I’d simply suggest that, in the future, it’s worth linking to more than just the article. There’s no evidence that an article in Science or Nature is any more often cited or prove any more useful than articles in other journals. What there is good evidence for (as here) is that Science and Nature dominate the popular…

Well, time to make more donations to Red Cross and other charities.

The point for me is what io9 is advertising, the science and scientists, or the journal. Right now, they’re advertising the journal. I’d love to see them also link to the lab or an institution involved in the research. It would be great if search results flowed to the people and places who are making the discoveries,…

I’ve been published many times. I just don’t like seeing billions of dollars going to a publishing industry when so many programs are withering due to lack of funds. Especially when that publishing industry offers about as much utility as a pdf and a website and charges so much for it. The only thing of value is the…

Yes, but links show support, especially on things like Google. Here io9 is showing support for the publisher, not for the scientists who actually did the work. For those who find the traditional scientific publishing game problematic, I’d recommend linking to the university (which usually has a press release) and/or…

It’s interesting that io9’s comfortable linking to stuff behind paywalls without notice. It would be nice if they mentioned where the paywalls were, and also linked to the press releases and/or lab homepages from the researchers were so that those of us who don’t want to pay $20 or more to read it can find out more.

The real sad part, as documented in Wade Davis’ one river, is that the US was well on the way to solving the rubber plant disease problem back in WW2. Then the funding was canceled, the nursery was plowed under, and the program was scrapped.

Depends on how you define civilization. A lot of groups have managed without fossil fuels. If you’re thinking consumerism and airplanes, that’s a different matter. If you want to tell the Romans they were uncivilized for only using coal in Britain, go right ahead. I’ll hold the time machine door open for you.

Yes. I was blanking on the terms, but a number like 502 could be represented by a knot with 5 turns in the hundreds row, a blank space in the tens row, and a knot with 2 turns in the ones row. You can see the columns of numbers in part of the quipu above. The characteristics of the string determines what "502" meant…

Actually, quipus apparently had multiple modes for showing information. In some cases the knots showed decimal numbers . In some cases the information was proportional (for instance, how much of a field was supposed to be in a crop). In some cases people seem to have been able to send non-mathematical messages with…

It’s a common trope in the Andean archaeology books that the highlands in Inkan and pre-Inkan times supported more people than they do now. So this is far from stupid. However, not all the Wari canals are still functional. IIRC, some have been destroyed by earthquakes in the last 1,000 years. Peru might have to build…

I'm confused: wouldn't it have been hard to stand on a planet 10 billion years ago? Were there enough heavy elements around to make a planet with mountains and stuff? Perhaps floating on a water world would have been more, erm, realistic?

Recycling the Nemesis Hypothesis without giving any credit to Richard Muller or any of the others? Puh-leeze. Stop with the plagiarism. Changing it to a “dark matter” model isn’t any better. This argument has been laid out since Raup and Sepkoski claimed that there was a periodicity of mass extinctions back in 1984.…

Of course, silly old me sees one of the biggest vernal pool complexes in the state now surrounded by almond groves and in serious trouble, and wishes we grew fewer of those nuts. Oh well.

Thing about mima mounds is that the surrounding area may often hold puddles when wet. Pocket gophers mounding the soil up above the inundated layer actually makes some sense.

Your lifestyle works for me, and as long as you or anyone has the storage space, I think it's a great idea. I'm in California now, though I've lived many other places, so for me it's about problem-solving rather than moving somewhere else. One thing is that, compared with the water politics of the Middle East, the…

Actually, Californians reportedly already use a lot less water than other Americans, on average. As for agricultural use, yes I agree that we need to reallocate our water use drastically. On the other hand, that means fewer winter vegetables for the rest of the country, along with perhaps high beef and cheese prices.

Thing to remember is that the highest Sierras are on the eastern side of the range, so less snow, and snow only at higher elevations, will look like an eastward shift on a satellite image.

There’s also this ugly phenomenon known as “demand hardening,” which is going to bite down in the next few years. I first stumbled over it in William deBuys’ 2011 book A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, which I highly recommend. Given that we’re being asked to conserve water, I…

It's worth adding to the timeline that people have been cloning plants for thousands of years. It's how we propagate most root crops (yams, potatoes), and fruit like apples and citrus. Heck, the Polynesians couldn't have settled all those islands without cloning. Most of the domesticated plants they took with them…