Soft-shelled crabs

This week's share from Walking Fish was soft-shell crabs and clams. Yum! I watched way too many youtube videos on how to prepare and cook soft-shell crabs, and then I decided to partially document my own experience!




I prepared the three smaller crabs first and then did the larger one, which was more lively.







I breaded them with seasoned flour and cornmeal and sauteed them in butter:







Lastly, I slapped it on a whole wheat kaiser roll with lettuce, tomato, and mayo:



It was a little crunchier and juicer than I expected (I don't think I cleaned them as well as I should have) but yum! I cooked and ate two of them and froze two of them. On the Walking Fish website it said it was okay to freeze them, but we'll see how the frozen ones do.

Science Catfight

A scientist from the Union of Concerned Scientists was on the Colbert Report recently. It's a long clip but worth watching:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Science Catfight - Joe Bastardi vs. Brenda Ekwurzel
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Updates

A couple weeks ago I blogged about the Lake Baikal issue - how moves are being made to re-open the Pulp and Paper Mill on the lakeshore. The petition signed by concerned scientists (including me!) to express disapproval of the mill reopening has been sent to the president of the Russian Federation, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

On a completely unrelated note, it's April 28 - time to ask myself how I'm doing with my New Year's Resolutions (you totally thought I forgot, didn't you).

These were my three primary resolutions:

1. Run hill repeats at least once every two weeks.
2. Do strength training for at least 30 minutes a week (and my weekly ballet class doesn't count toward this).
3. Floss way more often.

So I kept up #1 until the marathon taper and I've only done one hill repeat workout since the race. But that workout hardly counts because it was on the short, gradual hill near my house and I only did 6 repeats. #2 I've been pretty good about - only missed this a couple weeks this year. However, I think my strength training has now plateaued, so I need to change up my routine and up the intensity. And #3 I've utterly failed at. Why can't I get myself to floss??

These were my secondary resolutions:

1. Run at least 30 miles a week to exceed 1500 miles for 2010.
2. No computer or TV after 10 pm.
3. Bedtime by 11 pm at the latest.
4. Bike to work more often.
5. Read more, watch TV and web surf less.

#4 I've achieved, #1 I sometimes accomplish, and don't ask about 2,3, and 5!

Happy Earth Day!

Dear Earth,

Thank you for the countless resources and irreplaceable beauty you provide us. We apologize for overusing, exploiting, remaining ignorant of, and failing to recognize the limits of so many of these provisions. We hope we can learn to do better.

Love,
Sandra

Speaking of climate change skeptics...

...actually, there's a difference between climate change skeptics and deniers. The latter are closed-minded, selectively ignorant, and have an agenda that can only be categorized as anti-science and anti-truth. And in recent news Frenchman Claude Allegre is the poster boy of all this. French scientists are asking science minister Valérie Pécresse to officially denounce his latest book L'imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud). Hopefully she will, but you know what? I have absolutely no problem with Allegre representing the climate-change-denier-camp. Check this out:


Up or down? Paleoclimatologist Håkan Grudd says his temperature graph (red) doesn't match one drawn by Claude Allègre (black). Caption and picture published in the 9 April 2010 issue of Science.

Yes, it's true - this dude's book actually includes hand-drawn graphs of made-up data. Are you kidding me? Allegre must have some balls thinking he can twist around other scientists' data to fit whatever he wants it to say - and think that said scientists wouldn't notice this and call him out on it?! So yeah, nice job, Allegre - thanks for communicating loud and clear how you deniers operate.

Queer the census

My "Queer the Census" sticker finally arrived in the mail today, but I had given up waiting for it and had sent in my form so I wouldn't be bugged by door-to-door census workers. What is "Queer the Census" all about? This article explains it well. I think it's awesome that the Census Bureau encourages same-sex couples to indicate they're married, if they wish. It's nice to know at least one small sector of our federal government is fair-minded and progressive.

Skeptical Science website

In my DISCCRS newsletter this week there was a link to this website that addresses the skepticism surrounding global warming. I've spent about half an hour browsing around the site and so far I am thoroughly impressed. Climate change science is multi-disciplinary, complex, constantly changing, and extremely difficult to communicate in a clear, understandable way. But John Cook and contributors do a commendable job at this. Everything they present is carefully explained and referenced with recent, high-impact primary research articles (although many of the links to these references were broken or you'd have to have an account with the journal - and they should have a reference list in addition to these links). It appears to be updated often - it's only April 1, but there were 2010 publications referenced, though it appears they have not yet added the recent study in Geophysical Research Letters that finds that the temperature increase from greenhouse gases will overwhelm the cooling due to a solar minimum (Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010 - this would be appropriate in discussing if we're heading into a new Ice Age).

Here's what it says in the "About" section of the website:

The goal of Skeptical Science is to explain what peer reviewed science has to say about global warming. When you peruse the many arguments of global warming skeptics, a pattern emerges. Skeptic arguments tend to focus on narrow pieces of the puzzle while neglecting the broader picture. For example, focus on Climategate emails neglects the full weight of scientific evidence for man-made global warming. Concentrating on a few growing glaciers ignores the world wide trend of accelerating glacier shrinkage. Claims of global cooling fail to realise the planet as a whole is still accumulating heat. This website presents the broader picture by explaining the peer reviewed scientific literature.

Often, the reason for disbelieving in man-made global warming seem to be political rather than scientific. Eg - "it's all a liberal plot to spread socialism and destroy capitalism". As one person put it, "the cheerleaders for doing something about global warming seem to be largely the cheerleaders for many causes of which I disapprove". However, what is causing global warming is a purely scientific question. Skeptical Science removes the politics from the debate by concentrating solely on the science.

As someone who is terribly passionate about clear, accurate, and effective communication of science, I wholeheartedly endorse this idea of separating the science from the politics, even while realizing that ideally we do need the former to guide the latter.