Cephalopodcast

Just testing the connection between MarsEdit and my updated Wordpress blog.

Please standby. I am updating my Wordpress blog to a new version today, Sunday, 3/9/2008. Some services may not be restored until after 5:00 p.m. (EDT)

[via metafilter]

I wrote about the Creature from the Black Lagoon back in October. Sad to report that Ben Chapman, the actor that played the Gill Man, has passed away at the age of 79.

Chapman was a retired real estate executive. But his role as the Gill Man — the quintessential 1950s monster in Universal Pictures’ black-and-white film in 3-D — became his worldwide calling card and made him a darling on the collectibles and sci-fi circuit throughout the world.

The Gill Man’s place in the Universal monster lineage was a priority for Chapman, since he was the longtime lone survivor in a parade of horror monster flicks that dated to the 1920s. He cited predecessors Lon Chaney Sr. in “Phantom of the Opera” and “Hunchback of Notre Dame” in the 1920s, Bela Lugosi in “Dracula” and Boris Karloff in “Frankenstein” in the 1930s, and Lon Chaney Jr. in “The Wolf Man” and “The Mummy” in the 1940s.

• Ben Chapman, 10/29/28-2/21/08
• The Honolulu Advertiser, ‘Black Lagoon’ star Ben Chapman, 79

SciVee is about the free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science. Created for scientists, by scientists, SciVee moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theater taking advantage of the internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice. SciVee is operated in partnership with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).

SciVee^alpha is a video sharing site for science. The concept is that a researcher links the PubMed ID or DOI of their paper to SciVee, then records ten minutes of video or audio discussing the highlights and concepts in the article. The site allows the video or audio to be synchronized with figures from the article. The next step involves the SciVee community then commenting on and discussing the new pubcast.

For an example, here is Christopher L. Dupont from Scripps discussing his co-authored work, Modern proteomes contain putative imprints of ancient shifts in trace metal geochemistry from PNAS.

Currently the site is in its alpha release. There does not appear to be any way to embedded SciVee videos on your own blog, a la YouTube. It would also be nice if their was a recommendation scheme, where the site suggested related materials or similar research. But it might be too early to effectively do that with a small database.

In addition to discussions of original research, there are several educational science shorts you can view. In particular, BioMEDIA has snippets from several of their videos on animal diversity (see below). BioMEDIA allows some limited educational use of their content. They are also offering a couple of free posters if folks register with their site.

So what do you think? Can scientist master the art of communicating to an Internet audience? Should they be expected to? Know anyone who has uploaded content to SciVee?

• A Video Overview of SciVee
• BioMEDIA Associates: Biology of Echinoderms (seastars and sea cucumbers)
• BioMEDIA Associates: Biology of Cnidarians (sea jellies)
• BioMEDIA Associates: Biology of Annelids (worms)
• Microbe World: Save the Oysters
• Robert Alan Weiss’ free love Protein Synthesis

The Best of Ocean Blogging

The idea of a blog carnival is to highlight the best blog posts on a specific theme during a given period of time. Someone collects all those posts and turns them into one uber-posting called a “carnival.” Thus the Blue Carnival is a community of ocean-related blogging and bloggers representing the other 70% of our planet. It was kicked off on World Ocean Day 2007 by Mark Powell (blogfish).

The Cephalopodcast

I am pleased and honored to host the Carnival of the Blue here at the Cephalopodcast Web Site this month. I started this little blog and podcast back in 2005. The site is mostly about science, especially marine science, and science education, particularly in the K-12 arena. It’s also about how technology is changing the way we gather and understand information about the world around us. And it’s about cephalopods too, of course. The actual podcasts are produced irregularly as time and tide permit. More details here, including an exciting colophon and disclaimer.

Any errors or omissions in this entry are my own. For corrections or additions, please contact me at pulpodcast [at] gmail . com.

On With The Show

The first entry was sent in by the annotated budak, and takes us on a night out at a sandy/seagrassy shore on the east coast of Singapore and a walk through the Sungei Buloh mangroves and wetlands. Some of the imagery seems more like verse than prose. And the tidepool photos are wonderful.

An underbelly of worms, larvae and living crawlers

There is a serenity in this swamp that lies between the narrow sea and the fetid heartland. Beneath their toes of lignin, the stilted trees bind the outpouring of inland soils, holding fertile wastes in trust and dispensing the interest in servings of nutrition too minute for turbid exuberance. Serving two masters, they form a living levee against the encroachment of saline floods and host the fruit of the sea whose unripe bounty shelter in their protective shade. More…

Surfing on over to the Daily Kos, Mark from the Biomes blog contributes an entry from his excellent Marine Life Series, this one devoted to mole crabs.

If you’ve ever visited a beach on the East Coast, you most likely have encountered mole crabs without even knowing it. Perfectly camouflaged, if exposed by a wave, a person’s foot or a child digging at the surf’s edge, it will dive back under the sand before your eyes can even register that it was there. More…

Like the mole crab, I’ve taken an interest in the intertidal recently, but confine my collection to the uninhabited castoffs of the critters there. Unfortunately, Rick from Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets reminds us that there is a rather robust trade in marine life as curiosities, both living and dead.

Dust for your pleasure

The international shell and ocean curio trade places a tremendous pressure upon tropical coastal resources. Much of the shells, sea stars, and other ocean life that appear in markets (from specialty shell shops to megastores like Walmarts) are sourced from the Philippines…Honestly, if I were to think where I’ve seen the most sea stars in my life, the answer would probably be in miscellaneous friends and families bathrooms. More…

Originally, the saying may have been “happy as a clam at high water,” suggesting that a clam at high tide was pleased to be safe from aquatic predators. But not so for the quahog that Mark describes over at blogfish. New research suggest that these creatures might be the oldest living animals on earth. And you may have unwittingly eaten them in your chowder.

The real fate of the world’s oldest animal is missing from the news. Everyone’s talking about one old clam, without noticing that we eat these little buggers. Scientists found a 405 year old ocean quahog in the ocean off Iceland, from a depth of 260 feet. This “Shakespeare” clam, alive when the bard was still writing plays, was only about 3 1/2 inches long. More…

Taking another look at this matter is Kate Wing, from the NRDC Switchboard. In her entry, Harder, vaster, older, longer, she also shows us how to think about tiny things becoming big things in the sea.

For both the clam and the garbage patch, persistence is a matter of small, constant steps, which aggregate into a larger achievement: a really old clam, or an enormous soup of waste. It’s part of the magic of the ocean that through currents and gyres and sheer tenacity it can transform the tiniest particles into something much greater, for better or for worse. More…

Mike from 10,000 Birds takes us on a different wing with the Siren Song of the Seawatch

The truth is that the ocean is teeming with birdlife. To take in the pelagic birds like tubenoses, jaegers, skuas, and alcids, you usually have to cruise out beyond the continental shelf. But if you stake out the right stretch of seashore, you can spot all of those birds and metaphorical boatloads of others. What is a seawatch? It’s nothing more or less than watching birds at sea. More…

It’s easy enough to grab a pair of binoculars to observe and appreciate your favorite megafauna. But if you are interested in looking at some of the many little things in the sea, you need different technology, as discovered by Hugh Powell from surf.bird.scribble. He wrote about how scientist have recently captured micro-flotsam in holographic action movies.

…imagine my surprise when I learned today that far from being a passe (and possibly cheesy) method of listening to classic rock, laser holography is totally brand-new. And you use it for watching killer plankton hunt down their prey inside a drop of water. More…

As mentioned earlier, these micro-flotsams are the beginnings of much bigger things in the sea. This notion was framed rather well by Carl Safina from the Blue Ocean blog. On a recent trip to Alaska, he had a unique opportunity to observe for himself how small changes can make a big difference.

As ice melts earlier, the whole marine ecosystem is changing. Rich spring plankton blooms used to happen when ice melted around April. At that time there was enough sunlight for photosynthesis by single-celled plant plankton (phytoplankton) but it was too cold for tiny animal “zooplankton.” The plant-plankton bloomed and sank, taking nutrients to the bottom, creating rich seafloor populations of shrimp-like amphipods and shellfish that were heavily relied on by Gray Whales, Walruses, diving ducks, and others. More…

Miriam Goldstein’s Oyster’s Garter is a new entrant to the carnival this month (tagline: Science, technology, and shellfish gone wild. Set in horrifically sunny San Diego). Echoing some of Carl’s concerns about cliamte change, Miriam wrote about several schemes to manipulate algae growth on a massive scale.

• A series of tubes: Good for the internet AND global warming!
• The return of the son of the spawn of iron fertilization
• Carbon export is dead stuff and poop, and so are Planktos’ arguments

Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-blogger from the Intersection sciblog and the PBS/Wired Correlations blog also had some filings from the field of iron fertilization. But a more ironic topic she covered was new research suggesting that small scale fishermen are actually having a bigger impact on loggerhead sea turtles than industrial factory fleets.

Never underestimate the impact of the little guys…at least when it comes to fishing practices and North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles…small-scale operations are a greater threat to the survival of loggerheads than large industrial practices. This finding comes after 10 years of research and what makes it interesting is the result is not quite what we’d expect… More…

Conservation of a different kind was on the mind of Kevin from The Other 95% blog. He spent some time trying to figure out the economics of Indonesia swapping national debt for reef protection

…Indonesia is promising greater coral reef protection in exchange for forgiveness of portions of its national debt. Congress is expected to approve…Will bribing Indonesia to protect [it']s reefs work? Indonesia has the financial incentive to protect its reefs without any additional rewards. I think this reflects the lack of long-term thinking in politics. More…

And Jennifer from the Shifting Baselines blog co-created this video for your consideration:

Last year 417 manatees in the U.S. were killed, most of them by motorboats. It’s enough to make your heart explode. Literally. Watch this contribution from Shifting Baselines.

Cephalaneous Items

A couple of entries for this month’s carnival don’t fit the format, but they’ve got cephalopods, so sucker it.

First up is my entry for the carnival. The biggest day in Cephalopodcast history happened this past month. On October 8, 2007, visits to the blog more than quadrupled for Cephalopod Awareness Day. The idea was kind of like a mini-carnival, with folks blogging about and celebrating cephalopod diversity. My thanks go out to PZ Myers and the +50 others who contributed posts. It was a lot of fun, and I hope to have an even bigger, more coordinated effort next year. So start planning now!

Also, even though it is a little old, I like the entry from Chris of the Ouroboros blog.

I’ve always considered cephalopods (specifically, octopuses) fascinating from a neuroscience perspective, ever since I found out that they could get depressed…Do cephalopod brains suffer from neurodegenerative diseases as a function of aging, and do they share with mammalian brains the greater sensitivity of neurons to protein aggregation? More…

Finally, Lise kindly pointed me to the Cephalopod Along Web site. It’s a knit along party for folks who like to create cephalopods. Everyone needs a little tentacle in their lives. It’s the kind of project that can get under your skein.

Dive in Again Next Month for Carnival of the Blue #7

Carnival of the Blue #7 will be hosted on Natural Patriot blog. Send your submissions to Emmett Duffy (jeduffy [at] vims . edu) or Mark Powell (mpowell [at] oceanconservancy . org). Remember to include: post author, URL and a brief description.

Also, if you are interested in hosting the Carnival of the Blue on your Web site, contact Mark for available slots.

Blue Carnival LIVE event, 01/19/08

A couple of Blue Carnival clowns regulars will be hosting a panel discussion at the NC Science Blogging Conference on January 19, 2008. The topic will be: Real-time blogging in the marine sciences. Please join us in North Carolina if you can, or join the conversation online. More details appearing soon at the wiki.

Previous Blue Carnivals

• Carnival of the Blue #5: Shifting Baselines
• Carnival of the Blue #4: The Saipan Blog
• Carnival of the Blue #3: Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets
• Carnival of the Blue #2: blogfish
• Carnival of the Blue #1: blogfish

The Carnival of the Blue Web badge is available under a Creative Commons license in a variety of sizes and a couple of colors.

The Circus of the Spineless is a blog carnival celebrating the diversity of invertebrates. This month’s festivities are hosted over at the Other 95% blog. I submitted my What The Shell #2 for your consideration.

Blogfish was kind enough to tag me with the Hallomeme. Before it’s too late, I wanted to plunge deeper into one of his suggestions for an aquatic-themed scary movie.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon

The quintessential aquatic monster movie for me is The Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was scary because I grew up on a lake. Scary because that lake was in Florida, where the movie was filmed. Scary because my older sisters liked to wrap themselves in bog moss and tickle my legs, like the Gill Man did to Kay Lawrence. And it was scary because of Dick Bennick.

Dick Bennick was better know locally as Dr. Paul Bearer. At the time of his death in 1995, he was America’s longest running horror movie host. With him it was easy enough to segue from a morning filled with cartoons to a afternoon of Creature Feature on Channel 44, WTOG. I rarely knew ahead of time what horrible old movie would be showing. But I always hoped it would either be Gamera or the Black Lagoon.

Synopsis: Cuter than Cthulhu

Creature from the Black Lagoon was a black-and-white film released on March 5, 1954. It was filmed and originally released in 3-D and is considered a classic of the 1950s.

A geology expedition in the Amazon uncovers fossilized evidence of a link between land and sea animals in the form of a skeletal hand with webbed fingers. Another expedition is sent back to the Amazon to look for the remainder of the skeleton. However, when they return they discover that the entire research team has been mysteriously killed, perhaps by a jaguar. Excavations turn up nothing. But it’s suggested that perhaps thousands of years ago part of the embankment with the skeleton washed downriver. The tributary empties into the eponymous “Black Lagoon,” where unbeknownst, the amphibious “gill man” is watching, taking a special interest in the beautiful Kay Lawrence. The brave male scientist dive to collect fossils. But when Kay goes swimming, she is stalked by the creature. It gets caught in the ship’s draglines, and while trying to escape, leaves behind a claw, revealing its existence.

Further encounters with the creature claim the lives of some of the crew members, before the gill man is captured and locked in a cage aboard the steamer. When it escapes, Kay hits the gill man with a lantern. As they ship leaves for civilization, the way is blocked by fallen logs, courtesy of the escaped gill man. More tragedy as the monster abducts Kay and takes her to his cavern lair. The survivors chase and rescue her. The creature is riddled with bullets and stabbed in the heart, before sinking myseriously into the depths of the Black Lagoon.

Modern Monsters

If you read the lost interview with Dr Paul Bearer, you get a sense of what a racket it was to schedule television programming back in those days. A similar sentiment comes through in this interview with Ben Chapman, the actor who portrayed the original gill man on land (Ricou Browning did the UW scenes).

We complain about the odious content restrictions of the RIAA and MPAA nowadays. But the crazy thing is, for the moment, I no longer have to wait through a month of Saturdays for it to show. I can watch it right now, for free, via Google video.

And maybe next year I will remember to order the feet, hands and head for a Gill Man costume.

• Lost interview with “Creature Feature” host Dr Paul Bearer, aka Dick Bennick
• Interview with The Gillman, Ben Chapman
• More Ben Chapman at the Reel Gill Man
• Google Video: The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
• IMDb: The Creature From The Black Lagoon
• Wikipedia: The Creature From The Black Lagoon
• Bonus: Gill Man skull

Carnival of the Blue #6 will be appearing here on November 5, 2007. Remember to send in your submissions early and often. For your blogging convenience, web badges are available in different sizes and colors.

What is the Carnival of the Blue?

The idea of the blog carnival is to highlight really good blog posts on a given theme during a certain period of time. Someone collects those posts and turns them into one uber-posting called a “carnival.” Carnival themes can vary from cats to causes to the crazy.

The Blue Carnival was kicked off on World Ocean Day 2007 back in June by Mark Powell (blogfish). “[It] is meant to provide a community for ocean-related blogging and bloggers.”

Send your postings to me (pulpodcast [at] gmail . com) or Mark (mpowell [at] oceanconservancy . org). Note, I will be away from the keyboard until Sunday, so there there might be a slight delay in acknowledgment.

Also, this Carnival may very well be podcasted. At least, I plan on publishing Cephalopodcast #7 on 11/5 and will be inclined to highlight early submissions. Carnivals are primarily about the words. But if anyone is interested in augmenting their submission with an audio interview too, let me know. But again, audio is not necessary to participate next month. I just think it would be a fun supplement.

Note to Mark: The Carnival of the Blue is not listed here. Any ideas?

[via neatorama]

Something fun from the Wildlife Conservation Society: Build Your Wild Side. It’s a marketing gimmick, but a wild one.

And in the tradition of infecting other bloggers, I challenge the following to build their wild self too and pass on the meme:

• Laelaps
• Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets
• Invasive Species weblog
• The Other 95%
• Bioephemera

[via WOW2]

Tonight I was listening to a webcast featuring David Warlick. He uses an interesting blogging hack. After composing a blog entry, he has the computer read it back to him before posting. This is a cinch on the Mac (Hightlight text, then look under Application Menu>Services>Speech>Start Speaking Text).

Adding that and spell check should help with my grammar. Now, if only it made coming up with the content easier.

• Women of Web 2.0
• David Warlick
• Mac OS X Services (the menu you never go to)

If you suckers didn’t get enough of a cephalopod fix between Cephalopod Awareness Day and TONMO, you can now embrace the efforts of Matt Stagg, who is extending a tentacle into the mired depths of Facebook. He has started an International Cephalopod Appreciation Society group therein.

Dr James Wood apparently has a ceph group in Facebook too, but it appears to have entered a stage of senescence.

UPDATE: You know, there are only ~89,000 of these facebooktopuses left. If someone wanted to get me a gift, you know, I wouldn’t mind.

Celebrate Cephalopod Awareness Day, October 8, 2007

AKA: World Octopus Day, Squid Appreciation Day

We begin our celebration of the First International Cephalopod Awareness Day with a look back. I found this little carbuncle on the Internet Archive, and it proves you can mix the great taste of peanuts butter and octopus. It’s a 1950s show called You Asked For It, and it features a moment in the life of Ben Frick, octopus trapper, Washingtonian and “delightful fella.” Skip the knife thrower and fast forward to minute 07:00 to see all the action.

EDIT: Sorry folks. Internet Archive embedded player isn’t playing nice with Wordpress. Click the image above to open the movie in a new window.

Apparently, octopus wrestling used to be pretty popular in the States around this time, as evidenced by this 1949 article in Modern Mechanix: Octopus Wrestling Is My Hobby. And this one from a 1965 edition of Time, Adventure & the American Individualist:

Merely to minnow about underwater is no longer enough, and such sports as octopus wrestling are coming increasingly into vogue, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where the critters grow up to 90 Ibs. and can be exceedingly tough customers. Although there are several accepted techniques for octopus wrestling, the really sporty way requires that the human diver go without artificial breathing apparatus.

It would seem that the Japanese continue this tradition, albeit with less lively opponents and the disadvantage of being on land.

• Read more about International Cephalopod Awareness Day, including posts by other bloggers
• “You Asked For It” (ca late 1950s)
• Previously: Vintage Ocean and Science Fair Footage

I’ve finally got a replacement AC plug for my Powerbook G4. This allowed me to reinstall the OS and get it cleaned up for sale. If you are interested, please feel free to contact me.

For sale

PowerBook G4 15-inch (Double Layer Super Drive, DVD+RW/CR-RW)
CPU Speed 1.67 GHz
Airport Extreme Card & Bluetooth
100GB Ultra ATA drive @7200 rpm
Serial Number: W85448L4SX2
Purchase Date: 31-Oct-05

Applecare Expiration: 31-Oct-08

Included:
-new AC plug
-new AC cord
-new battery (replaced during recall)
-2GB of RAM (third party, crucial.com)
-Installation CDs (Disk 1 & 2)
-original box and packaging

Bonus
-Stash Card

Note: Cosmetic damage on bottom lower left and right.

Asking price: $599.00 US

UPDATE: SOLD

The fifth Carnival of the Blue is currently hosted over at the Shifting Baselines Blog.

Highlights include

• The Loom: Alien Eels, Pufferfish, and Other Novelties
• Blogfish: Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability
• Deep-Sea News: Non-Profit Submersibles
• Kate Wing’s Blog: Poaching is personal
• The Other 95%: A World Inside a Coconut

Many more ocean posts are listed at Shifting Baselines. Wondering what a shifting baseline is?

Shifting Baselines is a relatively new term, coined primarily in 1995 by fisheries biologist Dr. Daniel Pauly in his paper Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries. It refers to the loss of perception of change that occurs when each generation redefines “what is natural.” Pauly developed the term in reference to fisheries management in which fisheries biologists sometimes fail to identify the correct “baseline” population size (how abundant a fish species population was before human exploitation) and thus are working with a “shifted baseline.”
[via Wikipedia]

Also note, the Carnival of the Blue icon is available in different sizes and colors. Details and links to past CotB posts available at the mother site.

And next month’s CotB will be hosted right here at the Cephalopodcast. If you are interested in participating, send an email to pulpodcast [at] gmail . com

There are many things to dislike about this video. Mixing limnetic and stenohaline fishes. Confusing a Holocentrid for a Salmonid. Undergravel filters. But then you realize the kid is probably just tripping and the beatbox blowfish is really amusing. So don’t sweat the details and just give it up for Sammy the Salmon and his amazing salmon dance…

mild profanity

• Chemical Brothers
• Alternate encoded version: Chem1_FactoryWeb.mov
• The Fish and the Forest

Microbe Week continues over at the Deep Sea News Blog. But if you need an additional inoculation, consider tuning into the very well produced MicrobeWorld radio/podcast.

MicrobeWorld Radio is an educational outreach initiative that revolves around a daily, 90-second radio series designed to increase public understanding and appreciation of the vital role microbes play on our planet and to promote the science of microbiology.