Yes. It will TOTALLY be like this
It’s time for the Entomological Society Annual Meeting–who wants to party with Bug Girl in Indy? I’ll be there from Dec. 13th to the 15th, and return on the 16th.
I promise, I will wear pants this time.
I’d love to have a NatureBlogger meet up, or chat to local skeptics. Leave me a comment if you’re interested!
Discovered this interesting historic document today. I had read before that it was common to hunt raptors of all kinds in the past because they were considered “pests”. But…
this makes it a whole lot more quantifiable and horrible.
The irony, of course, is that this was a bird sanctuary doing this. These “pests” were shot…to preserve the tasty game birds. So people could shoot them. Sigh.
I was looking for some online resources that discussed the common practice of hunting raptors in the 1880s- 1900s, but didn’t find much.
Is your GoogleFu stronger than mine? Can you make some suggestions/contribute linkies?
egregious:
Example: this headline from Science Daily: Fruit Fly Sperm Makes Females Do Housework After Sex
Seriously. How freakin’ embedded in your culture do you have to be to project your heteronormist, traditional gender role shit onto FLIES, people?
Do fruit flies have a monogamous sex life? No.
Do fruitflies live in houses? No.
Do fruitflies live in nuclear families? No.
Do fruitflies iron, bake, or do any sort of traditional Western gender-role stuff? No.
Is it necessary to have all science news stories relate to humans? No.
Is it necessary to have all science news stories relate to sex? No. Maybe. Yes. What was the question?
PhD comics has an EXCELLENT description of the science news cycle. If you haven’t seen this, go print it out and stick it on your door/cube/whatever.
Anyway.
The paper they were actually describing is this one:
Isaac, R., Li, C., Leedale, A., & Shirras, A. (2009). Drosophila male sex peptide inhibits siesta sleep and promotes locomotor activity in the post-mated female Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277 (1678), 65-70 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1236
Oddly, no mention of dustpans and ironing there….
The paper is actually pretty fascinating–it provides a connection between a peptide in a male fruit fly’s sperm and a change in behavior in female flies after mating. Mated females skip their afternoon naps (fruit flies take a siesta, as mentioned in the title of the paper) and spend that time looking for food, or places to lay eggs.
This is, regrettably, described as “domestic type activities” by one of the paper’s authors in the news story, although the actual research paper stays on point and doesn’t branch off into this sort of silly anthropomorpic speculation.
I was not aware that finding food was housework. Thank goodness I have science reporters to help enforce gender norms!
For bonus points, guess the Order of Insect covered in this news release before you click through:
EDITED 11.30.09 TO ADD: Ha! the title of the article has now been changed to “Female fruit flies do chores after sex”. Screen shot of the original article now linked.
There is now an online key to the 86 species of Chrysididae in North America!
It is, of course, quite useful, but the best parts are all the detailed photos of these lovely Hymenopterans.
Thanks go to Nigel Jones for his lovely photo which you must view at full size, and to the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center for creating this valuable resource!
Brined a turkey for the first time this year–turned out quite yummy! I was much more excited with my green beans, though.
I accidentally bought some extra rosemary sprigs, and needed a way to use them up. I give you: Rosemary Green Beans.*
Nuke the stick of butter to melt it. Dump in chopped rosemary. Cook beans in salted water until they are tender, but still crispy. Drain the beans, and toss them with the butter/rosemary mix. Before serving, squeeze the lemon over the whole thing.
YUM.
——-
*Those of you who read my blog know that I consider measurements a vague advisory suggestion. I do Live Improv Cooking.
The Donors Choose Challenge is now over, and the project to get more nature bloggers involved was a success!!
The total amount given for the Nature Blogs Group was $5,170. That put our group at #11–not quite in the top 10, but still pretty darn good! That also is quite a bit more than I managed by myself last year ($270). YAY! And THANK YOU!
Overall, the total amount given this year was $637,336. That’s amazing! I was very excited to see that one of the top groups was Making a difference for Michigan Children. Teachers are being laid off left and right here, so making sure our remaining teachers are supported and have the tools they need is very important.
9 of the 12 projects I chose were fully funded–that’s a lot of new buggy and gardening stuff in the hands of kids. Still need an end of year tax deduction? You can still give!!
MUCH LOVE TO ALL OF YOU THAT DONATED!!!
Just in time for the holidays–Xerces has a new native bee calendar!
“The Xerces Society and the Great Sunflower Project are happy to offer the 2010 Native Bee Calendar, which was created by Celeste Ets-Hokin. With magnificent close-up photos by Rollin Coville, this calendar takes you on a tour of twelve commonly encountered types of native bees. Each month features a full-page pin-up of a different bee genus, accompanied by a brief summary of its preferred plants, nesting needs, notes on how to identify it, and of course, a complete day-by-day calendar for each month.
All orders must be received online by Monday, November 30, 2009. Calendars will be shipped to arrive by the holidays.
Price: $14.00 (including shipping).
Sales of this calendar will directly benefit the conservation work of both organizations.”
What are you waiting for?
It’s time for OpenLab! Since I will almost certainly be on the job market soon, an inclusion in OL would be a handy thing for my vita. I’m just sayin’……
Here’s some posts I’m considering nominating:
Can you help a Bug out and nominate, if you like these? Thanks!
I happened to find this very entertaining Extension Publication in a box: Good Eating from Woods and Fields. It’s a 1960 reprint of an earlier pamphlet, and what a cultural artifact it is!
I couldn’t decide which of the photos to put here, and so went with my Beavis and Butthead instinct: Roast Beaver.
The pamphlet opens with instructions on how to please ‘the housewife” and also contains historic info on game hunting. Except… they sort of forgot to mention all the people that lived here and hunted for centuries before the Europeans with guns showed up. Whoops!
There are also recipes for rabbit, squirrel, woodchuck, and muskrat.
|
If you see ads, they are NOT mine. They are inserted by WordPress. In fact, I have paid to not have ads, so please let me know if you do see them!
