Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning thundershowers with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 50m 22s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated. The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. On this day in 1776, according to American colonial reports, Ezra Lee…
Science/Nature
Cats, Medicine, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Cats’ Genomes
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In One More Thing We Have in Common With Cats, Katherine Wu writes about the similarities between feline and human genomes: Cats, it turns out, harbor genomes that look and behave remarkably like ours. “Other than primates, the cat-human comparison is one of the closest you can get,” with respect to genome organization, Leslie Lyons, an…
Documentary, Film, Science/Nature
I Changed Astronomy Forever. He Won the Nobel Prize for It
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
?? Growing up in a Quaker household, Jocelyn Bell Burnell was raised to believe that she had as much right to an education as anyone else. But as a girl in the 1940s in Northern Ireland, her enthusiasm for the sciences was met with hostility from teachers and male students. Undeterred, she went on to…
City, Coronavirus, Culture, Education, Public Health, School District, Science/Nature
Wise Words for Whitewater from Steak-umm
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s a thread on Twitter from Steak-umm (an American brand of thin-sliced frozen steaks) that does a better job (truly) discussing the role of science and skepticism about the pandemic than much of what’s published online. The full thread is available at Twitter, and excerpts are imediately below. It’s spot-on for Whitewater. (Note: the thread…
Art, Cartoons & Comics, Education, Science/Nature, Technology
From Comic-Con@Home 2021: The Science of Art
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
How is STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) used to inspire and create our most beloved popular arts? What do portrayals of science and scientists in popular media get right and wrong? From world-building to special effects and cosplay, IF/THEN ambassadors (www.ifthenshecan.org) Sydney Hamilton (aerospace engineer), Myria Perez (paleontologist), Dr. Samantha Thi Porter (archaeologist), and Dr.…
Coronavirus, Culture, Politics, Public Health, School District, Science/Nature
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Science
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It seemed reasonable, months ago, to wait until the end of the 2020-2021 school year to assess how well the Whitewater Unified School District managed the pandemic. It doesn’t seem so reasonable now, for reasons of culture as much as public health. Generally – and sensibly – one has reason to be skeptical of lay…
Science/Nature, Sen. Ron Johnson, What Me Worry?
Famous Moments in Climatology: Sen. Ron Johnson Shares His Insights
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Why Cats Do These 6 Things
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Narimes Parakul writes Why your cat does these 6 things, according to science: Having a cat (or several) can add companionship and warmth to any household. As you share each other’s space, however, you may have noticed a few quirks that your cat exhibits, varying from adorable to plainly bizarre. Emma Grigg, animal behaviorist with…
Coronavirus, Culture, Education, Science/Nature
On COVID-19 Skeptics
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
It was likely, as it was a century ago during a prior pandemic, that significant numbers of Americans would argue falsely there was no pandemic (‘just like the regular flu’), that if it were a pandemic it would go away (‘like a miracle’), that anyone talking about illness was merely fearful (as though discussions of…
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: A Study on Cats & Milk Prebiotics
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Lauren Quinn reports Milk prebiotics are the cat’s meow, research shows: If you haven’t been the parent or caregiver of an infant in recent years, you’d be forgiven for missing the human milk oligosaccharide trend in infant formulas. These complex carbohydrate supplements mimic human breast milk and act like prebiotics, boosting beneficial microbes in babies’ guts.…
Cats, Plants, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: ‘Nip
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
[Leonora Enking, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.] Inverse has an article on The science behind catnip’s potent powers: Catnip’s pungent odor comes from a chemical called nepetalactone. It helps the plant repel insects. But this research takes us further into the evolution of nepetalactone using genetic analysis. According to study co-author Benjamin Lichman, a…
Archaeology, Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Cat Geoglyph Found Among Nazca Lines
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: Cats Along the Silk Road
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Science Magazine has an article asking readers Care For Cats? So Did People Along The Silk Road More Than 1,000 Years Ago: Common domestic cats, as we know them today, might have accompanied Kazakh pastoralists as pets more than 1,000 years ago. This has been indicated by new analyses done on an almost complete cat skeleton…
Federal Government, Science/Nature, William Barr
Attorney General William Barr Fails Chemistry (and Trial Advocacy)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
On CBS’s Face the Nation, United States Attorney General William Barr offered his scientific assessment of the use of pepper spray, by contending that “pepper spray is not a chemical irritant…it’s not a chemical.” (See transcript, Face the Nation, 6.7.20). As science — This is false – and wackily ignorant: of course pepper spray is…