Another porpoise species on the brink of extinction: “The recently declared extinction of the Chinese river dolphin has focused attention on the plight of another imperiled marine mammal—the world’s smallest porpoise. Found only in waters off Mexico, the vaquita may now be the most endangered of any whale or dolphin species, due to the animal’s frequent and fatal entanglements in fishing nets, experts say. The International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA), a conservation research group, estimates only 250 to 400 of the elusive marine mammals remain.”
What’s Up 2007 is Now Available: You can download the free PDF that explains what astronomical sights are available for viewing throughout 2007. I used this for 2006 and found it to be a great reference.
I once sang the praises of Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park and a library of other works generally centered around science with at least entertaining spins. Unfortunately, his work has been scraping bottom for some time and, given his defiant attitude toward global warming and his overly-friendly hobnobbing with Bush and Rove, I lost interest in him a few years ago. Now, there’s even more reason to loathe the man, not to mention ignore his rapidly declining attempts to write something interesting. Read the article. It’s disturbing, and it illuminates Crichton’s tantrum-like infantile behavior when people say things he doesn’t like. It makes one wonder precisely whose penis is small…
Put your shocked faces on, poppets, because this will truly surprise you beyond anything you could ever have imagined: Most Americans have had premarital sex, study finds. That’s right. Our conservative government’s focus on abstinence-only sex education seems to have overlooked a major aspect of that approach: that it doesn’t work and people are going to have sex regardless of what the morality police demand. “Almost all Americans have premarital sex, says a report published Tuesday that analyzes federal data over time and suggests programs focusing on sexual abstinence until marriage may be unrealistic. ‘The reality of the situation is that most people had premarital sex, and it’s been that way for several decades,’ says Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York City-based non-profit organization that studies reproductive and sexual health. The study, which used statistics from the 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, asked about 40,000 people ages 15-44 about their sexual behavior and traced the trends in premarital sex back to the 1950s. Of those interviewed in 2002, 95% reported they had had premarital sex; 93% said they did so by age 30. Among women born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 did. At the same time, people are waiting longer to marry; 2005 data show median age at first marriage is just over 25 for women and 27 for men. The study may fuel the debate over efforts by the federal government and others to fund programs that encourage abstinence until marriage. Such programs stress that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable way to prevent pregnancy or disease. Finer says the data suggest that abstinence programs face an ‘extremely high hurdle. … Is it really feasible to make it normative behavior to have everyone wait until they’re married to have sex?’ He says the margin of error is less than one percentage point.”
There really is a War on Christmas™, and it’s all explained in Tangled Bank #69. All that great science writing in one place must mean something, right?
The Philosophers’ Carnival #40 has some great entries to peruse.
This creature from the deep ocean looks like something right out of a science fiction story. In fact, it’s quite reminiscent of Starship Troopers, is it not?