Ron’s Blog

There was an article in the sad excuse for the local newspaper, The Livingston Enterprise, that indicated that all of the local sporting goods and hardware stores are running short of all types of ammunition.  Seems all the local wing nuts are buying up all the ammunition they can get their hands on, because of some sort of rumors going around the black helicopter circuit that the government is going to:

1. Stop the production of this material and
2. Seize all the firearms in the county.

Uh - Huh…  Well, that fits.  We have a local state representative, Joel Boniek, who has compared Obama to Hitler, thereby proving he knows nothing about either man.  Just what we need in this county, rampant paranoia and large populations of “people” with combined intelligence of a sun-struck gopher.

Gawd, we live in whacky times. 

I urge all/any of the readers of this blog to drop over the science blogs and look around.  One recuring theme is the lack of, or the low quality of, the education of the average American, if there even is such a statistical animacule.   One of the common problems seems to be the inability of people to evaluate and chose alternatives.  As a result for any true and verifiable statement, such as gravity exists, there is an alternative, “There ain’t no sich thingie as gavuty,”  that is considered to be equally viable.  Most people just don’t seem capable of making decisions, so they live in a world where nothing is fact, but where there is an infinite number of opinions.

This is something I have run across frequently in my lectures to aquarium groups, as well as other folks.  Often somebody will say, “Well, that’s your opinion.”  I am afraid I often rather sharply respond, “NO!  This a fact, proven by many years of scientific observation and testing.” As in: “Yes, Bunky, atmospheric carbon dioxide increases cause the greenhouse effect which, in turn, causes global warming/climate change.  Frankly, if you don’t accept this, you are a freaking idiot.”  Sigh…

Well, enough venting of the spleen for one night.

Have a good one!

Until later,

Cheers!!!

Funky Days

This has been a busy, and not terribly productive couple of days.  As you might guess from my blog roll, I am a fan of the blog, Pharyngula.  This image from a site about a football league for  home-schooled kids, really says it all. 

I suspect they need to re-order their priorities.  Then there is the very concept of a football league for home schooled kids???  Sheesh.

“Ace-demics”… studied so they can ace all their tests, and then they can go outside and play “Atheletics.”   And after that they can praktise spellung.

More Musings

Michael Jackson has died.  BFD. I can honestly say I can’t remember either the lyrics or the melody to anything he performed.  I guess that puts me in the far outlier group of the bell curve for people alive today.  I suspect some aboriginal tribe deep in the Amazon basin probably doesn’t know his music either, but everybody else does.  Except me.  I was aware of the spectacle however.  The pedophilia accusations and trials, and rumors of witnesses being bought off by million dollar payoffs.  And then there is is the variable phenotype.  I suspect I would be hard pressed to describe the individual.  Feature the question, “What did Michael Jackson look like?  It would have to be qualified by time and place.  I think his appearance was different everytime I saw an image of him.  Strange guy.  A shape-shifter?

And, what kind of dork names his kids: Prince Michael 1, Prince Michael 2, and Paris?  His kids?  With their phenotypes?  This biologist thinks that there was precious little DNA transfer occurring that he was a contributor for.

And finally the media hype.  BARF.  This is not news.  It is a sad occurrence and should be dealt with as such, and things of some real import should be discussed on the front pages.

Finally

“Front pages.”  I wonder how long it will take for that term to lose its meaning, like so many others in my lexicon such as:   “broken record, carriage return, incandescent lightbulb, slide rule, and rabbit ears (for a television).”  The latter term still will have meaning for lagomorphologists. 

Like I said, a funky couple of days.

More later, until then…

Cheers!!!

Saw in the news last night that Kodak was retiring Kodachrome, once their premier color film, and now hardly used.  Sigh…  I remember using Kodachrome-64 for all of my photography, way back when.  Now, lest you think, “So what?”  Consider that I made an average of several thousand dollars a year  in the 1980s and 1990s by selling my images.  It was important that I had a good film, and K-64 was it.  It saturated well, gave wonderful colors, and it very fine and tiny grain size, being a dye film.  One could make almost infinte enlargements, if you got the focus right.  I remember enlarging some images of a couple of shrimps, and being able to see cell membranes through the transparent exoskeleton.  ’Twas a wonderful film.

 I remember seaching out various lot numbers because we’d (we = the group of guys I took pictures with) would run test rolls when we had to buy film and some batches were decidedly “different.”  Then we did searching as to which of the labs at the time that were processing the stuff were more consistent in their results and timely than others.  For those who never used the film, you always had to send the stuff out (unless you lived in one of the few cities that had a Kodachrome processing lab).  The processing of the film was complex and needed to be precise, and it was NOT something one could do at home.

But when the slides came back…. and if you chosen correctly - - My, Oh My!!!  The images were worth it.  At the present time I am having trouble posting images to the blog, but I will put some in a few days to show you some of my better ones.  Of course, putting good Kodachrome images on a digital monitor… well, it is a lot like eating ice cream through a screen door.

And if one kept the slides in a dark place, the color balance lasted indefinitely.  If one did a lot of projected slide shows, it paid to make duplicates, but that was a minor cost, as the dupes could be made of any film.

Then along came digital…  and the millions of minions migrated to it.  Including me, I might add, although I kept taking “keeper” shots with K-64 until only a couple of years ago.  Kodak got out of the processing business in the early 1990s and other films, such as Fuji’s Velvia made more inroads in a shrinking market, and the cost of the film became an obstacle and the delay time in getting the slides became intolerable.

So… Sic transit gloria.

R. I. P. Kodachrome, we who knew you well will miss you!

Until next time…

Cheers!!!

Spent most of my day doing plantings of our summer decorative flowers.  We got the flowers about a month ago, but couldn’t plant them safely until about 2 weeks ago - because of late frosts.  And then Roxie got injured, and so there were more delays.

The poor plants were suffering.  As a result over the last couple of days we put in as many as we could.  And wilst outdoors, the sounds of the local aerial plankton made me think of bees (although mostly what I saw was mosquitos…).  Last year here was REALLY scary with regard to the bees.  For the first three or so weeks of summer, there were virtually no bees to be seen or heard.  Finally, a few bumble bees and some of our native bees showef up, but I saw almost no honeybees all summer long.

This year it has been much more normal, lotsa friendly buzzers comming to the flowers.  We have several different types of large bumble bees locally, and a lot of native ones.  But, also this year, there were a lot of honey bees around.   For those of you who are concerned about this sort of thing - and you all ought to bee, hmmmmmmmmm, :-), you should take a look at the pages for the Pollinator Partnership. And if the mood strikes you, planting your garden with some pollinator friendly flowers would surely be a nice thing to do - and the results can be beautiful as well as beneficial. 

With the overdoing of pesticides and the loss of habitats, many of our native pollinators are really becoming threatened.  So… plant some of our native pollinator friendly vegetation and enjoy the results.

Until later….

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

This was taken from that weekly compendium of the sublime… “the News of the Weird, the Pro Edition,” which gets emailed out to the lovers of this sort of thing.

Like . . Hey . . Bow-Wow, Man . . .
Nestor Waddell’s Labrador mix, Jack, nosing around a Seattle park on a walk with his owner, emerged from the bushes in a daze. He had swallowed “a large amount of dried, harvested marijuana,” the later report said. According to Waddell, “[Jack's] eyes were kind of glossed over, very out of touch [and] he didn’t seem to recognize me at first. When he was trying to walk, he was looking at his paw, and then looking at the ground and then trying to get his paw to touch the ground, but was unsuccessful.” Kinda funny, but the vet charged Waddell $1,500 to bring Jack down. KING-TV (Seattle)

Ohmigawd!!!  The poor dawg…in that a vet “brought him down.”  He could have, at least, been allowed to have his high.  In my younger days, I never had enough weed to have had these effects; only partook (partoked?? ) a few times, but unlike Bubba, I did inhale.  Never liked smoking enuf to keep it up, though, and went back to my mood altering chemical of choice (for that time period, anyway) - ethanol.  On the other hand, I can surely sympathize with a pooch who was having trouble deciding where to put his paws during a bout of “mellowness.”  After all, with four legs, he would have twice as much trouble as people, right? 

Of course, an invertebrate zoologist would then wonder about a millipede.  I don’t know if milipedes can get intoxicated - my guess is that ethanol would simply kill them - but if they could, it would present quite a sight.  Perhaps this is a size related issue, and if the millipede had enough mass, maybe it could have a drink or two, and get myriopodially plastered.  There were millipedes during the Carboniferous Era, about 300 Million years ago that were about 2 m (6.6 feet) long and a good 15 to 20 cm (6 - 8 inches) wide.  Seeing one of these come weaving out of the underbrush toward oneself would definitely be an exciting experience. 

Actually, seeing a two-meter long bug of any sort would be an exciting experience.  Truly ghastly, but exciting.  During the same time period when the big millipedes ruled the earth, the earth had a whole array of large insects and  their kin (yes, I know millipedes are not insects, so truly not bugs, but there is a bit of writing license here, and I will take it).  Yesterday, I mentioned one of Pete Ward’s books, The Medea Hypothesis,  today, I will discuss some information from another one, Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere.

In this book, Ward discusses the changes in the Earth’s atmospheric composition and how that probably drove the natural selective processes allowing for the rise of dinosaurs, including of course, the living dinos, the avian ones.  He mentions the large bugs, but more in passing as they are secondary to his main theme, but during the period of the Carboniferous, there were a lot of big ‘uns… including cockroaches with a 30 cm or so (1 foot) wing span.  These little darlings were probably found in huge numbers around the coolish swamps of the period.   One also sees a lot of press given to things such as Meganeura, the huge dragonfly and a few others, but relatively little seems to be written about the rest.   Unfortunately, I have not seen a comprehensive treatment of these large arthropods. 

And that is too bad.  It would be the only time in all of history when large insects and other terrestrial arthropods existed (water dwelling ones were big too; there were 3 to 4 m (13 to 15 ft) long scorpion/horseshoe crab/nasties called Eurypterids).  A comprehensive treatment of these creatures would provide an interesting look at a series of evolutionary paths that will never again be trod upon.

Not that I am complaining , mind you.  I don’t really care much for terrestrial bugs.  Kind of an interesting bias, since I like most marine arthropods. 

Oh, well….

Until next time….

Bzzzz….. Swat!!!!

Although well-known to folks versed in classical literature, the persona of Medea is largely absent in the mind-set of the American Idle Idol generation. In short, she is a mythical figure who killed her own children, truly a women after my own heart.  I feel like I am a survivor of such a loving person.  So, I believe more in matricide than filicide, but that’s another story. 

Medea as a murderous mother is used by Peter Ward in the title of  his latest book, The Medea Hypothesis to convey the true meaning of his exposition.  In essence, Ward argues, very cogently, that life on Earth is inherently self-destructive.  This is, of course, directly contrary to the touchy-feely idea of Earth as ”Gaia,” or in other words, a nurturing earth.  The “Gaia hypothesis” (which is a formal scientific hypothesis, by the way) basically states that there are feedback loops in the entire biosphere that tend to moderate destructive effects, and that over time the earth becomes more and more ameliable to life.  

As might be expected by the title, Ward’s ideas, also explicitly stated as an hypothesis, are that over time, life on earh will become extinct largely though its interaction with global processes.  Ward dissects this idea into several different subsets, and presents a great deal of data  - in the form data about mass extinction events - that indicates that 1) life on earth is in a rather precarious position, 2) global tectonic events (primarily huge volcanic eruptions, but also continental position shifts) have caused and will continue to cause huge mass extinctions, and finally 3) that the single major defining property of life (that it evolves ) also provides short-term fixes that cause long-term problems. 

The book makes an interesting read and is well-worth the cost.  Interestingly, the new-age-Gaia types have been really panning it in the reviews.  This might be expected, as the Gaia “thing” has developed into a type of New Age religion, and it is just as logical and factually based as all other religions.  That is to say, not at all…   In effect, like any other religion, it is a body of superstitions that make the believer feel good.   So, basically, a thinking person can disregard this crappola and read the book.  After that, see if he makes sense.  I’d bet dollars to donuts that he will. 

Enjoy…

Cheers!!!

Writing for a blog, or an article, or anything, I guess, is like taking a journey.  There are many ways of getting from Point A to Point B, and the shortest distance isn’t necessarily a straight line.  I read an essay recently that compared writing styles to train trips.  The spare, “only the facts, ma’am” writing found in science articles can be compared to a bullet train.  You get on in the beginning station and - zip! - it takes you straight to the end in as short a time as possible.  One the other hand a decent informative article in a commercial magazine might be compared to a leisurely drive from the beginning to the end, and maybe you can take a few side trips along the way that let you learn a bit about the area.  Good writers seem to know how long to make the side trips, and remember that you are on a schedule and you do have to reach the destination before you run out of gas.  Bad writers often think that they know a short cut, but it turns out to be quagmire that ends the trip unpleasantly.

I am in the midst of writing an article for a magazine, Reef Life.  And as this is a new magazine, I have to chart my own path to from the beginning of the article to the end.  I want to do well at this task for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it pays.  So, I want feedback about my efforts to be melodious music to the ears of the editor.  But, I also want to do well for the simple reason that that is the way it should be.  I don’t like to do badly at anything I do, much less something that is in view of any reader any place in the world. 

All of this requires a series of judgement calls in every sentence.  Should I use this format or that? Do I want to use some metaphore to explain the topic?  Should I explain subject A in detail, and if I do, do I risk alienating those readers who don’t need the explanation?  There are a whole series of knife edges one must walk on in such an exercise.

One interesting facet of my situation is that I am also an editor of the same magazine, so I get to see what other people are writing.  It is truly a joy to read through a well-crafted article.  Sadly, one of the reasons for the joy is that it is so rare.  There seems to be a group of people writing for the aquarium hobby who desire to use every possible word that they know in each article and, if possible, in each sentence.  Then there are those folks, who have taking texting to heart, and want to write an entire article in “twitter-speak.”  It is okay for a 140 character long message, but try it for a medium sized paragraph.  One’s eyes cross so many times that optic nerves feel like cheap macrame. 

So writing can be a fun and interesting exercise.  I only hope that any readers that stumble across my articles feel the same way.

Until Later….

Cheers!!!

When I started this blog in its first incarnation about three years ago, I was posting about once a day.  I then switched to a different host, and lost the previous version, and still posted frequently.  I moved to this host about 15 month ago, and my posting dropped dramatically.  That drop has nothing to do with my hosting services, or my readers (presuming there are some), but instead it has to do with my health. 

Over the last 15 months, I seem to have suffered a tremendous drop in my energy, coupled with a significant increase in severe arthritic aches, pains, and troubles simply motivating from point A to point B.  As a result, I simply don’t seem to be able to be anywhere near as productive as I was even two years ago.  I am stating this not to elicit sympathy or pity, but simply to state what is going on.  For example, my Diodogorgia reasearch has stalled.  There is nothing wrong with the data, or the analyses to date, but I don’t want to attempt any analyses when I think that there is a significant likelihood of making errors simply because I am too tired to think properly.  As I have had to do some other things such as editing and writing  to try to keep up the cash flow, that has generally meant that when I got done with those tasks, and had the free time to do the research, I was too fatiqued to be sure of my analyses.  So, I didn’t do them.

I am starting to feel a bit better and I am optimistic that I will be able to be more productive as the summer progresses, consequently, there will be more information about the research, which I will post here.  I hope I will finally be able to get going on that manuscript by the end of summer. 

And a second manuscript, for an article  on the feeding of a deep-water scaphopod, Fissidentalium actiniophorum.

Fissidentalium actiniophorum Shimek, 1997.  A-E show individuals with a symbiotic sea anemone found on the scaphopod.  F shows an individual of the scaphopod without the anemone.

And a thrid manuscript, for a book, on Montana’s wild orchids.

So…  I have plenty to do, and plenty of data for analyses, and plenty of analytical results for writing.  All I have to get is the time and the energy to do it all.

For those of you who have been reading my blog, and wondering what is up with me, I hope this clears it up somewhat.  Right now, I am a classic case of the spirt being willing, but the flesh is weak.  I hope the near future will bring a turnaround in my health fortunes and I will regain some of my productivity.

Until later,

Cheeries!!!

I have just finished an intensive stint of writing and editing for Reef Life and at the same time battling my arthritis.  The latter has acted up to the point that I can only work - on some days - an hour or so.  Shoots my productivity all to blases. 

The good news is that I got both the editing and writing done, the bad news is that it took me about 10 days too long.

I have another article commissioned, so to get a jump on the gun, I will be starting it  sometime this week.  Then if I get knocked for a loop, I will at least be ahead of the 8 ball for a while. 

Spring Cleaning

The next order of business is to clean my aquarium system.  This is going to be a mammoth task.  I had significant Diodogorgia mortality during the winter.  The water is great, and the food is fine for them, but the problem is the cyanoacrylate glue.  The colonies do not over grow it the joint that they are glued into and eventually flexion there causes the stalk to crumble.  One can reglue them, of course, but over the long term they will continually fail and finally there is nothing left of the colony to glue.  In any case, I need to clean out the system and get it ready for our warm time.

Following my writing, I will get back to the feeding movie analyses.  This is 1) taking longer than I had figured it would, and 2) free of any money making.  The latter factor is far more important than the former, as it means that no matter what comes up that earns a few $$, I have to stop the research and get to the writing… or whatever it is. 

Anyway, this means this project’s work is proceed at far slower than a snail’s pace.  On the other hand, it is proceeding. 

A Warm Spring Is Here

Already - by late May - we have had several days in the 80s (above 26 C).  It could be a really hot summer.  So far we have plenty of moisture, but it could be really dry by August, and that is wild fire season.  Am not looking forward to those results.

Last year we had a warm snap in May, followed by a short, sharp cold snap in early June.  That hard frost killed a lot of trees, but also, somewhat interestingly, it took out a lot of our bees.  Fortunately this summer, they  appear to be back.  

Time to get back to work1

Until later,

Cheers!!!!

As opposed to hardly working.  Have now geared up to put a lot of time in on various tasks.  The first issue of Reef Life  has now been mailed out.  I have been editing and writing and consulting behind the scenes for this magazine for several months off and on.  Now, I will be working more non-stop, and I hope it will bring some needed income.  I will have a regular column where I discuss recents scientific papers that I think are important to reef enthusiasts, and I will be submitting articles to the managing editor.  Additionally, I am a technical editor, so I will be examining the submissions (or at least those I am qualified to examine - fish stuff goes to Scott Michael) as well. 

As opposed to hardly working.  Have now geared up to put a lot of time in on various tasks.  The first issue of Reef Life  has now been mailed out.  I have been editing and writing and consulting behind the scenes for this magazine for several months off and on.  Now, I will be working more non-stop, and I hope it will bring some needed income.  I will have a regular column where I discuss recents scientific papers that I think are important to reef enthusiasts, and I will be submitting articles to the managing editor.  Additionally, I am a technical editor, so I will be examining the submissions (or at least those I am qualified to examine - fish stuff goes to Scott Michael) as well. 

I have lots of work to do on the magazine, and when that gets to a low ebb, I also have my research work to continue on.  The Diodogorgia study data analyses have been going slowly as I have had to work on other stuff to keep the cash flow going, and that effort has only been marginally successful.

Some Good Reading Coming

I have ordered Peter Ward’s lastest tome, “The Medea Hypothesis” and it should be getting here soon.  As I understand it, Ward’s premise is that Mama Nature is a murderingly abusive parent.  Sounds reasonable to me.  Peter is an old acquaintance - he was my diving buddy when I found some of my first research sites for my doctoral work over 30 years ago - and he is also a fascinating author.  I have read almost all of his books, and I really like him.  I recommend you give him a try.  A few other really good books of his are: “The Call of Distant Mammoths,”  “Under A Green Sky” and “Out of Thin Air.”

So, I guess it is time for me to get to all of this work I have mentioned. 

Enjoy, and  until next time,

Cheeries…