Follow a scientific publication to an NPR report to a blog post to an article in Grist. Cool science facts turn into predictable fiction in three links and less than a week.
Posts from ‘October, 2009’
Mt. Tamalpais, Invasive Species, and Herbicides
Inspired by a great talk by someone who’d worked combating invasive species in Marin county, just across the san francisco bay. Is protecting ecosystems we all enjoy and native plants, some of which are found nowhere else in the world, sufficient to justify the use of small amounts of the least toxic herbicides?
Crops and Colbert
Stephen Colbert is a funny guy, I just wish he and/or his writers knew a bit more about agriculture.
Try Ubuntu
A heartfelt plea to try out the new Ubuntu. It’s possible to do so without installing any files to your computer by starting your computer directly from the CD/DVD drive, and it opens up so many possibilities.
I’m disappointed in the Des Moines Register
The Des Moines Register claims soybeans genetically engineered to resist nematodes have failed, yet such soybeans have never been commercialized. Click through for details.
Banana Biology
When I was giving my lecture to on phylogeny and tetraploidies, I found out not everyone knows why bananas don’t have seeds. The reason the bananas we eat don’t have seeds is that they are all sterile. A long time ago the Cavendish bananas first came into being when a tetraploid banana (that is a [...]
Time to Eat The Dog
A husband and wife author team have published a book on, among other things, the environmental impact of pet ownership sure to both generate publicity and hate mail from pet owners. Sensationalism and fun numbers follow. Click through.
Bananas: The Original Not-From-Here Fruit
Bananas do not grow in the continental United States, but at the same time they’re the cheapest and most eaten fresh fruit and are available year-round. Click through for more (including a picture of Musa basjoo, the hardy banana plant). This post doesn’t touch on the biology of bananas, I will cover that tomorrow unless it is displaced by braking news.
Microbial Art
Check out some of the gorgeous art people can make in petri dishes. Clearly the people who create these have far steadier hands than I do when it comes to smearing out colonies.
Relaunched Tomorrow’s Table
Yesterday I linked to Pamela Ronald’s relaunched blog at Scienceblogs. There are over one hundred million blogs on the web (and that’s already an outdated number). Many are abandoned, as for all intents and purposed jamesandthegiantcorn was this summer, but even so, simply getting heard over the background noise is a struggle. Becoming part of [...]