Nietzsche

Un nuovo blog da leggere - in Italiano. Non son sicuro dello stile che l'autore usa. non capisco se vive a cavallo fra gerusalemme, tokyo e NY. o magari in un paesino della bassa padana. mah... importa poco. xo' sembra avere una maniera originale di pensare. x cui ve lo link, dategli uno sguardo. ;-)

Parasites, parasites...

I've managed to complete a few chapters of my copy of Parasite Rex. Incredibly interesting, more so since Carl Zimmer does freely update on the state of parasitology research on his blog. Yesterday, for example, with an interesting piece about the evolution of human crabs (piattole) and lices (pidocchi). (trackback)

Happy women's day

as per topic. something like a hundred+ years ago a bunch of women died in a fire... here you can get the whole story.

Women of all the world, get this digital bunch of flower from me:

The mistery of the vanishing honeybees

you may not know it, but honeybees do provide an incredibly important service to us - other than honey, that is. In fact, much more important than honey. They do pollinate the vast majority of crops, to the point that one out of every three bites we take would not be there if it wasn't for them.

Oh, I'm sorry I wiash I could write more on the foolishness of marketing and moving around bees as if they were people, on the crazyness of instituting no-fly- zones for bees to avoid them pollinating citruses and so obtain seedless clementine (!), and other americanities (but I am pretty sure the rest of the world has similar practices. I just don't have the time, so go and read the NY Times piece.

new pictures

linked on the sidebar...

for your education, they were taken in Platamona, during the second day of my sardinian holidays last september...

click on the slideshow botton to see the slideshow (duh!) with my comments too...

they only need to add some nice transitions, and some background music to Picasa to make a complete slideshow...

Vanishing forests

Carl Zimmer, the author of Parasite rex, has a piece on the NY Times regarding the Tanzanian Eastern Mountain Arc, where the surviving patches of forest, encroached by human development, contains an enormous quantity of species to be still discovered. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there will be time enough for biologist to even describe the species before they are driven to extinction, let alone make efforts to preserve them.

This all development business makes me sad. When people all over the world will understand that your success is not measured by how many children you have but how well you can rear them? Most people still behave as if we were hunter gatherers, sparse on an enormous territory and barely able to leave a dent on it, whereas this is not obviously the case anymore. And hasn't been for the past three hundred years to say the least.

I understand the need for providing means for a decent life to all the people alive on the planet right now, I do understand their strong will of having descendant.
I do also concede that they are entitled to the same level of life that we westerners enjoy. pity that the world can't cope with this all.

It's just OUR problem. If we mess up the environment, we will not wipe out life from the planet. Life is tough and in a couple of million years will be able to recover from it. may be more, but it will no doubt on this. But we are a fragile species, and our very same advanced society relies on a stable environment to prosper. Exactly the thing we are messing with. Good luck to us all.

Thoughts from Kansas has a comment on the article too.

PARASITE REX

I've finally received this book in my mailbox. I did order it after Dr Tatiana's Sex Advices to All Creation, but that one got lost in the post, so I had to notify Play.Com of this and have a replacement copy sent. They rocks!!! So much better than even Amazon (no link for them, eh eh).

Anyway, now it's here, in all the splendor of his colored scansion-micrography cover art. And God it's disgusting!!! I've only managed to read the preface in a quick sto at the loo after lunch, and yet I was captured, and revolted too - never mind the situation I was in, sitting on the company's WC, but reading about the effect of Tripanosoms or even worse, Onchocerca Volvulus, really scares the shit out of me. Luckily, as I said, I was already ibn a good sitting position. Did I mention that the author, Carl Zimmer, has a very nice blog called The Loom? He also writes for the NY Times, and National Geographic, but also Forbes. ;-)

Well, I guess I'll know what to read tonight, since I forgot at my gf's place :-(
Good Omens and Culture Matters (which was lent to me by her brother)

You all, have a nice evening!

Being a PostDoc

I feel morally obliged to post a link to the second Postdoc Carnival.

I've read a handful of post from there today, and I find strange how most of the post-doc posting are seeing their temporary research as a way to enter Academia - I, on the converse have accepted an industrial PostDoc as a way to stick my foot inside industry. Otherwise, the situation we PostDoGs feel here is pretty much the same, as far as frustration are concerned. Thankfully though, I'm part of a glorified trio of PostDoc involved in science-only, rather than being glorified technicians in the labs like some other complain.

Tribute to Carl Sagan

thanks to Coturnix