Net Neutrality

There is a push to control what comes to your desktop from the internet by broadband providers.  They are a powerful lobby group and include companies like AT&T.  The internet is the single most important, open, grass roots vehicle for the sharing and transfer of information.  No one should be allowed to control it.  Let's not let what happened to Television, happen to the net.  M lab provides you with the tools to check your isp connections to monitor your broadband provider.  By participating you provide them with valuable research which they will use to improve their monitoring abilities.

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Trophy Hunting

OK, I'm a hunter and I advocate that responsible hunting is actually good for the environment. But that's the topic of another post. This post is in regards to trophy hunting. The argument goes like this: taking large animals diminishes the gene pool - depriving the population of it's most successful members. Intuitively this seems to make sense, especially when it comes to commercial hunting or "harvesting" animals such as cod. But I'm skeptical of trophy hunting's impact on the population of Big Horn Sheep.

Of course it may be true, but it may also be true that "trophy" hunting is itself just another form of natural selection. Never having been a "trophy" hunter, I never paid too much attention to the issue. Now it appears there's some real hard science on this. There is a new study out claiming that this is in fact happening. Trophy hunters go for the biggest (and presumably most evolutionary fit) members of the population - while natural predators typically go for the weak, sick, very young or very old members. This study says that the mean weights of fecund adults in populations of animals typically harvested by humans is drastically lower than the mean weights in comparable non-human prey populations.

Check out the link:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/12/0809235106

Now check out how scientific claims are typically reported:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13fish.html?_r=2&em

"Human actions are increasing the rate of evolutionary change in plants and animals in ways..." reads the opening line. Alarmist! This is a statement of fact when the study only suggests there is a link. Of course it seems to make sense, and it is more than possible - but is it fact? Not yet.

What is not disputed is that there is a disparity between the mean weights of several populations preyed upon by humans and several populations not preyed upon by humans. Do the findings justify further study.. of course! But the media all to often does a disservice to the causes of science in general in their desire to create punchy copy to sell more papers. If this study turns out to be bunk, it's the scientists who will bare the brunt of the false claims made by the New York Times - not the NY times themselves.

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