Friday links round

• Vintage plant genetic resources videos

• Wrong on the Internet: Bogus USA Spider Chart

• Riroriro

• Testing the utility of trait databases

• When Are Nomads Not Really Nomads? (Efe Pygmy Ethnoarchaeology)

• Please don’t smoke the tomatoes!

• The relationships among fame, impact and research quality

• Botanical Wednesday: Twisty

• Quotes of choice

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Peanut Leechy Gallery: Lianas

Lianas are so good for mandalas!

Simple horizon

And here’s another take:

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Simply wxrong rather than an easy get

I was just reading the following post on The Panda’s Thumb:  Challenge: research in the 1000 most common words. Basically, it is pointing to a list of the 1000 most common words in the English language and challenging you to write a simple statement of your research that is only using words from this list.

There’s this link that will check it for you when typing.

That’s really challenging. I lost at this game. This has a lot to do with the fact that I’m currently working in a discipline that cannot avoid a minimal jargon: phytopathology, the science of plant pests and plant illness. Any word related to pests (pathogens, fungi, microbes, viruses) are forbidden first. And it all begun with “plant” itself, which is not allowed (plants do not belong the 1000 commonest, does it make sense?). I’m afraid there’s no way I can express my research under such a challenging constraint. The best I came up with was this:

I study how small cell things are attacking bigger green things that need light and water to grow.

And frankly, this is just a way to weave in implicit meaning. That is, I’m utterly wrong. Anybody ignoring or not getting the implicit that green things that need light and water to grow means plant won’t have the slightest idea as to what I’m doing in my job. Not to say “small cell things” is any better -it is much worse indeed. It’s a very bad way to imply I’m working on fungi, the only idea I get somewhat right is that they are plant enemies.

I think I need to ponder about simpler ways to tell what I’m doing in my job…

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Fern poetry

Just played again with a random poetry generator. Made it for ferns. Made my moment.

First try is not bad:

Sporophytic Food

Horticulture bugs with actual fossile record.
Shall not a taxonomist radiate with Carboniferous phenotypes?
Direct sunlight is used as the ferns of plenty of families,
But the study of ferns ponders many taxa.

Growing garden!
Hark!
The fern radiation allows for the sister species’ spores.
Forget it!

or even this second one:

The Study Of Ferns’ Fossile Record

Direct sunlight has the fern radiation’s importance,
But It reduces the wind’s phenotype.
Wet conditions begins with actual garden.
Oh, no!

Classification disperses the food of Fern’s spores.
Alas!
The sister species is called growing period.
Ah, but a taxonomist ponders cheap taxa!

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Fern lapse for rainy saturday

Timelapse of fern sprouting. Saturday like.

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Freeday picks

• Staple Fruits of the World

• Does Your Genealogy Reveal Amazing Anthropological Stories?. The illustrative graph is by far the most interesting things I’ve met over the latest weeks.

• I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet

• Carnival of Evolution #59: A letter from the Doctor

Academia:

• What is academic success? A legitimate answer.

• False models are useful BECAUSE they’re false. Though you knew it already, right?

• Spring (And Scientific Fraud) Is Busting Out All Over. Scaring!

• Navigating the complexities of authorship: Part 2 -author order

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Peanut Leechy Gallery: leafloads

–Philodendron is all about leaves, paternity leaves and center froggy kids.

Mirroring leaves, backframe.

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BGR latest edition online!

You can find over there at Hort Log the very latest of the Berry Go Round Carnival.

It’s a themed Berry this Month, and it’s covering Ugly Smelly Plants. Of course, none of the critters are actually ugly. They’re all fascinating. Nor smelly except in the plant sense, which is good, because all plants smells for the best.

Maybe we should meme the theme options, and start series for berries. That’s certainly a good idea.

Meanwhile, I’m back again…

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Friday peak

Links for the weekend:

• The new bird flu: Is it serious?

• When does human life begin? (with a really good case comparing as to when it ends)

• Anthocharis cardamines!

• God and evolution 1 & God and evolution 2: The problem of creation

• Tingletongue won’t trouble Life Savers

• Dr Francis Seow discusses his love for stick insects in Berita Minggu

Academia:

Heated & passionate

• E. O. Wilson vs. math (UPDATEDx16 & corrected; no further updates)

• R. A. Fisher vs. E. O. Wilson on math in biology. Would have done a quote of the week!

• A calm and balanced case for math in biology (UPDATED)

How to keep up with scientific litterature, and its obligate tragedy of the common

• Selective journals vs. social networks: alternative ways of filtering the literature, or po-tay-to, po-tah-to?

• Navigating the complexities of authorship: Part 1 –inclusion

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Carnival gazing

You can find

- the latest Berry Go Round there

- Carnival of Evolution there

- Carnival of the Cats, over there

- This one, on Green living there

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