Science
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Shine on, you crazy diamond.
I'm tired. I've been desperately trying to nap in the face of a full blown nattering session of my daughter. I've finally given up fighting against her stream of consciousness. It was time I wrote up this post anyway. The reason that I am tired, of course, is that I was up until the wee
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Igor
I've become an inveterate Hurricane follower. I'm not quite sure why, but about three or four years ago I began keeping tabs on the Atlantic hurricane season through the NOAA National Hurricane Centre's site. I find reading the forecast discussions the best way to learn why hurricanes do what they do, why some fizzle and
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Mitey Springtails
One of the really cool things about my son, I mean really, really cool, is that he's curious about the world about him. I don't know about you, but I can't think of many qualities I want more in my children. Whenever friends have children, and I write them a note or comment about it
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State of the Arctic
Okay, say you were a group of international scientists, doing research on the Arctic, and coming off the International Polar Year, and you were going to hold a major conference to discuss your the findings over a broad area of Arctic issues. Things like the Environment, and Climate Change, with a stated goal of reviewing
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Great Backyard Bird Count photos
Due to a couple of disruptions in my schedule, I actually did the Great Backyard Bird Count from my backyard, glassing the parts of town I could see and the dog teams. Without moving I got a decent 73 Ravens, mostly at one team. After I was done, I took off down to the ice
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Its not always pretty, or perfect
In many ways I have a brain that works well for science. I like questions that arise from observation, and I like puzzles. I like to think I have an ability to think critically, but I might just be kidding myself. I certainly like reality, just because we don't understand something, doesn't mean we have
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The Great Backyard Bird Count’s a comin’
This Friday is the start of the 2010 Great Backyard Bird Count. This citizen science project, run by Audubon and Cornell and sponsored now in Canada by Bird Studies Canada, gathers data over one weekend each February. It requires just fifteen minutes (or more if you'd like) of your time. Although it is called the
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Neat little boxes.
My ideas of what exactly makes a species have evolved over time. If I think back to my school days I remember the standard definition of a species was an organism that could breed with one another and produce viable young. But as time has gone on I've come to realize that the natural world
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Guppy photo
Tonight I tried to take some photos of the fish, for the most part without success. Ah, who am I kidding, completely without success. As it happens, the best shot includes the female I just wrote about. Here she is with two males, and she's in female mode. Although you can see a bit of
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A guppy in disquise
A few months ago, we acquired about a dozen and a half of guppies. They were fry, or immature at the time we got them, and one of the issues we have, now that they are grown, is that we have too many males for the tank. As a result of this the female guppies