Conan’s Umwelt: How a Dog Sniffs

By: | November 12, 2012


This is my puppy, Conan, and the reason I’ve been buying a lot of dog books. For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure, dog books are for skimming, not reading. They’re hokey, repetitive, poorly written and peppered with pseudoscience. But Friday I found an exception: Inside of a Dog, a fascinating, science-rich story of how dogs think and perceive the world.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. The author, Alexandra Horowitz, worked for the New Yorker before becoming a scientist specializing in canine cognition. Unlike the other books, which focus on how to make a dog do what you want, this one asks, what does a dog want to do, and why?

Early on, Horowitz introduces German biologist Jakob von Uexküll and his concept of umwelt. The word translates to ‘environment’ or ‘surroundings’. The concept is that two animals can share the same environment but experience it quite differently.
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The Last Word

By: | November 10, 2012

5- 9 November

In the most heartwarming post of the week, Cassie considered post-election bitterness and wondered what would happen if we treated politics less as a competitive sport, and more as an expedition.

Ginny wrote an amazing examination of the fundamental mismatch between stories and science.

Cameron noted that owls are trending.

Michelle pondered whether the $300,000 artificial bat cave is a harbinger of peak conservation.

And guest poster Callie Leuck looked at what emergency responders can learn from the zombie apocalypse.

Happy weekend everyone!

_____

Office Zombies by Callie Leuck

 

Peak Conservation

By: | November 9, 2012

So the election’s over, the days are getting shorter, and it’s about time for a nice long nap. May I suggest an 80-foot-long concrete chamber, tucked neatly into a hillside in Tennessee? Clean, cool, and cozy, it’s the perfect winter hideaway … if you’re a bat, that is. Yes, The Nature Conservancy of Tennessee has opened the world’s first artificial cave for hibernating bats. Now they just need some bats to move in.

The cave is intended as a refuge from white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that’s devastated bat populations in the northeastern U.S. and beyond. Since the first diseased bats were found in an upstate New York cave six years ago, white-nose syndrome is thought to have killed more than 5 million bats from seven species, and it spreads especially quickly when bats gather in caves to hibernate. TNC hopes that some Tennessee bats will spend the coming winter in the new, fungus-free artificial cave. When the bats leave in the spring, the cave can be disinfected and safely used again. Continue reading →

Coffeewise by Owl-Light

By: | November 8, 2012


Owls are trending. At least that’s what a grumpy barista told my husband when he tried to get his owl coffee mug filled up. I used to like them before, she sniffed.

We do seem to have accumulated a fair amount of owl paraphernalia in the last few years. Before, our house was an owl-free zone. Now a mobile featuring a parliament of owls swings above my bed. A stuffed owl on the dresser top has glow-in-the-dark eyes. Another plays “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” And, along with the offending mug, there are other owls in our kitchen cabinets.

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Election Hangover

By: | November 7, 2012

Hello world. Yesterday was election day in America. One guy won and another guy lost. But the race was hard fought, and our already divided country remains as polarized as ever. Did you listen to the last episode of This American Life? We don’t just disagree, we barely see each other as human beings. And somehow that impartial lady we all love, Science, has been sucked into the partisan fray. Did you know that in America climate change is something you can choose to believe in — or not? It’s downright depressing.

So today, dear readers, I’m giving you a present. I’m giving you a break from thinking about all of this baloney. Because we all have election hangovers, especially my poor friends in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin.

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Guest Post: The Zombie Zeitgeist, Ham Radio, and the End of the World

By: | November 6, 2012

The end of the world has been preying on my mind lately. Not in a religious, horsemen-of-the-apocalypse way  ‒— but in a more surviving-the-failure-of-modern-amenities way.

One reason for this preoccupation is my generation’s fascination not only with zombie film and literature1 but with interactive zombie games, like elaborate tag variation humans vs zombies, races with zombie-infested obstacles, and training regimes that measure fitness by ability to outrun zombies. Another is the fact that the power has gone out in my northern Virginia townhouse for at least 24-hour intervals no less than three times in the last four months, once for nearly three days in the middle of a heat wave.

And then there’s the emails from the hams. Continue reading →

Jonah Lehrer, Scientists, and the Nature of Truth

By: | November 5, 2012

Last week the journalism world was buzzing about — guess who? — Jonah Lehrer. Yes, again. We knew about the science writer’s self-plagiarism and Bob-Dylan-quote fabrication. Last week a New York Magazine exposé by Boris Kachka claimed that Lehrer also deliberately misrepresented other people’s ideas.

Kachka’s piece led to some fascinating discussions about whether it’s possible to tell a science story that’s both riveting and fully accurate. Science journalist Carl Zimmer, for example, wrote a thoughtful, inspiring post about the messiness of science. All of the commentary left me wanting to hear more details from the scientists in Lehrer’s stories. Had they been misrepresented? If so, how? Were they upset? Did they complain?

Kachka and Zimmer zeroed in on a 2010 story about the scientific method that Lehrer wrote for the New Yorker. The story’s premise is clear from the title (“The Truth Wears Off”), the subtitle (“Is there something wrong with the scientific method?”), the nutgraf (“It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable.”), and the last few lines (“Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.”). Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | November 3, 2012

Oct. 28 – Nov. 2

Could penises become obsolete? Sure. Christie has a few beers with friends and reviews a book.

Ann & Richard each won a Windsor chair. Ann talks about Windsor chairs. Richard talks about naked ladies.

What’s happening with old nuclear materials scattered around the Arctic? Nothing good, says Jessa.

Two pieces of controversial public art, two universities, two very different outcomes, and, says Michelle, the good one was not the University of Wyoming.

Guest Helen Fields does love natural history museums but has no illusions about their flaws:  take knitting, she advises.