Archive for January, 2009
Tree cookies
I want to know how different soil types affect pinyon pine growth during drought and if there’s a difference in growth between trees that die in the drought and those that have survived so far. So I needed some cookies. We had no idea that there would be two feet of snow on the ground […]
Migraine Log – Week 6
I’ve now been taking Petadolex for 5 weeks. I’ve been keeping track of my migraines and my main trigger (bad weather). Last week I graphed the migraine data collected so far and received a few ideas for a better graph in the comments. Here’s the updated data presented a bit differently than last week’s: In […]
The future awaits
From Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: …the world’s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not […]
The Be Good Tanyas
Last week there was no Weekly Top 5 and there won’t be this week, either, though I did manage to recover almost half of my music. Instead, here’s one of my favorite songs.
What I’ve noticed
Nectar isn’t just insect food, it’s a drug – the plants produce narcotics and alcohol. How on earth can people believe that torture keeps us safe? (en)Gender points to the most awesome thing I’ve read all week – a statement released by the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe. It really irks […]
Who cares if some scraggly weed goes extinct?
I mentioned in the first Extinction Thursday why you should care about the extinction of seemingly insignificant plants. Jared Diamond puts it much better in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: But biodiversity losses of small inedible species often provoke the response, “Who cares? Do you really care less for humans […]
What We Killed Thursday
Continuing with the extinction series, next is Byttneria ivorensis, a tree from from the Ivory Coast. It probably went extinct in the 1900s due to deforestation. Other members of this genus are hosts of several butterfly caterpillars and it’s likely that B. ivorensis was, too. Some caterpillars feed exclusively on specific species of Byttneria. We’ll […]