Social Sciences
drorzel | May 27, 2009
Race and the Full Court Press at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture
A good piece on the creepy racial subtext of that Malcolm Gladwell article. (I can stop posting about that any time I want to. Really.)
(tags: race culture sports basketball society)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Men
"I mentioned a little while back that it's raining men here. The percentage of male students here has been climbing for the last several years, and the recession seems to be giving it a conspicuous boost. Male students are still a minority, though mostly in the over-21 age…
thusspakezuska | May 27, 2009Welcome to our discussion of The Gender Knot by Allan Johnson. This is the first post in the discussion series. We will be discussing Chapter 1 "Where Are We?" You can find all posts connected to this discussion here.
I just noted a potential problem. There is an updated edition of the book now available. Right now I am working with a 1997 edition. I haven't decided if I will purchase the new edition; for now, I am going to keep going with my old one. But, if you are working with a new edition, you may encounter something in the book that I have left out. If so, please feel free to…
palmd | May 27, 2009Earlier this month I wrote about some of the people who claim to be Lyme disease experts, and specifically about an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, and its author. The article was truly horrid, especially when presented in the context of an ethics journal. My ethicist friend weighed in at the time, and now she informs us that the journal has printed a response.
Background
Lyme disease is a relatively common bacterial infection acquired from the bite of a tick. Many people who are infected develop a characteristic rash, and if they are treated at that point, that's the end of that…
grrlscientist | May 27, 2009tags: HSUS, Humane Society of the United States, Animal Rights, terrorism, animal shelters, streaming video
This video shows you a little information about the Humane Society of the United States or H$U$ -- is a tax-free corporation that supports terrorist organizations while pretending to the public that they raise funds to provide shelter to homeless animals. Terrorist? What can I possibly mean? Watch this video and find out ... [2:27]
ejohnson | May 26, 2009
In this week's episode of Science Saturday, John Horgan chats with primatologist Richard Wrangham about two features that define humanity: violence and cooking. They compare chimpanzee aggression and human warfare, discuss the ancient origins of food preparation, assess the raw food diet craze, and explore how cooking has shaped the sexual division of labor in human society.
clock | May 26, 2009Mockingbirds In Fickle Climates Sing Fancier Tunes:
Why are some birds simple singers and others vocal virtuosos? Researchers at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and McGill University suspect that inconsistent climates may play a role. A large-scale study of mockingbirds in diverse habitats reveals that species in more variable climes also sing more complex tunes. "As environments become more variable or unpredictable, song displays become more elaborate," said Carlos Botero, a postdoctoral researcher at NESCent in Durham, NC. NESCent is an…
razib | May 25, 2009Dienekes points me to new research on MHC and mating:
The scientists studied MHC data from 90 married couples, and compared them with 152 randomly-generated control couples. They counted the number of MHC dissimilarities among those who were real couples, and compared them with those in the randomly-generated 'virtual couples'. "If MHC genes did not influence mate selection", says Professor Bicalho, "we would have expected to see similar results from both sets of couples. But we found that the real partners had significantly more MHC dissimilarities than we could have expected to find simply…
pharyngula | May 24, 2009Timothy Birdnow is one of those common wingnuts: he worships GW Bush, thinks global warming is a hoax, homosexuality is evil, evolution is a lie, and history is all about the triumphant ascent of Judeo-Christian America. I've laughed at him a few times before; now he's venting his diseased, shriveled spleen at atheism. It's funny stuff.
A lot of it is the usual ahistorical tripe which can be summed up in this cliche:
This prohibition was clearly intended to restrain governmental interference with the right of the individual to believe and worship as he sees fit. The "Wall of Separation" was…
palmd | May 24, 2009I'm actually rather surprised that the movement to castrate autistic kids isn't more in the news. Parents of autistic kids are very good at advocacy, so where are they on this one? On the other hand, the abuse of the mentally and cognitively disabled is so ingrained in our society, that perhaps these parents can't even see it.
The idea of castrating undesirables is not new. An American eugenics movement arose in the early part of the 20th century, leading to eugenics legislation, such as the Johnson Immigration Act of 1924. To give you an idea of some of the thinking that went into this…
skookumchick | May 23, 2009Okay, so I finally updated our family blog with what has been going on behind the scenes here at Chez Nous, and I will share some of it with you, through the power of copy and paste and with only a modicum of overlap. Voila, I present to you my last two weeks (only some of which is work-related)!
We begin my update with:
what happened two Wednesdays ago, namely that my department head has announced his resignation, effective July 1. I am hoping he has sent out an announcement to all those folks who should find out from him, and not from reading this blog. It has been a very emotional year…
oracknows | May 23, 2009About a year ago in Wisconsin, an 11-year-old girl named Madeleine Neumann died of diabetic ketoacidosis thanks of the irrational religious beliefs of her parents, who prayed for her but did not take her to a physician even as Madeleine became weaker and more ill, her deterioration leading to a most unpleasant death. Highly unusual in such cases, the DA actually prosecuted the parents for second-degree reckless homicide. Given the unjustifiably privileged position irrational religious justifications for doing horrible things have in our society, I was even more shocked that this case went to…
cortex | May 22, 2009Over at the New Yorker website, I've answered a few questions from readers about the marshmallow task:
Do you think the future results of success would be different for a sample of kids born in the twenty-first century considering the decades of behavioral, economical changes in the society?
Hassan Patwary
San Jose, Calif.
I think it would be hard to replicate the marshmallow task now, if only because it's gotten much tougher to feed hundreds of preschoolers sugary snacks in the name of science. There are allergies, peculiar diets, and all sorts of food issues. So you'd have to find something…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2009Question: Did you know that there are National Historic Chemical Landmarks?
Answer: Yes, there are.
Question: What did the American Chemical Society declare to be its first National Historic Chemical Landmark, and where can you find it?
Answer: "Old Faithful", a Bakelizer or steam pressure vessel, vintage 1909. Phenol and formaldehyde were hardened at 150 C and 100 psi and voila! commercial quantities of Bakelite were the product. You can find it at the museum at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia.
I spent several delightful hours there yesterday afternoon and could…
jstemwedel | May 21, 2009You may have heard that the Obama administration has proposed new rules for federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. (The proposed rules are available in draft form through the end of the public comment period; the NIH expects to finalize the rules in July).
While researchers are enthusiastic at the prospect under this administration of more funding for ESC research, not everyone is happy about the details of the proposed rules. Indeed, in a recent article in Cell Stem Cell [1], Patrick L. Taylor argues that there is something fundamentally misguided about the way the new…
palmd | May 20, 2009I've been reluctant to write about the Daniel Hauser case. I don't even want to imagine what his parents are going through. If you're not a parent, I can't explain it to you, so you'll have to trust me---having a kid with a life-threatening illness can drive you to do the unimaginable.
And what Daniel's parents have chosen to do is nearly unimaginable, but until you've been there, judgment must be tempered by compassion. But that compassion is only for the parents and the patient, not for those who are supporting their horrible decisions.
The basics
Daniel is 13 year old boy with…
mikethemadbiologist | May 18, 2009Probably not. But genes linked to a high risk of breast cancer? You betcha.
ScienceBlogling Rebecca Skloot has a very good piece about the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against Myriad, the company that owns the patent for the 'breast cancer genes' BRCA1 and BRCA2 (she provides some more background here).
To me, the really galling thing is that Myriad didn't discover these genes, publicly funded research did. The goal of that research is not to enrich patent holders, but to improve human health for society as a whole. The patent drives up diagnosis costs by preventing anyone else from…
bioephemera | May 17, 2009
Another fabulously weird map, from the great blog Strange Maps. This one is entitled "The Man of Commerce" and dates to 1889.
According to the American Geographical Society Library,
The highly detailed 31" x 50" map/chart conflates human anatomy with the American transportation system, in an apparent attempt to promote Superior as a transportation hub.Its metaphor makes West Superior "the center of cardiac or heart circulation"; the railways become major arteries; and New York is "the umbilicus through which this man of commerce was developed."The explanatory notes conclude: "It is an…
terrasig | May 15, 2009Well, it's mid-May at 36° North, the honeysuckles are blooming, my allergies are miserable, the air is damp, and that can only mean one thing: the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting is nearly upon us.
Held this year beginning on 29 May, the annual ASCO meeting coincides with all sorts of announcements of miracle cancer drugs and the sound of cash changing hands. Although being held in Orlando, Florida, this is far from a Mickey Mouse operation; in fact, the buzz of bullion here rivals that of the Walt Disney empire. With the abstracts released last night at 6 pm EDT,…
tetrapodzoology | May 14, 2009In the previous post we looked at the small, island dwelling crocodilians of the south-west Pacific. I personally find it exciting that such animals were (in the case of at least some of the species) alive until just a few thousand years ago, that they were encountered by people, and that their remains have eluded detection until recent decades. The odds are high that further species await discovery. Here's another article that originally appeared at Tet Zoo ver 1.
Before we get to the new stuff, here's something relevant to the mekosuchine article: a never-before-seen skull reconstruction…
revere | May 14, 2009A reader (hat tip River) sent me a link to a New York Times piece quoting a physician who recently saw swine flu cases in Mexico City. He called attention to what seemed like an anomalous clinical presentation of many cases. Besides a higher proportion of gastrointestinal symptoms (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea), Virginia Commonwealth infectious disease specialist Dr. Richard P. Wenzel was surprised that many cases, even severely ill ones, did not have fever:
Many people suffering from swine influenza, even those who are severely ill, do not have fever, an odd feature of the new virus that…