Tag Archives: science

Living the Sci Life: Another Venture

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Hello out there in Paleoland!

I got kinda bored over the break, so I decided upon the encouragement of Ryan Penagos to give this tumblr blog thing a try. I’ve been having fun with it, it’s kind of like Twitter plus. All of my personal posts from this blog and the main Science… sort of site will be found over there along with the occasional less polished ramblings, photos, and other funny links I find throughout the day. If you’re looking for mini-posts every day that hopefully make you smile I say check it out. Furthermore, I say start your own! Tumblr makes it pretty easy to sign up, pick a theme and get going. If anyone does start one, or already had one, feel free to give me a follow and let me know about your own project here in the comments. The more the merrier in the melting pot of the Internet!

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The Accuracy of Cuteness

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A few people linked me to the ultimate cute animal list over the holiday, it’s a list of 75 lists of photos of animals, pretty intense but I’ve been working my way through it (Yes, I even treat cute animals like homework). Most of the shots are wonderful but then I got to the list titled “101 Cute Seals That Are Also Babies“. What could be wrong with that, right? Well, dear reader, many of these photos were not of seals at all! (some of them aren’t even babies, but that I’ll let slide)

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Diagraming Evolution, or How to read a Cladogram

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Remember the Linnaean system of classification you probably learned in grade school or high school (heck, maybe even college)? It went something like this…

Kingdom -> Phylum -> Class -> Order -> Family -> Genus-> Species

Linnaeus started using this classification system in the 1700s and he had a good run; we still use his system in certain situations. However, we’ve moved away from this ranking system mostly because of the discovery of transitional fossils that screwed with Linnaeus’s idea of neat little boxes for all of life to be categorized into. This system falls apart, for example when you have two equivalent ranks, let’s say class Osteichtyes (boney fish) and class Amphibia (amphibians), and find a transition between the two.

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REVIEW (via iFanboy): Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards

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*Note* This is a cross post from my weekly column over at iFanboy. While I’m happy to have you read it here on the blog, I encourage you to go leave a comment at iFanboy. In the interest of full disclosure, they watch my stats so it helps me out to have you read and comment there.

Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh and the Gilded Age of Paleontology

Artist: Big Time Attic

$22.95 / 165 pages / G. T. Labs

Come one, come all! Step right up to the amazing pictographic tale recounting not just how the west was won, but how the west was dug!

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Winter Solstice Suggestions! -or- A Conversation with a Non-Dutchmen

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I take the Winter Solstice gift season very seriously. Maybe more seriously than you’ve ever heard me be if you only know me from the show. The season itself is inconsequential, I am focused with laser precision on finding the right gift for the right person. It has to exist in the small space between what a person really would love to have but would never actually buy for themselves. I’ve noticed that not everyone shares my proclivity, or even my desire, to find that perfect gift, but since it’s safe to assume everyone you know likes Science… sort of (what do you mean you haven’t told them yet?!) here’s a brief list of Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday PaleoPresents. Load a new tab, put on your blackface like a Christmas Dutchman and get shopping.

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Patrick’s Solstice Shopping Guide

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What to buy for…

Your friends that kind of like science, are scientists, or want to be scientists:

1) If you were following the Paleopals last year you probably remember me plugging Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character). This is one of the best books out there for someone who is interested in science or thinks they might be a professional scientist.  It covers all of the good stuff about being a scientist and none of the bad (except maybe that you get made fun of a lot).  Feynman is able to capture what he calls the “pleasure of finding things out” in his short essays about things that are science and things that are sort of science.

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A List of Erroneous Pet Peeves (with Clarification)

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Our show is about promoting a literacy of and excitement about all things SCIENCE! Well sometimes in the interest of not dampening the excitement we let some of the literacy fall by the wayside, but that defeats both purposes so here are a few things you should be aware of to avoid an embarrassing mistake in the future. It’s for your own good.

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REVIEW: Jurassic Park Redemption #1 from iFanboy.com

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Hey Paleoposse,

I’m gonna level with ya, this one is a bit of cheat but it’s still worth reading. I wrote a review of the comic Jurassic Park Redemption #1 that went up this morning over at iFanboy.com. If you want something more directly Science… sort of check out my post from Monday, Another Manic Monday: How the Sausage is Made. Hope you enjoy a bit of comics! It is Wednesday after all…

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Another Manic Monday: How the Sausage is Made

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If you’ve listened to Episode 41, which just went up, you’ll have heard Jacob make a comment about how much of a shambles our operation is. And he’s right. What you listen to each week is the floating head of the great and terrible Wizard named OZ. But I figure you guys might be curious for a bit of a backstage look behind how Science… sort of gets made.

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