Archive for September, 2007
Good news / bad news in Peru
Well, in case you haven’t heard the news yet, it’s a case of good news / bad news for the folks in Peru with the recent meteor impact. The good news — that illness they came down with wasn’t all in their heads. The bad news — the illness is a side-effect of arsenic poisoning. It turns out (as the BBC briefly alluded to a few days ago) that the ground water in the vicinity of the new impact crater contains high levels of arsenic. The heat of the meteor’s impact vaporized enough of this water to create an arsenic-laced fog around the crater….
Bloody Vikings!
The background of my father’s side of the family has always been a bit of a mystery. We know that some generations back, his ancestors came across the pond from somewhere in the British isles, and that the family name seems to have a fair amount of history behind it. But various sources have given us a variety of stories for the ultimate source of the name. So when I heard about the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project, I really perked up…
Meteorites, the Media, and Mass Hysteria
When I first heard about the recent supposed meteor impact in Peru, and the sickness it allegedly brought to locals, I was just going to let things go by. Something odd happened in a remote area, and it seemed pretty easy to write the mess off as a miscommunication. But this mess seems to be building up quite a head of steam in the media, so I suppose it’s worth a further look…
Blog carnivals du jour
This week’s crop of good sciencey blog carnivals…
Episode 11 — Colony Collapse Disorder
So, what’s the buzz about honeybees? Listen in to this episode, and you’ll learn about honeybees, how important they are to modern agriculture, and how damaging something called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has become — at least, in the U.S. and Europe. I try to put recent news in a bit of perspective, and talk a bit about the work that still needs to be done….
