorous, with cool monster effects. I have a few problems with the way the end ended up, but I guess my expectations weren't met, which is usually a refreshing thing.
August 7, 2007
This week's New Yorker
Oliver Sacks writes about a "fern club" expedition, Richard Preston profiles a syndrome that causes peoples' hands and mouths to do battle with one another. Bizarre. (On the downside, an article about counterfeit olive oil was not as interesting as I'd hoped it would be.)
The New York Times' "Freakonomics" blog
A touchy, but interesting discussion in the comments section about whether we should have an online forum dedicated to ideas to make an economic terrorist attack. (I don't mean an attack against economics, I mean an attack that is economically-efficient & economically-successful.)
August 6, 2007
Bat orphanage in Fairfax, as featured in the Washington Post
A woman who raises abandoned bat pups.
August 5, 2007
The Civil War, Ken Burns
The acclaimed master documentary on the U.S. Civil War, its causes, players, battles, and effects.
August 4, 2007
This week's New Yorker
A good issue. An examination of how a 2001 murder in Seattle may relate to the recent U.S. Attorney firing scandal. John McPhee writes about golf (boring topic, but McPhee could write about dirt and I would still read it), and Elizabeth Kolbert writes about bees.
August 3, 2007
Holy Cow, Sarah Macdonald
An Australian tries to live in India.
CO2 trends at Mauna Loa, Hawaii
Watch the most important greenhouse gas increase over the past 40 years.
Planet Earth, BBC
Very hyped but very cool series exploring the living aspects of our planet. Snow leopard footage! (This will mean more after you've read Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, which does not in fact feature any snow leopards.) Also, I was in Bako National Park in Malaysian Borneo when the BBC cameramen were filming the flight of the colugos in the rainforest there. Pretty cool to see it show up, all polished, in this slick series.
July 29, 2007
Harper's magazine, July 2007
[I've been away for a month; sorry for the lack of updates here.] An article on running in the world's longest footrace (around a single Manhattan block). Also, beautiful aerial photographs of industrial waste.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
Book 7 of the Harry Potters series. The epic concludes. Quite intricate, and ultimately very satisfying.
Nature's Justice, (William O. Douglas)
Selected writings from the Supreme Court justice who was responsible for setting aside the C&O Canal as a National Park.
The Superior Person's Book of Words, Peter Bowler
Epicurean fodder for those of us with sesquipedalian propensities.
Longitude, Dava Sobel
The story of John Harrison, who invented an amazing clock that allowed mariners to establish their latitude.
June 29, 2007
Buffalo/Lion/Crocodile battle in Kruger National Park (South Africa) on YouTube
You have to see this!
June 26, 2007
My brother's home improvement website is live!
"Knocked Up"
A new movie (in a theater near you!) by the director of "The 40-year-old Virgin." Not as funny as that earlier film, though, mainly due to taking the two funniest guys out (Steve Carell and Romany Malco) and leaving only Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd to crack the jokes. All my friends seem to be having babies anyhow, and so babies are no laughing matter as far as I'm concerned. Babies kidnap friends, and don't let them go for 18 years!
Bigfoot expedition in Michigan, CNN
Looking for the missing link in the U.P.
June 25, 2007
"Highly Allochthonous" by Chris Rowan
A geology blog that's well written and occasionally well illustrated. Enjoyable!
June 23, 2007
"The Office"
Finished watching the BBC's original "The Office" series. Two short "seasons," plus a two-epsiode Christmas special. Pretty funny.
Cirque du Soleil's "Delerium"
Wow. I had never seen a Cirque du Soleil show before, but this was SPECTACULAR. Visually stunning, with all kinds of crazy stuff to watch: acrobatics, bizarre costumes, cooling visuals, incredibly coordinated dance, etc. I'm definitely into seeing more of this kind of thing. Undescribable, but certainly a worthwhile experience.
June 22, 2007
"Vanishing Point" double feature
Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" (half of "Grindhouse") was inspired by old muscle cars and car chase movies, in particular the movie "Vanishing Point." I've been waiting for the original (1971) to come up on Netflix for months now, and got it and the remake (1997) on the same day. I watched them back to back. The original, needless to say, was better. More raw, more original, though still full of cliches. The remake, though it featured Viggo Mortensen, was made for TV and had (bizarrely) a strong Catholicism-is-good theme running through it. Not nearly so satisfying, though the final scene makes more sense, given the more robust plot of the remake. In the original, the conclusion comes out of nowhere.
Windows into the Earth, Robert B. Smith & Lee J. Siegel
The geologic story of Yellowstone National Park and Teton National Park, in Wyoming. I'll be spending some time there this summer. This was the assigned textbook for the course I'm taking on Yellowstone. Nice illustrations, very well laid out.
June 21, 2007
"Giant panda's pygmy ancestor found," CNN
The "pygmy giant," 2 million years old and anatomically similar to a regular giant panda, but not so giant.
June 20, 2007
"Earliest gunshot victim in the new world is identified," The New York Times
Casualties of a 1532 battle between Spanish Conquistadors and the Incas. Almost 500 years of bullets whizzing through the North American air...
June 16, 2007
Beautiful Evidence, Edward Tufte
I attended the ex-Yale design guru's workshop on "presenting data and information" earlier in the month, and just finished reading his fourth book, which came as part of a boxed set for all participants. Good stuff, though this is certainly his most self-indulgent book so far. Trails off towards the end with full color pictures of his own sculptures.
June 6, 2007
The New Yorker (May 28, 2007)
"A Boy’s World" by Anthony Lane discusses TinTin, and "The Golden Man" by Paul Theroux explores Turkmenistan under Niyazov.
June 3, 2007
Snowball Earth, Gabrielle Walker
I reread this excellent summation of the Snowball Earth hypothesis and its various scientific characters in preparation for a course I am teaching this week on the Snowball.
May 22, 2007
"Is There a Docu in the House? Moore Unspools a Second Opinion," The Washington Post
He's baaaaaaaa-aaaaaaack.
May 21, 2007
"Al Gore Has Big Plans," The New York Times
What America's biggest global warming booster is up to.
May 20, 2007
"Walking the Wall," Peter Hessler, The New Yorker
An interesting profile of a scholar who plans on walking the entire Great Wall of China before writing anything about it.
The acclaimed BBC series that explores hidden nooks of the planet. Full of awestriking spectacle. When I was in Borneo in 2005, I saw them filiming the part of this series where colugos (sometimes falsely called "flying lemurs") were gliding from tree to tree.
May 18, 2007
Two movies with nothing in common more than similar titles. Old Joy is a slow, contemplative "short story" of a movie, about two old friends who reunite for a camping trip in Oregon. Oldboy is a twisted Korean thriller about a man who is imprisoned and drugged and brainwashed for 15 years, then released to figure out what happened to him -- and who was responsible. Hard to look at claw-head hammers the same way after watching this one. Yeeks.
May 16, 2007
"Reunite Pang(a)ea!" Takoma Voice
An article about my "History before history" Walkingtown, DC walking tour.
May 10, 2007
The New Yorker's "Innovators" issue
Lots of cool profiles in this issue. Banksy, Richard Branson, Walter Mossberg, CERN's Large Hadron Collider, plus an exploration of the strange Antikythera Mechanism, a piece of advanced technology from the ancient past. A week's worth of terrific reading.
Movie review of "28 Weeks Later" in The New York Times
Though I'm not much of a zombie movie fan, I loved the sense of desolation and disorientation that prevailed at the beginning of "28 Days Later," and I'm probably going to see this sequel, which features American forces occupying a Green Zone in zombie-ridden London.
May 9, 2007
"Getting Schooled in Pasta," The Washington Post
My friend Nancy Pritchard shows the Post's gastronome the way Italians noodle.
May 2, 2007
The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris
A zoological accounting of the human species, with evolutionary explanations of topics ranging from smiling to big breasts to why kids like panda bears. Pretty interesting. Published in 1967. I read my father's old copy, complete with his annotations in the margins (also, presumably, from the late 1960s). As relevant today as it was then.
Tangentially, I was struck in the final chapter when the author talks about how the human population was increasing. He says at one point that (at the time of his writing), the human population on earth was 3 billion. It has now, a mere 40 years later, risen to over 6.5 billion, and the attendant environmental consequences are staggering. My final lectures of the semester to both of my classes are on geologic resources and environmental issues, and so it was an interesting coincidence that I finishing reading a book yesterday written when there were half as many people sharing our planet.
Duck phalluses in the Science section of the New York Times
May 1, 2007
"Antarctica," Kirt Kempter
Went to see a talk by a geologist on the topic of the frozen southern continent last night. The lecture was delivered as part of the Smithsonian Resident Associates program. It was pretty lightweight stuff to a geologist, and was really mainly aimed at senior citizens considering a cruise there. But I did learn some new stuff. West Antarctica is composed of a half-dozen different terranes, for instance (link to a cool animation of Gondwana's break-up, centered on Antarctica). And they've found fossils of an extinct species of giant penguin over six feet tall! (The fossil was unearthed in New Zealand, to be accurate -- but as the first link shows, New Zealand and Antarctica used to be connected.)
April 29, 2007
"The way we age now," Atul Gawande, The New Yorker
An interesting article about the way the human body breaks down over time. Why does hair go grey? The answer's here. Why do old people have age spots? The same reason they're more susceptible to heatstroke. Gawande also chronicles the decline of geriatrics as a professional specialty among docotrs, just as a larger-than-ever proportion of our population enters its golden years. Everyone who plans on getting old should read this.
April 28, 2007
An early film (1971) by Steven Spielberg about a highway battle between a Regular Joe commuter and a murderous truck driver. Apparently this was the movie that made Spielberg's name, and propelled him to the front of the directorial pack. I liked it.
April 24, 2007
"Something under the ice is moving," NASA's Earth Observatory
A mystery revealed by studying Antarctica's coastline.
April 21, 2007
NVCC's annual literary magazine was published this month.
April 12, 2007
The Washington Post
Kurt Vonnegut has passed.
April 11, 2007
The New Yorker's annual "Travels" issue
Good stuff. I liked the article on parkour (with a selection of parkour videos that you MUST watch!), and the article on the Piraha tribe of the Amazon basin.
April 10, 2007
National Public Radio
An update on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
April 7, 2007
The Washington Post
A couple of cool treats in this Sunday's Post. An article about a virtuoso violinist playing in a Metro station with his Stradivarius, and a cool gallery of art made with marshmallow "peeps".
Grindhouse, at the Uptown
A double-feature by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Gory. Extreme. Kind of fun.
April 6, 2007
Movies about non-corporeal aliens
Yesterday I watched "The Blob" (1958) and "The Andromeda Strain" (1971) via Netflix. Both deal with alien lifeforms coming to Earth, but they're not little green men. In The Blob, it's a little blob of goo that assimilates human beings into it's body and grows, eventually getting large enough to engulf a diner where Steve McQueen is hiding. In The Andromeda Strain, a satellite returns from space hosting a strange crystalline organism which kills everyone (well, almost everyone) it comes into contact with. A team of researchers has to figure out its life habits and deduce a way to stop it before it wipes out all life on Earth (it turns out that changing blood pH is the key). My favorite moment came at the end of The Blob, when they discover that the blob doesn't like cold. So they spray it with CO2 fire extinguishers & freeze it. Then the Air Force comes in and air-lifts it up to "the Arctic." The police chief character says to Steve McQueen: "At least we've got it stopped." And McQueen replies: "As long as the Arctic stays cold." Oh, Steve, if only you knew! Looks like we've got one more hazard that climate change is going to unleash...
April 1, 2007
"What's really in that wine?" from the Los Angeles Times
I heard it through the grapevine -- there's all kinds of junk in your favorite bottle of pinot!
March 30, 2007
"Flu" on Wikipedia.
I've been sick for the past three days, and so I'm trying to get a better handle on what's ailing me.
Herring return to Rock Creek (Washington Post)
Anadromous fishes use new fish ladders to return to their ancient spawning grounds.
March 27, 2007
Back issues of Smithsonian
A Paleozoic reef in Vermont with many fossil species -- the oldest such known. Pallid sturgeon in the Missouri River. Plus an article on a new kind of sundial that actually tells you what time it is.
March 26, 2007
The December 2006 issue Harpers
An article on whether time should be based on the Earth's rotation & orbit or not (vibrations of a cesium atom are another possibility). Plus a comprehensive review of Werner Herzog's films. And the usual delectable treats: the 'Index' and 'Findings.'
March 24, 2007
New York Times review of "Cobra Verde"
Another Werner Herzog project, but from the archives. Starring Klaus Kinski, and based (I just learned) on the novel The Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin (one of my favorite writers), the film chronicles Herzog's favorite subject, obsession, this time set amidst the slave trade in west Africa. It's released on the big screen for the first time this week in Manhattan, though it's already available on DVD for the rest of the country.
My hero, the specialist/generalist E.O. Wilson was at National Geographic last night to view and comment on a new biographical film about his life. He's inspirational. King of the ants, and the man who coined "biodiversity."
March 22, 2007
"Exploring Antarctica," The Washington Post
A nice multimedia blend of imagery and sound from the frozen continent.
March 17, 2007
Descriptions of my summer courses
This summer at Montana State University, I'm going to be taking some very cool classes. Just got through reading the descriptions (and packing lists!). It's got me very excited about July. Check out these course descriptions:
Geology of Glacier National Park
Geology of Yellowstone Volcanic Center
Alpine Field Geology seminar
Birds of Prey in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
March 16, 2007
"The Blues of Lula Mae Jenkins" (play) at THEARC
Went to the beautiful new community center in SE DC to see this play by a friend of a friend of a friend. Some great humor, but I had some serious coughing problems during the performance. Should have brought more Ricola.
March 15, 2007
Walking with... videos, from the BBC
The BBC has paired CG animators and informed paleontologists to generate an impressive series of videos. In chronological order, they are Before the Dinosaurs: Walking with Monsters (Paleozoic), Walking with Dinosaurs (Mesozoic), and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts (Cenozoic). All are filmed in the stule of a modern nature documentary -- with jarred cameras, mud-splattered lenses, night-vision scenes, and the like. All very convincing that it's real stuff you're looking at -- and Kenneth Branagh narrates.
March 10, 2007
A solution for global warming, Iraq, AND poverty...
...courtesy of the Onion.
March 8, 2007
Various articles about Orthrozanclus reburrus
A new species of fossil organism has been described from the Burgess Shale. Based on its unique blend of anatomical features, it appears to be linked to Wiwaxia, a spiky pincushion also from the Burgess Shale, and Halkeiria, an enigmatic worm/mollusc/brachiopod from the slightly earlier Sirius Passet deposits in Greenland. Check out the photo and a sketch of Orthrozanclus , and read about it here, here, and here.
March 7, 2007
"Season on the Chalk: Tracing the Cretaceous through Europe," John McPhee, The New Yorker
McPhee turns his inimitable prose onto what the White Cliffs of Dover, Darwin's house, and champagne all have in common: chalk.
Walking With Prehistoric Monsters, BBC
Life in the Paleozoic: one big buffet. Get it on DVD.
February 28, 2007
Whoa, big snail!
"Saul of the Mole Men" on Nickelodeon
A ridiculous show about a geologist who burrows to the center of the Earth and encounters a race of Mole Men. The rocks speak to Saul, and command him to lead the Mole Men to a less burrowing lifestyle. Check out episode 3 online.
February 25, 2007
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, Charlie Papazian, and Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels
Learning how to brew my own beer. Fun stuff!
February 23, 2007
Beavers return to New York City, CNN
Though they've graced the New York City seal since day one, beavers haven't been seen in the big apple for about 200 years. Now they're back.
February 22, 2007
Geology Explained: Virginia's Fort Valley and Massanutten Mountains, William G. Melsen.
Another local geology book. This one focuses on the Massanutten Mountain system, which is unusual in having a deep valley running along it's "summit". A great fold in the Earth, perfect for hiding some troops where they won't be seen from below in the Shenandoah Valley. So Melsen explores its geology (which is essentially the same as the rest of the area, and the same as the story I'm telling in my book), but with a focus on the individual formations present there. The production values were pretty low on this book, which is instructive to a guy like me. I'd cringe to publish my own book with as many typographical and factual errors as this one. It's a good reminder how important an editor is. That criticism aside, I did learn some new stuff, and I've been inspired to go check out Massanutten's Fort Valley on a field trip.
February 19, 2007
Maryland's Geology, Martin F. Schmidt, Jr.
I bought this book for one chapter -- the one on Maryland's geologic history. I found a couple of new facts and perspectives in there (like the Coastal Plain being a second Appalachian clastic wedge), so I guess that's worth it. Overall, I wasn't too impressed with the organization and production values. I'm hoping for full color and a more compelling narrative structure to my own attempt at a regional geologic story...
"Mummified body found in front of blaring TV," Reuters
This is why I don't watch TV.
February 18, 2007
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, Candice Millard
A spellbinding account of a real adventure undertaken by former President Theodore Roosevelt, who explored an unknown 100-mile river in South America. Pretty amazing stuff, with good comments on geology, biodiversity, and the human condition.
February 17, 2007
"The Origami Lab," Susan Orlean, The New Yorker
Origami, the Japanese art of paper-folding, as practiced by an American physicist.
February 15, 2007
Movies about deep physics
Watched "A Brief History of Time," the Errol Morris film about Stephen Hawking and his ideas. And "The Elegant Universe," Nova's exploration of string theory with Brian Greene. Mind-blowing stuff.
Feburary 12, 2007
Evolution, creationism, yadda yadda yadda
I know I go on about this a lot. But it never ceases to amaze me. A story in the Times today informed me about a fellow who just got a PhD in paleontology while being a "Young Earth Creationist." From what I read, it sounds like he did good science, and so deserved the PhD, regardless of his religious beliefs.... but why would someone who thinks the Earth is less than 10,000 years old want to study mosasaurs (Cretaceous marine reptiles, RIP 65 million years ago)? That led me to the Wikipedia entry on Kurt Wise, a Creationist "scientist" who studied at Harvard under the venerable Stephen Jay Gould. And that led me to an article in Free Inquiry Magazine, by Richard Dawkins. The article is about Wise, called "Sadly, An Honest Creationist." It's an enlightening read about the convoluted intellectual torture that individuals must put themselves through if they are to reconcile their inherited religious propaganda with a childhood fascination in dinosaurs.
February 10, 2007
"From here we can see your tetons," Ann Vinciguerra, Mountain Gazette
A discussion over an entendre-laden bumper sticker in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
February 8, 2007
"Green Rage," Matt Rasmussen, Orion
"Eco-terrorism" in Oregon... what do we think of people who feel so strongly about their environmental point of view that they will commit arson in its name?
February 7, 2007
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006, Brian Greene, editor
A compilation of some interesting stories from last year. My favorites were "Remembering Francis Crick," by the neurologist Oliver Sacks (Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, and others), and "Buried Suns," by David Samuels, about the U.S. nuclear testing program in Nevada. "The Coming Death Shortage," by Charles C. Mann, was also interesting: it detailed some of the unsettling implications of our species' increasing life-spans. As a tantalizing taste, I offer this (paraphrased) sentence: "The first 150-year-old may have already been born."
February 3, 2007
The IPCC's "Fourth Assessment Report" Summary for Policy-Makers
A 21-page summary of the current state of knowledge on global warming. A comprehensive case, but then again I guess it needs to keep getting put out there for folks who don't follow this issue regularly. On the downside, I found the formatting to be abysmal. Paragraph after paragraph of numbers... What would Edward Tufte say? I was surprised to see some font and spelling errors. Weird! Given its importance and likely public scrutiny, you'd think they would have spell-checked it.
January 30, 2007
The February issue of WIRED
An article about how and why Yahoo! lost out to Google in the search ad market. And a fun, slightly bizarre series on things we don't know, moderated by John Hodgman, Daily Show resident Expert. Plus an update on how yellow-colored lab-grown diamonds are selling like hotcakes.
January 28, 2007
Classroom Assessment Techniques, Thomas Angelo & Patricia Cross
I'm taking on on-line course this semester as part of my work towards a master's degree is Science Education (through Montana State University). This is one of our texts -- we're trying to get a handle on how educators can best determine whether or not student learning is happening. The phrase "Classroom Assessment" means informal, non-graded, and often anonymous assessment that takes place for a few minutes at a time in the classroom. The instructor then spends a half-hour or so analyzing the data, and makes adjustments to their teaching as appropriate.
January 27, 2007
"Vegetarian is the new Prius," Kathy Freston, The Huffington Post
Why going vegetarian does more to lower your personal greenhouse gas emissions than switching to a Prius. Explores the implications of the UN's recent report on the effects of agriculture on climate change. (For the record, I'm not a vegetarian -- though I used to be. But all the meat I cook at home comes from sustainable, local, organic farmers. As such, it has a far lower environmental impact than "standard" meat production. It costs a lot more money than factory-farmed meat, but its a hell of a lot easier on the planet. If you're in the DC area, I recommend getting your food from Forrest Pritchard's Smith Meadows Farm or Randy Treichler's Star Hollow Farm "online farmer's market.")
January 25, 2007
Moronic evangelicals doubt global warming
A piece in today's Washington Post follows the ongoing stink raised by evangelical Chirstian conservatives in the Seattle area about showing "An Inconvenient Truth" to schoolchildren. The article is headlined "Gore Film Sparks Parents' Anger," by Blaine Harden and here's the parents' reasoning: "The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day." ....Oh, okay. That settles it then. Don't bother trying to look at the rational explanation when you can go with a supernatural one instead. It's like if someone asks me why my car's engine is warm: I could explain by saying it's because I just drove back home from the office. Gasoline was injected into the combustion chamber. A spark plug lit it, it exploded, it drove the piston, the piston turned the crankshaft, the axle rotated, the wheel turned, the car moved forward. Or I could say it's because of an invisible gremlin who's using telekinesis to warm up my engine from his secret hiding place in the glove compartment. One's a rational explanation that agrees with observable evidence, and the other explanation ignores this in favor or what could be charitably called a "faith-based" explanation. Or, less charitably, a ridiculous delusion.
January 24, 2007
Other interesting New Yorker stories
I'm falling behind in my periodicals! Too much other stuff going on; I still haven't finished last week's New Yorker, and this week's issue has already arrived -- it's waiting with an unread WIRED on my desk... Anyhow, I got wrapped up in the story of Adam Gadahn, the American who serves as propagandist for Al Qaeda. Turns out his path to Islamic radicalism went by way of death metal music. Also intriguing was "Digging for Dodos," by Ian Parker (not online) -- about efforts to local the remains of the extinct mega-pigeon of Maurititus.
January 23, 2007
"Mr. Green," Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker
A profile of Amory Lovins, an optimistic environmentalist. A good example of how a profile can explore a person and a topic at the same time.
January 19, 2007
"The Greatest Field Trip Ever," Journal of Geoscience Education
An editorial about the importance of the Mars Rovers' mission.
January 18, 2007
"Mending Broken Hearts," National Geographic
An interesting article about one of our most important organs, and the disease which affects it. The talk about the various methods for treating heart disease: stents, angioplasty, bypass, artificial hearts. Accompanied by eye-popping photos of an actual heart surgery.
January 17, 2007
"Firefly" and "Serenity"
Joss Whedon's distinctive blend of science fiction and western genres, expressed as a short-lived television series ("Firefly," which Fox cancelled after episodes), and a movie ("Serenity," which picks up a couple of weeks after "Firefly" concluded). Interesting characters, and funny, cutting dialogue. I love how all the shots of the spaceship in outer space are silent -- like they would actually be in space. No wooshing or "neeyow" noises are possible in a vaccuum. I also like the Mandarin slang that peppers the characters' talk -- China and the U.S. have merged into a megagovernment called "The Alliance" in the future.
The Onion
The satirical "newspaper" is best at the short headline paired with an incongruous photo. Here is my favorite from perusing their site this morning: an owl. [UPDATE 1/18/2007: The Onion is coming in print form to DC, to be published by the Washington Post. Headline in today's Post: "Area Readers Get the Joke."]
January 15, 2007
The new season of 24
Jack Bauer saves the world, take six. The usual intensity and gut-wrenching decision making. Watching it makes it difficult to get to sleep afterwards.
Drug references in popular culture and science
In an episode of Brisco County, Jr. (which I've been watching on DVD), Timothy Leary guest stars as a very Timothy-Leary-like professor who's more than a little interested in botanic hallucinogens. And then I was reading the compilation The Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2006, which Brian Greene edited, and one of the essays in there was on "Dr. Ecstasy," a chemist living in the Bay Area (of course) who has invented 4000 different drugs, including the one now abused as ecstasy. The chemist, Alexander Shulgin, and his wife take the various drugs themselves, which is not illegal, because until he invented the drugs, they didn't exist. The article is from the New York Times Magazine originally; the author is Drake Bennett.
January 14, 2007
Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, Saxton Pope
My brother, the bow-hunter, loaned me this one. I found the first couple of chapters to be really interesting, as they describe the author's relationship with Ishi, the "last native Californian," a Yana Indian who walked out of the woods in 1911, smack-dab into Industrial San Francisco. Ishi teaches Pope how to make his own bows and arrows, and how to use them to hunt Yana-style. Sadly, the latter half of the book is very much a chest-thumping account, species by species, of "sport" hunting. I'm all for hunting one's own food, but it makes me sick to read of the author tracking a bull moose solo up in Alaska, then shooting him and being disappointed because he couldn't show it off to anyone. So he leaves the carcass and walks back to camp. Killing for the sake of killing -- I'm sure Ishi wouldn't have approved.
January 9, 2007
"Malaysia Boleh!," the Benchmarx
An MP3 of music from Kuala Lumpur's favorite expatriate band. My good friend Kenny sings and plays guitar. The title is Bahasa for "Malaysia Can!" -- a motivation slogan invented by a former leader of the Southeast Asian powerhouse. Free for dowload and redistribution to all your friends who want a motivational Malay-centric rock anthem.
"Long-Term Global Forecast? Fewer Continents," New York Times
An article about what plate tectonics has in store for our future. With a fun interactive graphic that shows the continents sliding around and eventually recoalescing into a new supercontinent.
January 8, 2007
The Devil's Teeth, Susan Casey
A firsthand account of a tightknit community of great white shark researchers, living on the Farallon Islands, due west of San Francisco. Crazy accounts of sharks the size of municipal buses, and an equally crazy storm which destroys the sailboat that the author was staying on. Really enjoyable.
January 6, 2007
Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Elizabeth Kolbert
Kolbert has a talent for calm in spite of the terrifying story she's reporting. This is an outstanding book detailing current trends in climate change, and profiling some of those who work in climate science. If you want a solid understanding of climate science, and why those who've looked at the data are so alarmed, this is it. I read it in a single day -- that's how compelling this story is. My #1 recommended book for the year! (Perfect for reading on a balmy 72° F day, like today, January 6, is in Washington!)
"The City Fenty Inherits," The Washington Post
A cool graphic that details some statistics for Washington, DC. I like the blend of clever artwork and numbers. Some stuff doesn't make sense to me, though -- how can the city have 33,000 employees? That's crazy big. Especially considering the juror number -- only 58,680. I know not everyone who works for the city lives in the city, but still, even by raw numbers, does the city really employ over half its population?
January 5, 2007
Gorgon, Peter Ward
A book about the personal side of paleontology. This is Ward's account of doing research on the Holy Grail of questions in historical geology: what caused the greatest of all mass extinctions, the one at the end of the Permian / beginning of the Triassic? He does his research in the Great Karoo region of South Africa, and describes all the effort, thought, setbacks, misadventures, interpersonal disputes, and other stuff that he encounters along the way. The final two chapters give his answer to what he think caused the end-Permian extinction, but I won't give it away here. The title, by the way, refers to the toothy pre-mammal reptiles called gorgonopsids which reigned throughout the Permian and were driven to extinction at that period's close.
January 3, 2007
A neat-o-burrito senior thesis project from Amherst: rotating x-rays and tomography of trilobites. Usually you can't do this sort of thing with fossils, but the trilobites from "Beecher's trilobite beds" near Rome, New York, were preserved through a special kind of fossilization: they were pyritized. And pyrite is opaque to X-rays. Check it out -- very cool!
