I discussed the application of “climate space envelope models” (also known as “species distribution models” or “ecological niche models”) to Sasquatch in an earlier post. While I was writing that post I was racking my brain trying to remember a scientific paper on the Loch Ness Monster… I distinctly remembered hearing about it in an undergraduate course but didn’t have any record of it in my notes. The good news is I found the paper! In fact, I found several!
I recently came across this neat video of an ant colony dismantling a dead gecko.
While some people were off enjoying the sights and sounds of Las Vegas at TAM9, myself and three other members of the Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism (which bears the much-needed acronym of CASS) were in Toronto having our own little skeptical conference. This is my brief summary of the talks.
I have accumulated a few photos of dragonflies and damselflies over the past few years and I don’t really have anywhere to share them, so I thought I would post them here. Since it features in the header of the blog, I though I might as well start with this one of Celithemis eponina. And yes, I did spend about 15 minutes trying to get the wings parallel to the top and bottom of the photo. It’s a good job this is a percher, not a flier…
I have been involved in “climate space modelling” for a few years now. This is an approach that uses observations of a given species to determine the range of environmental variables under which it will occur. Once you know what the limits of its tolerance are, you can predict where the species will occur. For example, let’s say that a damselfly (of course I’m using a hypothetical damselfly) can live at temperature of between 10 and 20 degrees and precipitation has to be between 200mm and 500mm per year. Warmer, wetter, cooler or drier than that and it can’t survive. We can use these limits to predict (i) where the species currently exists but has not been recorded, and (ii) where the species might exist in the future as the climate changes.
[THIS IS MY ATTEMPT TO PRESERVE SOME OLD BLOG POSTS BEFORE DELETING THE OLD BLOG. THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 5TH 2009]
Over at Merseyside Skeptics, Marsh has a piece on overdosing on homeopathic treatments (more commonly known as “drowning”). He points out that the extent of the dilution of the treatment in question almost certainly left none of the active ingredient in the pill… This is all simply absurd. A part of me would like to set up a homeopathic clinic, sell pills filled with water and take people’s money just to punish them for being so bloody stupid… The worst thing is that the NHS is currently paying people to “practise” homeopathy…
Having abandoned my plans of maintaining a blog almost 18 months ago, I now find myself posting far too many thoughts on Facebook and Google+. As a result, I’m going to give the blog a go again on a new (and, I think, prettier) platform. I only posted a few times on my old blog and I will repost those entries here over the next few days to preserve them for posterity(?). I also had a few “guest spots” elsewhere. If you want to read a bit about what I’ve been up to, here are some links to my previous guest blog posts:
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Katatrepsis 