What do these four, apparently very unconnected items, have in common?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/lake-vostok-drilled/
http://www.thecleanestline.com/2012/02/cerro-torre-deviations-from-reason.htmlStar wars: the clone wars
http://www.vpacademic.uoguelph.ca/fys/seminars/My life used to be easy.
I was a scientist, climber (a long time ago), father, and a teacher. And now suddenly these separate aspects of my life got sucked into a vortex, all thanks to reading some passages of Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic” for the First Year Seminar course Ingrid and I have designed. These items literally came across my desk (RSS reader, watching TV with the kids, teaching a course) in a 2 day period.
Ingrid is featured in theAt Guelph! I repeat, Ingrid is featured in the At Guelph! It is not her whole story, of course, but it does provide key aspects of her story.
While I am aware of my tendency to discount anything older as 10 years as ancient in science terms, I do try to sketch a brief historical of each issue I discuss in (most of) my research articles. However, I am always surprised by the lack of “history” in quality reporting on scientific progress. A recent story in Nature, “Can conservation cut poverty”, investigated the link between preserving biodiversity and positive influences this might have on the local inhabitants.
If I could meet any person, dead or alive, real or fiction, I think one of my top choices would be Steve Irwin. I’d want to meet him out in the bush, maybe in Australia, maybe help him re-locate a croc. Afterwards, we might talk about conservation and peace and wilderness. Or, more accurately, he’d talk, and I’d just nod vigorously in agreement while reveling in his radiance.
Steve Irwin is famously known for his larger-than-life television series Crocodile Hunter.
Very occasionally, I will brave North American culture and go see a movie on a ridiculously big screen with a ridiculously big bag of popcorn. Last December, a friend convinced me to not only go see Avatar on the big screen, but to watch it in 3-D with her. I was blown away. Though I find the current 3-D craze to be, well, crazy, I have to admit that it brought a certain enchantment to the fantasy planet Pandora.
In March 2009, the Women’s Studies undergraduate program (among others) was cut at Guelph. I wasn’t involved in the issue myself, but knew a few people who rallied against this decision. They cited it as ironic evidence that feminism is far from being a finished movement. At the time, I only saw a superficial link between the Women’s Studies program cut and feminism; I didn’t know what feminism really was.
“The federal government wants to put a price tag on polar bears,” begins this recent Globe and Mail article. It goes on to explain that Environment Canada wants to determine the socio-economic value of the iconic arctic species. This includes things like the bear’s consumptive value, cultural value, scientific value, educational value, aesthetic value, existence value, and so on. How much does each “additional unit of polar bear” or each “additional hectare of habitat” bring to the nation?