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March 31, 2008
Your blogger has been falling down on the job!
The whole idea of facTotem was to share with you some of the juiciest background links I found for further reading related to the articles in the current issue of the magazine. Obviously, the necessary nimble rhythm has so far eluded me—mostly because the tiger debate took a long time to happen, and because the current issue can get pushed into the back of my brain while I’m busy fact checking two months ahead.
So I just looked back through my link stash, and found some gems you shouldn’t miss just because I haven’t quite got the knack of this yet, and they refer to the March magazine on your shelf (and to other links on this Web site) rather than the April issue fresh on the table.
Here they are. April Fool’s spring cleaning, and then I’ll be caught up and will keep up.
March
“No Taming the Shrew” by Kenneth Catania
The New York Times and The New Scientist cover Kenneth Catania’s original research on underwater sniffing by the star-nosed mole, an extraordinary creature that has turned its nose into a burst of tactile tentacles. Catania himself wrote about the extraordinary organ eight years ago in Natural History.
You know that spouses come to resemble each other (you’ll find out why in the May issue), and so do pets and their owners, but scientists and their research subjects?? This headline announcing Catania’s MacArthur Foundation fellowship seems to imply as much. The temptation to Photoshop was nearly irresistible. Pin the nose on the scientist.
But it’s the brain that’s the extraordinary organ par excellence (click here to have yours utterly boggled by an account of how neurons in a developing fetus connect to the right “destinations”), and Catania’s own definitely merits the MacArthur “genius grant.” He is, among other things, an awesome underwater high-speed photographer (look again at that March cover), and his work on mapping the mammalian cortex (photo not to be missed) has far-reaching implications.
Natural Moment: “Hands Up! The Natural Explanation” by Erin Espelie
Espelie had the inspiration of calling sea otters “’aww’-inspiring.” Language Log has a marvelous riff on the “vocal display” that is the “awww” sound—and how many “w”s we think it should take!
Life Zone: “Inside the Code” by Olivia Judson
How genes got funny names like “Sonic Hedgehog,” and why HUGO, the Human Genome Organization, wants to change them.
“Art for the Ages”: Interview by Richard Milner
Modern “master paleoartist” William Stout cites the great Charles R. Knight, the pioneer of natural history painting (whose famous dinosaur murals grace the AMNH), as his primary influence. Here is a Web site devoted to Knight, where you can compare his classics with Stout’s slightly more psychedelic visions.
Endpaper: “Silk City” by Hank Guarisco
If you were fascinated (or creeped out) by the story of the giant spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas, tale-spinning blogger Spider Joe has much, much more.
While you enjoy all this wonderful stuff, I’ll be delving into April.
(Annie Gottlieb) |
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