Heteromeles

Recent Actions

• Commented on More Insight on Those Leaked Climate Change Emails
  Haven't read the emails yet, but I do know that weather station data is obnoxious to work with, because the are gaps throughout the data (when an instrument was broken vs.when it was fixed, holidays, budget cutbacks, etc.), location (they...
• Commented on Rethinking NIMBY: Why Wind Power Could Lead To New Ways of Defining (and Dealing With) Public Naysaying
  There are issues with siting both wind and solar plants. I've worked with wind developers who were extremely sensitive to local and environmental needs in siting the towers, and really worked hard to minimize the impact. There was still some...
• Commented on Mitch Horowitz: What is the occult?
  @23: Why do people do mysticism? Speaking from experience, there are two reasons that are linked together. One is a general unhappiness with the way life is going. That's why many of these ideas are (rightly or wrongly) repackaged and...
• Commented on After the big LA fires, terrain looks like a post-war moonscape: death, charred remains.
  @19: I understand the feelings, as I grew up in the LA hills and went through a fire as a kid. I also lived in the Midwest, so I know quite a bit about prairie fire too. The real issue...
• Commented on After the big LA fires, terrain looks like a post-war moonscape: death, charred remains.
  @11: Speaking as one of those fire ecologists, sorry, that's BS. End of story. When a plant's canopy is at ground level, it can't help burning. Some plants take advantage of the open post-burn areas and sprout, many do not,...
• Commented on Student kills burglary suspect with Samurai sword
  All I have to say is: too bad. Someone dying bleeding out on a garage floor is sad for both the person dying and the person who did it. That said, the only reason I can see for the...
• Commented on Smart Bombs: Mark Dery, Steven Pinker on the Nature-Nurture Wars and the Politics of IQ
  Interesting post. I agree with #2, in that the discussion became somewhat annoying to read about half-way through. My take, though, was when someone espouses non-ideological science, going after them about the ideological lapses in their own and related fields...
• Commented on Report: Deet, popular and potent insect repellent, is neurotoxic
  @80: Gotta keep up the harassment (: klenow: Ahem: "Plants did not evolve to become our food. Plants evolved to make more plants. We (and many other things) have evolved to use plants as food. And the plants evolved further...
• Commented on Report: Deet, popular and potent insect repellent, is neurotoxic
  I'm surprised this is news. Or perhaps, the news is that someone's still looking at it. I've known it was neurotoxic for years. 10 years ago, I learned that anything more than 30% DEET is neurotoxic. Those old 100% DEET...
• Commented on Evolution, religion, schizophrenia and the schizotypal personality
  One thing that's apparently missing from Sapolsky's discussion is that shamans can be useful to a society. After all, the primary functions of shamans were as healers and problem solvers. This is a great role for an outsider, especially one...
• Commented on Obama Continues Bush-Era Extremism on Liberties, Secrecy
  I raise my hand. Why? Not because I really expected Obama to change that setup wrought, but because that's the only way we're going to *get* change. Whoever's at the top will realize, someday, that being a crypto-dictator isn't as...
• Commented on What did I plant in my vegetable garden?
  I think we've just had two of the great lessons in the botanist's life, live on the web. Lesson 1: There's a reason that they teach us to use the flowers to identify unknown plants. While you can identify the...
• Commented on What did I plant in my vegetable garden?
  Here's what it's definitely NOT: 1) Datura (I go past one every day on my way to work. Most of the cultivated Solanaceae (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, etc) have compound (or at least deeply lobed) leaves, and these leaves appear simple....
• Commented on Gomboc: World's First Self-Righting Object
  Depending on the range of surfaces over which this object rights itself, it might be useful for space probes or similar mechanisms that have to be oriented a certain direction after falling. Now all we have to do is come...
• Commented on Floating toxic plastic garbage island twice the size of Texas
  I'm still struck by the following conundrum: 1. Hawaii has to import all its oil. 2. Honolulu (at least) is running out of landfill space, to the point where it may be economic to ship its trash to a proposed...
• Commented on How to: make a carbon-negative fuel
  One thing I wonder about the terra preta research: why aren't any of them talking with the prairie soil researchers? Prairie earth is black, and part of the reason is that it burned every year (or nearly) for millenia, and...
• Commented on Endangered languages and gadgets that record them
  With respect to Verafides above, I have to answer the "house on fire" comment. Personally, I'd be happy to volunteer to go out with a linguist to help come up with vocabulary lists, especially for areas where I am familiar....
• Commented on Endangered languages and gadgets that record them
  As a botanist, the article about endangered languages hits me in two different ways. First, I would say that linguists themselves are responsible for the loss of information, particularly in hunter-gatherer languages. For instance, an elderly woman is the last...
• Commented on Many scientists unhappy about Lucy tour
  Personally, I wish the scientists would be allowed to lock up the bones and send casts on display. Now, I was lucky enough to have Dr. Tim White (one of Lucy's co-discoverers) as an anthropology prof, and we got to...
• Commented on SLP Survival Knife with Flashlight and Firestarter
  @Gryffin: Yes, I absolutely agree with the comments about Doug Ritter. I got a couple of his cheaper things (pocket survival kit and photon light) before I got the knife, and I haven't been disappointed. @Joel Johnson: about carrying stuff....
• Commented on SLP Survival Knife with Flashlight and Firestarter
  Yeah, I got something similar, although it had a diamond sharpener instead of the fire steel. It is cute. Thing is, it's sitting in a box at home, unused. Here are the reasons: 1) I'm left-handed, it's not. B) The...