Today is Sir David Attenborough's 81st birthday. There was a fair bit of fuss and fanfare last year when he turned 80, including a Radio 4 programme, and a vote on the nation's favourite Attenborough moment (the winner was the delicious lyrebird clip in case you're wondering). No fuss this year, probably just a lot of cake and maybe even a nice cup of tea. Happy Birthday Sir David.
Lloyd Godson is a strange fish. The 29 year old marine biologist just realized his dream of living under the sea in the bright yellow BioSUB two weeks, recycling his sewage and cycling on a stationary bike to generate electricity and relying on algae for his oxygen supply. There were two points motivating his wild endeavor. One, it was his dream. And he got to realize it thanks to winning the Australian Geographic Live Your Dream contest. Second, he wanted to make a point about sustainability. Done and done.
But reading closer I was struck by one fact. Godson got a visit from the "Easter Shark" who gave him some easter chocolates. I'd like to point out the potential marketing genius of this. If the shark-huggers want to better their cause and revamp their pet animal's PR from vicious carnivore to harmless huggable adorable beast in need of our love, THIS IS IT. First of all, once armed with chocolate, your mascot instantly becomes the universal briber. Second, what animal could possibly be more harmless than the Easter bunny? It's beyond innocuous. So work that reputation and hijack it with a Great White Shark. They're both white. And toothy.
You can always tell it's a special day when Google goes all themed, and today is no exception. On the 12th of April in 1961, soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin made history and became the first person ever in space. Most people in the world were delighted, one notable exeption probably being American Alan Shepherd who missed out on claiming the title by a mere 23 days. Yuri did one leisurely loop of the Earth in Vostok 1, then landed just under two hours later. He apparently landed in a field in front of a farmer and his daughter, scaring the life out of them. In an attempt to reassure them, he is meant to have said "I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow". That seems typical of his straightforward style, while he was up in space, he is reported to have said things like "I am feeling fine. I am in good spirits. I feel splendid. The craft is operating normally." I can't helping thinking that if that were me who was the first person in space there'd be a lot more swearwords involved, but maybe that's one of the many reasons I'm not an astronaut...
Diminutive 5 ft 2 Yuri never lived to see NASA steal back the lead in the space race by sending the first men to the moon in 1969 - he died tragically in a plane crash in 1968. As recognition of his stellar acheivement, Yuri has a couple of commemorative coins bearing his likeness, a crater on the dark side of the moon, an asteroid, a town near to where he was born, numerous streets and squares, and the Cosmonaut Training Facility in Star City named after him. He also has his own mineral, gagarinite, and a 40ft titanium statue in Moscow. Nobody could ever say that Russia is not proud of it's trailblazing son - their very own Columbus of the Cosmos. Happy Anniversary, Yuri, wherever you are.
GALILEO KNOWS HOW IT FELT
When I was 12, I was on a choir tour around Maritime Canada. We often stayed with generous families from the small towns we visited, which was both awkward and amusing in equal parts. I remember one family very strongly. I was staying with them over the Easter weekend and they were obviously religious. After dinner the first night I was there, the father turned to me and asked what denomination I was. Sensing that "I don't believe in God" was the wrong answer, I replied: "......Baptist?" Born and raised an atheist, Baptist was the only one I knew.
But right now, I am proud to have selected that particular group, if only for this essay by Oliver "Buzz" Thomas. Thomas is a Baptist minister and author of the upcoming book "10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job)." Surprisingly, Buzz talks about the emerging science of sexual preference and asks what this means for religion's generally firm stance on the issue, equating the dilemma to Christianity's rejection of Galileo's blasphemous earth n' sun assertions. I couldn't be prouder even if I was a real Baptist.
The second half of David Attenborough's delicious natural history programme Planet Earth is currently airing on BBC1 on Sunday nights and my oh my is it wonderful. The first set of episodes were on subjects like caves and mountains and rivers, and so far in this batch we've had ice and plains. The ice episode featured breathtaking aerial shots of swimming polar bears and speeded up footage of emperor penguins huddling together to keep their eggs warm. The plains episode featured all manner of grazing beasts, and a selection of land based birds and mammals.
The series has taken a long time to make, but it was worth the wait as the footage is just stunningly beautiful. But it's not just a love song to nature, it also offers food for thought. The take-home messages are not particularly controversial or surprising, but they're titbits we'd do well to remember about our animal neighbours. I find it so easy to anthropomorphise and forget that it really is a dog eat dog world out there. We might cheer for the walrus that beats off the marauding polar bear, but when that same bear literally lies down and dies of starvation on film the tables are turned. It's easy to despise the Arctic fox who runs away from the snow goose's nest with a mouthful of adorable fluffy goslings, but when she feeds those goslings to her adorable fluffy fox cubs I immediately felt guilty for feeling so sorry for the goslings...
Aside from the deep and meaningful messages, the plains episode also had some (unintentionally, no doubt) amusing dialogue. One part referred to the Tibetan Fox, pictured above (photo by Milo Burcham). He really does look a bit odd, but I still didn't expect to hear Sir David say, "Here we have the Tibetan Fox. His thick fur protects him from the wintry surroundings, but you have to ask, why the square head?"
Craigslist beats all. This time, some raunchy R-rated bionerdy personals from its "best of" section:
I'm looking for a man to photophosphorylate me all night long. - w4m
Date: 2006-10-27, 11:29PM PDT
I will fondle your vesicles while you caress my golgi body. My stroma is leaking all over the place. We can do it in the alpha or beta configuration, whichever you prefer. You whip me with your flagellum, tubulin subunits flying everywhere. We can make a mess as I've hired some lysosomes to clean up after. Please have a smooth endoplasmic reticulum but know that I like it rough, if you know what I mean. I also prefer my ribosomes bound...tight. Spin me round with your basal body and make sure it's turgid. Pump me up and down your concentration gradient, letting the chemiosmosis take control. I can go both ways, just like an amphipathic phospholipid. Do you like aerobic respiration as much as I do?
Let me know if this makes you secrete.
(Thanks Kathleen. You made us blush)
THE TWO ORBS COLLIDE FOR ONE LUNCH IN NYC.
Us inkettes have been housing major blog crushes on the FrinkTank boys even before they whispered sweet nothings into our ears about the yonic nature of glaciers. As Anna once said (embarrassingly to one of them over the phone, with visible glee in her voice): "OMG! FrinkTank and InkyCircus are like internet boyfriend and girlfriend!!!"
Okay, no. But they are fantastic and so very very anonymous. No one wields a nom de plume like them on the science circuit. Who were these people. Would we ever know, ever? I mean, what were their day jobs. Did they have Tourette's? And what did Not Hitashi score on his SATs cause the man's got a pretty mean vocab at his disposal - be deceived not by his peppering of the word douchebag all over his posts (there are some singular words that a thesaurus can't help out).
So this is just to say that I've met three of them: Mr. Orange, Not Hitashi, and Alexander Blaisdell. In the flesh. And they're normal. Well, better than normal. They walk, talk and can navigate good Korean eats around Herald Square in Manhattan (despite Blaisell's hankering for a "5lb lobster
stuffed with a 3lb lobster stuffed with fried catfish"). But they aren't a bunch of horny repressed nerdy frat boys like their blog would have you believe. In fact they're solid upright citizens who hold reputable day jobs (at a science mag, in science broadcasting, and at a celeb rag), tip well, swear like sailors and happen to be sharp as tacks and spicy like kimchi. Bring on the Frinky Circus people. Bring it on.
Here it is folks. Mitosis as you've never seen it before. In a pool. With UC San Francisco grad students, pool noodle spindle fibers, and the Blue Danube waltz.
Extensive use of cell phones could jeopardize male fertility, according to a study of 364 men. In a paper to be presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in New Orleans, a team of doctors found that men who talked on their phones more than 4 hours a day had significantly fewer live sperm/ml than those who talked less. There seemed to be a *dose-dependent effect (ie those who talked least had best sperm, medium had medium sperm and blabber mouths had worst), though the overall trend wasn't significant. Almost all men, regardless of cell-time, had sperm counts above the 20 million/ml mark, which is the low mark for normal fertility.
Sperm quality is affected by a number of factors, the best known being heat. Hot balls = bad sperm. That is why extensive use of laptops actually ON LAPS has been linked to poorer sperm quality. But see, you don't use a cell phone anywhere near the sensitive area in question...so what's the mechanism? The radiation/heat does travel, but you wouldn't think it could make it down there with enough intensity to DO anything. Maybe the proximity of the storage location - pockets etc - has something to do with it. Whatever.
*when dealing with these sometimes laughable correlation studies one must be careful. In this instance couldn't it be that men who talk on their cell phones that long often have weird high pressure jobs, travel a lot or some other thing in common that affects sperm quality? We don't know, because this is just a correlation. Showing a dose-dependent affect - ie the more of X results in more/less of Y - can really bolster the claim. It's still not causation, it's still not a controlled study, but it's more than just correlation. Of course in this case the pattern was not significant.
I know a certain someone (totally not naming names, don't even ask me), who, when ovulating, finds a very "diverse" group of men sexy. If I am out with said person and she spots a dubious hottie and begins to extol his physical virtues, I will immediately ask, "honey, you ovulating?"
So it can come as no surprise that women seem to tart up their wardrobe at the precious peak of fertility. Or at least they do according to a study of 30 undergrad girls from UCLA. These women were all in relationships and NOT on hormonal birth control (which begs the question, but anyway...). They gave urine samples several times over a month to determine their ovulation cycle and had their picture taken twice - once near to ovulation and one far off. None of the participants had any clue as to what was going on.
The photos were judged by a panel of experts (25 women and 17 men) who had to determine in which image the woman was trying to appear more attractive. The panel chose the high fertility zone outfit 60% of the time. When the photo session fell upon the exact date of ovulation, the panel chose that as the more sexy ensemble 83% of the time. Women were more likely to wear skirts, jewelry and revealing clothing when closer to that all important high point in fertility...this being LA, we hoped they didn't have to worry about variations in the weather to account for said skimpiness.
From a modern day culture kind of way, this result is intriguing because hey, who hasn't woken up one morning feeling H.O.T. and just wanted to dress all slutty? Even more interesting, from an evolution/animal behaviour view, is that human females are SHOWING signs of their fertility status. Female great apes like us are supposedly the only animals who conceal ovulation - most other animals give off smells or feathers or big red glowing butts. Why do we hide it? Sexual power games of some sort. (IE men just want to make the babies and if they knew it was baby-makin' time they'd just ditch for the rest of the month OR by hiding the baby-makin' time women can be sure to make babies with only the best males all the while "placating" the less deserving...) The details are still being hashed out by the behaviourists and evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists and physiologists. Anyways.
This leads us to another point. Are women gettin' all hot to trot for their own committed spouses or maybe, are they dressing to impress a little bit of "good genes" on the side? Studies**** of people have shown that 1)partnered women are more likely to flirt with, have interest in or fantasize about other men around ovulation, especially if they consider their partner to be less than smokin' hot. And 2) Women like manlier men and more masculine faces around ovulation. 3) Women generally just want more of the sex, but they want it more with other men as the relationship goes on.
So is the clothing just another on the list of evidence convicting women of attempting to cheat - even if only in their "primal" brains? You know, I find it hard to answer that one. I just keep on getting stuck in the misogynistic hellhole that is evolutionary psychology. Let's try this: Will the power of ovulation force a partnered woman to wear a miniskirt and stilettos, fall helplessly in bed with a big hunk-o-beef-cake and have hot hot sex? No. Will her fertility peak make it impossible to resist the FINE man she's been flirting with FOREVER, while being stuck in a crummy horrid marriage ? No. Harder? Maybe.
****Many studies of human sexual psychology are prone to severe crapiness. Grains of salt all around.
