05 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Examples of Evolutionary Traps
We have altered the environment in a vast number of ways, both small and large. And when animals try to read the cues from our human environment, they can get tricked. They can end up doing something that kills them, loses them the opportunity to reproduce, or simply wastes their time. Scientists call these situations evolutionary traps.
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Some evolutionary traps, like the Christmas lights, play on the visual strategies animals use to find prey. Albatrosses will peck at brightly colored...Folksonomies: evolution maladaptation
Folksonomies: evolution maladaptation
1 
notes
notesFrogs that swallow christmas lights, turtles that eat plastic bags, and beetles laying eggs in timber fallen for lumber are examples of animals falling into dead ends thanks to humans altering the environment.
28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Turning Asteroids into Terreriums
With the hefty biomass created by a marsh, you can then build up land using some of your excavated materials, saved on the surface of the asteroid for this moment. Hills and mountains look great and add texture, so be bold! This process will redirect your water into new hydrologies, and this is the best time to introduce new species, also to export species you no longer want, giving them to newer terraria that might need them.
Thus over time you can transform the interior of your terrarium t...Folksonomies: futurism space exploration
Folksonomies: futurism space exploration
1 Instructions from a fictional booklet on hollowing out asteroids to fill them with biomes.
08 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Trivia VS Knowledge
Have you ever met anyone with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure rock bands? I knew a group of people in Los Angeles who spent their time browsing the used bins at record shops back in the days when music was recorded on vinyl (which is making a comeback these days, even though most kids have never heard anything other than compressed 128-kilobite-per-second digital recordings). Some of these people were so obsessed with obscure bands that they deserved the moniker "vinyl vermin." They coll... 1 notes
notesGraffin relates the story of "Vinyl Vermin" who collected trivia about music rather than cultivating opinions on what was good or bad. He relates this to amassing taxonomy knowledge without a theory.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
What Drives the Mind of a Science Writer?
The design of a book is the pattern of reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send a man into the tide pools and force him to report what he finds there. Why is an expedition to Tibet undertaken, or a sea bottom dredged? Why do men, sitting at the microscope, examine the calcareous plates of a sea cucumber and give th... 1 notes
notesWe understand that fictional books are crafted to present a worldview, but we forget the same is true of nonfiction.
06 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Natural Selection Works with Existing Material
It is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species. Novelties come from previously unseen association of old material. To create is to recombine. Folksonomies: evolution natural selection
Folksonomies: evolution natural selection
1 notes
notesNovelty arises from unseen association of old material.
25 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Life Can Go On for Billions of Years
I believe that life can go on forever. It takes a million years to evolve a new species, ten million for a new genus, one hundred million for a class, a billion for a phylum—and that's usually as far as your imagination goes. In a billion years, it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects. But what would happen in another ten billion years? It's utterly impossible to conceive of ourselves changing as drastically as that, over and over again. All you...Freeman Dyson quote about the future of humanity.
21 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Australopithecus afarensis' Hip Bone Indicates She Could ...
When Lucy’s hundreds of fragments were assembled, she turned out
to be a female of a new species, Australopithecus afarensis, dating back
3.2 million years. She was between 20 and 30 years old, 3.5feet tall,
weighing a scant 60 pounds, and possibly afflicted with arthritis. But
most important, she walked on two legs.
How can we tell? From the way that the femur (thighbone) connects to
the pelvis at one end and to the knee at its other. In a bipedally
walking primate like ourselves, the femur... 1 notes
notesThe bone tilts to bring the knees inward, like it does in humans, but not in chimps, who waddle because they are bow-legged.
18 APR 2011 by ideonexus
The Growth of Taxonomy in the Scientific Revolution
Taxonomy was the biology of the scientific revolution. The opening up of the New World and the Far East provided European scientists with thousands of new species to examine and classify. Establishing botanical gardens, menageries and 'cabinets' of minerals, preserved animal specimens and dried plants were favourite hobbies amongst wealthy collectors. And since the natural sciences were not yet fully recognised by university faculties, these studies remained in the hands of amateurs. Of 48 na...Folksonomies: science history
Folksonomies: science history
1 notes
notesMany women became botonists and entomologist during this time.
