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Evolutionary Psychology, Proximate Causation, & Ultimate Causation
Evolutionary psychology has always been somewhat controversial in the media for reasons that generally confuse me (Wikipedia has a nice rundown of the usual complaints). For instance, the good folks...
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Exploding expertise
How do we decide who to listen to about something chemical? I have a piece in Slate this week (on the brouhaha around the teenager in Florida and the exploding water bottle), and someone in the...
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The 100th flowering plant Index - 2010-2013
TPP's 1st day of flowering log provides some interesting data. On May 5th, the 100th different plant in our gardens flowered. This is considerably later than a typical year, if such a thing exists. In...
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George Whitesides on the responsibility of chemists and the future of chemistry
Catching up on a few articles I had missed, I came across a characteristically deep and wide-ranging essay called "Assumptions" by George Whitesides about science, its future and our responsibility as...
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What's the Point of Making This Face When We're Scared?
If cartoonists ever pause in their sketching to ponder human evolution, they must feel grateful to the forces that shaped our fear expression. All it takes is a pair of extra-wide eyes to show that a...
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Just a little bit busy this spring
The end of the semester, the beginning of field season, a publishing deadline, and home gardening are all colliding here in May when the days just don't have enough hours. At the coffee shoppe this...
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Do You Speak Korean?
Learning new languages is hard for many reasons. One of those reasons is that the meaning of an individual word can have a lot of nuances, and the degree to which those nuances match up with the...
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On synthesis, design and chemistry's outstanding philosophical problems
Chemists need to move from designing structure - exemplified by this synthetic receptor - to designing function (Image: Max Planck Institute).Yesterday I wrote a post about a perspective by...
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Post semester clean-up and end-of-the-semester rant
In addition to grading and grades, followed by tears and gripes, TPP's research lab and teaching classroom/lab are basically a pit. The debris left over by a semester of student work is considerable....
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5-8-13 Fibonacci day
The infamous Fibonacci series is recalled on this May 8th, 2013, part of the series which is constructed when each element is a sum of the previous 2 elements in the series. So 1 - 1- 2 - 3 - 5 - 8 -...
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Happy Blogday! Help Me Rename This Site
Inkfish is three years old today! One great thing about blogs that doesn't apply to real three-year-olds is that you can change their name and appearance at will. I'm getting tired of "Inkfish"—too...
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Observations on the final week of a semester
The end of a semester and the possibility of graduation for some, survival for others, puts a lot of strain on the system. After many years on a university campus you sort of get used to a certain...
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Chemistry, fluid dynamics and an awful radioactive mess
When it comes to handling radioactive waste the Hanford site in western Washington state is the opposite of a role model. Ever since its reactors started producing the plutonium which was used in the...
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Extinction is forever - A close call for an ebony
Islands are evolutionary laboratories providing genetic isolation of any organism that disperses there with the result that new and novel species often arise that grow no where else. Then there are...
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TMI Friday: Using a Bottle for a Throttle
Today we once again must again take a look at men who take incredible risks in order to find new and grotesque methods of masturbation. You have been warned. This week, the object of their fascination...
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Upcycling rather than recycling
Alternatives to waste, alternatives to over consumption, alternatives to filling more land-fills are always welcome ideas, and here's a very nice and interesting video of upcycling in Greece. Now TPP...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - Fern-leafed Peony
Several years ago a long-time employee of TPP's favorite neighborhood garden shoppe was offering us several perennials at significant discounts rather than trying to over winter them and sell them the...
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Blue lawn to green slime
A month ago a large portion of our lawn was a carpet of blue scilla. It took decades for the scilla to multiply so prolifically, and it's a wonderful and lovely harbinger of spring. What could be the...
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Please don't smoke the tomatoes!
How ya doin New Yawk? The NY Boys in Blue busted a rooftop marijuana growing operation except it turned out to be tomatoes. Yes, tomatoes. Which of course are grown for their berries not their...
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Living in an Imperfect World: Psycholinguistics Edition
You, sir, have tasted two whole worms. You have hissed all my mystery lectures and been caught fighting a liar in the quad. You will leave Oxford by the next town drain. -- Reverend Spooner. There is...
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