Category: Popular Culture

Overfishing Rap Battle – Dead and Gone

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on Overfishing Rap Battle – Dead and Gone
Popular Culture

So I’m sitting in my office revising a manuscript when Dr. Bik over at Deep Sea News dropped some serious overfishing beats on me. In case you thought there was only one overfishing themed rap parody video out there, we’ve got some news for you: httpv://youtu.be/AZr9nWfips4 Warning: video contains some graphic footage of sea turtle and shark … Read More “Overfishing Rap Battle – Dead and Gone” »

in which four environmental scientists play Oilsprings of Catan, destroy world

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on in which four environmental scientists play Oilsprings of Catan, destroy world
Conservation, Popular Culture

Catan: Oilsprings. image by Andrew Thaler
Catan: Oilsprings. image by Andrew Thaler

This weekend I assembled a small team of marine and environmental scientists, including a molecular ecologist, a human geographer with experience in environmental justice, a political ecologist with experience in common-pool resource theory, and a veteran of the US Commission on Ocean Policy with extensive experience in marine spatial planning, to test out the new expansion for Settlers of Catan, Catan: Oilsprings. Settlers of Catan is a popular and expansive board game that focuses on resource management, development, and trading. Oilsprings is designed to add an element of “Tragedy of the Commons” to the game by introducing a new resource, oil, which allows rapid development, but at a cost that affects all players.

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The indelible stamp – Scientists and their tattoos

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 5 Comments on The indelible stamp – Scientists and their tattoos
Popular Culture, Science

How do you declare your undying love for science? How do you immortalize your doctoral dissertation? How can you let the world know about your eternal love affair with tardigrades, Euler’s Identity, caffeine, or the voyager spacecraft? If you answered any of these with “get a tattoo!” than you’ve probably already heard about Science Ink: Tattoo’s of the Science Obsessed, by Carl Zimmer.

Over the last several years, Zimmer has been compiling scientists’ tattoos at the Science Tattoo Emporium, which now contains 255 pieces of ink. In Science Ink, Zimmer has selected the best looking,  most memorable tattoos from his online collection and published them in a beautiful book featuring both artwork and insight into each piece.

Zimmer is among the best of the “science communicators”, those who distill the essence of important concepts into comprehensible units. Each tattoo come with either a description of the story behind its origin, its meaning to the canvas, or the fundamentals of the concept it represents. The book covers an extensive range of topics, from mathematics to natural history to physics and astronomy. When I first heard about this project, I was expecting a coffee-table style book of tattoo photographs, but it is much more than that. The tattoos are simply prompts for a deeper exploration into the meaning of science to society, as well as a delightful collection of (very) short stories about individuals experience in science.

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The historical origins of ‘whales as people’

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 7 Comments on The historical origins of ‘whales as people’
Conservation, Popular Culture, Science

In an attempt to garner attention and raise awareness regarding the problematic use of orcas and other marine mammals in captivity for entertainment, PETA, an animal rights group, has sued Sea World, a corporation that builds and manages aquariums and marine parks. Opposition  to Sea World’s brand of entertainment-driven aquariums is nothing new, but this fresh lawsuit adds a novel twist to the boilerplate “intelligent animals don’t belong in captivity” – PETA is suing Sea World for violating these oceanic dolphin’s constitutional rights under the 13th amendment.

The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly outlaws slavery or involuntary captivity:

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Misunderstood Marine Life # 1 – The five biggest myths about Marine Biologists

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 6 Comments on Misunderstood Marine Life # 1 – The five biggest myths about Marine Biologists
Popular Culture, Science

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the single most misunderstood marine creature that calls our oceans its home: the rare, elusive, often smelly, occasionally employable, Marine Biologist! For something so incredibly popular, articulate, good-looking, and revered, there sure are a lot of misconceptions about who marine biologists are and what they do. Myth … Read More “Misunderstood Marine Life # 1 – The five biggest myths about Marine Biologists” »

Misunderstood Marine Life # 6 – Jellyfish

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab 3 Comments on Misunderstood Marine Life # 6 – Jellyfish
Popular Culture, Science
photo by Amy Freitag

“Yikes! It’s a jellyfish, get out of the water!”

I can’t remember how many times I heard this shriek from my friends as a kid around the end of July, when loads of comb jellies washed ashore, the casualties of their massive breeding efforts. Like most kids with a good poking toe, however, I figured out that these jellies couldn’t hurt me. For a number of reasons, not all jellyfish equal a painful sting.

Furthermore, like many sea creatures, they are symbolic of a beautiful greater ecosystem at work but often lead to squeaks and squeals of fear rather than smiles of appreciation. I’ll go so far to say that jellyfish are a good candidate to be a charismatic creature of the sea.

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Crude Rage – A Sea in Flames reviewed

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on Crude Rage – A Sea in Flames reviewed
Popular Culture

In the year since the Deepwater Horizon sunk, killing 11 people and pumping untold millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, much has been revealed about the causes and effects of this disaster: the chain of events leading up to the explosion, the response (or lack of response) from BP and the US government, the impact of sealife and coastal fisheries. In his most recent book, A Sea in Flames, Carl Safina lays out the timeline of the disaster, the factors the lead to such an egregious lapse in safety, the role that several corporate and government entities played, and the anger. Above all else, this book is about the rage one man feels about a situation that is almost impossible to comprehend.

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