Archive for 2009
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 […]
Fur: an imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus
I borrowed Fur: an imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus from a friend months and months ago and finally got around to watching it last weekend. I had never heard of Diane Arbus, but it turns out I’d seen one of her more famous photos, “Child with Toy Hand Grenade,” on the cover of an SNFU […]
Working from home
I love that I can do so much of my job from home. It’s nice to be able to prop my feet up and wear fuzzy pajamas and drink hot cocoa and get paid. I’m also still in shock that I get paid to read about the coolest things ever (ecology and plants, duh). While […]