Recommended reads #28

• The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation is advocating for the reproduction of classic experiments. Right out of the gate, the Executive Director of ATBC (Robin Chazdon) and the Editor-in-Chief of Biotropica (Emilio Bruna) are cooking up a plan. I think this rocks.
• Scientific B-Sides brings to you the Four Stages of a Project infographic. With pithy observations and useful advice.
• The Small Science Collective collects and digitally distributes scientific zines. There are some really cool ones in the library, in this effort headed by by Andrew Yang (an ant guy by the way!)
• Wonder more about how blogs are run? Jeremy Fox from Dynamic Ecology wrote a great FAQ post about how it’s done. (With respect to many things, I would have answered pretty much the same way.)
• The best way to win an argument. That’s the name of this piece of writing, but it’s more about how to convince other people to change their mind. (What does it mean to win an argument, anyway? To convince the audience, the interlocutor, or just be correct in some other way?) This has great relevance to thinking about how we teach.  In short, if you ask someone to explain their position in enough detail, they’re likely to discover that they don’t understand it enough. Which then opens the door to changing minds.
• “My life in the classroom, where race always matters”. A piece from the career section of the Chronicle of Higher Education about how our identity matters, just as much for white faculty as anybody else.
• Sometimes figs are really hard. And they’re pollinated by specialized wasps in a complex life cycle that involves drilling a hole in the side of of the figs. How do they get their eggs inside the figs? They use a metal-tipped drilling ovipositor. Seriously. An amazing video follows in the link. And the end of the video is the best part.
• Not a birder but want to ID a bird? Now there seems to be an app for that, though I don’t know how great it works. It’s called Birdsnap, free for the iPhone.
• If you happen to be a soccer person interested in the run-up to the World Cup starting in two weeks, you must know about the crazy roster selections, and non-selections, that have happened in the US National Team. A lot’s been written and ranted on the topic, but this piece by Jeremiah Oshan puts what we know and don’t know in perspective.

Thanks to Chris Buddle, Chelsea Cook, Dave Craig and Meg Duffy for sharing links via social media.