The Oyster’s Garter: now with more hotness

February 9, 2009

The Oyster’s Garter has had a little bit of work done, and is now hotter than ever. Check out the shiny new banner, handcrafted by the extremely talented Irradiatus of Biochemicalsoul. (So happy to have met him at Science Online!) I’ve also changed the wordpress theme to a cleaner look. The exact nature of the oyster’s garter remains left to your imagination, where it belongs.

In conclusion, IRRADIATUS is teh r0x0r OMG XOXOXOXOXOXO! And Biochemicalsoul is a great blog and you should read it – check out his recent destruction of my dream commute via giant sloth.

12 Comments | Self-Referential | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Custom plush fouling community

February 9, 2009

Fouling community

When I highlighted Weird Bug Lady‘s work about a month ago, she mentioned that she does custom work. Aha! What else besides anatomically correct plush invertebrates could possibly commemorate my dear friend JEByrnes‘ doctorate/Very Important Decadal Birthday?

Since Herr Doktor Byrnes did his thesis on biodiversity in fouling communities, I requested that Weird Bug Lady create a diverse fouling community. And hot damn, she outdid herself. I can’t recommend her highly enough for all your nerd-plush needs.

Here is JEByrnes’ fouling community, covered in actual California fouling species.  You get a virtual cookie if you can name one! For extra awesome, the bryozoan zooids and the limpet (and possibly other critters – I haven’t seen them in person yet) are removable so you can snuggle them.

11 Comments | Critters, Garter Gear | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Sunday Links: Wunder Boner Edition

February 8, 2009
  • JEByrnes contemplates marine science in the age of sail, and Peter McGrath traces English phrases to nautical terms. Peter will be pleased to know that a side effect of reading (and re-reading and re-re-reading) all 20 of Patrick O’Brian “Master and Commander” novels appears to be an unstoppable urge to use  “ahoo” in everyday conversation.
  • Parts of the Arctic Sea newly exposed by melting ice were closed to fishing. It’s a tiny drop of yay in a big bucket of global warming environmental sadness.
  • Echinoblog invokes the asteroid corollary of Godwin’s Law with the only supervillain ever to matter: STARFISH HITLER. And there is video, oh yes.
  • The very first Diversity in Science Carnival will be hosted by honorary ocean blogger DN Lee over at Urban Science Adventures! Since it’s Black History Month, this carnival’s theme is black innovators. Let’s show everyone that you don’t have to be a crazy old white guy to be a scientist! Send your entry to DN by February 20th.

And here’s a video of the Wunder Bonder. Don’t worry, this blog is still more-or-less PG-13 and the video is safe for work. Unless your work really hates mullets. (Via Martini-Corona and Wil Wheaton.)

3 Comments | Sunday Links | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Conceivable Waste

February 6, 2009

I find it almost impossible to grasp just how much sheer stuff gets used up by our current society. It’s just one of those ideas hard to get your mind around, like how some numbers are too large for us to comprehend. Photographer  Chris Jordan tries to help us grasp what we’re throwing away partly by taking pictures of vast piles of trash, but also by making detailed representations of waste.  I found his stuff via a New Scientist slide show, but his website has some staggering photos of a mountain of sawdust, piles of dead cell phones, and other mind-numbing displays of waste. The whole thing makes me think of how Slumdog Millionaire and Wall-E manage to find beauty in piles of garbage.  I recommend flipping through the whole slide show, but here’s one example, and then a close up of it.

There are 320,000 light bulbs in this image. This is equivalent to the number of kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage, such as poor wiring and computers left in sleep mode.

And then the close up of the center:

1 Comment | Environment | Permalink
Posted by Eric Wolff

TGIF: Adorable tiny sea horses!

February 6, 2009

National Geographic has photos of five new(ish) pygmy sea horse species. All five are less than an inch tall. I know they’re vertebrates and all, but who could resist this cute lil punim?

4 Comments | Critters, Ocean | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

When sponges ruled the earth

February 5, 2009

For nearly 100 million years, sponges alone ruled the seas. In a study published in this week’s Nature, researchers found chemical traces of sponges that were over 635 million years old. That’s 100 million years before the Cambrian Explosion, when the first (really creepy looking!) animals were thought to have appeared.

The chemical traces of these sponges are the oldest record of animal life ever to be found in the fossil record. Their tiny spongy lives would have been lived alone (except for single-celled organisms) in the shallow, frigid seas of an ice age. But with no other animals to eat them, there were probably plenty of fellow sponges. According to Gordon Love, the lead author:ResearchBlogging.org

“There was no competition from more complicated animals, so sponges were probably thriving,” Love said. “Compared with other times in our history, there were enormously high amounts of them.”

These ancient sponges eventually gave rise to all other animal life, though some of their descendants scorned higher organization for the loose & easy life. Since more than 90% of modern sponges resemble those ancient sponges, perhaps there’s something to be said for a simple life of filtering seawater and spawning.

Gordon D. Love, Emmanuelle Grosjean, Charlotte Stalvies, David A. Fike, John P. Grotzinger, Alexander S. Bradley, Amy E. Kelly, Maya Bhatia, William Meredith, Colin E. Snape, Samuel A. Bowring, Daniel J. Condon, Roger E. Summons (2009). Fossil steroids record the appearance of Demospongiae during the Cryogenian period Nature, 457 (7230), 718-721 DOI: 10.1038/nature07673

4 Comments | Critters, Discovery | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

How I just wasted an hour on Google Ocean

February 4, 2009

In honor of Darwin’s upcoming 200th birthday, I decided to explore the Galapagos on shiny new Google Earth 5.0 with extra fantastic ocean capability. It is SPECTACULAR – stuffed with videos, blogs, cruises, and photos. So here’s how I wasted an hour exploring. I’m not providing links since it’s more fun to find the sweet sweet procrastination important educational materials yourself.

  • Zoomed into Puerto Ayora, the main town on the island of Santa Cruz. Checked out the Darwin Station and a photo of Lonesome George. Was hoping to find some historical photos to get a handle on growth, but no luck.
  • What’s this red hat symbol? Sacre bleu, a video of Jacques Cousteau diving with marine iguanas in 1971. Bonus sea lion harassment of iguanas!
  • Onto the island of Floreana. Read about critically endangered Floreana coral, with pretty photos.
  • Anchor symbol – oceanographic goodness! An unusually well-written blog about a Woods Hole geographic expedition (on SIO’s R/V Revelle) to explore sunken volcanoes. They’ve got interviews with a huge cross-section of the scientists and crew.
  • Awww, Galapagos penguin chick begging for food off Isla Isabela.
  • I wonder what’s underwater? Swim over to Alvarado Ridge. There need to be some hidden easter-egg-type goodies in the Google Earth deep sea.

For a bonus, check out the largest initials on the planet, carved right into the sea floor!!! That’s the glory of supplying the bathymetry data – DTS/SIO is Dr. David T. Sandwell of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

For more Google Ocean, Peter Etnoyer on Deep Sea News has been playing, too – see here and here and here.

3 Comments | Discovery, Sciencey entertainment | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

“It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

February 3, 2009

There’s not one, but TWO Jane Austen-inspired zombie novels coming out. How will I choose between “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Jane Bites Back?” While the first includes the original text of the Regency classic, juiced up with ‘all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem,’” the second features “an undead Jane Austen who, after 200 years of writer’s block, takes revenge on everyone making money off of her.”

In other zombie-related news, Texas has suffered a zombie infestation that the authorities cleverly passed off as “hackers from changing messages on digital road signs.” But we know better, oh  yes.

Thanks, Kevin Z and Mary!

5 Comments | Zombies | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Two more Carnivals

February 3, 2009

So much shiny new Google Oceans to explore! I’ll followup soon with some highlights, but in the meantime, please enjoy two more carnivals.

The Carnival of Evolution is up at Biochemicalsoul.

The new, shiny, revived Circus of the Spineless is up at the Other 95%.

Leave a Comment » | Sciencey entertainment | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

Carnival of the Blue #21

February 2, 2009

Carnival of the BlueI. Invocation to the Muse

I sing of arms and of tentacles,
And of the Carnival, who exiled by Fate,
Hurled about endlessly from blog to blog
Has reached the Oyster’s Garter’d shores
Here to found number twenty-one.

O muse! Tell me of the many wonders
Cradled in this sea-tossed carnival.
Of sharks and squirts and of the cuttlefish
Impaled upon the dolphin’s beak.
And death spreading ever outward
From too much carbon in the sky.

II. Conservation

Wallace J. Nichols wanders in the sea.
Encouraging you to get out there.
And Sheril praises Bush’s legacy
Protecting Pacific habitats rare.
I explain ocean acidification short & sweet
A primer for the learning.
James Hrynyshyn says Monaco is too discreet
And acidification’s very concerning.
But Oceana saved some sharks
By keeping them out of makeup
And DN Lee’s shark finning remarks
Are a cause that we should take up.
And David says keep sharks in captivity
If they inspire conservation in you and me.

Climate change is flooding Palau
Carl Safina says wake up now!
And see what climate change hath wrought.
And Ken at Sea Notes wonders
With all the fish diet thunder
Where Madonna’s salmon is caught.

III. Critters

JE Byrnes is a man who loves squirts
But invasive ones cause nature big hurts.
So in order to beat them
He suggests we eat them
Truly, this is just desserts.

Peter Etnoyer found a new coral!
Yippee! He gets science laurels.
But naming Isidella tentaculum
Caused an anxiety attack-ulum,
The wrong name could cause a big quarrel.

Rick MacPherson dines upon morays,
Or at least, describes Roman forays.
It takes guts to be blogging
Recipes calling for flogging.
But feeding morays to kings clearly pays.

Tuibguy writes how dolphins use their rostrums to smash
Cuttlefish open for tasty hash.
Digital Cuttlefish is derisive
And writes a cuttlefish missive
But the dolphins aren’t a bit abashed.

Mark Hall contemplates Andre the Seal
Raised by a doctor to feel
That humans were fun
And swamping boats done
Perhaps Andre got a raw deal?

The purple sandpiper flies south to the sun,
But the tropics it chooses to shun.
10,000 Birds’ Charlie
Photographed them most hardily
Wow. Didn’t that look like fun.

III. Sex and family values

Ed Yong’s three groups of fish
Sup from one genetic dish
And are the nuclear family of one kin.
And Mark Powell’s hydrozoan
Keeps on goin’ and goin’
Using sex to live forever in sin.

IV. Assorted

Mighty ROV
Dr. M sings your praises.
Workhorse of the sea.

Fame and fortune lurk
Beneath Bainbridge Island waves
Mark’s on the front page.

What evil lurks in
The guts of Osedax worms?
These undergrads know.

V. Farewell

I hope you enjoyed the Carnival in verse.
And that mediocre rhymes didn’t upset.
Next month the Carnival of the Blue can be found
At Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets.

26 Comments | Sciencey entertainment | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein

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