Education
terrasig | December 7, 2009Alexa Ray Joel, the daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, was hospitalized Saturday with what I originally thought was an overdose of some type of sedative.
However, today's Newsday and MTV are reporting that the family is calling this an overdose of a homeopathic medication called Traumeel. Traumeel is manufacturer by an Albuquerque-based company called Heel USA, a company founded by a German physician in the 1920s.
If Traumeel is truly homeopathic, there is absolutely no way this product could have caused Joel's hospitalization.
If you are new to our blog, you may not know the…
nisbetmc | December 3, 2009I've been busy the past week with wrapping up the semester. As a consequence, I have not had the chance to post about continuing developments related to the stolen emails from servers at University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU).
However, today is a convenient time to weigh in, since I share many of the same conclusions offered by Mike Hulme in recent op-eds at the BBC and Wall Street Journal.
Before discussing the Hulme articles, let me relay a few observations. Since the stolen email story broke, my concern has been that many bloggers and commentators are overlooking the…
terrasig | November 29, 2009I had the honor today of witnessing the recognition of a civil rights landmark here in The-Town-That-Tobacco-Built.
This afternoon, North Carolina Historical Marker G-123 was dedicated at the site of the 23 June 1957 segregation protest at the Royal Ice Cream parlor, just north of downtown Durham.
The 1960 Greensboro sit-ins sparked a national movement but were not the first such action. Individual and group protest actions prior to 1960, generally isolated and often without wider impact, took place across the state and region. A protest in 1957 in Durham had wider consequence, as it led to…
pharyngula | November 28, 2009Katherine Kersten is Minnesota's own version of Glenn Beck. She's a 'columnist' (literally true, since she is given a regular column to fill with right-wing nonsense) for the Star Tribune, and is a regular embarrassment. She recently aimed her smear-gun at the University of Minnesota, in a deranged tirade that has been picked up by Wing Nut Daily and Hot Air (read the comments at that site for a glimpse of how insane the right wing has become).
What made her so angry? The UM has a program in the college of education called the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, or TERI. It's a reasonably…
terrasig | November 28, 2009As we mentioned earlier this week, a brouhaha has erupted north of the border (or just a bit east for our Detroit-area colleagues) whereby graduates of Canada's two naturopathy schools may be given drug prescribing rights by the Ontario legislature. Editor-in-chief of the Skeptic North blog, Steve Thoms, put up this detailed background in "Fake Doctors with Real Drugs," at the JREF Swift blog:
Bill 179 was introduced in the spring of this year as a way of expanding scope-of-practice for health care professionals in Ontario, including (but not limited to) nurses, midwives, pharmacists and…
thusspakezuska | November 24, 2009Part of my socialization into the world of science and engineering was, of course, the worship of great and important historical figures in the professions who, naturally, just happened to all be white males. This socialization was an informal, even casual, process - passing references in the introductory matter of various textbooks; framed portraits and busts on the walls and in the halls of university buildings dedicated to science and engineering; and the ubiquitous idolatry of a few key figures, e.g.: Galileo, Newton, Mendeleev, Darwin, Einstein.
As an acolyte of science, I was more…
clock | November 24, 2009Last couple of weeks months were awfully busy, on many fronts, not least finalizing the ScienceOnline2010 program, herding cats almost 100 moderators/presenters to do various stuff (e.g., respond to my e-mails) in a timely manner, and making sure that registration goes smoothly. This is also the time of year when activation energy for doing anything except going to bed to hide under the covers is very high for people suffering from SAD. Thus, you did not see many 'original' posts here lately, I know.
But, it's not that I have been totally idle. Apart from teaching my BIO101 lab again, I also…
terrasig | November 23, 2009Last Monday, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi dropped a bombshell in his new budget proposal. From the Jackson Free Press:
In his Nov. 16 budget proposal, Barbour announced that the state was facing a $715 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2011 and another $500 million shortage in fiscal year 2012. In addition to merging the state's HBCUs, he suggested many draconian budget cuts in response to the impending shortage.
"This budget proposes merging Mississippi Valley State and Alcorn State with Jackson State. No campus would close, but administration would be unified and significant…
terrasig | November 21, 2009At the recent U2 Academic Conference, I had the opportunity to be at the local premiere of It Might Get Loud, a much-more-than documentary of the electric guitar as told through the careers of Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge, and Jack White of The White Stripes and Raconteurs. For the record, I thought that White was going to be totally out of his league - while I wouldn't call him a "legend" as billed by the producers, I left being incredibly impressed with his background and breadth of abilities.
Related to the movie trailer below, I had an exchange with Toaster Sunshine, a…
terrasig | November 17, 2009
Brandon Haught is Director of Florida Citizens for Science Communications and has been a tireless advocate for science education across this large and educationally diverse state. His blog, an activity of the larger Florida Citizens for Science organization, carries this mission:
This blog is used to keep track of the good, bad and ugly science news in our state and beyond. We tend to focus on educational issues. When a science class makes the news for doing something interesting or positive, I try to make sure a post goes up here about it. When a Florida scientist gets out into the…
pharyngula | November 13, 2009Plans are afoot to build a creation "science" education center in Henning, Minnesota — about two hours north of Morris. They plan to push the simple-minded literalist creationist claim that the earth is 6,000 years old and peddle the same BS that the Creation "Museum" does — it's stark raving mad. These quotes tell the whole story:
The aim, Schultz said, is to provide families and young people with information they can use to respectfully question differing points of view they may encounter, like at school.
"What we're finding is, many kids are subject to ridicule, lower grades, being…
drorzel | November 12, 2009
Das Kriegstagebuch von Dieter Finzen im 1. Weltkrieg - Wardiary of Dieter Finzen in WW1
Diary entries from a German soldier in WWI, posted 93 years after they were written.
(tags: history war world blogs)
WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier
"This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written. To find out Harry's fate, follow the blog!"
(tags: history war blogs world)
Cocktail Party Physics: The Mayans Warned Us: Don't Trespass In Yellowstone
"Last night I settled down into a cushy…
terrasig | November 11, 2009I was just going through my unread Twitter stream from yesterday and found a link to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, "A Scientist's Guide to Academic Etiquette," with a tagline about scientists lacking in social skills.
Recognizing the truth in that statement, I fired up the post to the very pleasant surprise of learning that the author is none other than the Grande Dame of the science blogging community, Female Science Professor.
Female Science Professor is the pseudonym of a professor in the physical sciences at a large research university who blogs under that…
jrosenhouse | November 11, 2009Remember that trip to the Creation Museum during the big paleontology conference this summer? Linda Vaccariello has a lengthy, and pretty good, article about it in the current issue of Cincinnati Magazine. Here's a nugget I liked:
Looking over the exhibits in the Dinosaur Den, we learn that the flood killed all the dinosaurs except for the ones on Noah's ark. “But their days were numbered,” the signage explains ominously. What happened? Here, the museum makes a rare admission of uncertainty. But it does present a tantalizing possibility: “Dragons could have been dinosaurs,” the sign says.…
terrasig | November 10, 2009I missed this note on Friday at the Wall Street Journal Health Blog but the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has made available some great new curricular resources through their Centers of Excellence for Physician Information Program (NIDA CoEs) (press release)
"Physicians can be the first line of defense against substance abuse and addiction, but they need the resources and the training," said NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. "Our long term goal is for doctors to incorporate screening for drug use into routine practice like they currently screen for other diseases; to help patients…
drorzel | November 10, 2009
A New Spacecraft to Explore on Waves of Light - NYTimes.com
"About a year from now, if all goes well, a box about the size of a loaf of bread will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth. There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails as shiny as moonlight and only barely more substantial. Then it will slowly rise on a sunbeam and move across the stars."
(tags: science space technology overbye)
News: Engaged or Confused? - Inside Higher Ed
"[The National Survey of Student Engagement] "fails to meet basic standards for validity and reliability," writes Stephen R.…
clock | November 9, 2009The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.
Today, I asked Christian Casper to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?
My name is Christian Casper, and I recently finished a Ph.D. at North Carolina State University, in their program in…
oracknows | November 9, 2009
This project is behind schedule. The reasons, I hope, are forgivable. First off, there was just too much other stuff going on last week, to the point where, even though I've read several chapters of Suzanne Somers' new book (if you can call it that) Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place (Random House website), I couldn't force myself to sit down in front of the computer, copy of Knockout in front of me in order to pick choice brain-necrosing quotes from. Besides, the whole issue of Desiree Jennings came up, as well as a…
sa smith | November 6, 2009Though only a handful of ERV readers are from Oklahoma, I know all of you are familiar with the handiwork of Senator Randy Brogdon.
He was the fellow who recently tried to get Creationism taught in Oklahoma public schools (FAIL).
Dude is a fucking IDiot (and just plain old idiot) who hates science:
I am also disgusted with the yearlong one-sided celebration of Darwinism that OU is sponsoring on their campus.
Disgusted? Really? Not 'disappointed', or 'dismayed', or 'intrigued, so Im going to check it out', but disgusted? Fantastic.
So what happens when you combine:
1. Anti-science
2. New…
oracknows | November 5, 2009Over the last week or so, I've been confronted full bore with cranks, staring down the barrel, if you will, of a crank shotgun, one barrel being the anti-vaccine movement in general (with J.B. Handley and his misogyny being the buckshot, so to speak) and the other being Suzanne Somers and her despicable cancer quackery. Indeed, over the last five years, I've subjected myself to some of the most outrageous bits of unreason, conspiracy mongering, and pseudoscience. Be it the anti-vaccine movement, quacks, 9/11 Truthers, Holocaust deniers, creationists, or any of a variety of other bits of…