Damn you, faint praise!

I received this in my news alerts. And now I know what I'd like Santa to put under the tree for me. It's certainly not the review, but the item being reviewed.

Frankly, I take offense at some of Scicurious' comments. And I will tell you that I am refraining from expressing many of my true sentiments. My hope is that she someday learns that her fellow scientists share her passion for their own subject, and that most of us have the courtesy not to malign the research interests of other scientists.

Speaking of respect for scientists working in different areas, I recently got sucked into History's documentary series, "How The Earth Was Made". It brought back a lot of memories of my foray into geology, which mainly involved a textbook and some spare time back when I had some. I highly recommend it, and it made me think about some interesting directions for my own research. Details to come, perhaps?

Fungi music!

This popped up in my news alerts. In the British Virgin Islands, they have a musical genre called Fungi music. There is also a dish called fungi, but neither the music nor the dish seem to have anything to do with the subject that I prefer to blog about. It's pretty sweet though, as this YouTube clip demonstrates!

New era in mycoblogging for me

Wow. So with the new iPhone I can talk and it will write down what I am saying to put on my blog. That is super cool but can I say fungal terms like coronaria send (NB. Cortinarius) basidiospore and have it understand? Okay, not quite. Quarts in the area's courts in areas CEO RTI and ARI US. How about amanita? (Doesn't capitalize) How about Armillaria? Hi pozzolana (Hypoxylon) crepitus (Crepidotus) try Caloma (Tricholoma) them out Aloma (Naematoloma) Agaricus boletus from a Topsys (Fomitopsis). Oh okay not perfect but still a pretty funny thing. (And it doesn't punctuate very well, either. Parenthetical remarks are my edits)

Very neat old tymie video of the life cycle of a mushroom!

Spectacular Science: The Lifecycle of a Mushroom from Thomas Beg on Vimeo.

What was the rust?

After posting yesterday, I was thinking about the great Alaskan orange goo story, and I tried to see if anyone has followed up.  Nope.  I was unable to find an answer as to what rust fungus produced that great cloud of orange that had Kivalina residents so concerned.  It is often a simultaneous joy and sorrow to find the holes in the Internet. 

Long time no posts!

I now see that my last post was on August 8th?  Crikey! It's been a while.  Not that I haven't been out and about looking for mushrooms and other fungal pursuits,  I've just been busy busy busy.  I'm teaching a Principles of Biology course and it's taking a lot of my time.  I try to use a few fungal examples every now and again, but for these folks fungi are just something that you put on pizza or perhaps something that spurs you to throw your bread away.  

I've been adding a few things to my bookshelf as well, including Bessette et al.'s North American Boletes, and the How To Identify Mushrooms series.  But to be honest, I haven't been able to look at them much yet.  Also, I got my compound microscope fixed up, so I'm able to look at some fungi on the scale at which they typically operate (remember, fungi are fundamentally microorganisms!).  Hopefully, I'll be able to put some of my photomicrographs up soon enough.  Okay, back to the lecture writing.  Holler at ya, later, Blogosphere.