The Strangest Mix

The PodGoober randomizer has just offered what may be the strangest mix I’ve ever heard: from the Kinks (All Day and All of the Night – what some might argue was the first punk song) to Benny Goodman. Bedlam.

Doping v. Real Medicine

There’s a fascinating anecdote in Peter Spotts’ Christian Science Monitor piece on athletes and doping. After publishing results of tests on a new compound that showed promise in growing extraordinary muscles in mice, University of Pennsylvania researchers were inundated with requests for information, but not from people in the medical community: After the university published …

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On British Bees

Of possible interest to at least one Inkstain reader, there’s a paper in last week’s Science documenting the decline in bee diversity in Britain and the Netherlands. It’s of potential significance because of the importance of pollinators to our ability to grow food, though, as the authors note, “the evidence for such declines remains scanty.”

Early Spring

Interesting new bit of work by Dirmeyer and Brubaker in GRL about the effects of early spring on northern hemisphere water budgets: Over most mid- and high-latitude areas, a strong annual cycle of recycling ratio exists; low during winter when storm tracks are active, tropospheric circulation strong, and surface evaporation rates low, high during summer …

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The Hurricane Record

There’s good reason to think the whole hurricane-global warming debate is a huge distraction, because of its relative lack of importance in understanding societal hurricane risk. (See Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog for the latest in many, many discussions of the data suggesting that building houses on the beach is the most important risk factor in …

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