Check out Podcast of the Blue #1, hosted by Rick MacPherson and featuring WhySharksMatter, Kevin Zelnio, Jason Robertshaw, and yours truly. Lurking in the middle is a Very Exciting Announcement about the Oyster’s Garter. I’ll write a post about it eventually, but for now you can only hear it on Podcast of the Blue, along with lots of dolphin and squid and fishy delights. Enjoy the melodious voices of your friendly ocean bloggers!
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Carnivals, Sciencey entertainment | 
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Posted by Miriam Goldstein
I SEE YOU, LURKERS!!!
The deadline for Carnival of Evolution entries is tomorrow (5 PM PST) and yet, you persist in thwarting my evilutionary plan. Do you think I don’t see you lurking in the corner? No, my internet powers are like unto Sauron, a laser beaming into every corner of the internet where quality unsubmitted evolution-related blog posts lurk. Give me my rightful entries, or suffer the consequences.
You will submit here, puny mortals!
1 Comment | Carnivals, Doom | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
1 Comment | Sunday Links | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
Tonight is Earth Hour. Last year, more than 50 million people in 400 cities turned out their lights for one hour to show political leaders that they wanted real action on climate change. This year, let’s make it even bigger.
All you have to do is turn off your lights at 8:30 PM your local time and leave them off for 60 minutes. I’ll even be turning off my beloved laptop for some grantwriting with…paper and pencil!!!
I’m perfectly aware that Earth Hour is just a minuscule drop in the giant ocean of worldwide energy use. But even for something as trivial as turning out the lights, seeing the entire world taking collective positive action warms the cockles of my cold dark heart.
Here’s the official Earth hour video if you want something all inspirational. But if I’m going to sit alone in the dark contemplating climate change, I’m going to do it to the dark beats of VNV Nation:
3 Comments | Action!, Climate change, Zero emmissions now! | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
TGIF, everyone!
Via Best Week Ever and Martini-Corona
4 Comments | Our furry friends, Silliness | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
Check out Diversity in Science Carnival #2, up at Thus Spake Zuska. The theme is Women Achievers in STEM: Past and Present, and there is all kinds of science-lady-goodness. Check it out!
Leave a Comment » | Carnivals | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
Both the House and the Senate have approved increased funding for ocean research! Sheril broke the news yesterday:
The package includes ocean exploration, NOAA undersea research, ocean and coastal mapping integration, the integrated coastal and ocean observation system*, federal ocean acidification research and monitoring, coastal and estuarine land conservation, and lots more…Folks, this is as much a bill about the environment as it is about people and our collective future.
The bill will now to to President Obama’s desk to be signed into law. Congratulations to all who worked hard to get this bill through!
For more ocean policy goodness, check out this NYT profile of Jane Lubchenco, the head of NOAA. She plans to create a climate observation service similar to the National Weather Service and to tackle the problem of overfishing.
Dr. Lubchenco, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a MacArthur grant recipient, said she did not take the NOAA job thinking it would be another chance for her to chip away at the culture of science — not consciously, anyway. “I took the job because I had the chance to be helpful,” she said.
3 Comments | Newsy Bits, O frabjous day!, Ocean, Policy | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
This month’s Diversity in Science Carnival coincides with Women’s History Month, so the theme is Women Achievers in STEM: Past and Present. I’m going to write about a woman who I really, really wish I could have met: Mia J. Tegner.
Mia Tegner received her PhD from Scripps in 1974. Though she came to Scripps as a sea urchin microbiologist, she soon started to wonder about the ecological role of sea urchins in the kelp forest. At the time, overfishing of large coastal fish that prey on urchins had led to massive starving urchins fronts which had eaten the entire kelp forest. Correction: Actually, she was interested in the ecological effects of the urchin and abalone fisheries. Urchin barrens were not an issue at the time.
Alongside her longtime collaborator Paul Dayton, she teased apart the biological and physical factors controlling kelp forest dynamics. Their monograph on kelp forest patch dynamics is a classic in the field. Dr. Tegner also showed that harvesting different urchin species had different ecological effects, and studied the decline of local abalone species due to overfishing and disease.
Later, Dr. Tegner got more involved in marine policy. She found that the outfall of San Diego’s sewage treatment plant had no impact on local ecosystems, and wasn’t afraid to say so. But she also found that overfishing had devastated her beloved Point Loma kelp forest and spoke out against overfishing and shifting baselines syndrome. She said, “People deserve scientists’ time and efforts to provide data on which to base decisions regarding the environment.”
The current mandate to create marine protected areas in southern California in part stems from Dr. Tegner’s work, but she did not live to see them. She died in a diving accident in 2001, when she was 53. My office is two doors down from where hers used to be (though I never met her; she died five years before I came to Scripps). Not only did her premature death deprive the world of her deep understanding of marine ecology and love of the ocean, but I bet she would have been quite a mentor as well.
4 Comments | Carnivals, Ocean, San Diego, Time to Make the Science | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
I confess I’ve been alienated by a lot of the “Female scientists ARE SO totally hot!” action. I’ve never cared much for performing femininity, as the humanities kids say. And being more…shall we say…Bette Midler than Bette Davis makes for a very different experience, both on the internet and in real life. But the foolishness that’s been going around science blog land lately is ridiculous.
Lisa from Sociological Images (one of my very favorite blogs ever) has insight from an unusual source. A while back, she posted this cover from Vogue Magazine in which Judd Apatow’s chubby actors lounge about in body suits. It’s funny because it’s a parody of another Vogue cover with naked ladies, only the guys get to wear clothes. As Lisa says:
I think we would be unlikely to see a similar cover featuring women, even women comedians, because women are allowed to be rich, nice, or funny but they must ALSO be good-looking and fit. A cover featuring chubby women would JUST be gross. It wouldn’t be gross and funny.
Being good-looking and fit is ONE way for men to be admire in our society. Being good-looking and fit is a REQUIREMENT for women to be admired, no matter what else she brings to the table.
So women MUST be attractive – no matter what else they bring to the table. And if a woman is attractive, that is just as important as whatever she’s actually doing or saying. (Hi, Sarah Palin.) Consider the backlash against Gail Trimble, who dominated UK quiz show University Challenge. Nobody could figure out how to talk about a smart woman, so everyone just argued about whether she was sexy or not, or bitchy or not.
But this could not possibly be true in science, right? Except that a brief examination of scientists on TV bears this out. Are there any women on TV with the slightly pudgy, schlubby looks of the Mythbusters guys? I flipped through Discovery Channel’s shows and couldn’t find any, though to be frank it was a tiny sample size since there were barely any women at all. Anyone have a counter example?
This dialogue over sexiness in science makes me think of female choices in Halloween costumes. Little girls can be a cowgirl or a detective or a “Kimono Kutie” (ewwww) but all of the choices are pink. Women can be a police officer, a referee, or a detective but all of the choices are sexy. The message for women is “You can be anything (even smart!) as long as you’re feminine and cute! Looking good is THE most important thing for a girl or woman.” Frankly, that is also the message that I get from Danica McKellar’s math book and Dora’s makeover.
I think too much emphasis on “smart is sexy” overlooks the ubiquitous societal message that “sexy is everything if you’re female.” That’s why commenters feel they have the right to ogle female bloggers – why should they pay attention to what she is actually saying when everything that society says is important is right there in her picture? When women in the public eye are free to be funny or butch or dorky or even (shock! horror! omg the world is ending!) fat, then Totally Hot will just be another way for female scientists to be.
16 Comments | Getting it right, Social eptitude, Things That Severely Annoy Miriam | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
This photo is all over the internets as a photo of the North Pacific Trash Gyre:
But a clever person on Flickr found the original image, and this is neither trash nor the central Pacific nor a gyre. The land is Japan and the swirl is a large eddy with a plankton bloom in it.
Eddies commonly break off of the Kuroshio Current near Japan (it’s the Gulf Stream of the Pacific) and go swirling about on their own for weeks or months, trapping plankton inside. Since plastic is transparent and does not reflect much light, the tiny bits of trash in the North Pacific Gyre cannot currently be seen by satellite.
7 Comments | Getting it right, North Pacific Trash Gyre | Permalink
Posted by Miriam Goldstein
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