It’s Friday! That means it’s time for some links but most importantly it’s an opportunity for me to write some nonsense and post a random (yet hilarious) picture for everyone to see. Enjoy!
Call me Commodore Slug: Thoughts on the eve of Graduate School
So here I am getting ready for my first day of school. I took a year off after undergrad but always had the intention of returning and now that plan has come to fruition. Everything thus far is pretty much as expected: lots of meetings and orientations that say roughly the same thing ad infinitum, stacks of journals articles I’m supposed to find time to read, and a million little other things I’m supposed to keep track of. It’s all totally doable and I’m excited for the challenge. But what else is there?
Continue reading Call me Commodore Slug: Thoughts on the eve of Graduate School
Making the best of a bad situation… Damn iPhone’s…
Let the mockery commence…
Yes, I was one of the hapless souls who purchased an iPhone 4 on launch day.
[I’m not an Apple fanboy, I swear! My secondhand iPhone 3G was the first Apple product I’ve ever owned, and I really liked it! That, combined with the fact my entire (long distance) family is on AT&T, made it pretty hard to justify jumping ship to Verizon, even if their 3G service is probably better.]
Little did I know that Big Stevie JJ had been attempting to hide a massive design flaw in this beautiful piece of industrial minimalism.
That’s right, you’ve heard about it… I’m talking about “THE GRIP OF DEATH!”
Continue reading Making the best of a bad situation… Damn iPhone’s…
Nuisance to Cash Cow
Trichosurus vulpecula, the brushtailed possum, is native to Australia and was introduced to New Zealand during the 1800s with the ever popular notion of establishing a lucrative fur trade. Shockingly, the buggers got loose. Wait a few years and you have on your hands a bonafide invasive species with no known predators on the island. They’re kind of cute, kind of ugly, and really hungry. They are primarily folivorous, but have been known to eat small mammals in a pinch, also… wait for it… kiwi birds. Bad idea possums, might as well come to America and eat baby bald eagles or mooselets in Canada. This can mean only one thing.
The possums must be stopped.
Bright and Shiny Links
They’re bright and shiny because I have a new monitor that makes things look bright and shiny. But I guess that’s irrelevant to everyone else. If you’re not happy with the level of bright and/or shiny in each of these links I suggest you get a new monitor as well. That is all.
The Right Time to Talk (about podcasting)
Intro:
It can be hard to talk to your friends about podcasting. There’s new lingo, you’re really excited by something they don’t understand, and you’re asking them to undertake a new step in their daily ritual that they might not be ready for. With that in mind I’ve put together a quick step-by-step list to help you get that friend or loved one on the road to audio bliss.
And between you and me: This is the week to do it. We’re featured on the main page, making us that much easier to find and enjoy!
Epic Calculators!
PaleoPosse, I have an epic question for you today. A question many a scientist has pondered when judging the skill and potential of fellow colleagues…
What calculator do you use?
Believe it or not, here is the calculator that I got through 4 years of undergraduate Aerospace Engineering with…
Piece of crap, right?
As I walked around my office today, I’ve recorded the broad range of calculators seen on my colleagues desks, for your enjoyment.
Roses are red, oceans are blue…
OK, I don’t know much about flowers, but lively oceans aren’t typically blue, they’re green-ish.
Primary producers (in normal marine environments) need to photosynthesize, which involves a healthy dollop of chlorophyll. Trivial fun fact suitable for printing on the side of a tube of Gogurt this is not. “The fact that [the oceans] are not blue has a [direct] impact on the distribution of tropical cyclones,” says Anand Gnanadesikan, PI for a new NOAA study slated for release sometime in the near future in the Journal of Geophysical Research Letters.
Linksylvania
Happy Friday the 13th, everybody! Remember: The best way to avoid bad luck is with knowledge, so use these links to improve your brain and stave off something awful.
Triceratops is Safe and Sound
Numerous popular press outlets reported last week that Triceratops was going the way of the dinosaur (haha) and that Triceratops was no longer a valid genus name because it was potentially just an example of a juvenile stage of a dinosaur with another name, Torosaurus. Here are some examples. At Science… sort of you would think that we would not be swayed by the popular press, we would go straight to the primary literature, read the study ourselves and then report on what the actual scientists said, maybe even interview them. Wrong; we made the same blunder that many popular press outlets did in our podcast episode 48 – No Frills. When it came down to it, we were rushed to put a show together and had already read too many pop press accounts of the Triceratops article that many a member of the Paleoposse had sent us. As a result, we gave the primary literature only a quick once over before we (or at least I) thought we understood the crux of the argument.
Oh, did we miss the boat. Continue reading Triceratops is Safe and Sound