It's hard to get good help these days...

In my last couple of reviews my brain has taken a slight vacance when it comes time to insert "blog name" and Amazon subscription number into the appropriate slots of the template.

Apologies to my readers - the reviews for Digital Bits Skeptic and The Backyard Arthropod Project have now been fixed.

So check them out!

Digital Bits Skeptic (arts & entertainment, culture)

REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES, with reservations

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Digital Bits Skeptic

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.dbskeptic.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Digital Bits Skeptic is about promoting critical thinking and skepticism. This site was created as a response to the frustratingly large amount of credulity and scientific ignorance in today’s society.

A skeptical outlook in life is healthy. At the very least, it prevents you from wasting your time or money. At its best, it can save lives. Much of what we see reported in today’s media is overly credulous. Impressive claims are often accepted as fact, without question. Those that are questioned are often not tested scientifically to prove the claim.

From New Age mysticism to organized religion, from aromatherapy to Bigfoot, Digital Bits Skeptic is a collection of articles critically examining these kinds of topics.

MY REVIEW: The entries in Digital Skeptic are very thorough - the topic under discussion is looked at thoroughly...and the topics vary - from Biblical prophcies to parenting to how to conduct research. Fascinating reading.

The only problem is that this blog only gets one post a month. Understandable enough because of the thoroughness of each post, and since it only costs 99 cents a month to subscribe...check it out.

RECENT POSTS:
--Bible prophecies and myth
--Getting dirty with bacteria panic and unjustified sterilization
--Skeptical parenting: Critical thinking around the family dinner table
--The Veil of Ignorance: Don’t confuse tools with the buildings they create


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Reviews published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

The Backyard Arthropod Project (science, bugs!)

REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: The Backyard Arthropod Project

WEB ADDRESS: http://somethingscrawlinginmyhair.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: This site was created initially to identify the arthropods (bugs!) living in and around the author's house in upper Michigan. In addition, the following points are made:

(1) Even in areas with “low diversity”, like the northern half of North America or the inside of the average house, there are more kinds of little crawly things than you might imagine.
(2) Just because an arthropod isn’t big and showy doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve attention too.
(3) It is possible to find interesting things wherever you happen to be if you look at sufficiently high magnification.

MY REVIEW: As you walk around your home - lawn with grass, gardens, trees - or your neighboring surroundings - chances are that you're walking past bugs of alll kinds. You perhaps ignore them - the owner of this blog positively revels in them!

Do the leaves of your plants look funny? They might be infested by some microscopic creature. See a strange growth on a tree? It might be the remains of a certain kind of Wasp nest.

If you have curiousity about your surroundings, this blog is definitely for you. The author writes knowledgeably and well, and takes macro-photographs that reveal every tiny detail of these tiny creatures.

Highly recommended.

Sample post:

Aspen Leaf Blotch Miner Moth
2011 January 8
We have a number of aspen trees growing around our yard, and this summer they were heavily infested with a type of “leaf miner”. These are insect larvae that tunnel in between the top and bottom membranes of plant leaves, and just eat out the green, nutritious part in the middle. The leaf damage that these caused looked like this:
[Photo not included]
The discolored blotches that they made were most visible from the bottom of the leaves. These were picked on July 24, which was just about the time the caterpillars inside were mature.
[Photos of the caterillars not included]
The caterpillars were pretty minute, only maybe 4 mm long.
Some of them had, in fact, started to pupate already, making these elongated black pupae.
Sometime in the next month, some tiny moths had emerged from the pupae. We unfortunately didn’t notice they had emerged while they were alive, so we had to make do with photographing a dead one.

One normally identifies leaf miners based on the kind of plant they were on, and the kind of damage they do. Since these were making blotchy damage to the underside of aspen leaves, that makes them most likely the Aspen Leaf Blotch Miner Moth[1], Phyllonorycter apparella. While they cause a lot of visible damage, they evidently usually aren’t that much of a threat to the tree because they don’t destroy the whole leaf, just parts of it. Although, in sufficient numbers, they can pretty much defoliate a tree. Of course, trees generally have enough resources to survive being defoliated once in a while, so it takes a large infestation several years running to actually kill the trees. And, since these moths have no real defense against predators other than being tiny, their eruptions in numbers tend to get eaten up fairly quickly.

An interesting thing about the hindwings, is that they don’t look like the hindwings in larger insects. Instead of being a thin membrane, the hindwing looks more like a feather – a solid midrib, with fringes on both sides.

This type of wing is seen on a number of other very small insects, like the unrelated Thrips. They can get away with these very simple wings because, as you get smaller, the fluid dynamics of air become very different from the way fluid flows at larger scales. Flying through the air when you are about the size of a piece of lint is very different from doing the same thing when you are the size of, say, a bird – at small scales you are dominated by the viscosity of the air, and your weight and the effects of turbulence are much reduced. So rather than having wings that air flows over to create lift, at small scales one is better off with something more like paddles that can be used to row through the air by brute force.

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[1] A trick to use when you are called on to identify an insect and you have only a vague idea what it is: look it over for a bit to see if any traits strike you, string together a bunch of applicable adjectives, stick them onto a broad class of insect, and voila! A common name is generated! And, it has pretty good odds of being the same common name that other people have generated. Like with this one – presented with an aspen leaf, and caterpillars making blotchy mines in the leaf, and that turned out to be a moth, I could generate “Aspen leaf blotch miner moth” off the top of my head. Which then turned out to be the exact common name that BugGuide had them filed under.

RECENT POSTS:
--Aspen Leaf Blotch Miner Moth
--Engorged Deer Tick
--Reconstructed Viceroy Butterfly
--Purplish-Brown Looper
--Oak Apple Gall

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Reviews published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
_______________________
Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Retro Review: The Happiness Project

REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

OUR RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION PAGE: The Happiness Project, published by Gretchen Rubin

WEB ADDRESS: http://thehappinessproject.com

BLOG'S DESCRIPTION: I'm working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT--a memoir about the year I spent test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study I could find, whether from Aristotle or Martin Seligman or Oprah. On this daily blog, I recount some of my adventures and insights as I grapple with the challenge of being happier.

OUR REVIEW: There's not a lot of happiness in the world today, unfortunately. Of course, with all the earthquakes...in Haiti and Chile, the lousy economy, the conundrum of global warming (is it or isn't it man-made?), everyone is just a bit tense, if they're paying any attention at all to what's going on in the world. But even those who aren't - teenagers who spend all their time playing violent video games, or even just practicing their skateboarding skills... are they happy?

Then there's girls...hard to be happy when you're going to be teased at school for being overweight, or for not having a boyfriend, or any of a hundred things some clique finds it necessary to tease you about. Then there's the fact that girls start obsessing over their weight at the age of six, and this new government "anti-obesity" project is just going to exacerbate matters.

Oh...there's lots of things to feel tense about, which is why The Happiness Project is so important, and why I recommend it highly.

Here's a few sample paragraphs:

I’ve always been a bit of a humbug when it comes to “personal development”, happiness fluff and life-changing inspirational yaddayadda…

That’s because I’ve known for a long time that all these damn lists, personal improvement systems and anti-systems, productivity tips, self-righteous self-help gurus and on and on are mostly just more noise added to the online eco-system of “average” — more stuff to read and follow, more stuff to “TRY” when really you should be out there cutting your teeth and “DOING.” I’ll talk a bit more on my own experience with this, but first let’s get to the point:

There ARE a number of exceptions to the rule of general mediocrity and fluff online…
One of the true stand-outs is Seth Godin. It’s been remarkable for me to watch Seth in recent years, as he dives deeper and deeper into his own real natural genius. His short, brilliant, and to the point 14-page manifesto, Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Reinvent Yourself is indispensable for anyone who’s struggling to change the world, grasp their own genius, and stand in their greatest personal power...

I highly, highly, recommend this blog.

RECENT ARTICLES:
-We needs must love the highest when we see it
-Finish the projects you've started. Or call an end to them.
-Nice paradoxes to contemplate as you consider happiness
-Happiness and the visits of a gazelle
-The extraordinary happiness of completing a project: "Four to Llewelyn's Edge"

Retro Review: The Magnificent Frigate Bird

REVIEWED BY: Ms. CAiro

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Magnificent Frigatebird

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.magnificentfrigatebird.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: ABOUT ME - My name is Amy and I'm a newer birder living in the Chicago area with my husband, Arthur. Besides birding I love to travel. I was fortunate enough to live in Arthur's native Holland for nearly 10 years. We spent a lot of that time traveling around Europe and beyond - birding, scuba diving and having a great time generally exploring our world. On this blog I'll write about my own birding & backyard birding experiences, interesting bird news, and a bit about the birding-themed gifts for sale in our shop here and at Birdorable.

MY REVIEW: This is another enjoyable birding blog. Well, most birding/bird watching blogs are. There are a lot of photos, and that's the only drawback, they are in greyscale, so you don't get the full impact you would at the actual site. Nevertheless, for a quick daily fix of birdwatching, this one, along with Two-fisted Birdwatcher, fit the bill.

Here's a sample post:

As spring migration starts picking up, so do the spring bird club field trips. Lake-Cook Audubon kicked off their 2010 field trip season with today’s Loons of Lake County lead by Fred and Cheri Thompson. We had 33 total species for the day, with nine FOY (First Of Year) birds, including Common Loon and Double-crested Cormorant. We also had our FOS (First of Season) big group of birders.

(With several photos)

RECENT ARTICLES:
--T-Shirt Tuesday: I See Birds (posted 3 days ago)
This week's highlighted shirt design looks like an eyechart you ...
--Leucistic Robin (posted 4 days ago)
I saw my first leucistic American Robin on Sunday afternoon ...
--FOY joy (posted 5 days ago)
As spring migration starts picking up, so do the spring ...
--Raptor Internship Week 11 (posted 5 days ago)
My Raptor Internship at Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation is winding...
--R&R in Chicago (posted 7 days ago)
On Thursday Arthur and I are volunteering for Flint Creek ...
--T-Shirt Tuesday: Ride a Birder (posted 10 days ago)
This week's highlighted t-shirt design spoofs the popular "Save a ...
--(Really Old) Book Review: Birding Babylon (posted 12 days ago)
Birding Babylon: A Soldier's Journal from Iraq by Jonathan ...
--Three lifers in two days (posted 13 days ago)
We don't often chase rare bird alerts. When we do, ...