Chris Clarke writes about steelhead. It’s a subject I’m on close terms with, too; my father was an obsessive steelhead fisherman, and I grew up spending many memorable weekend mornings chilled and damp on the banks of the Green River, eyes fixed on the tip of a fiberglas rod. I also felt the year-by-year decline, as actually catching a magnificent fish became a rarer event over time. I was interested in the biology of these fish, though, and these are also things my father explained to me:
The Hacking Team, a notoriously sleazy and unscrupulous gang of malware-spreading, privacy-violating goons, has been hacked. The irony is delicious. I’m pleased to see that perfectly appropriate comeuppance.
Even more hilariously, their own passwords were exposed.
In addition to having fabulous taste in hats, Nettie Stevens is also an underappreciated scientist. She was a cytologist, embryologist, and entomologist at Bryn Mawr, where she worked with Edmund Wilson and a certain fellow you have almost certainly heard of, Thomas Hunt Morgan. In fact, she’s the person who introduced TH Morgan and Drosophila, so we would owe her just for that.
But her main claim to fame is that she’s the person who figured out all that business about X and Y chromosomes — the chromosomal basis of sex determination. Strangely, most of the genetics textbooks grant all the credit for that to TH Morgan, I can’t imagine why. Oh, wait, I can guess. When Stevens died, Morgan got to write her curiously distant obituary in Science, where he credited her with a “share” in the discovery. It’s not a terrible obit, in that he does discuss the breadth of her work, but otherwise it’s rather dry and nitpicky.*
But you know she had to be remarkable in many ways. She was a woman in a deeply sexist culture, and she was forty years old when she started studying biology in 1901, so she already had the deck stacked against her. Yet she managed to build a commendable career in just a few short years — she died in 1912 of breast cancer, just before finally getting a faculty position — and it’s a shame that what must have been a fascinating person has been lost in the rush to take credit for her work. She’s someone who deserves a bigger place in the textbooks.
*The part that annoyed me most in the obit was in the first paragraph, where he credits some of her success to the “liberality of Bryn Mawr College, which created for her a research professorship”. Was it also very generous of Bryn Mawr, Columbia, and Cal Tech to grant poor TH Morgan research positions at their institutions? It sure was liberal of them to let him in the door.
The University of Hawaii, like universities everywhere in the US, has been facing major cuts. There seems to be zero support for higher education in this country, and every legislature sees a way to save their favorite perk for the rich by carving more dollars out of the university budget. Only now the cuts are reaching vital organs … like the faculty and students. One symptom is the abuse of graduate students.
Grad students in Hawaii are working under the very same salary they would have received over a decade ago, which is ridiculous. Pay at the university must adjust to circumstances, or you’re just building up to kill the institution.
I’ve mentioned before this curious trait in my hate mail: I’m ‘accused’ of being Jewish. It’s discombobulating because, to my knowledge, I have no Jewish ancestry at all, and because I don’t find the accusation to be at all insulting…although clearly my correspondents do.
Over the last year or two, though, it’s changed. Nowadays I commonly get accused of being a Cultural Marxist
. Check out this roundup of cultural marxist
memes to see what it means. Once again, it’s mostly meaningless, and the only thing it tells you is that whoever is flinging the term around is a racist and anti-Semite.
This “news” article lead in with some rather positive statements, and had me wondering for a bit how life could exist on a comet.
Evidence of alien life is “unequivocal” on the comet carrying the Philae probe through space, two leading astronomers have said.
The experts say the most likely explanation for certain features of the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, such as its organic-rich black crust, is the presence of living organisms beneath an icy surface.
Rosetta, the European spacecraft orbiting the comet, is also said to have picked up strange “clusters” of organic material that resemble viral particles.
Hmmm. I could imagine bacteria living deep in a organic-chemical-rich rock in space, but it would have to be metabolizing at an extraordinarily low rate — how would a probe that wasn’t designed to detect life even see it? Are there cues other than that the surface is dark? Because that’s kind of routine, and doesn’t require life.
And then that bit about viral particles
…how would they know? Does Philae carry an electron microscope on board?
Despite the emphatic wording, this article is extremely suspect. But it’s Sky News, a real UK news source! Just like Fox News in the US! They would at least check with real scientists, wouldn’t they?
Nope. All is revealed.
I’m going to stay away from Mary for a while. It was a busy weekend for both of us, we’re both really tired, and then she sends me this as an appropriate organism. I’m trying to read the message in sending a picture of a botfly to your spouse.
Don’t panic, here’s the cure: bacon.
The Eye of Argon is a legendary work of bad fiction (you don’t have to trust me, just read a page or two), but we have to be fair: its author did not try to publish it, didn’t try to tell the world that it was the greatest work of fantasy ever, and didn’t brag about his book and movie deals.
That modesty is not a property of Gloria Tesch, author of the Maradonia Saga, a series I was introduced to just this past weekend. It may not be as badly written as Eye of Argon (although it comes close), but the ego of the author is astonishing.
It’s the last day of Convergence! We partied into the wee hours last night, and now comes the dreaded time when we have to break down and clean up the party room. It’s going to be drudgery all morning.
But I’m not done with the con! I have two science panels this afternoon before I can escape.
At 12:30 in Atrium 7, we’re discussing Human Augmentation.
We may not be able to fly or record our lives with memory implants, but existing developments are exciting, from 3D printed hands to mind-controlled exoskeletons and neuroprosthetics. We’ll discuss the latest advances and what’s possible for the future. Panelists: PZ Myers, Christopher Hunter, Tim Shank, Brian McEvoy, Cassandra Phoenix
At 3:30, it’s time for Genetic Engineering: From Fiction to Fact, in Atrium 7 again.
Dystopian books, movies and video games are filled with genetic engineering nightmares, from Oryx and Crake to Gattaca and Bioshock. We’ll discuss how much of this fiction is becoming fact (and the implications) in the growing field of synthetic biology. Panelists: Kris Coulter, PZ Myers, Ross Conklin
I’m also going to have say goodbye to my daughter and son-in-law, who have been tending bar all weekend and making sushi, and will be driving back to Colorado; my oldest son is heading back to St Cloud after his long weekend as a party gopher; and the middle son has a few more days with us before he flies back to Korea. I think we’re all going to sleep well tonight.
