First contact with alien races: is it worth considering?

The latest meme going around is first contact, spurred by this speech by Stephen Hawking. It’s made some interesting buzz in the blogosphere, although I’m not sure how many of these biologist bloggers are actually applying biological principles to their thoughts. There are certianly many different directions societies could go. Just look at the various [...]

More Sketchy Science: Do Tomatoes Really Eat Insects?

I’ve been seeing this story more and more around the news, exemplified by this Telegraph article…apparently, there are some researchers that discovered that tomatoes have hairs on them which trap and kill small insects. The Telegraph reports: New research shows that they capture and kill small insects with sticky hairs on their stems and then [...]

Insects use tools, but do they self-medicate?

This is my first researchblogging post in awhile…so I figured I’d make it worthwhile by writing a really, really long post and actually deconstructing a scientific paper. I’ve seen the video of the tool using octopus…and it is neat. Here’s a science daily article, and here’s the video below: Using tools is something which is [...]

I’m not too happy with Graham Lawton of New Scientist right now…

see more pwn and owned pictures I’m not even going to pretend that I read everything what pops up in popular science. My exposure to pop-sci articles consists largely of stumbling into the Iowa State University bookstore and thumbing through the science magazines, usually after I look at the pretty women in fashion magazines. I’m [...]

I am living proof against Intelligent Design

Take a look at Casey Luskin’s diagram in his most recent post over at Evolution News and Views. Believe it or not, this diagram hits close to home to me. You see, the very fact that I’m alive is proof positive that this diagram fails the most basic test of irreducible complexity. I have a [...]

Black Widows are NOT going to kill you and your family

Many spiders get a really bad rap merely because they have hideously toxic venom. Okay, that’s actually a really good reason to be very, very careful when dealing with some spiders. Especially Black Widows. Black widows in areas they live are pretty much ubiquitous. I got the chance to collect them while I was in [...]

Science Journalism and Blogging

So I haven’t been on the blogosphere for too long, but my weblog is just starting to get some decent traffic (mostly as a result of the researchblogging posts I try to do about once a week or so) and I’m just becoming aware of some of the conflicts that take place regularly on the [...]