Beatrice the Biologist (aka Katie McKissick) is a science-loving cartoonist who loves to use simple drawings to explain big concepts in science. She has just published a book of some of her favorite science cartoons, called Amoeba Hugs and Other Nonsense. Buy it, review it, read it to your kids!

Congratulate me. Pity my wife. Always remember:

It’s better to be lucky than good-for small values of N.

I will be providing a quick book review of a book that is very special to my older daughter and me, Rare Treasure: Mary Anning* and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown, for the Skeptically Speaking “Science Books for Your Gift List” episode. The episode will be available to download at 8PM (ET) tonight (Friday, 21 December 2012)

*The band Artichoke has a fantastic song about Mary Anning that is available to download for free (MP3 – 2.2MB).

UPDATE: According to the producer of Skeptically Speaking, KO Myers, my review comes up at 47:33 in the podcast. While I would be flattered by anyone downloading the podcast only to listen to my two minutes, I would strongly recommend listening to the other reviews, which I hear will include Bug Girl reviewing Spider Silk by Leslie Brunetta & Catherine L. Craig even though spiders aren’t bugs.

You may also run into a mule deer or two or four.

You can see all my photos from the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop on my Flickr photostream.

You can follow all our science-y travels on the Have Science Will Travel map.

Marc Maron’s interview with Sam Simon, co-creator of The Simpsons, reminded me of this relationship between creativity and constraint. The Simpsons has been incredibly successful and creative (at least for several seasons, depending on who you ask). Maron and Simon talked about how animation could allow The Simpsons creators to do whatever they wanted.

This got me wondering: what were the technical constraints on The Simpsons that might have fostered their creativity? Maybe time. Thirty minutes isn’t much time to tell a convoluted story. Other thoughts? Am I thinking about this wrong (ie, I know good animation is really hard)?

*Not you. You did not attend the 2013 Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop. Unless you did. Either way, you should be talking about the importance of constraints to the creative process. You should also go to the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop.

**Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop inside joke FOR THE WIN!

The title of the Counting Crows song from their breakout album, August & Everything After, makes much more sense with the lyrics when you realize that a “murder” is the collective noun for a group of crows.

This means that Dumbo the Flying Elephant realizes his ability to fly thanks to an awkwardly stereotyped murder of crows singing what is, by far, the best song in Dumbo.

Not all collective nouns are as cool as a murder of crows.

Also, lyrics in this live version that mashes up “Murder of One” with “Doris Day” include:

There are jaguars in Mexico.

This is true.

For a kitty that might be dead, he sure keeps busy.

photo via Cheezburger.com

According to an article in the NY Times by Eduardo Porter, the US insurance industry may also rate a 4. It accepts the scientific consensus position, but is reluctant to engage in political squabbles, because the threat of punitive regulation is a bigger risk than increased payouts due to worsening weather:

Yet when I asked Mr. Nutter what the American insurance industry was doing to combat global warming, his answer was surprising: nothing much…Instead, the focus of insurers’ advocacy efforts is zoning rules and disaster mitigation. – Eduardo Porter

Porter summarizes the position of a 4 on the Dubiosity Scale in his last sentence:

And that’s the best hope for those concerned about climate change: that global warming isn’t just devastating for society, but also bad for business. -Eduardo Porter

But, what happens when the issue is so politicized that the market forces are responding to the politics and not the market?

On the one hand, I am stunned by the bravery of this high-profile woman to not only undergo such a transformative surgery and then write about it in the nation’s newspaper of record less than three weeks later…On the other hand, I do worry that the ensuing publicity surrounding her announcement might evoke some magnitude of panic in women with breast cancer, particularly those who don’t have BRCA1/2 gene mutations or cannot afford to have the testing done…My primary concern is that some women with breast cancer may think that they are not being aggressive enough with their current treatment plan. – David Kroll

William Curtis School (Adolf Cluss, 1875), O Street, NW between 32 and 33rd Streets. Razed 1951. DCPS Archives

Those of you out there who went to graduate school, try to think back to the early days….I know the PTSD makes it difficult, but try to remember the beginning of graduate school. Do you remember the required classes that you had to take?  These classes were a mostly a hodge podge of random professors talking about either their own work, or a concept they may not even be familiar with. I read a Commentary in the journal Cell the other day that gives me hope that schools will consider modifying their graduate curriculum and spend more time on teaching.

The Commentary focuses on changes that are being made to the graduate curriculum at Harvard in their umbrella biological science program. One change they are making is offering short format skill building courses. These short courses can cover a technical skill, experimental design, presentation skills or quantitative methods. This is a great way to offer focused instruction on a particular concept and deliver it to those who are interested. While they are offering the new short form classes, they are also revising their long format core courses. The diverse departments are now focusing more on key concepts and skills and sacrificing the mechanistic details. They are even bringing “clickers” (a handheld device a student uses to answer professor’s questions anonymously in real-time) to graduate school, as many newly entering students have been using these all throughout undergrad (I am old, and have never used a clicker other than to change the channels on my grandma’s TV).

I’m particularly excited about a program they are enacting for post-docs called the Curriculum Fellows Program. These fellows interface with the instructors and graduate students helping to manage courses, develop curriculum, implement teaching technology, and evaluate new techniques. This would be a great opportunity for a post-doc interested in teaching and education research. While many PhDs get some teaching experience, this would be a way to really look at the science of learning and make a contribution in improving the program. I’m happy to see that schools are taking note that the times are changing and just slapping together some classes isn’t going to cut it any more.