Social Sciences
revere | September 6, 2009Bill Donohue is a demented, mean (evil?) and bat shit crazy head of a nasty coven called the Catholic League. Donohue's organization claims to represent 350,000 Catholics (yeah, right; and we're the Andrews Sisters), but since there are an estimated 67 million Catholics in the US and Canada, even by his own inflated estimate this is only 0.5%. You wouldn't think there would be much we would agree on. But I just found one. We atheists -- and it turns out, lots of Christians -- are out to get him and his mob of crazies:
Catholic League President Bill Donohue presented a paranoid side of his…
razib | September 5, 2009Singapore is a racially diverse society, so there's a natural pool of diversity from which one can draw for study of human variation. The Han majority of Singapore derive predominantly from Fujian in southeast China. The Indians are mostly from the southern regions dominated by Tamils or Telugus, but there are large minorities from all over the subcontinent. Finally, the Malay category is really an amalgam of peoples of Southeast Asian Muslim origin, from native Singaporean Malays, to Malaysian Malays, to immigrants from Indonesia.
Singapore Genome Variation Project: A haplotype map of three…
drorzel | September 5, 2009
slacktivist: TF: No heroes
"Here is the scene LaHaye and Jenkins are stumbling toward: Nicolae sits in his office, meditating on his evil scheme and the worldwide suffering it will cause. In walks the hero.
If that hero is anyone other than Buck Williams, then we're in for some fireworks. Pick a hero, any hero. In walks Buffy Summers, armed with wisecracks and a nasty scythe-looking thing, matter-of-factly informing Nicolae that his scheme stops, now. In walks the Doctor, unarmed except for a sonic screwdriver and a boundless, inexplicable confidence, cheerfully explaining to Carpathia that…
sb admin | September 4, 2009by Ruth Long
Yesterday, a friend and neighbor told me that she was chastised for nursing her daughter in a DC public library. She had placed herself in a discreet corner and covered herself and her child who was nursing, while she read a book to her older child. The librarian then confronted this woman and told her to âcover up.â At what point in human society did the notion of seeing a mother nursing her child become vulgar? This is one of the most basic human rights that we are all entitled to.
According to the DC Code D.C. Code Ann. § 2-1402.81 et seq., âbreastfeeding is part of…
emjohnson | September 3, 2009
Inexplicably, a UFO appears over one of Earth's remote cities. Hovering a few hundred meters above the terrified citizens, a government mission to board the craft is executed only to find the strange beings living in disease and desperation. A decision is made to save their lives and relocate the aliens to the city's outskirts. In that moment, what seemed to be a compassionate action develops into an outdoor prison reminiscent of the worst crimes of colonialism. Imprisoned, literally in the shanty town that is created for them and figuratively within a society that shuns them, the…
sb admin | September 3, 2009We've just learned that Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be announcing later this afternoon that John Howard, MD has been selected to lead the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Howard headed NIOSH for six years during George W. Bush's administration, and both the American Society of Safety Engineers and the American Industrial Hygiene Association appealed unusccessfully to then-CDC Director Julie Gerberding to extend his tenure.
An interesting side note is that, assuming David Michaels is confirmed to head OSHA, there will be two George…
gregladen | September 3, 2009At issue here is the idea that "biology" is slow and ponderous, glacial, even geological, in its rate of change, while culture is quick and snappy and makes rapid adjustment. Connected to this is a subtly different but very important idea: Culture actually makes sensible adjustments to compensate for changes in the biological realm.
Surely, it is true that culture can change more quickly than biology, and surely it is true that culture can make adjustments for biological effects or alterations. Indeed, the very essence of humanity is culture's effects on human capacities. We tropical ex-…
drorzel | September 3, 2009
Physics Buzz: The Surprising Physics of Pipe Organs
"In 1877, English physicist Lord Rayleigh observed that when two almost identical organ pipes are played side by side, something strange happens. Rather than each blaring their own tone, the two pipes will barely make a whisper. But put a barrier between them, and they sing loud and clear.
Markus Abel and his team of physicists at Potsdam University in Germany found themselves uniquely poised to investigate the long-standing mystery. "
(tags: physics science music blogs physics-buzz)
News: Unexpected Philosophers - Inside Higher Ed
"That…
cpikas | September 2, 2009Sometimes so many things come up at the same time it becomes difficult if impossible to ignore. Here's just a brief list:
An oceanographer came to me and asked to see a print copy of an AGU journal article. If you've followed me here from elsewhere, then you'll know my place of work was mandated to discard all print materials (we did actually make the case for maybe 4 journals that are both not available online and are not widely held - there was a 5th but it got discarded by accident). Turns out that the entire point of the article was to show two color graphics on the second page. Well…
sciencepunk | September 1, 2009Music-science crossover special! The lovely people at Jemsite, a repository for all your Ibanez JEM guitar and related musical needs, have been featuring a run of science bloggers on their blog.
Since clearly music is the only thing that comes close to the awesomeness of science, I was more than happy to take part!
Do you think music can help teach science or help students learn science?Without a doubt. I've already been lucky enough to hear fantastic lectures on the neurology of music from scientists such as Giana Cassidy and Jessica Grahn. Music is a phenomenally integral part our…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2009During one of the many framing-related flare ups (kinda like zits, aren't they?), I argued that biologists have done the following things well while confronting creationism:
Calling creationists fucking morons (because they are).
Arguing that a better understanding of how life evolved is good in and of itself, and can imbue us with a certain sense of wonder.
Refuting specific creationist claims.
But this is what I thought was missing:
What we rarely do is make an affirmative, positive argument for evolution (as opposed to against creationism). I proposed one particular argument: we can't do…
drorzel | September 1, 2009It's probably a good thing that I don't have full-text access to Mark Slouka's article in Harper's, with the title "Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school." Just the description in this Columbia Journalism Review piece makes me want to hunt down the author and belt him with a Norton anthology:
According to the article itself, the dehumanizing element of the school system (especially universities) is actually its focus on producing businesspeople and "ensuring that the United States does not fall from its privileged perch in the global economy." But "nothing speaks more clearly to…
nisbetmc | August 31, 2009Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, Curtis Brainard previews some of the major themes and proposed initiatives from a new co-authored paper I have appearing at the American Journal of Botany. The article is scheduled for the October issue as part of a special symposium on science education and communication. A pre-publication author proof is available with the final paper online later this month. If you have been following the recent blog debates over science communication but have been looking for more substantive sources, this paper is probably for you. It's also a good introduction to…
gregladen | August 31, 2009Good morning and welcome to another installment of "The Falsehoods." Today's falsehood is the assertion that the poor have more babies than the rich, or that the poor just have more babies to begin with. In comparison to ... whatever.
Now, before you rush off to the Internet and find some table or graph that shows higher fertility in women of lower SES than higher SES, or a high birth rate among Nigerians, I want to acknowledge right away that such evidence is easy to find, and it is easy to take that evidence and construct the obnoxious sentence that titles this post. Yes, that is all…
pharyngula | August 30, 2009The Pope has become an environmentalist, and he has figured out who is causing all our ecological difficulties: the atheists.
Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where his existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the 'final authority,' and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.
Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, has a pithy reply.
This is rich coming from the leader of…
j7uy5 | August 28, 2009...and the steel hits the flesh.
Mark Rosenberg, MD, representing the
href="http://www.researchamerica.org/pgr_society">Paul G. Rogers
Society for Global Health Research, had an opinion piece published
in the Boston Globe. He makes a good point about health. It
is not just doctors and hospitals. Urban design, and
infrastructure maintenance have a role to play.
href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/18/roads_that_are_designed_to_kill/">Roads
that are designed to kill
By Mark Rosenberg
August 18, 2009
...Most people think we are doing…
khannula | August 27, 2009When I was little, I was vaccinated for the things that were recommended at the time: polio, measles, German measles (rubella), diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough (pertussis). I had the mumps and chicken pox when I was little, and was re-vaccinated for measles before college (because the late 60's vaccine wasn't effective enough, I think). My kid's list of vaccinations has been much longer, and includes a lot of diseases I didn't recognize immediately (Hib, for instance). A lot of parents I know are skeptical of vaccinations - aren't they potentially dangerous, and maybe better when kids get…
mikethemadbiologist | August 27, 2009
R.J. Matson, St. Louis Post Dispatch
Ezra Klein nails it:
There is an impulse to honor the dead by erasing the sharp edges of their life. To ensure they belong to all of us, and in doing, deprive them of the dignity conferred by their actual choices, their lonely stands, and their long work. But Ted Kennedy didn't belong to all of us. He didn't even belong to all Democrats. He was not of the party that voted for more than a trillion in unfunded tax cuts but cannot bring itself to pay for health-care reform. He was not of the party that fears the next election more than the next failure to…
cortex | August 26, 2009Why do people buy insurance? On the one hand, the act of purchasing insurance is an utterly rational act, dependent on the uniquely human ability to ponder counterfactuals in the distant future. What if my a fire destroyed my house? What if my new car got totaled? What if I get cancer and require expensive medical treatments? We take this cognitive skill for granted, but it's actually profoundly rare.
And yet, the desire to purchase insurance is also influenced by deeply irrational forces, and the peculiar ways in which our emotions help us assess risks. The passionate nature of risk - and…
emjohnson | August 26, 2009It took the threat of nuclear annihilation between the two greatest powers of the 20th century to solve one of the most profound scientific controversies of the 1800s. In 1952 Dr. Harry Ladd, a researcher for the US Geological Survey, convinced the US War Department to drill holes deep into the Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls just prior to their obliteration by hydrogen bombs. The reason for the drilling had little to do with the nuclear tests as part of Operation Crossroads, but was simply to conduct an experiment based on the hypothesis of coral reef formation first proposed by Charles Darwin…