We now return to our occasionally-scheduled Thank God It’s Penis Friday.
The alligator harvest at Louisiana’s Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge happened every September, so in the fall of 2007, Diane Kelly packed her bags. She wasn’t hunting, but she still had to put her scalpels and knife blades and the rest of her dissection kit in her checked bags. Explaining to TSA that she was going to figure out how the alligator penis worked wouldn’t fly. Continue reading
I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s day, but I love the ads. They are so utterly, transparently awful that they cross the line from crassly offensive into entertaining. Business Insider just did a brilliant roundup of the worst offenders of all time.
They have a certain evolutionary-psychology simplicity to them — if you present a female with this resource, she will mate with you willingly — and it reminded me of a tour I took last year of the Natural History Museum in London. The NHM celebrated the occasion with a “Turn me on/Turn me off” tour of romance in the animal kingdom, one of which I covered for New Scientist.
If you’re struggling with the crass cynical exploitation fest this Valentine’s Day, let the animal kingdom give you some cheap alternatives. Continue reading
Last year, I published a series critical of modern wind farms. They dealt with a number of pretty dirty land deals in southern Mexico related to new wind farms. Although they were on the cover of a major national newspaper, they didn’t get the attention I thought they deserved (as with most of my stories, oddly enough). It was a sad story in an overlooked corner of the continent.
But one sliver of that attention especially bothered me – those who used it as an argument that wind power is just as bad as coal and gas. That’s why a few weeks ago at a placebo conference (yes, it’s a real conference – not just a bunch of fake scientists and a fake audience) my head snapped around at a lecture on the health effect of wind power. Apparently, there is an idea out there that wind turbines can make you sick. The idea goes that people exposed to very low sound waves, called “infrasound” (say 40 decibels at five hertz for the nerds out there) might experience sleep disturbance, headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, ear pressure or pain, nausea, concentration problems, irritability, anger, panic episodes, fatigue, loss of motivation. Continue reading
I was browsing online a couple of months ago when I came across the headline, “Petula Clark Turns 80.” What? That’s not possible. I remember when she was part of the British invasion, an icon of Swinging London, a mainstay of the Top Forty. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing “Downtown” or “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” coming out of a transistor ra—
Oh, wait.
I experienced a similar cognitive rebuke a few weeks later while riding on the uptown 1 train. I was standing near a trio of women I would guess were at least in their mid-60s. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop—not that I’m above that sort of thing—but two words kept surfacing: “Mick Jagger.” I couldn’t quite get close enough to hear what they had to say about Sir Mick, but I did notice that they were talking about him with great familiarity, as if they had grown up listening to the Rolling Stones. And then I realized, they had.
In spite of AG’s title, this is really Science Writing 101. The first time science writers run across these infinitely receding questions is when they start researching a story and the story is all parts and no whole. The next time is when they start asking scientists questions and every answer just means another question. And the time after that is when they write the first draft and nothing is irrelevant. How far down the rabbit hole do you go? Once you’re down there, how do you get back up again? How much of what’s down there do you bring back with you? Oh Lord it’s awful, it’s just awful.
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Abstruse Goose has been on some kind of sabbatical and was posting from his archives. This one was labelled Jan. 2, 2009 and didn’t have a link. Because if it did, I’d link to it. Meanwhile, he seems to be back again, all fingers and toes accounted for — for which we are grateful and a little relieved. http://abstrusegoose.com
February 4 – 8
This week, Erika’s back! And she’s not happy about “informed consent“.
Cameron considers the endangerment of the world’s apex predator, some of which are only as big as a chocolate bar!
Cassie throws shade at the dodgy sleep aids of the 70s.
Jessa tells us how architects are like psychoactive drug designers.
Did you know your brain doesn’t natively know how to hear? Ann explains in the gorgeous story of how Rosemary learned to hear again.
The other day, just as I was about to go out on the water on a nine-foot piece of epoxy-covered foam, a man stopped me on the beach. “Aren’t you scared to go out there by yourself?” he said. “Because of the sharks?”
I had been trying to forget about them, even though the sun was setting, the water murkier by the minute. So I mumbled something that I’ve heard other people say, that I was going into the sharks’ territory, that I was the uninvited guest. I also held up my paddle, as if to say I could give a shark a good whack if I had to. Continue reading
Last year, after years of writing about research studies, I agreed to become a research subject myself.
I agreed to allow a local medical center to use my tissue, health records, fluids, cells, and other “specimens” for research. Not only that – I also allowed the researchers to use the same types of information and specimens from my newborn daughter.
The only catch: I have no memory of allowing this to happen.