Many of you have heard about the recent paper by Mark Witton and Scibling Darren Naish called A Reappraisal of Azhdarchid Pterosaur Functional Morphology and Paleoecology. The paper has received a large amount of press due, mainly, to the conclusion that the Azhdarchids were terrestrial stalkers like some species of modern stork and ground hornbills. Ordinarily, I would be blogging about the osteological aspects of the paper - and there are plenty of them - but I want to focus on something different (and just as important for the paper). In the meantime, if you want to know more about the osteology Greg Laden sums it up for you. What I would like to focus on is the paleoecological and taphonomical aspects of the paper.

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Discovery launched

This is important for two reasons:

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tags: West 86th street subway art, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC

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tags: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, charities, prequel

At the request of UK bookseller, Waterstone's, JK Rowling recently wrote an 800-word outline for a Harry Potter prequel, all to benefit the British charity Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Dyslexia Action is the UK's leading provider of services and support for people with dyslexia and literacy difficulties, and PEN is an international fellowship of writers who are working to promote literature and defend the freedom to write.

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By way of Lindsay, I read that David Corn relates the following about former Republican senator and McCain advisor Phil Gramm (italics mine):

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I'm in Kirkwall on the Orkney islands for a conference on maritime societies in the Viking and Medieval periods. It's a lovely sunny evening, which is apparently a rare and precious occurrence around these parts. The dialect is also something to experience: the waitress at the fish & chips shop I'm in took my order and then asked "Ta se' en?". On the third try I managed to understand that she wondered if I wanted to sit in, that is, to eat my fresh skate on the premises. I do.

And now I'm outside on the dock, smelling the sea, hearing a blackbird and the occasional seagull. Hardly any cars here of a weekend evening, blissfully quiet. When no storm is howling, I suppose.

Kirkwall. That's pure Norse, like most place names here. Means Greensward of the Church, Kyrkvallen in Swedish. It refers to St. Magnus Cathedral, a Romanesque sandstone edifice that I visited briefly upon arrival. A security guy from the airport gave me a ride into town and dropped me off outside.

Getting colder as the sun sinks. I should get moving!

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Bouphonia: The Conservatism to Come.

SciCurious: Weird Science: it's Friday!. Since I do not have time and energy for my Friday Weird Sex Blogging series, I am glad that someone picked up on it. This post is about condoms and why they break.

Echidne: He Loved Horses

Two excellent posts and comment threads - I wish these guys were blogging back when I was in grad school: PhysioProf: Strategic Planning: How To Complete Fascinating Projects And Publish Them In Top Journals and DrugMonkey: Strategic Planning: How to Secure Funding in a Climate of Arbitrary Selection

Anna Kushnir wrote a letter to WIRED Science: Why are Senior Female Scientists so Heavily Outnumbered by Men? There are mysogynist idiots in the comments who need a dose of organic shoe-polish....

Sukhdev in Web Land: What can Bloggers do for Open Access? and Open Access: What it is and why it is required for scholarly community?

A little promotional stuff: I'm Sorry I Haven't a Kluge and It takes a village.

Jay Rosen: What Happened to Scott McClellan in Longer Perspective: 100 Years of the White House Press

Henry Gee: The Ecology at the Maison Des Girrafes and The Zoology at the Maison Des Girrafes.

Janet comments on this article: Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research

So, Bill Clinton did not, in kids' minds, change the definition of sex.

Are they nuts? Belgian media reject 20th and 21st century.

Do you know the nationality of scientists? Quiz Time! Part 2: country of origin

Glenn Greenwald: Scott McClellan on the 'liberal media', Network news anchors praise the job they did in the run-up to the war, CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative, The right-wing Politico cesspool and Interview with former 'Donahue' producer and MSNBC pundit Jeff Cohen.

Carl Zimmer on E.coli.

Jonathan Eisen: Top 10 Things Francis Collins Might Do After NHGRI

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I used to tout every bit of media interest I've gotten, but lately it's hardly seemed worth it. Press outreach is part of my job, so a quote in a newspaper in Florida, or a radio interview in Pennsylvania, doesn't do much for the ego any more.

I will note with interest this article at conservative news site CNSnews, relating to anti-science bills that have been introduced in several states. The author talks to Expelled producer Walt Ruloff, Expelled star Carolyn Crocker, Disco. 'tuter Casey Luskin and the legislator who introduced Louisiana's version of the noxious bill. Pleasantly enough, he gave me more or less the last word:

"What are teachers not able to teach now that will be able to teach as a result of these bills?" asked Joshua Rosenau, a spokesman for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). "What is it exactly that these bills are supposed to protect? It seems to me like the teachers already have most of the rights that these (bills) protect, and so there certainly is a suspicion that these are intended to open the door to creationism and other topics that don't belong in science classes."

Moreover, the kind of instruction that would occur on the high school level, if the bills become law, would be counterproductive, Rosenau argued. The presentation of alternative viewpoints that stray from the scientific consensus is better suited for the college environment, he said.

"Students at high school don't have background to understand the scientific debate because they haven't learned the basics yet, Rosenau observed. High school should be about what the scientists agree on so the students are prepared. That's where this whole idea behind these bills gets weird. A 101 class in college is where it's more appropriate to get into where scientists who are on the cutting edge have disputes. Instead of protecting rights, this could be about promoting bad pedagogy. [Note that the quotation marks never close. I think the last sentence is a bit mangled from what I actually said.]

Rosenau's organization has been highly critical of the "Expelled" film saying the accusations of scientific censorship are greatly overblown. An entire Web site is devoted to exposing what the NSCE views as "anti-science propaganda."

Oddly, Expelled screenwriter Kevin Miller cannot grasp my point. He quotes the bit about high school being where students learn the basics, and suggests that this:

Seems rather strange seeing as the NCSE is one of the first to argue that healthy debate is the essence of science.

Indeed it is. And healthy debate must be informed. Ninth-graders don't have the basic knowledge to debate actual scientific disputes, let alone pseudo-philosophical pap like ID or other sorts of creationism. If they want to get into scientific debates such as the relative significance of neutral drift and natural selection over the history of life, they should do that in college or grad school, after they've learned what DNA is, why natural selection works, and how neutral drift happens.

Giving kids that background in high school is how you ensure that, when the students grow up, they can engage in healthy, well-informed, debate. Otherwise you've just got a bunch of immature brats mouthing off. We get enough of that on cable news shows.

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So almost exactly a year ago, Michael 'LiLo' Behe released his prized pig book, 'Edge of Evolution', where he stated, with utmost certainty, that HIV-1 'has not evolved'.

Yeah, that hasnt worked out too well for him.

Anyway, unlike Ivory Handed Creationists who dont lower themselves to doing anything as dirty as 'research', scientists have kept busy seeking out new proteins within our own bodies to explain some weird evolution in the Vpu gene of HIV-1. Turns out there is a component of the innate immune system that we didnt even know existed before we followed the trail of Vpus 'unimpressive' and 'pathetic' evolution-- tetherin. Tetherin is a way all of your cells can defend themselves against retroviruses (or wayward ERVs). It prevents progeny viruses from spreading-- they stay stuck to the infected cell. Neato!

Well, thats where we left those pathetic evilutionists desperately clinging to Darwinism three months ago. What have they done since?

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Classic Science Papers: The 2008 'Challenge', what will hopefully turn into a carnival, is up on Skulls in the Stars and it if full of really cool posts.

Friday Ark #193 is up on the Modulator

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