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Can you spot the rare and magnificent endangered species in the photo below?

Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Photo by TGAW

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is not officially on the endangered species list; however, this extremely rare and biologically unique cephalopod inhabits a very small area in the coniferous Olympic rainforests west of Seattle, an area threatened by suburban sprawl and an encroaching logging industry.

Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Zoom

You can see other sightings here, and there’s a pretty amazing video of the PNTO in action here. To read more about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus’ unique behaviors and lifestyle go here.

Spent yesterday setting up a wordpress.org blog and transferring everything I’ve written on wordpress.com over to it, AND IT WAS SO EASY!!!

It’s about an afternoon’s worth of work. Wordpress.com lets you export all your blog content to an XML file, which you have to cut down to several 2MB XML files and upload one by one. The import will copy all your images over from your wordpress.com blog, and it preserves comments, categories, tags, etc.

Once everything was imported, it was a matter of installing the necessary widgets to show my flickr photos, twittering, etc. There was also some setting-tweaking to get wordpress to use descriptive links with slugs and set up the dashboard, and I did have to run through all my blogposts and re-embed the videos, since wp.com has it’s own odd way of embedding to prevent users from installing malicious code in their blogs.

The biggest hitch was when I finally transferred my domain name to the wordpress.org site. I had failed to change the settings in wp.org to use ideonexus.com, which was causing wordpress to crash. Luckily, bluehost.com technical support does weekend hours, and directed me on how to fix it. Sorry to everyone for the blog being down between 3AM and 11AM today.

Wordpress.org is a lot like Wordpress.com, but with some very important enhancements, like the freedom to add Digg, Stumble, and Reddit links to posts, put javascript demonstrations in posts, metadata support, put adverts on the site, and install site-traffic monitoring services with more granularity.

Plus BlueHost is infinitely better than my previous host, where all my other domains reside and will be transferring from. I regularly had to call them and give tech-support in order to get my sites working. “Okay. Now click on ‘Control Panel.’ Now click on ‘Administrative Tools.’ There should be an item called ‘ODBC.’ See that? Okay…”

I’m sure there are still bugs. I know comments entered yesterday afternoon did not get backed up, which I apologize for. If there are any major issues, please let me know. : )

I’m quoted in Fran Malloy’s ABC Science article Internet connectivity about social networking and it’s effects on culture.

This is a bit awkward, seeing as how I recently knocked on the ABC for hosting science quacks.

Chris Mooney has an important article online about how scientists debating fringe groups like Creationists and AGW deniers in many ways actually hurts our causes.

Sure enough, one of the Expelled trailers features the following quotation from Oxford evolutionary biologist and atheism apostle Richard Dawkins: “If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.” And then in comes Ben Stein to play the rebel, the Galileo, against this oppressive scientific orthodoxy, against “Big Science” that tells the little guy to “shut up.” How’s that for enabling? (Link mine.)

A very astute observation of Dittohead reasoning. The fact that science does not have any peer-reviewed publications supporting the existence of god or disproving AGW Theory is only proof, in their minds, that the vast liberal conspiracy is in full effect, suppressing the “facts” they so desperately need to be true in order to prop-up their pre-defined ideological assumptions.

With Dittoheads–and that is who we are talking about primarily–debate is always a futile effort. How do you argue with someone who doesn’t even share the same factual foundation as the rest of the world? People who dismiss peer-reviewed research as liberal bias, who rationalize away hard facts as subjective, and take the absence of media and scientific coverage as support for their positions?

Mooney’s recommends science bloggers start ignoring the cranks as the best strategy for marginalizing them. I agree, but would also like to offer another tactic that I personally adhere to and one I think other bloggers should adopt: stop treating these cranks with respect.

The problem isn’t that science bloggers are pointing out the irrationality, lack of scientific evidence, and blatant rhetorical abuses of the Cranks. The problem is that they are doing so in a competent, fairly respectable, and dignified manner. That’s what makes the cranks feel legitimized.

When John Coleman can get up in front of an audience of AGW skeptics and argue that other people should sue Al Gore for his warnings about Global Warming, without having the spine to sue Al Gore himself, and he says this with a straight face, it’s time for bloggers to drop the academic tone and start laughing these people out of the room. Absurd statements like this prove that John Coleman is a spineless dweeb. He deserves a spanking and a “Dunce” cap, not a measured, respectful response.

First-tier bloggers like Mooney, Nisbet, PZ Meyers, etc shouldn’t stoop to this level, and neither should second tier science bloggers. It’s important legitimate science remain above the fray. Scientists are the keepers of data integrity, and I agree with Mooney that it’s best if they simply start ignoring the cranks.

Leave it to the third/fourth-tier bloggers like myself to openly ridicule these dimbulbs, as I personally have done here, here, here, here, and here. These are just my way of marginalizing what has become and increasingly silly cluster of conspiracy odd-balls.

Wildlife-Friendly Backyard

At the museum’s center is a huge recreation of North Carolina’s many ecosystems, filled with both living and taxidermied animals. One of my favorite side displays was on how to build an eco-friendly yard that invites, feeds, and shelter’s wildlife.

The Four Fundamentals of Wildlife-Friendly Landscapes:

1. Offer a year-round food supply along with a variety of feeders. Native plants that seasonally produce seeds, berries, nuts, and flower nectar are ideal.
2. Provide water for drinking and bathing. Watering holes can be a simple shallow saucer on the ground or an elaborate minipond.
3. Provide a place to rest and escape predators. Evergreen shrubs and thick vegetation lend protection to wildlife–as do rock and brush piles.
4. Create nesting spots; some animals have specific needs. Add birdhouses and leave dead trees standing when possible.

Complete Flickr set here.