Ask Doctor Vector

Impact factors, copyright law, and other science publishing buzzwords

2008-07-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

One of my former labmates just sent around the latest list of journal impact factors. I'd repost 'em here, except that I don't want to perpetuate the perception that they are important (although I was grateful to have seen the last version, in a checkout-stand-tabloid-curiosity sense). Here's why:

People seem prone to forgetting that journals have impact factors because individuals papers are cited widely, or not. It's not like every paper that Nature (IF = 28.something) publishes is widely cited, or every paper that Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (IF = 0.955) publishes is not. In a field as small as sauropod paleobiology, everyone is going to read all of the literature no matter where it is published (the last remaining exception being obscure foreign journals that are not easily available as PDFs; and I mean foreign here as in "outside any researcher's country", not just "outside the US"; getting hold of un-PDFed papers from Oklahoma Geology Notes is probably a cast iron bitch if you're in a local museum in China). The only real advantage of a high-profile journal is to possibly bring the paper to the attention of non-sauropod workers. Whether Nature does that any better than CJES is probably up for discussion (at least in the small world of sauropod paleobiology). Unless some avian physiologist or human bone biomech person is going to have their world rocked by what I write, that 'crossover' appeal is probably not worth stressing over too much.

And there is an entirely different form of impact that we need to be thinking about, which is: how easy is it for people who are interested in your research area to find out about your work and acquire it? I'll bet that my effective impact is much greater than it would be otherwise simply because all of my papers are freely available online (thank you, Mike!). Although individual researchers are doing this more and more--see the badly-in-need-of-updating list here.

And there's a third kind of impact that is arguably more important than either of other two, which is: how big is the intellectual footprint of a given paper? For example, I'd argue that Kristi Curry-Rogers's paper on Apatosaurus ontogeny in JVP has been far more important and influential than her paper on Rapetosaurus in Nature (feel free to argue otherwise, I'm just shooting from the hip here).

Seems to me that what matters for Impact(3) is quality and timeliness of ideas (and timeliness often trumps quality), and publication venue is almost completely irrelevant (although I'd be interested in seeing a counterargument). What matters for Impact(2) is availability of work, which is better for papers that came out in open access journals but easily remedied for papers that didn't (at least until publishers crack down on free distribution of PDFs, if ever*). And Impact(1) is not unimportant, but it's also not nearly as important as people think it is; indeed, Impact(2) and Impact(3) actively erode the importance of Impact(1).

The main thing propping up Impact(1) as something we all have to at least pretend to care about is that the perceived prestige of having published in a high-IF journal really does matter to bean-counters in universities and funding agencies who can't be bothered to assess the actual quality of someone's work and for whom a nice convenient number is a godsend, even if it is horribly flawed. Therefore it also matters to many of us, who can't get ahead without having the approbation of those faceless but immensely powerful entities. See also: student teaching evaluations.

If we're going to be stuck with one number to evaluate something like the impact of a scientific paper, how about the number of citations that pop up on Google scholar? It's fast, free, and doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: the number of papers indexed by Google Scholar that cite the paper in question. Tragically, I suspect that ISI impact factors are popular in bureaucracies specifically because they are slow, inaccurate, and not transparently available to all.

* Recently there was a post on the Vert Paleo listserv about how copyright is a barrier to making the existing backlog of literature easily available electronically. My feeling is that those of us needing to get work done will scan what we need ourselves, circulate it through private channels, and keep plowing on. Those who try to stop us with be publicly humiliated at worst (when they come down on us and we all collectively vow never to use their stuff again) or marginalized at best (when we just stop using their stuff because it's harder to get hold of).

Finally, if you haven't been following the blogosphere brush fire (or brush war?) that sprung up in the wake of Nature's pathetically transparent slam of PLoS, Greg Laden has kindly assembled about a million relevant links here.

Discuss.

The State of Palaeontology meme

2008-06-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

This one is the brainchild of Dave Hone, who could be characterized as a machine that takes in observations, co-opts friends and colleagues, and gives off interactive internet projects as waste (witness Ask a Biologist, Archosaur Musings, this). It started with his State of Palaeontology survey, the results of which are now posted at Archosaur Musings.

Here's the deal: each participant sends their answers to someone else, who posts those answers with commentary. So you don't post your own answers, you post someone else's. I won the lottery so I get to post Dave's answers, and comment on them. My own answers have been sent on to a Certain PalaeoBlogger Who Shall Remain Nameless Until She Responds. Here we go!

1. What do you think is the great unsolved mystery of palaeontology?

DH: It is harder than I thought being on the other end of what appears on the face of it to be such a simple question. For me though it would be (amongst many other areas of interest) the issue of evolutionary rates. The living world is just a snapshot in time, as is any given fossil (or formation) but what is happenning in the gaps. It looks like pterosaurs evolved very quickly for example, but just how fast can you go from an arboreal lizard to soemthing as derived and specialised as a pterosaur. Can wings appear in 100 generation in the right conditions or does it take at least 100000? It is not a problem for evolution - we can see some incredibly rapid changes in the morphology of living organisms, but once the first tetrapods got out of the water, how fast did they end up with reptilian scales? The fossil record might eventually give us a pretty good answer in terms of time, but never in terms of generations, or changes and I would dearly love to see that issue taken much further.

MW: Agreed on all points. It is occasionally useful to remember that palaeontology is just a tool. It's big and complex and it's easy to get lost in its internal mechanisms and forget that the point of palaeontology is not to have meetings, write papers, yack with fellow palaeontologists, etc. All of those things are meaningless unless they help the machine serve its greater purpose, which is to understand the history of life on Earth.

I have an axe to grind here about the balkanization of institutions, including fields of study. A few years ago Polly Winsor came to talk at Berkeley, and she said that one of the reasons she helped get 'history of science' up and running as a field in its own right was to get scientists and historians to talk to each other, but that what had been intended as a bridge actually became a wall. In the old days you had scientists over here, and historians over there, and occasionally they talked. Now there is this entity, History of Science, parked in between them, and the result is that scientists talk to historians of science rather than to historians, and vice versa, but the biggest tragedy is that too many historians of science didn't talk to either scientists or historians: they talked mainly amongst themselves.

It is helpful to remember, often, that palaeontology is not a monolith or an end unto itself. We are in the Time Machine department of Earth history and evolutionary biology. And we don't have the only kind of time machine, either--geneticists, phylogeneticists, and genome researchers have their own sorts of time machines. Instead of huddling behind our walls, throwing stones, and grumbling about who is getting the grant money and prestige, we ought to be wandering over to those other departments and having a round of beer.

2. What do you think is the most exciting topic / area of research in palaeontology right now?

DH: Everything really. I don't mean that in a faecitious way, but the fact that as we go further with palaeontology, new fossils are found, new methods are developed, old ones refined, new ideas are formed, new collaborations start and slowly we build an increasingly complete picture of the anciet world and how it fits together. Bird origins are fascintating, but part of that is becuse we can compare them to living birds, we can look at the origns of flight (ground up, tree down, WAIR), physiology (breathing systems, pneumaticy, heart capacity, muscle structures), the origins of feathers, the phylogenetics of dinosaurs and birds, ecological niches and feeding types, nesting and reproduction and more. The origins are inherently interesting, but the way we are able to pull together all these disparate ideas and methods to form a holostic picture produces the greatest interest for me.

MW: It does seem like the amazing stuff is coming thick and fast these days, in the form of new fossils, new techniques, and new ideas. I feel like vertebrate palaeontology right now is amazingly far beyond where we were when I got started back in the mid 90s. In fact, I'd venture that the field has changed more in the past 10 years than it did in the preceding 20. Which is exciting, but also frustrating, because it seems like all this new stuff that is broadening our understanding of evolution and the history of life is really getting eviscerated and bowdlerized when it is passed on to the public.

3. What do you consider to be the biggest problem with palaeontology?

DH: Not enough money (pay), no job security, poor funding for research, poor taxonomy, not enough revision, loss of fossils through private collecting, poor research, poor education. All of these are serious issues, but as ever they are all interlinked - with better education, we might do better research, encourage funding and that would produce better pay and more jobs and get people to see the importance of what we do and protect the fossil legacy of the world. Which is most important, or the biggest? Probably in terms of research the poor taxonomy / revision. What is the point of trying to do an ecological or phylogenetic analysis, if all of the 'species' you are using are made of chimeras, or are synonyms etc. You can't check all the primary literature yourself, yet much of it is massively outdated or just badly done. Building on such an unstable foundation is not a good idea.

MW: I agree that the mountain of primary literature and specimens to plow through to try to get a handle on anything is intimidating. But I also don't see any way around it. As far as I can tell, this is how it's always been, and this is how it always will be. The most we can do is to make sure that we publish the most careful and accurate work that we can, to provide a better foundation for future generations.

4. What area of palaeontology do you think is most neglected?

DH: Exactly as above - alpha taxonomy and revisions / descriptions. Ye, we need to manitain all areas of our science, but the fundamental unit is the description and name attached to a fossil species and too little of this is done on new taxa, and too many of the old ones are out of date / poorly done / not illustrated etc. Without knowing wehat we have and what it looks like it becomes very hard to say what it *means*. Too often it is seen as unglamorous or boring work, and yet it is by far the most important thing we do.
It is irrelevant how clever the architect is for your building, if the bricks are full of straw, the mortar is full of sand, and the foundations are not complete. It might look great, and it might do the job, but it needs shoring up and constant work and rebuilding, when you could save so much time if the basics were done right the first time.

MW: Descriptive morphology is simply not valued right now. Early today I was battling a reviewer who wanted me to gut the descriptive section of a manuscript. I have heard similar stories from colleagues. If even editors and reviewers don't see the value in careful descriptive work, then we are in a really bad spot. I keep waiting for people to collectively wake up and realize that description is the fuel of palaeontology. And it's not just palaeontology; when was the last time you read a lengthy, careful morphological description of an extant animal that wasn't tied to evo-devo?

I think we are really hurting right now because of the way that funding works, and the way that universities look at grants. Genomics is sexy and expensive. Evo-devo is sexy and expensive. Doing careful descriptions is not sexy, but it's also not that expensive. The trouble is, it's not supported even at the meager level it requires. Given the choice between a world-class descriptive morphologist and a mediocre moleculoid who can write a grant for a zillion-dollar ion reflux pronabulator, universities seem to be choosing option B. Not good for us world-class morphologists.

5. How do you think the general public view science / palaeontology in your country?

DH: "Just dinosaurs" is too simplistic, but its not far from it. The big problem is that you are either just digging up something and giving it a name, or doing something wildly speculative on behaviour or ecology built on ephemeral data. Either way, you are not doing 'real' science. They like it and it interests them, but not in the way that studies of living animals do. The biggest issue is the media misreporting things (mammoths are dinosaurs, pterosaurs are birds) and the stoking up of non-existent controversey (e.g. BAD vs BAND). The public don't and can't know better and yet they are being fed inaccurate, wrong, speculative or just heavily skewed information that is posing as accurate and impartial facts. Scienctists can really help to fix this, but they are generally unwilling and that does not help the situation.

MW: Palaeontology, narrowly, and evolutionary biology, broadly, need a Carl Sagan right now. Real bad. But since one is not likely to descend from the heavens or claw its way out of the ground, we each need to take personal responsibility to (1) do the best, most substantive work that we can, and (2) communicate what we do to our colleagues and the public. And to be a little humble about it, and go out of our way to make it comprehensible, and to convey some of the enthusiasm that keeps us working on this stuff. If you're a scientist and you don't like the state of science, you can start fixing it immediately, starting with yourself. Admittedly, this is not going to revolutionize the world overnight. But it's a start.

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Okay, dear readers. The ball is in your court. Discuss!

You can't take the sky from me

2008-06-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

People who dismiss the plains states as "flyover country" don't realize that out here, the sky is the scenery. These are views west from the house I grew up in, over our neighbor's wheat field, out in the country in north-central Oklahoma. I took them yesterday, on the evening of my birthday. The one above is just a few minutes before it started raining here--you can see a curtain of rain falling on the horizon. If you cover up the wheat and the bright sky under the clouds, it could be one of those artists' impressions of the atmosphere of Jupiter.

I took this about half an hour later, after the rain had passed. Some groovy mammatus clouds there on the bottom of the thunderhead.

Pretty good birthday present. Thanks, universe.

Snakes on the brain

2008-05-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

Around the dawn of time I promised to post occasional goodies from what may be the most wonderful book in the world, Gerald Wood's The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats (this is also how I got to be a Google-recognized expert on headless butterflies). But I kept loaning the book out to people--forcing it on them like a pusher would be more accurate--and I never got around to it. Then just the other day I realized that I had the book back in the house so I picked it up and BANG! had my mind blown by the bit quoted below. Completely by coincidence, Darren decided to visit this overlooked branch of Tetrapoda this week as well. It's a strange world, and I can think of few pieces of information that better demonstrate that than this (from Wood 1982:112):

...the giant snakes are also great fasters and there are a number of records of individuals going 12 months or longer without food. One female reticulated python at Frankfurt Zoo fasted for 570 days, took food for a time and then fasted for another 415 days before eating, and a much larger example at the same zoo went 679 days without food although it drank regularly (Lederer, 1944).

All of these achievements, however, pale by comparison with the fasts carried out by the highly venomous Okinawa habu (Trimeresurus flavovirdes) of the Ryukyu Islands, W. Pacific. On 10 September 1977 the Amami Kanko Pit Viper Centre in Naze City, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan started a fasting experiment with five of these snakes. Four of them died on the 207th, 696th, 1101st and 1184th days respectively, but the oldest individual aged c 12 years was still going strong--if approached it reared up in preparation for an attack--when the experiment was terminated on the 1189th day (12 December 1980), which is a record for a vertebrate animal. Although its weight decreased by 60.9 per cent during this period, its length actually increased much to the puzzlement of researchers. After is marathon fast the snake was given some milk and has since been restored to full physical health (Eiichi Nakamoto, pers. comm.).

If you are even remotely interested in animals, I strongly recommend tracking down a used copy of Wood's book. It's a shame that is has not been updated in 26 years, but it's still an awesome compendium of amazing stuff.

Shoot the moon II: Getting the most out of your binoculars

2008-05-15T00:03:00.001-07:00

Part the First: Mount Up

The biggest pain in the butt about binoculars is that they shake. Or rather we do, no matter how we may try not to. If you can get rid of the shakes, using binoculars is awesome. But it ain't easy. Up until now I have done one of two things: steadied my binoculars against a nearby fence or wall, or steadied them against a monopod but without having them actually attached, just using the monopod as a sort of primitive mobile fencepost. But recently I came up with a better solution: I built a budget binocular bracket.

Lots of astronomy equipment companies sell dedicated binocular brackets, for mounting binoculars to monopods or tripods. The current issue of Sky & Telescope has a review of a premium model that costs $70. That's more than double the cost of my best pair of binoculars! Even the budget model from Orion costs $30.

Well, bump that. You can build your own for about $5. Go to the hardware store and pick up a steel angle bracket like the one shown in the photo above, some 1/4-20 nuts, and a 1-inch-long 1/4-20 thumbscrew. One of the holes in the bracket will fit over the 1/4-20 bolt on your monopod or tripod. Put on a nut and tighten 'er down. I used needle-nose pliers to get in there and get that nut nice and tight--you don't want your binoculars swinging in the breeze, no matter how cheap they were. Put a couple of nuts on the thumbscrew before you put it through the bracket--these act as spacers and keep the flat end of the thumbscrew from bumping up against the bracket when you tighten the rig. Then stick the thumbscrew through the bracket and screw it into the socket on the front of your binoculars. If the thumbscrew reaches the end of the socket before it's tight, pull it out and slip on one more nut as another spacer--that's what I had to do, and in the photo above you can just see the edge of the nut peeking out between the bracket and the socket on the binoculars.

Bang, you're done. Point the binoculars at something interesting and enjoy a completely shake-free view. I like running them up on my camera tripod and observing the moon without having to touch anything at all. I'm telling you, it's a qualitatively different experience from any binocular observing you've ever done in the past. And not just of astronomical targets--it's good for birds, landscapes, sunsets, your perverted neighbors, whatever.

And it's damn near free. If you use binoculars at all and own a tripod, there's no reason not to build one of these. And my tripod is not fancy--it's the absolute cheapest full-size model that Wal-Mart has to offer. It shakes and wobbles like crazy with a telescope on top, but it's plenty sturdy for a pair of binoculars or a camera.

Part the Second: Absolute basics of image processing

This is, no lie, the un-fiddled-with raw photo of the moon that I took through my Celestron 10x50 UpClose binoculars tonight. Well, okay, not completely un-fiddled-with. I did rotate and crop the image to get the moon in the middle and get rid of most of the empty field. But I didn't mess with any color or sharpness settings, so the moon itself is exactly as it came out of the camera.

I don't like to brag, but I was freaking amazed that I could get a picture that sharp using just binoculars. The 10x50s are quite a bit better than the Tasco 7x35s I used for my last attempt, but still. The image quality of the mounted binoculars is not far behind that of a small telescope, either visually or photographically (proof--compare these pictures to this one). The one advantage of even a small scope is that you can crank up the magnification if you want to see, for example, the rings of Saturn. On the other hand, binoculars are cheaper, lighter, easier to set up, and grab a lot more sky--all the reasons amateur astronomers use them in the first place.

Anyway, this part isn't about the binoculars. It's about what to do once you get a picture.

First thing, seriously, always, is Unsharp Mask. It looks like a gimmick but it's not. It can be overdone, like almost anything, but you should be able to play around with the settings minimally and find something that works. And it's available in just about every serious image processing program out there, including Photoshop and GIMP (the latter is free, BTW). The only difference between the photo immediately above and the one at the top of this section is that I applied Unsharp Mask in GIMP, using the default settings.

You'll notice some distracting color in both of the above images. The north edge of the moon is outlined in blue haze, and the southern end is an unwholesome-looking yellowish brown. That's chromatic aberration, and it's an unavoidable consequence of refracting light through glass. For telescopes you can buy anti-fringing filters, or super- or hyper-expensive apochromatic telescopes that use special kinds of glass to minimize CA, but even the best only knock it down to below the threshold of perception. It's impossible to completely get rid of. Physics is like that sometimes.

Let me amend that. It's impossible to completely get rid of in optical trains with refracting elements. A major advantage of reflecting telescopes is that they collect light with mirrors rather than lenses, so their views are blessedly free of CA.

Interestingly, I've never seen any CA on the moon through binoculars, and I've looked for it. Possibly the weak signal of color falling on my cones is just blown out by the intensity of light falling on my rods. Whatever the explanation, in my experience it is a strictly photographic problem.

This won't work for everything, but the moon is basically black and white in real life so it doesn't look weird if you convert the image to grayscale, as I've done here. And that's all I did--I didn't try to erase the dim halo around the northern regions, for example. It was always dim, and it only grabbed the eye because it was blue. Convert it to dark gray and it just disappears.

One last trick. I nudged up the contrast a little. It's really easy to overdo this, but if it's done right it certainly makes for a more interesting and pleasing image. The main problem with doing this on anything but a full moon is that the area near the terminator--the day/night line, where the lit part of the moon meets the unlit--drops off into blackness, and if you make the blacks blacker, the terminator appears to shift. Suddenly instead of describing a gentle curve or line from pole to pole, it zigs and zags as bright craters and dark maria pull it first one way and then the other. Which makes the photo look fake, because the real moon just doesn't look like that.

But there's an easy fix. Copy the image and paste it into a new layer. Bump up the contrast on that layer, and watch the terminator move. Once the contrast on everything else looks good, grab a big fuzzy eraser and erase the parts that got blackened out. The normally-lit terminator in the original image shows through. Flatten and save. You're done.

And so am I (UPDATE: no I'm not. Keep reading). Like I said, this is the bare bones of image processing. There's lots more here, and in many other places on the web. Have fun!

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Hoo boy, what a dumbass I am. The picture above is actually how not to do contrast. I screwed up bigtime, but I'm leaving it in as a teaching tool. There are two big problems with that image, and somehow my poor addled brain didn't catch them until this morning. The first is that I only grabbed part of the image when I copied and pasted, so there is a distinct black box from the contrasty layer visible against the skyglow from the original background. Lesson 1: copy the entire image into the layer you're going to mess with. The second problem is that I colored outside the lines with the eraser, so next to the terminator there is a weird light-colored strip like a fuzzy caterpillar (if you can't see this, try tilting your monitor so the image looks lighter. Lesson 2: if you're going to up the contrast and then erase some of the contrasty layer, you have to be careful not to get off of your foreground target or the brighter background will show through. Both problems are fixed in this version:

I'd like to be able to say that I planned this little goof/save in advance, but I didn't. Just shouldn't process images in a dark room or blog when I'm tired. Sheesh. Keeps me humble.

Now I'm going to take Mike's advice and get back to work. No sarcastic commentary needed.

Shoot the moon: digiscoping 101

2008-05-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

In a comment on a recent post, TheBrummell said, "Any advice on getting a couple of seconds exposure through 1/2 a pair of binoculars with a Nikon coolpix 5200?" Which may sound like a crazy question. Most of us own a pair of binoculars and a camera, but I'll reckon the fraction that have used the two in conjunction is vanishingly small.

I, however, am a member of this elite group. And I realized that although I have blogged the results of my digiscoping adventures here*, I haven't actually explained anything about the process, or given any instructions for doing it yourself. So here goes.

* A lot; possibly too much for those of you who came here hoping in vain for something paleo-related, but now that I have to feed SV-POW! regularly I send most of my paleo ramblings there.

What Digiscoping Is

Afocal projection photography, also known as digiscoping amongst birders and as white trash astrophotography by me, is the simplest and cheapest way of taking pictures using any kind of optical device: you just hold the camera up to the eyepiece and snap away. You can do it with just about anything. TheBrummell reports taking zillions of pictures through dissecting microscopes, my anatomy students take pictures of prepared slides through the compound microscopes in the teaching lab, birders and other nature lovers use spotting scopes or, less frequently, binoculars, and amateur astronomers use telescopes. The results can be striking--do a Google image search for 'digiscoped bird' and you'll see what I mean. The picture at the top of the post is my best image from 8 months of experimentation. Click on it for the full-size version, and check out the detail.

Okay, that's the what. What about the how?

Holding the Camera Steady

I use a Nikon Coolpix 4500, and for almost all of my pictures I really have just held the camera up to the eyepiece of whatever I'm shooting through. For steadier results you could put the camera on a tripod, or buy a dedicated adapter for mounting the camera behind the eyepiece, like the Steadypix from Orion (image from Orion's website).

I have also started experimenting with the camera on a monopod, which is what I used for the recent Earthshine photo. The monopod is nice because it's simple, lightweight, easily adjustable to any length, but sturdy enough to really damp out the little vibrations that you can't escape just because you're alive. (When I'm really trying to hold the camera still I can see my hands move ever so slightly in time with my pulse. Try it.) And mine was dirt cheap, something like $18.

An unexpected benefit of using a monopod is that it helps dampen out the shakes even when it's not on the ground, just by being long and heavy (relative to the camera). I discovered this when I was taking pictures in the OMNH last year and I wanted a tall-aspect photo, so I just picked up the camera plus monopod and flipped the whole rig on its side. The rig was easier to keep steady than the camera by itself, even when it wasn't propped against anything (you can sometimes prop a sideways monopod against a nearby wall, too).

Camera Settings

For settings I use macro mode, sometimes with a timer to eliminate the little bit of shake from manually pressing the shutter release. And I usually zoom in to eliminate vignetting, which is the "stopping down" of the image by the margins of the optical assembly (usually the field lens of the eyepiece). Here's what an unmodified vignetted image looks like:

Here's the same image rotated, cropped, and sharpened:

Vignetting is not a problem when I'm shooting at night, because the black margin does not show up against the dark sky. The settings I use to shoot the moon and planets don't usually show any stars anyway. If you want pictures of starfields, you'd be better off using a DSLR by itself--there are plenty of tutorials around that will explain how, and lots of camera-specific forums you can check out for advice and assistance.

Magnification

Zooming in can also boost the magnification significantly. Magnification of any optical device is equal to the focal length of the objective divided by the focal length of the eyepiece. So a 25mm eyepiece will yield 40x in a telescope with a 1 meter focal length, but only 20x in a telescope with a 500 mm focal length. It is hard to get up to high magnifications with small refractors or Newtonian reflectors just because of that fact. Catadioptric telescopes like Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksutovs have the opposite problem--their folded light paths mean that very small telescopes have very long focal lengths, and even fairly long-focal-length eyepieces still yield fairly high magnifications. For example, I have an Orion Apex 90 Maksutov-Cassegrain, and the tube is four inches in diameter and less than a foot long--which makes it a good travel telescope, because it fits in a carry-on bag with room to spare--but the focal length is 1250 mm, longer than my "big" telescope, a 6-inch Dob (see below).

So, two points. First, contrary to what most people think, the main point of a telescope is light collection, not magnification. A lot of astronomical objects are big but dim, like galaxies and nebulae. Some magnification is helpful, for sure, but the main benefit of the telescope is that it's light-collecting area is vast compared to that of the naked human eye. I've blogged about this before and I won't beat it to death here.

On the other hand, a good digital camera can pull more detail out of the scene than can your eye, thanks to the zoom. I took the photo at the top of the post at a telescopic magnification of 37x and a camera magnification between 2-3x. Which means my eye saw the moon magnified 37 times, and the camera saw it magnified somewhere between 74x and 111x, and recorded that. I have a 16x20 inch print of that image ($9.99 at Costco, and 12x18s are only $2.99!), and the detail holds up even at that size, which is waaay beyond what I can see with the naked eye at 37x.

Almost all of my moon photos have been taken at low telescopic magnification. The only exceptions are closeups of just part of the moon, like the second pic down here. I am usually forced to use low magnification for the whole-moon shots, just to get the whole moon into the field of view at once.

Exposure Time

Although my Coolpix autofocuses just fine, it's not so hot on figuring out exposure times for small bright objects in a sea of inky blackness. So I go over to manual for most stuff now. Here's why this matters--these photos were taken about a minute apart, but the one of the left is a two-second exposure and the one on the right is a 1/15 second exposure.

The moon varies in brightness a lot. If it's full or nearly full, I may use exposure times as short as 1/250 second or even 1/500 second. And obviously exposure time and camera steadiness are related--the shorter the exposure time, the less you have to worry about the shakes.

What To Shoot

Digiscopers with an astronomical bent have a limited choice of targets. Basically, the moon, the bright planets, and any evening or nighttime scenes you want to see really close up. Starfields are better imaged without a telescope, or with a long-exposure photo on a tracking mount, which is a whole 'nother kettle of (much more expensive) fish. Nebulas, clusters, and galaxies are too dim. You can image those things with simple webcams, but I'm not going to blog about that because I don't have any experience doing it. Yet. (My birthday is coming.)

Still, the moon and planets are pretty great. It is easy to forget that moon is an entire world. Yeah, airless and dead, but still: a whole world. And it's right there. Even cheap binoculars will show you tons of details that you can't see with the naked eye.

So far, the only planets I've shot are Saturn and Jupiter. The results are not going to make APOD, but you can make out cloud belts, rings, and the Great Red Spot, which is pretty amazing considering the entire operation consisted of holding the camera up to the eyepiece and pushing the button.

What To Shoot Through

Whatever you have. Seriously. Experimentation costs nothing, it's fun, and any result you get will probably be better than what your naked eye could have served up. So go nuts.

But if you want some advice, bigger is better. In the case of a large, bright target like the entire moon, the advantage of big optics is neither light-gathering nor magnification but resolving power. Compare these photos from similar phases but taken through scopes of different apertures:

Note that the middle photo was actually taken at slightly lower magnification than the one on the left, but the resolution is far superior. Here's what those scopes look like in real life:

The travelscope is the skeletal thing perched on the tripod. It's currently in its third incarnation, or fourth if you count its ignoble birth as a National Geographic toy (you can read my thoughts on the utility of the original product and the ethics of its marketing here). Previous evolutionary stages are here and here. The red ball-type scope on the table is my Edmund Astroscan, object of my desire since I was about 12 and my primary scope for car trips. The black howitzer-looking thing is my Orion SkyQuest XT6, a Newtonian reflector like the others, but on a Dobsonian or "Dob" mount. It's actually a lot more imposing in person--the tube is four feet long and seven inches in diameter, and the whole thing weighs 35 lbs. It just looks small next to me, which is an occupational hazard for us sasquatchi. And it does look suspiciously like a weapon, which often gets me weird looks from the neighbors and passersby when I set it up out front. So I invite them over to have a look through it, which is a great way to make someone's day.

I have done most of my digiscoping through the XT6, at first because it was my only telescope. I went through a phase this spring of shooting through the Astroscan, because it is so small and portable. I can sling it over one shoulder, put the camera over the other, stuff a couple of eyepieces in my pockets and be outside observing in about a minute and a half. But the images served up by the Astroscan are just a little mushy compared to those from the XT6, probably because of the fast optics--f/4.4 is a steep light cone. For a while it was kind of an enjoyable challenge to see how well I could do with the Astroscan, but pretty soon I got tired of really working for so-so images when I could get better ones for less effort through the XT6.

And by "so-so", I mean only by comparison to the images I'd already been getting through the XT6. I'm actually quite proud of some of my Astroscan photos, and I don't mean to knock the little scope at all. But Aperture Rules. I'm sure if I had a 10-inch scope to play with, I'd stop digiscoping with the XT6.

Which brings up the question of why I have so many telescopes (the Apex 90 I mentioned earlier in the post is not in the above photo, nor is the Explorascope I mention below). Partly it's because I'm a telescope nut, but partly it's because different scopes serve different purposes. The XT6 is both my default scope and my big gun. If I'm home and I want to do some serious observing or digiscoping, that's what I use. The Astroscan is my grab-n-go or quick look scope, my car travel scope, and the scope I share with my little boy. The travelscope, Apex 90, and Explorascope are all contenders in my quest for the perfect airline portable scope. And anyway, according to Ed Ting one really needs six scopes, so I'm still under the legal limit.

But wait, you say, why am I blabbing on about telescopes when TheBrummell specifically asked about

Binoculars

Yes, you can take pictures through binoculars. It takes some forethought. The first problem is mounting them. Almost all binoculars have a mounting socket at the front of the center column, usually covered by a plastic cap. Lots of astronomy and camera stores sell dedicated tripod adapters, which are L-shaped rigs with a 1/4-20 bolt on the vertical side to screw into the binoculars, and a 1/4-20 socket in the base for the tripod bolt to screw into. You could also make your own out of 1/4-20 thumbscrews and scrap lumber for about two dollars. UPDATE: a five-dollar solution is shown in the next post.

But that's not what I did. In my one adventure in binocular digiscoping, I used the Tasco 7x35s that I bought back in high school (or maybe even junior high). They have a mounting socket, but it's not a standard size, and I don't have a binocular adapter anyway. But I still got them mounted to the tripod. I used one of the struts from the travelscope, which has an inset 1/4-20 T-nut for tripod attachment, and simply lashed the binoculars to the strut with big rubber bands. It looked weird as hell:

How did it work out? Not too bad, actually. I had to squat down and put my head right next to the travelscope strut to sight the things in, but the focuser worked fine and I didn't have any problems taking pictures. I went a little nuts that night taking pictures of the same moon through several devices or none at all, in anticipation of writing this very post. Here's the comparison shot:

UPDATE: Gah! Better binocular photos now available, again in the next post.

The only real surprise in putting this together is how well the Coolpix did by itself, using maximum zoom and steadying the camera against one of the columns on the back porch.

To Shoot or Not To Shoot

I actually feel like kind of a weiner putting up the binocular shot here at the end, after having kicked off the post with a picture that is far better than you're ever going to get through binoculars. I'm not trying to discourage you--quite the contrary! The first time you get a nice, reasonably sharp photo of your own, it will feel pretty damn good. And it will hopefully make you want to do more.

I am always telling people that getting started in astronomy does not have to be prohibitively expensive. Even cheap binoculars will show you tons of stuff you can't see with the naked eye (especially if they're mounted on something), and not just on the moon. All of the Messier objects are visible in binoculars in dark skies, and most serious amateur astronomers spend at least part of their time observing with binoculars. Orion has several good beginner telescopes in the $100-250 range, a new Astroscan will run you $199 but used ones can be had for a little more than half that if you look around, and an XT6 is $269. But right now you can buy a workable telescope for about the same price as a modest pair of binoculars: Celestron's Explorascope, an 80 mm reflector, is on sale for under $40. Eighty mm is not much, and you won't get any XT6-worthy pictures through it, but the views will be closer to those through a six-inch scope than to those served up by binoculars (at least at higher magnifications; at low mag, maybe not). So if you've been reading and wondering if you'd get anything out of owning a telescope, now's a good time to find out without breaking the bank. I've got one in the mail, and I'll review it here once I get a chance to test it out.

Clear skies.

Science you should know about: Homosexual necrophiliac duck rape

2008-05-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

Moeliker (2002:fig. 2b): Wakka-cheeka-wakka-cheeka

Those funny guys at Zooillogix just covered the seal-brutalizes-penguin story that's been all over the news lately, which prompted me to post about my favorite scientific paper of all time:

Moeliker, C.W. 2001. The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae). DEINSEA 8: 243-247.

Here's the entire text of the abstract:
"On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass facade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an "Attempted Rape Flight" that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard."

What the author doesn't mention in the abstract is that the 75-minute event ended prematurely when he separated the drake from the object of its perverted affection. Which makes me want to hit him (the author, not the drake). Because, why? Why would he end it? One minute was enough to document the behavior. After 75 minutes, surely any self-respecting scientist would want to know just how long this was going to continue, and watch until it was over. Now we'll never know. What a loss for science.

So if you see an animal doing something perverted--and they are, all the time, the unreconstructed little bastards--cowboy up and record the dad-blamed data. ALL OF IT.

Sheesh!

In for a penny, in for a pound

2008-05-06T23:23:00.000-07:00

Aw, hell, here's the turtle. When I was growing up, with Herbert Zim's Golden Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, this was Clemmys marmorata, but recent work shows that it is closer to Emys and the name Actinemys has been resurrected for it. And it really was just crawling across the driveway last week. I stuck him in a bucket, hauled him to school to show my ecology students, and then turned him loose in the creek towards which he was slogging when he was apprehended. And it is a him--check out that tail, and his plastron has a stronger arch than my feet ever have.

I'm pretty pumped to know that these things are around here. They're not doing great these days. For obvious reasons--show me a body of water west of the Sierras that isn't the center of a tourist trap, housing development, or agricultural or industrial outflow and I'll explain the optics of mirages for you.

I really just blog about this stuff to make Darren jealous.

Go, turtle, go.

The moon by Earthlight

2008-05-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

There's about a metric buttload of stuff I want to blog about, including the highlights of the Lick Observatory trip (now on my Flickr page) and some awesome predator/prey photos that one of my students took and the Western Pond Turtle that my wife caught crawling across our driveway last week, but it's the time of year when I've got finals to write and grade so all that stuff will have to wait.

In the meantime, this is what the moon looked like tonight. This fetching display is called "the old moon in the new moon's arms"; from the moon the Earth is nearly full and it bounces back enough light to dimly illuminate the shadowed regions of the moon. If you'd like to see it for yourself, you don't have to wait a month--the show should be almost as good for the next couple of nights.

For those who care, this was a two-second exposure with my Nikon Coolpix 4500, shooting through an Orion XT6 Dobsonian reflector with a 32mm Plossl eyepiece.

Speak of the devil

2008-04-27T03:13:00.000-07:00

I was back at the Lick Observatory this evening, with another UCM field trip group.

Like last time, we all got to look through the 36 in Lick refractor (that's the Shane reflector above).

Unlike last time, Saturn was up. Can you guess what that means?

If I was emperor...

2008-04-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

Here's what I'd do first. I'd come to your home, right after dinner, take you by the hand, drag you outside, and make you look at Saturn through a telescope, so you can see the rings.

Partly because I know you'll really dig it. I have to yet to meet anyone who didn't.

But mostly because I love watching people's reactions when they see it for the first time. About three weeks ago I took some of my ecology students on a field trip to Yosemite, and I took my little Edmund Scientific Astroscan (love it!). About 9:30 I set it up on the hood of an SUV (on a towel, so it wouldn't scratch the paint) and gave the interested a brief tour of the sky. We started and ended at Saturn. One of the guys had never looked through a telescope before. I'm not saying that to knock on him--most people haven't. I'm saying it because it was freakin' awesome to get to be the one to show him this stuff for the first time, and especially freakin' awesome to start with Saturn.

Then a couple of weeks ago we had some friends over and as we were walking them to the car at the end of the evening we all stopped to have a naked-eye gander at the moon. Somebody asked if any planets were up so I pointed out Saturn right by Regulus, and then I said, "Look, just wait two minutes. You've got to see this." I keep Shaft, my Orion XT6 Dobsonian reflector, parked against the wall in our pointlessly immense* entryway for just this purpose, and about 90 seconds later one of our friends was getting her first ever look at Saturn. She literally squealed with delight.

* I'm convinced that the houses in this addition have big entryways just to stick it to people from the coast. It's about a third the area of our entire apartment in Berkeley and it serves no purpose other than to ostentatiously show off the fact we have tons and tons of space.

Look, seriously, if you haven't seen it you just have to. It's mandatory. Most space stuff you can see pretty well with binoculars, like the Orion Nebula and the moons of Jupiter, but you'll need higher magnification to grab Saturn's rings and that means a telescope. In the Bad Old Days decent telescopes were usually prohibitively expensive, but not anymore. Orion's StarBlast has gotten uniformly great reviews (here and here for starters; Sky & Telescope and Astronomy both loved it but their reviews are behind paywalls) and it is under $180, so unless you're reading this from a library computer you've got the juice. A new Edmund Astroscan is just under $200, damn near indestructible, and will last forever.

It works well for kids, too, and it's tough enough you won't freak about that. If you need something bigger--something you might need more than one hand to carry outside, say--I got Shaft on sale for under $250 and it looks like a freakin' howitzer.

Back to task: Saturn. Look now, and save me some work in the future.

More glittering gems from my outbox: finishing the dissertation

2008-04-10T19:32:00.000-07:00

I don't update this thing very often, but I'm on e-mail all the time, and the profound wisdom and sparkling wit just comes jetting out of me like one of those lava fountains in Iceland. So I'm going geothermal here.

A recent correspondent asked me about dissertation stuff, and this is part of my response:

-------------------

....The most honest and useful advice I ever heard about dissertations came from Darren. I wrote to ask him what finishing was really like (this was when I was still a few months out). Tragically I've lost his original reply, but the gist was, "Eventually you will realize that you can't finish by treating the dissertation like a day job. It is a godforsaken monster that will continue to ruin your life until finally you've had enough and you just decide to kill it. After that, you may put in impossible hours and push yourself right to your limits, but you will finish. It's the only way I know to do it." [Darren, if you have the original thing you sent, please feel free to resend it or post it as a comment. UPDATE: Darren just posted it in a comment, below, and as I suspected it's much better than my paraphrase.]

That was certainly true in my case. The only thing that finally made me face finishing was my committee's insistence that I needed to get it done that semester. And even then I spent the first half of the spring of 2007 treating the diss. like a day job. It wasn't really until the final month and a half that I went into overdrive, literally staying up past my bedtime every night and gradually letting every other concern in my life slide. It sucked, bigtime. And after I filed I didn't look at the diss. at all for about three months. But I did get it done and filed.

It might be possible to just decide, "Okay, I'm going to finish my dissertation now," no matter where in the process you are, but I doubt it and I wouldn't recommend it even if it is possible. I think it's more like trying to climb Everest when there's a storm coming. There is some point up the side of the mountain when you are close enough to the summit to make a dash for it. There's no point in starting the dash until you're that close; otherwise you'll just exhaust yourself and possibly die of exposure. So for now just keep grinding away, a little here and a little there, until you are (a) sick to death of it and (b) close enough to make a run on the summit.

I read some books on writing when I was trying to write my diss--possibly more displacement activity--but none of them were worth a damn. The book that I wish I'd had then but only discovered recently is Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, which I cannot recommend highly enough. It's shelved in the Self-Help section at the bookstore, which strikes me as perverse. It's not really that. It's more like a personal philosophy on how to think about your work and all the things that keep you from getting it done....

------------------

I do recommend The War of Art, to everyone. Jarrod put me onto it. It's a short read, but pithy, and decidedly non-lame. I put it up there with Paul Graham's essays in terms of great writing about how to do useful stuff in the real world.

Are you getting your infrequently updated dose of strong language?

2008-04-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

You are if you read this blog, motherfucker!

Created by OnePlusYou

Perhaps this is why I'm known throughout the blogosphere as Matt effing Wedel.

Actually, when it comes to online cussing I'm kind of a pussy. I only learned about this from that bitch Julia, whose shitty blog is more than 200% cussier than mine.

Maybe I'll take the afternoon off and go to the museum.

Fuck.

Why we can see unimaginably distant galaxies from Earth, but not the moon landers

2008-04-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

Recent Correspondent: We know where the guys langed on the Sea of Tranquility (and the other missions too of course, not just 11), and though small, they left behind a lander and moon rover etc. So, I assume with a big enough telescope (and we have some monsters) we could just hunt around a bit, and actually *see* where we landed - right?

Me: Sorry, it's a good thought, but the landers and so on that we left behind are waaay too small to be seen by any telescope on earth or in orbit.

Recent Correspondent: I must say I am surprised. We have these scopes that appear to be able to see tiny little planets in other galaxies. I know that is a big object, but it is a shit load further away. I figured the size vs distance would be on the side of the lander...

When I replied, I was just repeating what I've read lots of places. I've never seen anyone actually demonstrate that it's true. So I am endeavoring to do so now. There are a couple of things to clear up here. The first is the discovery of extrasolar planets around other stars, and the second is whether size vs. distance is on the side of the moon landers, or the unimaginably distant galaxies.

Part 1: Extrasolar planets

We have not seen tiny little planets in other galaxies. There is a literally vast confusion of scale here. The most distant extrasolar planet discovered to date, OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, is only 21,000 light years away. On one hand, that is a hell of a long way away. Our ancestors were hunting down the last mainland mammoths when light from that planet's primary was barely halfway here. On the other hand, it's nothing. The Milky Way is estimated to be about 100,000 light years across, so OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb is only a fifth of the way across our own galaxy. The closest major galaxy to the Milky Way--excluding our dwarf satellite galaxies, like the Magellanic Clouds--is the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away. It is the most distant object that you can see with the naked eye, which is pretty cool, because the photons that fall into your unaugmented retina left Andromeda when our ancestors were banging rocks and dreaming of taming fire. But it is more than 100 times as distant as OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb.

It gets worse. Nobody from Earth has seen OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb. We only know it's there because of gravitational microlensing. The most distant planet we've actually seen is 2M1207b, if it actually is a planet and not some kind of dwarf star, and it's only 173 light years away.

In other news, the "hot Jupiter" that orbits HD 189733 has methane and water in its atmosphere. Here's how we know that. The planet above is not extrasolar; it's wholly terrestrial in origin.

So to sum up, all of the extrasolar planets we've found are in our own galaxy, and pretty close even on a galactic scale, and we've only directly imaged one of them, and the one we've imaged may be more of a failed star than a planet.

Part 2: Which is smaller, the Eagle or a smudge in the HUDF?

The Apollo Lunar Modules are about 14 feet in diameter, with a maximum landing gear spread of about 30 feet. At its closest approach, the moon is 225,000 miles away, or about 1.19 billion feet. So the ratio of size to distance is 1:40 million even if we use the landing gear spread, and 1:80 million if we use the vehicle itself.

The Apollo 17 lander was actually photographed from lunar orbit, but that's a distance of about 69 miles, not 225,000 miles. And it shows up as a single pixel, plus a pixel of shadow. You can see that photo, along with tons of cool zoomable moon landing site photos, here.

Although there are galaxies somewhat larger and much smaller than the Milky Way, let's say for the sake of argument that most galaxies are about 100,000 light years across. The most distant galaxies ever imaged, in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (shown above), are about 13 billion light years away. Which yields a ratio of size to distance of only 1:130,000, or about 300 times bigger than the moon landers to observers on Earth or in Earth orbit.

Which is why we can see galaxies on the other side of the universe from Earth, but not our own moon landers. The galaxies are indeed shitloads further away, but they are also many, many shitloads larger.

Feel free to poke holes in my math or logic.

Saturn

2008-03-27T06:01:00.001-07:00

This is what Saturn looks like at 120x from the polluted atmospheric swamp that is the central valley. On really clear nights, like right after a rain, it looks a lot better. This is my first Saturn photo ever. Not outstanding, but recognizable, which is pretty great considering that all I did was hold my camera up to the eyepiece of the telescope. And that if I had a tall enough ladder I could cut blocks of polluted air right out of the sky and sell them on the black market. As what, I don't know. Star-blockers, I guess. Constellation simplifiers. Troubled by that annoying Milky Way thing? Just look through one of these!

Actually it is just sad, because pictures are so flat compared to the experience. It is easy to look at a photo--especially this one--and think, "Meh." But every single time I find Saturn in the telescope my first thought is, "Holy shit, that's freakin' Saturn!" I will keep banging this drum as hard and loud as I can: the difference between seeing something in a picture and seeing it for yourself is as vast as the gulfs of space.

Credit where it's overdue

2008-03-24T00:56:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of an ass. Neil at microecos has been doing good work for practically ever and he frequently links to me and says nice things, and I've never returned the favor. Our meeting at SVP last year didn't produce so much as a ripple in the blogosphere, at least from my end. So I'm making up for it now by giving him the top space in my list of bio and paleo blogs (right sidebar), even above SV-POW! itself (for now).

Sorry dude.

If you're not Neil and also not on my sidebar but think you should be, let me know.

Dr. Vector's EXPLODING BRAINS Breakfast Massacre

2008-03-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Inspired by TheBrummell's Bachelor Chow, I present the first of my Dude Food recipes: Dr. Vector's EXPLODING BRAINS Breakfast Massacre. I know you just saw the full name in the title, but it's fun to say, and you're at my mercy, so: Dr. Vector's EXPLODING BRAINS Breakfast Massacre.

Ingredients for Dr. Vector's EXPLODING BRAINS Breakfast Massacre

bacon
frozen tater tots
bear grease (or olive oil)
garlic salt
black pepper
eggs
Worchestershire sauce
cheese
picante sauce
barbeque sauce
horseradish sauce
HP brown sauce (if available)

Instructions for Dr. Vector's EXPLODING BRAINS Breakfast Massacre

1. Fry the bacon to taste. I like mine flexible, but some folks prefer crunchy and that is very much in the spirit of the dish. Set it aside.

2. Throw the frozen tater tots into the bacon grease. Supplement with olive oil if there's not enough grease to get the job done, and if the tub of bear grease in your coldhouse is empty (ya wuss). As the tater tots thaw out, they'll start to fall apart. If you're moving them around with a fork or a spatula, you'll notice that the little tater bits start falling off the end, like those little white balls out of cheap styrofoam. Now you should be able to use your cooking implement to bust 'em apart and make hash browns out of them (you can skip this step if you started out with some form of diced potatoes, Mr. Fancy Pants). Season with whatever you like and fry 'em up. I prefer garlic salt and plain black pepper, but it's a free range, so do what you like. When the hash browns are done, scrape them off and set them aside.

3. Scramble some eggs. I like mine with the usual, garlic salt and black pepper, and a liberal splash of Worchestershire sauce. When the eggs are nearly done, hit them with the cheese. Let the cheese melt a little, then turn the whole mess over a couple of times so everything gets good and intertwingled.

4. Now it's time to start building the breakfast Frankenstein. Pile the cheesy eggs and hashbrowns on a plate. Chop or crumble the bacon and mix it in. Now top liberally--nay, excessively, as if your condiment bottles have Ebola and are crashing and bleeding out--with picante sauce, barbeque sauce, and horseradish sauce, and mix it all up. I used Pace, Bull's Eye, and whatever was in the fridge, respectively. If I'd been in England, I would have added some HP brown sauce. That stuff is awesome.

5. Feed! You don't have to watch Reanimator, Dead Alive, Slither, or Planet Terror while you feast, but that's also very much in the spirit of the dish, and is officially condoned by the Vector Institute of Advanced Gastronomy by Rank Amateurs. Also, depending on your location and level of health, you may be able to save some time by just calling 911 before commencing gustation.

Why is it called Dr. Vector's EXPLODING BRAINS Breakfast Massacre? Because if you've done your job right--mainly by jacking up the condiment level in Step 4 to Ludicrous Speed--the resulting mess looks exactly like somebody blew a zombie's brains out all over your plate. And also because if anyone is watching you cook, their brains will probably explode during Step 4. And because when you get your first taste of the bacony eggy cheesy potatoey Worcestery picantey barbequey horseradishy peppery salty sweet spicy flavor supernova, your brain will also explode. Guaranteed or your money back.

But especially because I am a Tenacious D fan, for miles on to Zanzibar.

im in ur tv, wokn wif dinesorz

2008-03-18T23:32:00.000-07:00

Walking With Dinosaurs will be on the Discovery Channel on Easter Sunday. Same old animation, new talking head bits. I'm gonna be a talking head. So are some other Padianites--should be a Padianlabstravaganza. Watch it or die.

A ring around the moon

2008-03-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

There is something in the sky tonight that is a bit thicker than haze and a bit thinner than clouds, and it made an awesome halo around the setting sun, which I did not capture on pixels, and another awesome halo around the rising moon, which I did. However, capturing the halo meant leaving the shutter open for four seconds, which was enough time for every faulty pixel on my Nikon's five-year-old CCD to fire and junk up the image with noise. So right now it only looks good at very small size, so that's all I'm giving you. It will only take about 15 minutes in Photoshop or Gimp to clean it up, but that's more time than I can spend on it right now, so you'll just have to wait.

UPDATE: the cleaned up full version is here.

Double promo special

2008-03-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

Gotta give a shout-out to my man Dave Hone, who is one of the geniuses behind Ask A Biologist, which celebrates its first anniversary today, and the sole genius behind Archosaur Musings. Stop by both and say hi for me.

The picture above is the proposed cover art for Dave's upcoming Nature-Science Secret Origins Super Team-Up, which I am leaking to you because I am also a little bit awesome.

Aetogate news

2008-03-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

I'm temporarily hosting Aetogate while Mike Taylor celebrates his 40th birthday with a 3-day bacchanalia. If you would like to know what Aetogate is, go here. If anything big breaks in the next 72 hours, I'm on it.

UPDATE: New blog coverage. John Fleck has a link to Bill Parker's rebuttal of Spencer Lucas's report to the DCA. Why is this important? Lucas's long defense of his actions was heralded by some in the VP community as evidence that he was innocent and that we could all put this behind us. However, Lucas's statement is at odds with the facts in many places, as Parker's rebuttal demonstrates (with abundant documentation). All of us involved in this continue to urge you to look at all of the evidence (on both sides) and draw your own conclusions.

Got binoculars? Make some science.

2008-03-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

This Saturday night a bright star in Taurus will be occulted (eclipsed) by the moons of the asteroid Eugenia. Yeah, that's right, the moons of an asteroid. If you didn't know asteroids had moons, check this out. Anyway, observers in the southern US and Mexico can help astronomers determine the positions of the moons by--get this--watching the star go off and on and noting the times. For this, even the largest telescopes on Earth are less useful than you are, as long as you have binoculars, a timekeeping device, and some idea of where you are. Details here, instructions and finder charts here (scroll down to the hideous yellow part).

The photo above shows the 53-km-long asteroid 243 Ida and its tiny, 1.4-km moon Dactyl. Stolen from Wikipedia.