clock | August 26, 2006Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Troy Duster, Elizabeth Ransom, Winona LaDuke, Peter Singer, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Eliot Coleman & Jim Hightower recently participated in a Nation forum: One Thing to Do About Food. Here are a few excerpts - go read the whole thing:
"Once you learn how our modern industrial food system has transformed what most Americans eat, you become highly motivated to eat something else."
"....the American food system is a game played according to a precise set of rules that are written by the federal government with virtually…
clock | August 26, 2006So, you must know by now, that last night I went to the Triangle Bloggers BBQ, hosted by Anton and his wonderful wife Erin. Needless to say, it was great fun, though I had perhaps a beer too many....(but the food....don't let me get started on food - it was great)
Who was there? Local activists Will and his wonderful family (thank you for driving to the party), Brian and Ruby (thank you for driving from the party), my SciBling Abel, another fellow science blogger Reed Cartwright, the link to blook-publishing Jackson Fox, fellow Edwards supporter Jim Buie, meetup regulars Steve Cory, Josh…
clock | August 26, 2006A year ago this Monday, Katrina hit the Gulf states. We all blogged like crazy.
Since Bush Administration is desparately trying to supress the memory of their debacle, King Cranky and Melissa suggest we do a blogswarm - everyone blogs about Katrina on Monday and Shakes will collect the posts in a huge linkfest.
Need a reminder and a collection of facts? Check this Katrina timeline (via Arse Poetica)
clock | August 26, 2006Yup, in our household the new meaning of 'Bushism' has already been adopted. Even kids are using it in the new Dictionary sense. Now I gotta go as I am feeling a tad little bit presidential.
clock | August 26, 2006Hello to my 90,000th visitor, who came in from the Culture Wars Channel, and is good at hiding wher s/he is coming from except that it is North America. Still on here right now? Say something in the comments.
clock | August 26, 2006I finally got to meet Reed Cartwright in person last night. Now that he is in Raleigh, and Panda's Thumb resides in my old building on campus, I hope I'll see him more often.
Speaking of Panda's Thumb, it is currently, as in "this week", demonstrating the power of the scienceblogging community, dissecting Jonathan Wells' new pamphlet-in-book-form "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design" literally chapter by chapter.
The introduction to the series was written by Reed. Burt Humburg tackles the first chapter. PZ Myers dissected the Chapter 3, first with a draft on…
clock | August 26, 2006Jennifer Ouellette and her commenters discuss how: Geek grrls: the next generation
clock | August 26, 2006Wolverine Tom posted some of his pictures from Badlands National Park in South Dakota he visited last summer.
clock | August 26, 2006Sara Robinson turned the last installment of her previous series into a whole new series, first part of which is now up: Tunnels and Bridges, Part I: Divide and Conquer.
clock | August 26, 2006Bumble Bees Can Estimate Time Intervals:
In a finding that broadens our understanding of time perception in the animal kingdom, researchers have discovered that an insect pollinator, the bumble bee, can estimate the duration of time intervals. Although many insects show daily and annual rhythms of behavior, the more sophisticated ability to estimate the duration of shorter time intervals had previously been known only in humans and other vertebrates.
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Bees and other insects make a variety of decisions that appear to require the ability to estimate elapsed…
clock | August 26, 2006The third edition of Radiology Grand Rounds, the carnival of medical imaging, is up on Sumer's Radiology Site.
clock | August 26, 2006As we age, our sleep gets less well consolidated: we take more naps during the day and wake up more oftenduring the night. This happens to other mammals as their age. Now we know that it also happens in Drosophila:
"As humans age, so I'm told, they tend not to sleep as well. There are all sorts of reasons -- aches and pains, worries about work and lifelong accumulations of sins that pretty much rule out the sweet sleep of innocence.
But what about fruit flies? Not as a cause of insomnia. What about the problems fruit flies have sleeping?
Yes, Drosophila melanogaster also suffer sleep…
clock | August 25, 2006After reading this, I really want to see 'Snakes On the Plane' as I now feel like I have a chance of comprehending its depth and subtlety.
clock | August 25, 2006So, did you like Books Around The Clock?
Tonight, I know where I'll be, so Friday Weird Sex Blogging may happen tomorrow or at the very best very late at night.
Next week, back to normal programming, only one repost per day (chronobiology on Mondays, miscellaneous on Tuesdays, science on Wednesdays, education on Thursdays and politics on Fridays), perhaps some cat pictures taken by my daughter, and whatever else strikes my fancy on any given day.
clock | August 25, 2006Biologists Discover How We Detect Sour Taste:
A team headed by biologists from the University of California, San Diego has discovered the cells and the protein that enable us to detect sour, one of the five basic tastes. The scientists, who included researchers from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, suggest that this protein is also the long-sought sensor of acidity in the cerebrospinal fluid.
Cortical Plasticity: It's Time To Get Excited About Inhibition:
The researchers showed that the lasting cortical shut-down induced by visual deprivation at early stages of…
clock | August 25, 2006From Thursday, February 16, 2006, another old post in the where did my son get his smarts vein:
When I went to pick up Coturnix Junior from school today (he is in 7th grade), we bumped into his English teacher who informed me that he did not turn in his book review. He started coming up with excuses, that he lost the book, or it was stolen, etc. She said something like "Well, you better read something really fast, so you can turn in the review tomorrow. And it has to be something at middle-school level, not Dr.Seuss".
I doubt Dr.Seuss ever crossed his mind up till that moment, but he was…
clock | August 25, 2006Dr.Predrag Milosevic, an architect from Sarajevo (Bosnia) has written a book "Architecture in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Sarajevo 1918-1941)". In it, among else, he writes at length about my grandfather, Dr.Isidor Reiss, who designed and built a number of buildings in Sarajevo between the two World Wars, a few of which are now preserved as cultural heritage of the city, including the first skyscraper in the Balkans.
Graham Foundation in Chicago is ready to fund the publication, but it needs a large reputable publishing house to ask for it, to print it and to publicize it. If such a publishing…
clock | August 25, 2006
From January 15, 2006, another good book....
From Chris Mooney, a book suggestion, that I immediatelly followed. You know I have written a number of times on sexual politics, from the historical non-existence of "traditional" marriage to femiphobia as a psychological root of wingnuttery. Thus, of course I clicked on the link and ordered the book immediatelly. Who knows, once I read it I may write a post on it, too.
The book is How The Pro-choice Movement Saved America by Cristina Page. Here are a couple of excerpts from the editorial reviews:
The abortion issue is a cover for a…