March 23, 2010
It has just been announced that my fellow Scibling Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science has been voted the winner of the 2010 Research Blogging Awards. In addition to being voted as Best Blog of the Year he has additionally been selected for having the Best Lay-Level Blog and for having written…
March 23, 2010
Harvard Medical School physician and researcher J. Wes Ulm has a fascinating paper in the new edition of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, the quarterly academic periodical put out by Johns Hopkins University. His paper "The Cachet of the Cutthroat" investigates the legacy of ideas that formed the…
March 22, 2010
Five years ago Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, made headlines when he suggested that women are not as well represented in science because of "issues of intrinsic aptitude." By proposing that women are biologically less capable of succeeding in science he gained the anger of many of…
March 21, 2010
Taken word for word from online fundamentalist forums(contains some graphic language).
March 20, 2010
RaceWire is reporting that Thomas Hagan, one of three men convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X (and the only to plead guilty), was released after his 17th attempt at parole yesterday. Hagan, at the time of the murder, was known as Talmadge X and was a militant member of the Nation of Islam…
March 19, 2010
An adolescent female orangutan practices her ape stroke.Image: Anne Russon / New Scientist
Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) are not the most dexterous of creatures (especially for primates) and this is particularly true when they're in water. Zoos across the country have removed the moats surrounding…
March 18, 2010
Image Source: Monkeys in the NewsMonkeys In the News has alerted me to an Associated Press story today about a Nevada research lab, part of Charles River Laboratories, that is one of the world's largest suppliers of clinical and laboratory research services to pharmaceutical and biotech…
March 17, 2010
The monthly anthropology blog carnival Four Stone Hearth has just been posted. Ciarán was kind enough to include two of my recent posts and there is a wealth of information for those interested in all aspects of anthropology.
March 16, 2010
Looking nonhumans in the eye. Image: Elephant Man by Chris GallucciIn 1927 Bertrand Russell wrote his now famous essay "Why I Am Not A Christian" and outlined the general reasons for why he rejected such an ideology. This approach has been followed by other writers such as Ibn…
March 16, 2010
My essay The Unseen and Unknowable Has No Place in Science has just gone up this morning in the Religion section of The Huffington Post:
Yes, religion is incompatible with science. This doesn't mean, of course, that religious people are incapable of doing science. Far from it. There are certain…
March 15, 2010
The latest edition of Scientia Pro Publica has been divided between eight blog posts based on theme. True to form, a single edition has influenced multiple posts in the blogospheric version of pleiotropy.
Beginning | Biology | Conservation | Ethics | Medicine | Physics | Psychology | Conclusion…
March 15, 2010
Image: The Daffodil Cichlid of Lake Tanganyika / Koen Eeckhoudt
In 1888 "Darwin's Bulldog", Thomas Henry Huxley, declared that nature was little more than a "gladiator's show" whereby only "the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day." Brutal competition was the only…
March 12, 2010
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
CIA peppered bread with LSD in 1951 Image: The TelegraphYesterday the UK newspaper The Telegraph published an article revealing that a mysterious 1951 outbreak of mass hysteria in France was actually the result of a secret experiment performed…
March 11, 2010
Coca-Cola sucks India dry. Image: Carlos Latuff / Wikimedia CommonsThe marketing executive who came up with Coca-Cola's popular slogan in 1908 most likely never expected it would be taken so literally. However, a hundred years ago there probably weren't many who imagined a…
March 10, 2010
It is a common argument by those who are opposed to evolution's implication for religious belief to label Darwin as a social Darwinist and a racist. Adrian Desmond and James Moore's book Darwin's Sacred Cause has gone a long way towards dispelling any claims that Darwin sought to justify black…
March 8, 2010
Haiti-born hip hop artist Wyclef Jean has been one of the leading artists promoting Haitian relief since the earthquake. In this Creole version of his song "24 Heures a Vivre" (24 Hours to Live) on his 2004 album Welcome to Haiti: Creole 101 he asks the following:
Et si t'avais 24 heures à vivre…
March 5, 2010
In light of the Oscars this Sunday I thought those of you who missed it would enjoy my review of District 9 (which is up for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay).
Inexplicably, a UFO appears over one of Earth's remote cities. Hovering a few hundred meters above…
March 5, 2010
Nuuchaanulth Ceremonial Curtainfrom the Family of Naasḳuu-isaḳs of the Hupacasath Nation
Human beings around the world honor their dead and the memories of their relatives. We have enacted special rituals related to the handling of human remains from the sacred funeral pyres of India to the…
March 4, 2010
Bonobos and the Child-Like Joy of SharingHaiti and the Loan That Wasn'tCan You Solve This Nearly 300-Year-Old Medical MysteryTeaching Evolutionary HistoryAn Academic Love Story
March 3, 2010
Think you know Nature Network? Wait till you see what they're up to now. The members of my former parish have now unveiled their long awaited MT4 platform and you can re-experience all of their wonderful science blogginess updated afresh for your viewing pleasure.
The administrators announced the…
March 3, 2010
Yesterday the BBC aired an investigative report documenting how American "vultures," such as New York-based Eric Hermann at hedge fund FH International, bought up debt from Liberia for pennies on the dollar and are now forcing Liberia's impoverished government to pay in full. This is at the same…
March 3, 2010
Artist rendering of Darwinius. Image: Julius T. CsotonyiLast year's publication of the fossil primate Darwinius masillae claimed it to be the oldest haplorhine primate ever discovered and a multimedia blitz campaign touted the find as the ultimate "missing link" (an erroneous term…
March 2, 2010
In light of the recent discussion on animal testing and animal rights I thought a few additional points would be valuable. It is a fact that animal testing leads to some necessary medical advances that save lives. Anyone who would say differently doesn't have the slightest clue what they're…
March 1, 2010
It's wonderful to see that my Open Letter to the Animal Liberation Front has generated discussion on this important topic. The issue as I see it is really quite simple and boils down to two essential issues: the benefits to science versus the ethics of invasive animal experimentation. The British…
February 28, 2010
Four years ago today a young researcher at the beginning of his graduate program in primatology sat down with the most intelligent, engaging, and downright beautiful fellow primate he'd ever had the opportunity to share a beer with. Freshly minted with her Master's degree in women's studies (…
February 27, 2010
The finalists have been chosen in the first annual Research Blogging Awards for material written about peer-reviewed literature. Some of my favorite bloggers have been selected including Neurophilosophy, Laelaps, Not Exactly Rocket Science, A Blog Around the Clock (BoraZ also has the best…
February 26, 2010
(updated below)
My piece for The Huffington Post has just gone up concerning the latest incidents involving neuroscientist Dario Ringach and the targeting of his children by animal rights extremists. For more on this see Dr. Free-Ride, PZ, PalMD, Scicurious, MarkCC, Nick Anthis, Drugmonkey and…
February 25, 2010
Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulip, Rembrandt (1632)I have been extremely ill this week which has prevented me from posting as often as I would have liked. However, I have been keeping up on the suggestions offered to explain the nearly 300-year-old medical mystery involving "hairy crustaceous…
February 21, 2010
The creationists have done it again, first it was bananas and now it's peanut butter. It seems they do all of their heavy thinking while shopping for groceries. Ray Comfort saw mutant bananas forged through artificial selection as evidence of God's presence (little did he know that wild bananas…
