November 2009 Archives

This pen surprises people. Yes, it's a fountain pen. Yes, it's retractable. It's another Japanese pen, a Namiki in fact. It's my Namiki Vanishing Point fountain pen. It's the pen I have in my shirt pocket most of the time (along with my Rotring mechanical pencil). It has a sturdy, fine nib that makes a very precise line. It's great for grading papers. (I use bright blue ink most of the time, but sometimes I'll use red.) The precise line makes it possible for me to insert notes in between lines or in the margin and keep them reasonably legible.¹

And there's the novelty value.

Any time I hand this pen to someone who's asked to borrow it, they're first surprised because it seems to be upside down. Normally the clip is attached at the same end as the clicker. They're thinking to themselves, "Boy, Holsinger even has wierd pens." Then they click the clicker, and a fountain pen nib emerges. "He's even stranger than I thought." Few people write with a fountain pen any more, so it's always kind of fun watching them be so careful with it. And to be honest, this pen is a little tricky. Because its nib is so fine and so firm, it scratches the paper easily. I don't lend it to people when they're trying to sign their name to an important document for that reason.

Here's some of what Fahrney's has to say about it:

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For years Fahrney's has recommended the Vanishing Point retractable fountain pen for convenience and value. The patented design allows the nib to retract completely into the barrel after use, protecting the nib and preventing leaks. Of course you get the Vanishing Point firm 18K gold nib (we think the fine point is one of the clearest writing nibs on the market). Choose from the new yellow, black, blue, green or red finish with rhodium or gold accents. Or try the unique Carbonesque finish with the look of lacquered carbon fiber in black or blue with rhodium. Two metallic finishes are also available in brushed chrome or gunmetal both with rhodium trim. uses cartridges or converter.

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Of course, I use the converter. My only complaint is that the clip isn't as sturdy as it might be. Of course, I also use this pen a lot, so maybe it's just wear and tear. But I had to replace my first one after about 3-4 years, and I may have to replace my current one before 2010 is out.

For the past week there's been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the private e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. Some have

read through the corpus of email and found that the scientists working on climate change often have substantive disagreements with one another, which they debate vigorously in email, and cited this as evidence of a conspiracy to cover up dissent and present a scientific consensus on climate change. (source)

I won't say more about that, except to say that scientists are human, and it's not surprising that climate scientists who were viciously attacked may have become a little defensive.¹ I will point out that Michael Mann, a prominent paleoclimatologist and one of those whose included in the e-mails that were released, provides his perspective on the controversy at desmogblog.

I do want to point out fhat if you're skeptical, if you think the IPCC is wrong, and if you think the authors of the Copenhagen Diagnosis are wrong, you now have a chance to show them.² The folks at RealClimate have put together a list of publicly available data sources and analytical code. If you really think you can do better, all you need to do is to download the data, run an analysis showing the IPCC its mistakes and get it published in a good peer-reviewed scientific journal. If you can really show that a major conclusion of the IPCC is wrong, I guarantee you that it will attract enormous interest and attention, and you'll get your paper published in Nature or Science. Even if you only show that a small conclusion is wrong, you can probably get your results published in a first-rate climatological journal.

Of course, there is the little matter of peer review. You won't have to convince reviewers and editors that you're right. But you will have to convince two or three experts in the field and an editor that your methods and conclusions are at least plausible enough that they deserve to be published. If you can't do that, I'm sorry. I'm not going to listen to you.³

David Archer has just posted all of the lectures from his global warming class at the University of Chicago this semester. They are based on his textbook, Understanding the Forecast, and they're available as QuickTime videos.¹

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This 10-week course for non-science majors focuses on a single problem: assessing the risk of human-caused climate change. The story ranges from physics to chemistry, biology, geology, fluid mechanics, and quantum mechanics, to economics and social sciences. The class will consider evidence from the distant past and projections into the distant future, keeping the human time scale of the next several centuries as the bottom line. The lectures follow a textbook, "Global Warming, Understanding the Forecast," written for the course. See related links for more info about the book. (source)

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I haven't read the book, nor have I had a chance to look at the lectures, but if the lectures are half as good as the blurbs for the book suggest they might be, they will be a very useful resource.

I'm delighted that Archer has made them available.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis was released two days ago.

The purpose of this report is to synthesize the most policy-relevant climate science published since the close-off of material for the last IPCC report. The rationale is two-fold.

First, this report serves as an interim evaluation of the evolving science midway through an IPCC cycle - IPCC AR5 is not due for completion until 2013.

Second, and most important, the report serves as a handbook of science updates that supplements the IPCC AR4 in time for Copenhagen in December 2009, and any national or international climate change policy negotiations that follow.

The report, prepared by 26 respected climate scientists, finds that

• Greenhouse gas emissions are surging,
• Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-based warming,
• Ice sheets, glaciers, and ice caps are melting at an accelerating rate,
• Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly, and
  
• Sea level is rising 3.4 mm/yr.

According to the report, "[t]o stabilize climate, global emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases need to reach near-zero well within this century...."

Not me. President Obama.

He's going to Copenhagen next month for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. From Environmental Capital:

Administration officials said this morning that after "productive" discussions with Chinese and Indian leaders, President Obama had decided to attend the summit, meant to craft some sort of successor to the Kyoto Protocol tackling climate change. There's more here and here.

And according to the New York Times:

Mr. Obama will tell the delegates to the climate conference that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions "in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020," according to a White House official.

Boy am I glad that we have Andy Revkin. Not only is DotEarth a wonderful blog, and not only does Andy write intelligent, thoughtful articles about the environment and climate change for the New York Times, now he's put together a Science Topics page at the Times on global warming. He promises "that it'll be a 'living document,' with more features, links and content added as needed."

Here's the first paragraph, but you should head over and read the whole thing.

Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue facing world leaders. On the one hand, warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases - produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests. On the other, the technological, economic and political issues that have to be resolved before a concerted worldwide effort to reduce emissions can begin have gotten no simpler, particularly in the face of a global economic slowdown

150 years ago today John Murray (Albemarle Street, London) published a book that rocked the world -- Charles Darwin's On the origin of species.¹ Few books have had an impact as large or profound as the Origin. Evolutionary ideas were in the air. Not only Lamarck, but Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had published evolutionary ideas. But in the Origin, Darwin not only marshaled the evidence for evolution, he further developed the theory of natural selection that he and Alfred Russel Wallace presented to the Linnaean Society of London in July, 1858.

In the past century and a half, evolutionary ideas have become the foundation of modern biology. Physicians use evolutionary principles to design drugs and to understand pathogens. Agriculturalists use evolutionary principles to breed new crops and to identify wild relatives from which desirable traits can be derived. Physiologists, geneticists, biochemists, molecular biologists, ecologists, systematists, botanists, zoologists, microbiologists, all of us use evolutionary principles every day to understand the data we collect. Evolution is the great organizing principle of modern biology.

Which isn't to say that Darwin got everything right. His ideas about heredity were all wrong. Pangenesis was never widely accepted, and it was quickly forgotten² after Mendel was rediscovered. And in spite of its title, the Origin doesn't provide much insight into how new species arise. Advances in understanding the process of speciation didn't come until after Mendel's work was rediscovered and incorporated into the modern synthesis.

But Darwin got a lot right, and his fundamental insight has not been seriously disputed by scientists for more than a century: All living things are ultimately descended from a single common ancestor. Cabbages and kings, mushrooms and presidents, all of us trace our ancestry to single-celled organisms that lived in the ancient past. It is a wondrous reminder of the fundamental unity of life and something Darwin described more eloquently than I can.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Today is a day to celebrate a remarkable event in human history, and to remember the awe for nature that an evolutionary understanding inspires.

From the White House blog (posted at 12:10pm):

President Obama today helped launch a new campaign, "Educate to Innovate," designed  to energize and excite America's students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).  It builds on the President's pledge that he would use his position to help encourage students to study and consider careers in science, engineering, technology, and innovation--fields upon which America's future depends--and elevate those students from the middle to the top of the pack worldwide.

From the Educate to Innovate web page come a few more details:

America is already stepping forward to meet these challenges. As part of the "Educate to Innovate" effort, five major public-private partnerships are harnessing the power of media, interactive games, hands-on learning, and community volunteers to reach millions of students over the next four years, inspiring them to be the next generation of inventors and innovators.

• Time-Warner Cable, Discovery Communications, Sesame Street, and other partners will get the message to kids and students about the wonder of invention and discovery.
• National Lab Day will help build communities of support around teachers across the country, culminating in a day of civic participation.
• National STEM design competitions will develop game options to engage kids in scientific inquiry and challenging designs.
• Five leading business and thought leaders (Sally Ride, Craig Barrett, Ursula Burns, Glen Britt, and Antonio Perez) will head an effort to increase private and philanthropic involvement in support of STEM teaching and learning.

A few of you know that since early last winter I've been working hard on losing weight. I've been counting calories and fat and exercising more. Since July I've been using my Garmin 405CX to keep track of mileage, heart rate, and cadence when I run. The map above is a screen shot of this morning's run.

It's neither my longest run, nor my fastest, and it's sure not going to win me any medals. But at 7 miles and 8:18 per mile (with a couple of the splits at less than 8:00, including the last mile),  it's not bad for me. It's not much to brag about, but I can't help myself.

If you're a glutton for punishment, you can click on the image above. It will take you to the Garmin Connect site where you can look at the elevation change, my heart rate, and my cadence. You can even watch an animation of the whole run.¹

Science students and early-career professionals often contact the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) seeking information about "alternative science careers." A growing number of individuals are interested in employment that allows them to apply their scientific skills and training to the resolution of societal problems.  Whether an individual's interests are in education, health, environment, or the nation's investment in scientific research, a public policy career is one way that scientists can convert their education into action.

AIBS is sponsoring a webinar for those considering a career in science policy. It will be held on Monday, 21 December from 2:00-3:30pm Eastern Standard Time. More information is available at http://www.aibs.org/events/webinar/science-careers.html. You can download a PDF with a little more information here.

Date:   November 20, 2009
From:   Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and President
            National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, Ashland OR

Dear Kent,

Calling all scientists!  President Obama has signaled his interest in upholding the national Roadless Area Conservation Rule of 2001, which would protect 58.5 million acres of our National Forests.  But in the meantime, the fate of these roadless areas and the national rule that protects them is unclear.  I'm headed to Washington D.C. in ten days, where I will be hand-carrying a letter from scientists nationwide that promotes roadless area protection.  Please sign on by Wednesday, Nov. 25.

Until there is clarity on the national rule, all Forest Service proposals for roadbuilding and logging in roadless areas are subject to a case-by-case decision by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  We were recently disappointed when he approved a timber sale on Alaska's Tongass National Forest with nine miles of roadbuilding in a roadless, old-growth rainforest.  Two more such sales on the Tongass are now being considered.

Scientists like you can help keep vulnerable areas like these off the table.  Roadless areas are critical for wildlife, clean water, and as strongholds for biological diversity and carbon storage.

PLEASE JOIN SCIENTISTS NATIONWIDE BY SIGNING a letter urging President Obama to uphold the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule until new and lasting protections are in place.  It has already been signed by Michael Soule, Reed Noss, James Karr, and Richard Hutto.  See the letter at  http://www.nccsp.org/files/national-roadless-signon-letter.pdf

Thank you for reading further, and my apologies for any cross-postings.  Also, please help by sharing this with your colleagues who may be interested!

DEADLINE:  Please sign on by Wednesday, November 25, 2009.

SIGN-ON PROCESS.  Just fill in the fields at  http://www.nccsp.org/national-sign-on-letter/   If you have questions, contact my assistant Julie Norman (julie@nccsp.org, 541/482-4459 x305).

Signatures will appear as typed signature blocks, in alphabetical order.  The letter signifies that "affiliations are listed for identification purposes only," or you may opt out of including an affiliation.  Your contact information will not be added to any general outreach lists.

BACKGROUND.  On January 12, 2001, President Clinton approved the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (see footnote 1) following three years of analysis and unprecedented public support.  Since then the roadless rule has been upheld by the 9th Circuit Court, despite legal challenges and attempts by the Bush administration to weaken it.  President Obama supported the national rule both as a senator and during his presidential campaign.  With input like yours, we are hopeful his administration will endorse full roadless area protection nationwide.

Please help us send a strong message that the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule remains the most effective strategy for managing the nation's roadless areas, particularly in the face of climate change and state level challenges.

Thank-you for your consideration,

Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist & President
_____________________
Footnote 1:  The link to the USFS Roadless Area Conservation website is:

http://fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1K1L?ss=119930&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&navid=091000000000000&pnavid=null&ttype=roadmain&cid=FSE_003853&position=RELATEDLINKS&pname=Roadless-Home 

From the Howard Hughes Medical Institute:

At first glance, the research of Bonnie Bassler and Baldomero "Toto" Olivera might not appear to be medical at all. Dr. Bassler works on marine bacteria that glow in the dark, while Dr. Olivera studies venomous snails that hunt by harpooning fish. Yet their findings show what science has revealed time and again--knowledge that can be used to unlock medical secrets is often hidden in unlikely places. Nature has much to teach us, as long as we know where to look and what to look for. Join us for a four-lecture series as Bonnie and Toto guide us through intriguing slices of the natural world revealing how a deeper understanding of nature and biodiversity informs their research into new medicines.

Click here to view lecture summaries of the 2009 Holiday Lectures

The latest  meeting of the international commission created to manage harvests of tunas and other wide-ranging fish species in the Atlantic Ocean ended by setting 2010 quotas for bluefin tuna that  conservation groups and  United States fisheries officials said were -- while lowered -- still far too high to allow the imperiled fish to recover. (from DotEarth)

The government of Monaco proposed a ban on international trade of bluefin tuna, and was  initially supported by the European Union and the U.S. It won't be hard for people who know the fish to recognize bluefin if whole fish are being shipped, but what if they've already been processed into steaks or filets? What then?

A little over a year ago a couple of high school students from Manhattan pointed the way. They used DNA fingerprinting to identify samples of sushi at New York restaurants and found that 25% were misidentified.

Jacob Lowenstein and his colleagues develop a more sophisticated DNA barcode based on cytochrome C oxidase subunit I to distinguish among all tuna species in the genus Thunnus (the genus to which bluefin belongs). They sampled tuna sushi from 31 restaurants in Manhattan and Denver. Among the 68 samples they tested they found some that were from endangered tuna species, some that weren't what they said, and some that were a health hazard.

Five out of nine samples sold as a variant of "white tuna" were not albacore (T. alalunga), but escolar (Lepidocybium flavorunneum), a gempylid species banned for sale in Italy and Japan due to health concerns. Nineteen samples were northern bluefin tuna (T. thynnus) or the critically endangered southern bluefin tuna (T. maccoyii), though nine restaurants that sold these species did not state these species on their menus.

The take home message? I see two. First, Lowenstein and colleagues demonstrate yet again that DNA barcoding can be a useful tool in identifying commercially sold fish (and other products). Second, think twice next time you order a piece of maguro at your favorite sushi bar and ask yourself how confident you are that it's not bluefin (and that the folks who run your sushi bar would know the difference or care).

Purchasing offsets for carbon dioxide is an appealing idea. Sometimes we have to travel to meetings or we have to travel for research.¹ Often that travel involves plane flights, and planes emit a lot of carbon dioxide. By purchasing a carbon offset, I invest a small amount of money in a project that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere equivalent to what my flight added.² In other words, my flight didn't contribute to global warming.

Responsible Travel was one of the first companies to offer such offsets to travelers.

But last month Responsible Travel canceled the program, saying that while it might help travelers feel virtuous, it was not helping to reduce global emissions. In fact, company officials said, it might even encourage some people to travel or consume more. (source)

Andy Revkin doesn't buy carbon offsets when he travels. I plan to continue buying them, because I'm buying them for travel I would have taken anyway. I'm not traveling more because the offsets are available. And I'll try to travel less, do more with conference calls, and I'll use Skype and web conferencing more often. I'll encourage groups I'm part of to do the same.

Buying offsets in that context has to help at least a little, doesn't it?³

Armen Leonovich Takhtajan or Takhtajian (Russian: Армен Леонович Тахтаджян; surname also transliterated Takhtadjan or Takhtadzhian) (June 10, 1910 - November 13, 2009), was a Soviet-Armenian botanist, one of the most important figures in 20th century plant evolution and systematics and biogeography. His other interests included morphology of flowering plants, paleobotany, and the flora of the Caucasus. (Wikipedia entry)

I had the privilege of meeting Professor Takhtajan once. He was kind, generous, and extraordinarily knowledgeable. His phylogenetic system has been largely superseded by work of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, but his influence will never be forgotten. He died on 13 November, and he will be buried in the Armenian part of the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg tomorrow after a civil funeral at the Komarov Botanical Institute.

Interstates aren't green, but Karrie Jacobs has an idea: use interstates as corridors for high-speed rail and transport of energy.

It's been a long time since we've been able to see beyond the traffic and the exhaust fumes. But if we expand the highway system's uses in anticipation of a time when we are no longer dependent on the internal combustion engine, we may also appreciate the beauty in its graceful overpasses, lofty bridges and complex cloverleaf interchanges.

I don't know about "appreciating the beauty of graceful overpasses", but multiple use of existing interstate corridors just makes sense. Gulliver argues that it won't be simple:

First, America's interstates don't always cut through empty prairie--in many places, there won't be enough clearance on either side to build the "adjacent rail lines" Ms Jacobs is so psyched about. And where the interstates do cut through virgin prairie, infrastructure advocates will have the opposite problem: convincing environmentalists and locals that a landscape already sliced in half by I-Whatever should be further defiled.

The clearance problem is real, though in many places there's a wide median that could be used instead of using corridors on one side or the other. And using the median, which in my experience is often very wide in areas where I-Whatever cuts through "virgin" landscapes, won't add to the damage that's already been done.

I'm not prepared to go as far as Gulliver and conclude

Ms Jacobs' broad point is generally correct--infrastructure advocates and environmentalists should see America's highways as an opportunity for better, greener development--not an obstacle.

We have interstates because we have cars. And the American response to traffic congestion is always to add lanes rather than beefing up mass transit. Roads are a problem, but that doesn't mean we can't use them more wisely.

Attention, multitaskers (if you can pay attention, that is): Your brain may be in trouble.

People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found. (source)

Interesting, the study, which was published last August in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that habitual media multitaskers "are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory." It's not clear whether habitual multitasking causes people to be more susceptible to irrelevant information or whether those who are more susceptible to irrelevant information are more prone to be media multitaskers, but it is clear that the minds of multitaskers work differently from the minds of those who aren't.

Perhaps the most intriguing finding of all is that multitaskers are worse at switching tasks than non-multitaskers.

The pens at the left are from the Aurora Afrika series. My Aurora Afrika fountain pen is one of my favorites. It's one of my evening pens. (You've met the Pelikans, the 400 and the Niagara Falls. This completes my set of evening pens.) The ballpoint has the same striking design, but when I use a ballpoint, I use a simple, inexpensive Bic or something like that. I don't see the point of investing as much as you have to invest in a pen like an Aurora Afrika simply to have a ballpoint. Having a fine fountain pen is the whole point, so far as I am concerned.¹

The beautiful colors in the resin body speak for themselves, but one of the things I most enjoy about my Afrika is its nib. It took me 6-9 months to get it broken in. It was scratchy until either it adjusted to me, I adjusted to it, or both, but now it leaves a beautiful, wide line. And what makes it even more interesting is that my Afrika has a medium italic nib. Even though my penmanship is far from beautiful, when I write with my Afrika, the line has delightful variations in width and tone. It gives a dull, pedestrian (though legible) line a little spark and verve.

Here's the Fahrney's blurb.

Aurora presents Afrika - the first in a limited, numbered series celebrating the continents of the world. Aurora has captured the life, color and emotion of this adventurous land in the Afrika design. The resin barrel and cap in warm earthtones are hand-turned by a master craftsman and adorned with a matte gold clip and trim. The barrel ring depicts six African tribal shields. The black crown has a semi-precious agate stone set on the top as a symbol of harmony and peace.

Fahrney's no longer mentions the availability of the medium italic nib. I wonder if that means it's no longer available.

On rare occasions you read a story that reminds you how reslient, how resourceful, and how amazing some people are. This morning was one of those occasions. I read Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times about Tererai Trent who recently defended her Ph.D. dissertation at Western Michigan University and will receive her degree next month.

What's so remarkable about her? I can't do her story justice. You'll have to read Kristof's column. I will give you a taste of what's in store for you when you do.

Any time anyone tells you that a dream is impossible, any time you're discouraged by impossible challenges, just mutter this mantra: Tererai Trent.

I've mentioned Randy Olson's book, Don't be such a scientist, repeatedly over the last several months,¹ and yesterday I received an e-mail from Island Press, Randy's publisher, with the following news:

In a webinar on November 19 at 1PM EST, Olson will draw on his own hilarious-and at times humiliating-evolution from science professor to Hollywood filmmaker and offer his perspective on communicating science at a time when information and facts are more important to the discussion than ever.

Here's a link to the page where you can sign up. It's a GoToMeeting sign up page, and signing up is free and easy.

A radio broadcast on probability told through a tale about a drifting balloon, a newspaper series on the impact of a devastating genetic disease on a family in rural Montana, and a group of gracefully written stories about genetics and evolution are among the winners of the 2009 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards.

Read more at AAAS.org. I was especially pleased to see that Carl Zimmer was recognized "for a trio of articles he wrote for The New York Times on aspects of genetics and evolution."

AIBS Publishes Darwin Articles Open Access
 
To celebrate the 150th anniversary this month of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) is publishing open access two peer-reviewed articles about Charles Darwin and his historic insights into evolution.

The two articles are by Kevin Padian of the University of California, Berkeley, and James T. Costa of Western Carolina University.  Padian's article, "Ten Myths About Charles Darwin," appeared in the October issue of the AIBS journal BioScience and can be read at http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/full/10.1525/bio.2009.59.9.10.  Costa's article, "The Darwinian Revelation: Tracing the Origin and Evolution of an Idea" is published in the November issue of BioScience and can be read at http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/full/10.1525/bio.2009.59.10.10.  Padian explores some common inaccuracies and untruths about Darwin and his life's work, painting in the process a clear portrait of the man and his struggles to develop a theory to explain the diversity of nature.  Costa draws on Darwin's letters and notebooks and other sources to trace the origins of Darwin's key insights, which came to him over many years. Costa suggests that biology teachers can use Darwin's reasoning as a superb example of creative scientific thinking.

I switched to a Mac a little over a year ago. The evangelism of Mac advocates can be offputting, but Macs are nice. I"m running VMWare Fusion on my MacBook, so I even have Windows (for a few specialized programs that are only available under Windows and don't play well with Wine) and Ubuntu sitting close by whenever I need them. I've never thought Windows was great, but I never thought it was horrible.

Charlie Brooker has a different take.

I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn't change it for the world, because I'm an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life.

I have a couple of pens that I can't find online images for. I've mentioned the silver Levenger pen that a student of mine gave me almost 15 years ago. I haven't mentioned a Stipula with a partially transparent barrel showing the ink reservoir. I'll keep looking for images of them, and if I can't find ones on-line, I'll eventually pull out my camera and take my own photos.

In the meantime, here's a more recent addition to my collection. In fact, it's the one I'll be writing with tonight -- a Pelikan Niagara Falls. I've only had it for 3-4 years, so it's less familiar than my Pelikan 400, which I've had almost as long as that silver Levenger.

The pelican clip and the striped body mark this pen immediately as a Pelikan, but its body is metal rather than resin. That "heft" gives it a nice hand feel. Unfortunately, the ink doesn't flow as smoothly as it does in my 400. Whether that's because I'm still breaking it in¹ or because there's something different about the nib or the feed, I don't know. But the difference is clear enough that if I had to make a choice and carry only one of my Pelikans with me, the choice would be easy. It would be the 400.

Here's some of what Fahrney's has to say about it:

For its new Wonders of Nature special edition series, Pelikan has created a writing instrument as beautiful as one of the planet's most awesome spectacles - Niagara Falls. Created at the end of the last ice age, this natural wonder borders the U.S. and Canada and is the most powerful waterfall in North America. The falling water is artfully portrayed on the pen using palladium-plated metal that is elaborately inlaid with cobalt blue resin. The result is stunning, set off by the silver clip and rings which sparkle like sunlit drops of water. The Niagara Falls plunger-fill fountain pen has Pelikan's 18K gold and rhodium nib, formed and polished by a master's hand.

Last month I noted that Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced a resolution that would have eliminated funding for political science research at the National Science Foundation. I was delighted to discover this morning that ScienceInsider reported last week that the Coburn amendment was soundly defeated: 36 to 62. I am disappointed that 36 senators voted for the amendment. It's important to note that five Democrats joined 31 Republicans in voting for the amendment.

[I]t wasn't strictly a party-line vote. Five moderate Democrats--Senators Max Baucus of Montana, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Jim Webb of Virginia--apparently agree with Coburn's argument that NSF, with a budget of $6.9 billion, is "wasting" federal dollars by spending $9 million a year to support research in the field.

You can find how your Senator voted by clicking here.

From Rob McDonald at Cool Green Science:

It is not the job of scientists to produce papers that reinforce a preconceived advocacy position. Rather, it is the job of scientists to lay the facts on the table, so those facts can inform advocacy. (emphasis in the original)

If that sounds familiar, it may be because I wrote this about a month ago:

[T]here's one thing we all must do: be true to the science. We have to be honest about what the data say, even if the data tell us things about the policy we'd prefer to adopt that we'd rather not hear.

Go read all of Rob McDonald's post. It's well worth your time.

I've never reviewed a restaurant here before, but I wrote about Hook a couple of months ago, and my partner and I are in DC this weekend. I made reservations over a month ago to make sure we got a good table, because I really wanted to try it -- and I'm very glad I did. If you live in DC or you visit and you're looking for an excellent seafood restaurant, Hook is much more interesting and creative than Legal Sea Foods or McCormick & Schmick, the fish comes from sustainable sources, and the produce comes from local sources. It costs a little more, but it's worth it.

It starts with the decor, clean and modern. The downstairs bar is busy and loud. If you want something quieter, be sure to make a reservation and ask for a quiet table. They'll probably seat you upstairs where the colors are warmer and there's a lot less noise.¹

A meal consists of three courses, portioned so that you leave feeling satisfied but not stuffed.

The crudo is bite-size portions of raw or house smoked fish with three accompaniments. My partner started with the king salmon. I had the house smoked selection (salmon, mackerel, and bluefish). I had always thought of mackerel as a cheap fish. No more. Prepared well, as it was here, it has a pleasant salty tang and is a perfect way to prepare for the main part of the meal.

For the second course we both had the beet salad with goat cheese, crushed pistachio, and pickled watermelon. The yellow beets had a wonderful mild flavor that perfectly complimented the pistachio. Pickled watermelon was new and delightful. The dressing was red beet puree with olive oil. The menu changes according to what is available in the market, but our very knowledgeable server told us that the beet salad has been on the menu since Hook opened. I highly recommend it.

My partner had dorade (wood-grilled, served whole, bone in) over roasted yukon gold potatoes with grilled sun-dried tomatoes and kalamata olives. He let me taste it. The dorade had a wonderful delicate flavor enhanced by fresh thyme and slices of lemon stuffed inside during grilling. The potatoes had a nice crunch and rich flavor that played off the powerful sweetness of grilled sun-dried tomatoes. I had striped bass, simply grilled on a bed of pureed butternut squash with sweet potatoes and yukon golds. The bass was firm and moist with oil, more body and flavor than the dorade, but it was the tiny sage pgnoli tarts that I will remember longest. Just a pastry shell filled with pignoli, sprinkled with fresh chopped sage and baked until the crust was flaky and the pignoli were golden. Wonderful.

We finished with decaffeinated coffee.

There's only one thing they could do to improve Hook. Open it in a new location closer to a Metro stop. It's in Georgetown a very long walk from the nearest Metro (either Foggy Bottom or Farragut West). We took a taxi from our hotel on Dupont Circle only about $8 each way, but I prefer public transit when it's available.

I've referred to David Goldston's column in Nature many times over the past few years. (Here's a link to a Google search that will bring up half a dozen links.) I've read every one of the 33 columns he's written. Every one of them was filled with insight and wisdom.

Unfortunately, this week's column was his last. He is becoming director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Nature is losing a valued contributor, but the NRDC is gaining a director of government affairs who will help them to become even more effective.

Goldston did leave us with a summary of the themes he's emphasized throughout his columns. I expect to return to this post periodically for a reminder of those themes. They summarize well the relationship between science and policy.

Click through for my summary of the four themes he identified.

Live in a city. That's what Adam Stein argues, and he's pretty persuasive. A couple of weeks ago he gave Green Metropolis, a new book by David Owen, a favorable review. As the subtitle to Owen's book puts it, the key to living sustainably is living smaller, living closer, and driving less are the keys to sustainability. Put that way it's hard to argue with.

Living smaller? Sure. Living smaller means consuming less and making fewer demands on the planet's resources. My partner and I live reasonably simply. We're mostly vegetarian, for health reasons as much as environmental ones. We recycle as much as we can, we keep the thermostats turned down, and we turn lights off whenever we leave a room.

Driving less? Sure. Part of living smaller, isn't it. Who wouldn't take public transport if they live in a place where its comfortable and convenient. Public transit is non-existent in rural northeastern Connecticut, so I drive less by combining trips to school with stops at the grocery store and by combining several shopping trips into one whenever I can.

Living closer? This is where it gets interesting. I'll quote just a little of Stein's response to comments on his favorable review:

I recently read that a freight train can move a ton of goods 460 miles on a single gallon of diesel. Your car can move a bag of groceries about 20 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. Sustainability is best measured by proximity to a supermarket, not a farm. (emphasis in the original)

That's right. It matters more how close you live to where you buy your food than where it's produced. And it matters even more how it's produced. Over 80% of the carbon footprint associated with food is associated with producing it, not with transporting it (source).

Bottom line. Your friend with a small apartment in Manhattan probably has a smaller carbon footprint than you do. She almost certainly has a smaller carbon footprint than I do, since I live in a comfortable house on a little over an acre of land, and I have to drive back and forth to work, to the grocery, to the pharmacy, to anywhere I want to go other than for a walk around my neighborhood.¹

So if you really want to be green, move to Manhattan (or DC or San Francisco or Chicago or Seattle or Boston), take the subway or bus to work, and grow your vegetables in a community garden.

A couple of months ago, I pointed out that Carmine Gallo told us how to give a really bad presentation. His plan, of course, was to share that advice so that we'd know what not to do. Knowing what to avoid is helpful, but knowing what to do is even better.

Well, Gallo now has some advice on what to do.

Steve Jobs does not sell computers; he sells an experience. The same holds true for his presentations that are meant to inform, educate, and entertain. An Apple presentation has all the elements of a great theatrical production.

And those elements are

1. A headline.
2. A villain.
3. A simple slide.
4. A demo.
5. A holy smokes moment.

It won't be easy to make a simple slide or a demo about Bayesian hierarchical modeling, but I can probably come up with a headline, a villain, and a "holy smokes", and three out of five would make me a hall of famer in baseball.

From a recent e-mail:

Live, Free Webcast of "Evolution in Extreme Environments" Symposium

Those who cannot attend this year's National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in Denver will nonetheless be able to participate in the fifth annual evolution symposium, cosponsored by AIBS and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Educators and students are encouraged to tune in to the live Webcast on Friday, 13 November, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Mountain Standard Time, and to take advantage of this opportunity to hear internationally renowned researchers discuss their fascinating, cutting-edge work in "extreme" evolutionary biology. Speakers will talk about how life evolves, adapts, and flourishes in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, such as high-altitude areas, the deep-sea, Arctic ice, and caves. Classrooms around the world will be able to submit questions online and speakers will respond in real time. For full program information, including speaker names, talk titles and times, and the link to view the live Webcast, please visit www.nescent.org/NABT09Webcast.php or send an e-mail to eog@nescent.org.

A student in my conservation biology course just pointed out that a previously unreported tunicate has been found in Long Island Sound. It's a member of the genus Clavelina -- and that exhausts my knowledge about it. But I'm sure if you check in occasionally at James Reinhardt's blog, you'll be able to follow updates.

My Graf von Faber Castell is another of the pens I regularly carry with me. It's one of three morning pens in my journal rotation. My other morning pens are the Namiki Falcon I wrote about last week, and another of the pens I haven't mentioned yet.¹ My evening pens are my Pelikan 400 and two other pens I haven't written about yet.

Mine has a indigo blue body, but other than that, it's identical to the one pictured above. I fight with this one a little. Even though I fill it every time before I use it, it often seems that the ink stops flowing smoothly after I've filled a page or two. I have to stop writing and manually feed the nib by rotating the converter. Other than that it's a very nice pen. The nib is firm, and it leaves a beautiful line. It's enough of a defect that I wouldn't call it my favorite, but it's still a part of my morning rotation. Clearly I like it pretty well. It feels solid and well-engineered, like a well-made German automobile. Here's part of Fahrney's blurb:

Don't let the graceful lines and elegant looks fool you - these German-made pens are built for precision and performance. The Graf von Faber-Castell Guilloche fountain pen has a unique design that distinguishes it from the ordinary. As the name implies, the finish is characterized with guilloche patterns etched into the colorful resin barrels. The fluted metal caps, curved, spring-loaded clips and tapered grips are silver-plated and coated with rhodium to prevent tarnishing. The Guilloche fountain pen has a superior, two-tone 18K gold nib