Galaxy Zoo

New photos of deep space, from the Hubble Space Telescope and others, have multiplied the number of known galaxies. You can join in the work of classifying images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey by visiting Galaxy Zoo.

…which harnesses the power of the Internet – and your brain – to classify a million galaxies. By taking part, you’ll not only be contributing to scientific research, but you’ll view parts of the Universe that literally no-one has ever seen before and get a sense of the glorious diversity of galaxies that pepper the sky.

The human brain is much better at recognising patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you.

This is a new service, so lend a hand!

Notable trees

“Gather” has an online article about “Sentinel trees.” Their photo reminds me of some sugar maples on property I co-owned in Tweed. Unfortunately the marriage broke up and we sold the land. Maybe ours wasn’t quite as spreading. But make the horizontal spread a little less and you have the idea.

I think that venerating notable trees would make a good, educational part of the environmental movement

De-scenting a skunk

A veterinarian on the Dead Runners’ Society occasionally posts about his work. This was a propos of meeting skunks while running:

I’ve dealt with several skunks in my profession. Skunks can make good pets if descented. Their personality is similar to cats: equal parts friendly and aloof.

Just to see if I could do it I agreed to descent a skunk. The owner had called every vet in four states before reaching me. When I said yes she made the long drive from eastern Kansas. As she held the tail down, (tightly!) I injected an anesthetic. When it was out we took it to the barn for the surgery. I planned for the worst by wearing a plastic face shield and a plastic rain poncho with hood.

The scent glands are two bulbs, one on each side of the anus and interposed with the sphincter. In a ferret, the glands are smaller than a pencil eraser. In this skunk, each gland was larger than a golf ball. But the procedure was essentially the same as for a ferret. Working in the barn in summer, the flies got pretty aggressive as I was removing the first gland. It went so well I thought it was safe to go back to the clinic to do the next gland in my surgery. While removing the second gland I nicked the gland and the secretion exploded onto the face shield. The stuff ate into the plastic shield and I had to remove it to be able to see. It also ate into the poncho but nobody would enter the surgery to help me get it off. So with tearing eyes I continued the procedure, blinking furiously and trying not to gag at the odor.

I finished the surgery. The skunk lived. As soon as it was done I took off the poncho, my shirt and jeans and ran to my office. The office has a shower. After running out of hot water I got out and into scrubs. While I was showering the staff gingerly put all my clothing in a garbage sack, sealed it and threw it in the dumpster. Wearing surgical masks to blunt the odor they scrubbed the wall behind where I sat during the procedure. It had been doused as well.

For several weeks I had the skunk odor trapped in my sinuses. Every client entering the building asked. “Skunk?”

The skunk went back to Kansas and we got Xmas cards from the owner, showing the skunk playing with her granddaughter. Occasionally I get a request to descent another skunk. So far nobody has wanted to pay the $1000 fee. The first time someone agrees, I’ll say that’s per side. And if anyone wants to pay $2000 maybe I’ll do it.

My books have arrived!

In a burst of enthusiasm after reading the Sciencebloggers’ reviews of Natalie Angier’s books The Canon and Woman: an Intimate Geography, I ordered both of them along with Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great. They all arrived yesterday. It will take me a little while to get around to them, after Talk Talk Talk by Jay Ingram and Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. But now they’re in the queue or, as some people say, on Mount To-Be-Read!

Curses! Foiled again!

Biology professors at the University of Colorado have been receiving pamphlets, letters, and threatening e-mails from an apparent religious nut. The Discovery Institute, with its usual subtlety, questions the reportage of the Denver Post and the statements of the Boulder police force and suggests that someone is attempting to smear religious people and it’s probably an Evil-lutionist (“Thou Shalt Not Lie to the Police”). That bit of information was rightly called contemptible by PZ Myers in his blog reaction: “The Colorado threats and the despicable slander of the DI”.

Well, guess what! The culprit has been identified, and he is a Christian religious nut: Menachem Korn, or Michael Korn as he signs himself, a messianic Jew turned rabid Christian. (See “CU biologists get death threats.”)

According to a reprint of the letter posted online, the threat reads: “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.”“EBIO (evolutionary biology) professors are terrorists against America and intellectual and spiritual child abusers of their young and impressionable students the EBIO department not only blasphemes God, who is invisible, but it blasphemes His Only Begotten Son and our Messiah, Jesus Christ, which is more unforgivable for all these reason all God-fearing and Truth-loving persons must say, They must go!”

CU officials won’t name a suspect, but numerous sources close to the case say the letters – as well as a barrage of threatening e-mails – were signed “Michael Korn.”

Menacher “Michael” Korn is a 49-year-old Israeli national and former Messianic Jew who says he was baptized into Christianity in the Sea of Galilee seven years ago and is now on a mission to convert Jews and Muslims. His blog, JesusOverIsrael. blogspot.com, references CU-Boulder specifically and says he lives in Denver…

Several sources say Korn has distributed flyers on campus and has barged into offices of biology professors and administrators in the past year.

But in recent days the threatening e-mails and letters have occurred with increasing frequency and intensity.

On Friday an e-mail sent to CU-Boulder’s evolutionary biology department bore the subject line “a final CU Boulder EBIO appeal” and repeated the line “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.”

That line, as well as “they must go,” have been repeated in a number of communiqués, said a source.

Most, but not all, of the threatening letters were left in the Ramaley Biology Building at CU-Boulder.

The anti-evolutionary communication began one year ago, when someone left a book in the campus mailbox of Jeffry Mitton, chair of CU-Boulder’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department.

Mitton said the book was entitled “The Evolution Fact Book.” (An Internet search revealed Korn is the author of the book.)

Mitton said the book didn’t worry him.

“It was just one of these sorts of things that is put out by creationists just declaring that there is no evolution,” Mitton said. It contained no threats.

Last fall, however, Mitton started receiving e-mails and pamphlets.

“Those became much more personal,” he said. “It referred to specific biologists, but not by name.”

Oh, goodie! A religious nut with escalating threats of violence. We don’t expect any trouble from them!

I’m waiting to hear the retraction or apology from the Discovery Institute’s Robert Crowther.

**crickets chirp**
–hat tip to Pharyngula for “Colorado kook identified“