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The Danforth Music Hall, an old movie house, hosts a wide variety of events. That’s where I heard Alice Walker on her last book tour. A couple of weeks ago, David Suzuki brought a science show about local pollinators. Today it’s MacBeth.
And it looks as if Laurie Anderson is coming to town. Could that be the same one who does wierd music like Love is a Virus? It is:
…and real scientists, in town for the American Society for Microbiology general meeting. I was honoured to be invited. Larry Moran and Tara Smith organized a dinner of science bloggers previously acquainted only over the Web. We met at the University of Toronto. The picture shows some of us sitting on the steps in front of the Medical Sciences Building: Larry Moran of Sandwalk, Jonathan Badger of T. Taxus, Andrew Staroscik of Mixotrophy, Tara Smith of Aetiology, and John Logsdon of Sex, Genes, and Evolution. Chris Condayan, the ASM public outreach manager, was off recording an interview with Eva Amsen of Easternblot. (He interviewed several people for a podcast on the ASM’s Web site.)
Eight of us walked down to Baldwin Street for Indian food and a long, chatty, interesting dinner together. The food at Matahari restaurant was both good and unfamiliar. I had a good time and I think everyone else did, too. Here’s
Q_pheevr has a delightful parody of Intelligent Design transported to the field of linguistics. “Wrathful Dispersion theory” echoes every argument of “Intelligent Design theory”—but is it just Babelism in disguise?
Speaking of Kevin Padian, as I just did in the “Macroevolution primer,” here’s a tidbit from the past.
The cover article for Nature (May, 1999) describes how StudioToolsTM computer modelling and design software from Alias|wavefront is used to analyze dinosaur tracks and to explain a mysterious, apparent “spur” mark in each track, sometimes supposed to be from a “reversed hallux” or backward-facing toe.
At that time I was at Alias|wavefront helping to document a new version of StudioToolsTM. I attended a talk by the author, Kevin Padian. He described how used the software was used to model a mud surface and a dinosaur’s foot, then trace its motion in three dimensions, discovering that the “spur” was an artifact of how the foot entered the mud. I’m pretty sure that our resident scientist, Bill Buxton, found the research opportunity and donated a copy of the software.
See also “How Dinosaurs Walked the Walk.”
Related book: It’s ten years old, but the Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, edited by Philip J. Currie* and Kevin Padian,** still looks very interesting.
*Curator of Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta
**Professor of Integrative Biology and Curator of Lower Vertebrates in the Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley
Thanks to PZ Myers for pointing out this lovely series of graffiti–not scientifically acurate but nifty and thought-provoking.
Edward Humes is interested in truth, justice, and Doing the Right Thing. In this book, he explores the issues raised by the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial of whether Intelligent Design (a.k.a. “Goddidit”) should be taught in public schools.
The daughter of Ms. Kitzmiller was taunted as “Monkey Girl” at her school.
The experts on Intelligent Design presented their own case and their own best arguments in court. They proved to the judge that the concept of Intelligent Design was hopelessly contaminated by religious dogma and was not science.
Here’s a link to the book page on Amazon with a good review from the Washington Post.
Saturday night is the night of the full moon this month. And it brings the first total lunar eclipse in 2½ years. We in Ontario won’t see much of it if the weather is cloudy: the eclipse will be underway before the moon rises. You can see it best along the east coast of Canada and the United States, as well as South Africa, Europe and much of Asia.
The CBC’s science column says:
Lunar eclipses occur when a full moon, on its usual orbit around the Earth, slips into Earth’s shadow. The eclipsed moon may appear washed in a copper or brown colour as sunlight leaks through the Earth’s atmosphere.
I have seen that sullen brick-red quite a few times since I was a child. I didn’t realize that lunar eclipses were so rare.
An amusing article from spiked-online.com (a British somewhat contrarian Marxist-libertarian Web site—yes, that’s rather contradictory) about Sense about Science’s programme to aid celebrities before they endorse dubious causes or repeat dubious assertions.
I read more than a hundred books in 2006, almost none of them edifying. Favourites and books about science and nature are in bold:
See also Books read in 2007.
