Also this week: visualizing extinct megafuna vs. their extant relatives, 10,000 Maniacs vs. Michael Stipe, and more.
From Jeremy:
The story of Walter Pitts, the teenage runaway who became a neuroscience and AI pioneer. The linked piece isn’t new, but it was new to me. It’s amazing, and tragic. Go read it.
Writing in the ESA Bulletin, Walt Carson and a large and diverse group of co-authors have a comprehensive guide to applying to graduate school in ecology and evolution. Worth sharing with undergraduates considering graduate school in EEB.
Visualizing the sizes of extinct megafauna vs. their living relatives. You’ve probably seen these comparisons before using silhouettes. But somehow, photoshopping near-photorealistic reconstructions of the extinct species into photos of their living relatives makes the size differences much more striking. Nice touch: photoshopping a two-toed sloth to cling to the side of a Megatherium. 🙂 Also: TIL there used to be giant wombats. And that there’s an extinct whale named for Herman Melville.
Well, this all seems horrible.
And finally, this live performance catches 10,000 Maniacs near their peak, plus Michael Stipe guests for “Candy Everybody Wants” and a cover of “To Sir With Love”. Skip Dennis Miller’s intro. Why yes, my musical tastes were formed in the late ’80s and early ’90s, how could you tell?
Have a good weekend. 🙂
Dynamic Ecology 
Great live performance! I’ll see your Merchant and Stipe, and raise you a Bragg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csAp1KeueUU
Cheers for that.
Hah, after lurking for YEARS on this blog, you’ve finally gotten me to comment with the 10,000 Maniacs/Michael Stipe link 😁🙄. The very first live concert I saw was front row at a 10,000 Maniacs concert, and Michael Stipe joined during the encores. My musical tastes were also similarly influenced by the late 80s/90s!
I saw 10,000 Maniacs touring for Our Time In Eden. It was great, though sadly there was no guest appearance from Michael Stipe.
10,000 Maniacs and TMBG are the only favorite bands of mine I’ve seen live when they were at or near their peaks.
I am sad they didn’t include giant hyraxes.
There were giant hyraxes?!