I love to sift through my google reader feed and my Zite content on Sunday mornings. In days gone by (oh the loss of good newspapers) I would spend the morning with the NYT sunday edition and the local Arkansas papers along with a big pot of coffee. Sprawled out across the living room rug. Never really knew what to expect. What interesting tidbit would jump out at me at this time? Is there a topic I did not even knew existed? With Zite and google reader not so much. Zite's algorithms are too small in the categories it provides. I have used this web app for about a year and now the majority of articles presented for my amusement are science (primarily biology) related. The Google reader is a little better as it doesn't predict anything, just gives me exactly what I ask for. Alas, no surprises. I still miss my Sunday morning papers (they just aren't up to par) and every once in while I will purchase said papers and settle in on a sunday morning to read. It's just not the same as the content is now 50% of what it was a decade ago. That said, today's surprises.
A website called book porn. Just pictures (think pintrest) of book shelves. Amazing pictures of book shelves. There was even a book shelf made of books strategically stacked to create the book shelf without any other structural component.
A website (i think it is a tumblr account but i don't understand tumblr) titled "Things I Learned as a Field Biologist. I read post after post and laughed. I have one professor this term who refers to students as 'Biologists' After reading this author's small stories I now realize...I am a field biologist! I am a field biologist? WOW That is so cool.
The intelligent octopus https://vimeo.com/44791802
The Washington Post has an article with the headline "In Hawaii, fisheries service relaxes bycatch limits on endangered sea turtles" stating that swordfishermen can catch 26 leatherback and 34 loggerhead turtles before suspending fishing. Appalling, right? If you read the entire article you find that, according to Michael Tosatto (regional administrator for the fisheries service) no turtles were killed this year. All were released alive. If this is true and the bycatch is not resulting in death of turtles and the fishermen are reporting truthfully, then is there a problem here? What a great research opportunity. If a scientist could partner with the swordfish fishermen and geo-tag the turtles caught on the swordfish hooks a wealth of information could be obtained without having to create and implement a large, expensive study. Maybe someone is already doing this, it just doesn't make the news.
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