Linda’s father lives in Småland, literally meaning “small lands” – not because things are tiny here, but it was historically made up of several smaller, independent lands. Småland is a very special place. Swedes tend to have a very idyllic perception of Småland. It is indeed dotted with tiny villages made up of white-trimmed red [...]

After 8 hours of driving to Virginia, 6 hours driving to Newark, 3 hours wait in the airport, 8 hours flight over the Atlantic and finally a 6 hour drive to the south, we are finally home again for the first time. Linda lived here her first 25 years before I sucked her into the [...]

Strangely, we arrived in Sweden without any major problems. It was as if when boarding the plane the world breathed a sigh of relief for us – if the world revolved around my family anyways. Our luck is pretty average, the typical 50/50 chance of either going shit-hits-the-fan or ending fairly well. This probability increases [...]

As I am getting to ready to begin a new chapter of my life in my wife’s homeland, I will keep a journal here to mark my thoughts and transitions to life as an expat American in Sweden. It will be marked “Sweden Journal”, so those only interested in science content can ignore it. I [...]

On the Spanish islands of Ibiza and Formenterra live a small, unassuming lizard. Yet this lizard is embedded into local culture and folklore so much as to appear on homes, books, art, clothing, and businesses throughout these Mediterranean islands. Despite their ubiquitous nature, little is known about the “Ibiza wall lizard”, which may have one of [...]

The species concept “problem” has pervaded for many years and will not be resolved anytime soon, if ever. The problem, of course, being that no two scientists will agree on universal definitions of what the darn things are! Taxonomist are exceptional argumentative and someone will undoubtedly disagree with everything in this article! Species concepts were [...]

Sorry about the dust and cobwebs! I’m in the middle of a move to a new country. Moving my family to Sweden has taken it’s toll on my “free time.” People have been very interested about the move, why I’m doing, how it’s going, what I’ll do there, etc. etc. So I plan on writing [...]

When you don’t know what to do, but know you should do something, what do you do? Rage against the machine! Or… sign an online petition? In a bid to call attention to the decades old problem of Joseph Kony, a horrible man who steals children and brainwashes them into serving in his Lord’s Resistance [...]

It has been just 45 days since I wrote about my nontraditional pathway into science at Deep Sea News. This post and the resulting hashtag #IamScience on Twitter resulted in an explosion of stories from 140 character tweets to several hundred blog posts from an enormously diverse group of online scientists. The resulting Storify of [...]

Behold the sieve. It is a marine biologist’s best friend, saving hours of sorting and enabling us to quantify ecosystems. In fact, you can get these miracle workers at McMaster-Carr, the field biologists’ version of died-and-gone-to-heaven, for a mere $40-50. Take good care of these puppies and they will last through several generations of graduate student! I prefer [...]