Friday, August 28, 2009

Climate change: not just for crunchy liberals and nerds anymore

While the sane/intelligent/non-comatose population has been well aware of the climate change thing for years, the rest of us are finally starting to come around. It's hard (but apparently not impossible) to ignore the physical evidence that the global climate is changing. Yeah, yeah, it does that on its own....well, not like this. Sorry to have to tell you this Bush Administration, Michael Crichton, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Glenn Beck, the rest of the yahoos at Fox News, and 41% OF AMERICANS (!!!!)....but you are all craaazies.

I could rant/yell/spout statistics for days and days about how ridiculous it is that we are even arguing about this, instead of doing something about it. But I won't. I will simply point out a couple of FACTS that the crazies are going to be hardpressed to ignore/refute/conspire against.

So, basically, scientists went to Antarctica and analyzed air pockets in ice cores dating back to 800,000 years ago. They found (spoiler alert) that carbon dioxide was at significantly lower levels back then. That's statistically significant. Which is like, science. In fact, they found that the CO2 levels are higher right this very second than they ever were during any of those previous 800,000 years. "Hmm," you might think, "I wonder what was happening in that general time period." Only the emergence/expansion/explosion of a dominant group of organisms in the genus Homo. Oh wait, wait, that was us.

For a cogent/fascinating/eloquent explanation of the issues we face due to rising carbon dioxide levels, I recommend The Next One Hundred Years, by Jonathan Weiner. This guy won a Pulitzer (for a different book, but still), and does an excellent job of explaining the problem with having too much carbon floating around. In a nutshell: for a long time, the CO2 level held steady around 315 parts per million. During the mid twentieth century, it started creeping up. And by creeping, I mean skyrocketing. See:

It is currently at 389 ppm, a 25-ish percent increase. In 50 years. Holy. Crap. High levels of CO2 lead to ocean acidification, inhibition of plant growth, extreme weather events, sea level rise, species extinctions, and of course, global temperature increase. D'oh! Did I mention that this book was written in the scientific yesteryear of 1991? We've known about this for decades, and we are still arguing about whether or not it's real. Come on, crazies, we've got enough to worry about.

If you're not much of a reader, and all this carbon talk is like Greek (or Latin I guess, which is what it is), there are pictures, too! Believe it or not, there are satellite photos of this stuff. They were actually classified by the Bush Administration, and then Obama came in and was like "What? That's dumb." And he declassified them. So here, for your viewing pleasure, are satellite images taken one (1) year apart (!) of ice melt in Alaska.

See that big, ominous dark spot on the right-hand picture? Just one (1) year before that, it was full of happy/sparkly/crystally ice, as you can see in the left-hand picture. And now it's gone. Ignore that, bitches! Science 1, Crazies 0, Earth, totally screwed.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Charismatic Megafauna, Now With More Charisma

Ok, so this is a tiny bit pre-emptive, seeing as the superawesome groundbreaking thing I am about to share is still in the research and development stage...but - there are some really cool pictures to look at, and it kind of goes along with a good cause, so I'ma talk about it anyway. Here goes:

We might be able to learn whale language!!

No, seriously.

So this guy, Mark Fischer is a whale researcher and computer nerd, I mean programmer. He graphs cetacean calls using an algorithm he made, and ends up with pictures called wavelets. It's ok to giggle at the word "wavelet." I did. Not only are these wavelets really cool to look at (each species looks completely different), but he is looking for underlying patterns that might lead us closer to understanding the intricacies of whale (and dolphin, too!) communication. The word "language" might be a bit of a stretch, but in conjunction with the research being done on whale migration, feeding, reproduction, etc., there is totally some potential here. We could learn what they are saying when they are looking for whale food, whale homes, whale love, and whatever else it is that whales do all day.



One big problem though: we can't hear everything the whales are saying. They don't exactly operate within the spectrum of our hearing range. What? The whales aren't there just to entertain us with their gloriously soothing songs?! Anyway, the recordings that are made tend to miss some of the frequencies, and therefore make it much more difficult to look at the whole picture. Even though it is a pretty picture regardless.
All in all, it's a fascinating idea. We'd finally find out if Moby Dick actually was evil, if chomping Jonah was really worth all the trouble, and
if Willy actually wanted to be free. Either way, we get to look at these:

Humpback Whale

Minke Whale

And my very favorite, the beluga. Don't you just want to have that? A baby beluga swimming so wild and so free?



Which brings me to my next point. These wavelets (and more) are available as artwork, and you can put them in your house! Through an organization called Interspecies, you can donate money toward "healing our own species' emotional, spiritual and cultural ties with nature." It's something about using art to bring humans and other species closer together, bla bla bla. Whatever...they send you a cool picture in the mail. (Sidebar: Another artist, Jim Nollman, also has work available on Interspecies for a pretty donated penny - totally worth it though, he's pretty awesome). It is entirely possible, however, that all of this is totally useless - maybe Dory had it right all along, and wwwhhaaaaaallllessssss jjjjussssssst ttaaaaaalllllkk llliiiiiikkkeeee ttthiiissssssss......


As a complete non sequitur, I think the phrase "charismatic megafauna" might just be my all time favorite in the English language. That is all. Check out interspecies.com and aguasonic.com.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

He-Who-Must-Be-Read

In our land of video games, ubiquitous wi-fi, reality tv (see below), and a general saturation of visual stimuli, kids these days have kind of forgotten how to read. Maybe not quite how to read, but why to read (unless good old W is your teacher, a la this gem). There's no time for old-fashioned books if you're busy shooting aliens, being a guitar hero, and trying to keep up with the latest episode of American Idol. Then, along came a run-of-the-mill impoverished single mother. She wrote down her ideas for a story on some cocktail napkins, and fifteen years later, she's worth nearly 800 million dollars. Bloody hell!

I am talking, of course, about J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter universe. It's a little bit difficult to be snarky about Harry Potter, because, well, I love it. It's simple, it's fun, and wizards are really cool! I'm not saying it's brilliant literature or anything (quite the opposite actually - J.K. only knows a handful of adjectives, but luckily the plot can usually make up for the lack of literary genius), but who says you can't be an intelligent human and appreciate a well-crafted fantasy world?

With the exception of the fifth book (hundreds of pages of excruciating teen angst followed by thirty pages of action), all of the volumes make for a quick and enjoyable read. One of the things that makes the Harry Potter books so different from other kids' series is that they were written for a maturing audience. The first book was full of flowers and puppies (murderous flowers and snarling three-headed puppies, but flowers and puppies nonetheless). There was a hint of danger and that whole good versus evil thing, but nothing too scary and/or thought-provoking. By the time we got to the last few books, we were facing some seriously dark stuff, and beloved characters started dropping like bludgered Quidditch players (oops...spoiler alert?). Regardless of the content, the length of the books alone demanded much more from young Muggle readers: even the nerdiest of pre-teens are unlikely to tackle 900 page tomes. So, um, these ones must be awesome!

Anyway, the point of all this is that no matter what you think of the Harry Potter books, there is no denying the impact they had on our culture. Not only did they get kids to read again, they got kids to read hundreds of millions of copies in 67 different languages. And according to Wikipedia, the last four books have set consecutive records for fastest-selling books ever. Ever. Not to mention the movies, merchandise, websites, blogs, even podcasts that have resulted from the Harry Potter explosion. The word "muggle" is actually in the OED. Pretty soon, we'll be referring to him as Sir Harry Potter. That might sound ridiculous, but he's done a lot of Actual good for a fictional character by singlehandedly yanking the youth of the entire world out of an illiterate stupor. Seriously though, if you haven't read them....lame.


Well done, Harry, well done. Mischief Managed.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The Thin Yellow Line

As the football season comes to a close (finally), it seems fitting to draw attention to something that most of us barely even notice anymore. I don't watch football that much, but it's even hard for me to imagine life before The Yellow Line. Granted, we are only talking about ten years ago, but it's easy to forget hard times.

For those of you who live in holes (or Detroit), The Yellow Line shows us how far the team has to go to get a first down. Sometimes, there will also be a blue line to show the line of scrimmage, or if it's a fourth down, The Yellow Line will turn red (Danger!). The kicker is that it only shows up on TV. Even though it looks like it's actually there! This is the real reason people use to justify spending hundreds of dollars on high definition televisions as opposed to spending sixty-two dollars (I'm told) on football tickets. It's all because of the yellow line.

The computer system that makes it happen is actually called "1st & Ten" (those graphics nerds are so clever), and was developed by a company called Sportvision. It requires seven computers, five cameras, four people, and a whole bunch of technology that I don't feel like explaining. These people do though, so ask them. Here's a picture just to take up some space. See how The Yellow Line disappears behind the dude with the ball? It's' magical.


The Yellow Line may not make football any more bearable for non-football fans, but that's okay. There's plenty of other stuff to watch on big flat screen tvs. Like Super Bowl commercials.

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Revolution!


It's the biggest holiday since, well, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. January is already Black History Month, so why not make it official that January 20th is Barack Obama Day? It will just save us all time in the long run; this way, we won't have to remind all of the future presidents that they have a lot to live up to. Obama's transition to the White House has already been more favorably portrayed by the media than Bush's entire eight years in office. Not that that's really saying much. In an attempt to keep the past where it belongs, I will keep my mouth shut about the last eight years. Let's just say I no longer feel simultaneously embarrassed and compelled to leave the country.

There isn't really much that needs to be said here. Tomorrow, we will have a president who is not a crusty old white dude. Yay! This is clearly historical in and of itself. Our plantation-owning forefathers are probably turning in their crusty old white graves (dug tirelessly by slaves, most likely), but who cares. We are moving on and moving up.

Barack Obama has done what so many of us thought was impossible. He single-handedly (almost) dragged our country out of its cynical, unpatriotic stupor and got the young people to vote! And not only that; he got them to canvass, fundraise, organize, and most importantly, wear t-shirts with his face on them. Once you've got your own clothing line, that's at least a six month guarantee that your fans will stick by you. By then, all the crusty old white dudes will have realized that, indeed, the kids were all right.

So anyway - possible activities for future Barack Obama Days include: perusing the local humane society for hypo-allergenic orphaned puppies, riding in the front of a bus, visiting Hawaii, speaking in proper English, not throwing shoes, and attending a public reading of that superawesome victory speech that made us all cry somewhere around paragraph three.

We all have our own thoughts and feelings about our first African-American president, but we can all agree that January 20, 2009 is one of the most momentous days in American political history. I'm not much for patriotism, but tomorrow, I might just be proud to be an American (who knew?). Barack Obama doesn't have his own official holiday yet, but if he lives up to his promises, he'll deserve one. In the mean time, can we ride the Obama high all the way to 2013?

Yes we can!



Happy Barack Obama Day everyone!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Because we didn't have enough sheep already...

On July 5, 1996, I was eating a flaming watermelon. Well...not really. It was my brother's eighth birthday, and since he "doesn't like cake" for unknown reasons, we settled on a treat that required minimal effort as far as preparations go (the wax from the candles comes right off). In the height of our sibling rivalry, I wish I had been culturally aware enough to tell him that I was not celebrating his birthday with my enthusiastic watermelon consumption. It was, in fact, a much more important day (and certainly deserving of a slightly richer dessert).

Halfway across the world, in Edinburgh, other people were celebrating a birthday (dancing around in kilts and playing bagpipes, surely). The first cloned mammal, Dolly, had been born! Dolly was a sheep, cloned from a somatic cell of another sheep (quite predictably, also Dolly). It was a cell from a mammary gland, actually, which is why the Scottish people named her Dolly (as in "Dolly Parton sure has giant mammary gland cells!"). Apparently Pamela Anderson hadn't made it into Scottish pop culture yet and they were still listening to music from the late 60s. But you sure can see the resemblance - check it out:



Just kidding. I think.

Anyway, they cloned Dolly by taking the nucleus from the donor cell and implanting it into an unfertilized egg cell (sans its original nucleus). Then they stimulated that cell to divide with an electric shock, and eventually implanted it into a surrogate sheep uterus. Apparently this is a tough process to get right: Dolly was the only survivor of 227 cloning attempts. Oops. The guy whose brainchild (brainlamb?) this was has said that the process will probably never be efficient enough for use in humans. So sad; I was desperately hoping this was an actual possibility.

Dolly lived for six fulfilling years, during which she made six more baby sheep. Her breed is supposed to live for 12 years, but since she was living an extra life, six years of deja vu was probably plenty for her.

After Dolly, a dog named Snuppy (really...?) was successfully cloned in Korea. If dogs and sheep ever become endangered, we'll be able to bring them back, no problem. It's too bad that no one decided to put any serious effort towards cloning a more exciting animal, like a spider monkey or a tasmanian devil. Taxpayers would probably be a little more into the whole cloning thing if we all got to keep genetically identical (and possibly buxom) baby monkeys named Lindsay Lohan or Tara Reid.

And in case you were wondering, that sheep picture is actually Dolly. Her remains are on display at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, where she spent her whole second life. At least that's where her exterior remains are. Her insides? Probably haggis.