revere | January 5, 2009Yesterday's New York Times carried a very long piece (more than 5000 words) by Scott Shanes on the anthrax attacker case. You may remember that shortly after Dr. Bruce Ivins, the Fort Detrick scientist who worked on anthrax, allegedly committed suicide (see posts here), the FBI announced he was the culprit and started to wrap up the case. Is the case truly "solved"?
With the F.B.I. preparing to close the case, The New York Times has taken the deepest look so far at the investigation, speaking to dozens of Dr. Ivins's colleagues and friends, reading hundreds of his e-mail messages,…
revere | January 4, 2009This is about the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Because it cannot be ignored. Let me be clear at the outset: I think the assault on Gaza is brutal, vicious and cruel, the act of a notorious regional bully. Israeli leaders (Olmert, Barak, Livni and probably others) are war criminals in a class with Bushes Jr. and Sr., Kissinger, Nixon, Pinochet, Putin, Saddam, MiloÅ¡eviÄ, Karadzic, Charles Taylor and a number of others. I wanted to get that out of the way because I don't want this to be misunderstood as a defense of Israeli actions. Far from it. It is a condemnation of the kind of action that has…
revere | January 4, 2009It's time once again for the inimitable Marcus Brigstocke on The Abrahamic Religions. Yes, I know we've done it before, but some of you may have missed it and those who have seen it will get to see it again because you can't see stuff like this too often. Especially when two of the main Abrahamic religions are duking it out and doing their best to kill innocent people because they are of a different tribe:
Kudos to Firedog Lake and Huffington Post for keeping the brutal slaughter in Gaza in front of us where we have to see it.
revere | January 3, 2009Seventeen days left in the Bush administration. With the fiscal crisis it isn't clear some urgent matters will be attended to right away by the Obama folks, but one can hope. Urgent matters like getting the Food and Drug Administration back on track protecting our food supply. Consider this FDA Press Release from yesterday:
FDA Prevents Two Dairies from Adulterating Animal Drugs and Food
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that the District Court for the District of New Mexico has enjoined Do-Rene and Clover Knolls Dairies and their owners, Douglas B. Handley and Irene…
revere | January 2, 2009Promises, promises. Since the New Years is a time for resolutions, we bring you news you already know about resolutions. News like this. Evolution has hard wired a drive to reproduce in young, healthy humans. That's how the species survives. Maybe you don't want them to have sex and maybe they even promise they won't, but biology is more powerful than parents or governments. A study published in the journal Pediatrics followed 289 teenagers who said in 1996 they took a virginity pledge and compared them with 645 non-pledgers, taking into account religious beliefs and attitudes to sex and…
revere | January 1, 2009Loyal reader Man of Misery sends this recap of 2008 from Uncle Jay. I had an Uncle Jay. But he was an orthodontist. Not like this Uncle Jay.
Happy New Year boys and girls:
revere | January 1, 2009One tradition of News Years Day in the US is the college football bowl game. When I was young I always watched the Rose Bowl (my state university was in the Big Ten league), but I have gotten away from it and don't expect to be glued to the TV today. But there will still be something glued to the football field, at least metaphorically: the dirty leavings of "Clean Coal." An American college football field is 120 yards long and 53.34 yards wide. That's 6400 square yards. Last week a retention pond containing coal ash from a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal fired power plant let loose 5.4…
revere | December 31, 2008Every couple of months a major flu paper appears purporting to reveal why the 1918 H1N1 virus was so horrifically virulent in comparison to the other pandemic viruses of the last century, H2N2 (1957 pandemic) and H3N2 (1968 pandemic). It's not just the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus that made it so deadly. There's still lots of H1N1 around, even as I tap this keyboard, but it isn't as virulent as the 1918 variety. Why not? If we knew the answer we might be able to spot a genetic change in circulating viruses indicating a turn toward virulence or find a drug or vaccine solution to…
revere | December 30, 2008About ten people sent us links to the Washington Post front page news that isn't news to anybody in occupational health. "Under Bush," the headline read, "OSHA Mired in Inaction." You don't say!
In early 2001, an epidemiologist at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sought to publish a special bulletin warning dental technicians that they could be exposed to dangerous beryllium alloys while grinding fillings. Health studies showed that even a single day's exposure at the agency's permitted level could lead to incurable lung disease.
After the bulletin was drafted, political…
revere | December 29, 2008The fact that EPA has just approved a safer and more environmentally sound refrigerant is amazing news in itself. But the story behind this new product is even more amazing. The material, called HCR-188c, is a hydrocarbon blend of common materials (among them ethane, propane, isobutene, normal butane) that have no ozone depleting potential and very little in the way of greenhouse gas type of heat trapping. Even better, appliances require only a quarter the amount as current refrigerants (hydrochlorofluorocarbons, HCFCs, and hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs), costs 20 cents per charge compared to 62…
revere | December 28, 2008As far as the world is concerned, if any day can be said to be bird flu's birthday, it's today. The disease of birds doctors call influenza A subtype H5N1 may have had a long gestation period, but we're not sure how long. A form of the virus deadly to poultry was isolated from a goose in southern China (Guangdong province) in 1996, marking the first time the highly pathogenic form of the H5 bird virus poked its head above water for us to see. How long it had "been around" before that we don't know. Then in May, 1997, a three year old tot in Hong Kong came down with a flu-like illness that got…
revere | December 28, 2008This June we lost George Carlin. He was only 71. We've had him often on our little Sunday get togethers, so on this last Freethinker Sermonette of the year of his death, why not again? You've seen it. Many times. Classics are forever. Joe Bless you, George:
revere | December 27, 2008Israel, a state entity, is committing war crimes in Gaza. They have blockaded and imprisoned an entire civilian population in the Gaza strip, over a million people, and have now launched air strikes against civilian targets with the expected results: the deaths of hundreds, among them women and children and innocent men. The Israeli attacks are the disproportionate response to escalating firing of rockets into Israel from the Gaza strip. The Israelis claim they will continue their brutality until it "changes [the] behavior" of those they blame for the rocket attacks. Any person with more than…
revere | December 27, 2008Compared to five years ago, there is a lot of great science on the web, most of it free. New Scientist is one of the best general science publications dand comes from the UK (much like the US-based Science News). While each have subscriber-only Premium Content, there is quite a lot of free access material, including some great videos on New Scientist. As part of a year-end wrap up New Scientist just posted their five most popular videos. Here they are. If you always wanted to see a human egg ovulate, here's your chance (you have to wait to get to #1):
revere | December 26, 2008It's the end of a year that saw historic election in the United States. An African American was elected President. To many of us felt like a turning point. We'll have to see. But if it is, it is due to many people, some of whom we know, most of whom we will never know. Black people fought hard and long and suffered greatly. They had allies in the white community, including many academics. I thought of all this recently when reading the Preface of a book on the nineteenth century philosopher Gottlob Frege. If you aren't a philosopher or philosophy student (or possibly a logician) you may not…
revere | December 25, 2008Sneezes occupy the attention of flu mavens because the aerosol created is likely one of the chief ways the virus finds a new host. So it's a selective advantage to a respiratory virus to make someone explosively expel air from the lungs through the nose. A sneeze even has a medical name: sternutation. The speed of the estimated 40,000 aerosol droplets has been variously given as 90 to 650 miles per hour.
But sneezing is a complex act and lots of things can make someone sneeze besides the flu or a head cold. Things that irritate the nose cause some people to sneeze. And there is an inherited…
revere | December 24, 2008The Bagdad Hack is neither a journalist nor a clever trick to get something done in Iraq. It's a cough. And reading about it is dismaying and maddening. As someone who did a lot of work on unexplained illness following the Gulf War of 1991 -- illnesses steadfastly denied by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs -- when these same folks djinned up the steaming pile of shit we call the War in Iraq they had plenty of time to plan for prevention. But when I inquired of colleagues (I was by then no longer involved) if there were any pre-deployment plans to establish baselines and…
revere | December 23, 2008One can understand why a government might be reluctant to release information to the public about the list of illegal food additives it has found in food products made within its borders when you read this:
China Releases List of Illegal Food Additives
As part of its long-term effort to improve food safety, China's Ministry of Health recently made public a list of illegal food additives that have been used in food production. Among insecticides, drain cleaners, and industrial dyes are included boric acid, an insecticide that was added to noodles and meatballs to increase elasticity, and…
revere | December 22, 2008It's influenza-like illness ("ILI") season again. We just call it flu season but in fact there are a lot of respiratory viruses running around besides the flu virus that look like flu. Recently we discussed one of the others, the human metapneumovirus (HMNV). It's been around infecting us for over a century but wasn't identified until 2001. One we've known about a little longer (1956) is respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a major cause of respiratory infections in children and increasingly in adults, especially the elderly. Like influenza and HMNV, RSV is a negative sense single stranded RNA…
revere | December 21, 2008Maybe the biggest science story of 2008 is that science will be back in government in 2009. In a way it is a commentary on how far we have fallen that the appointment of distinguished scientists to important posts in government is a story at all. It should be a given. But for eight years -- and more -- it has been the exception, and scientists who have been in government have been marginalized. Even worse, whatever they have done in private, they have been compliant public faces -- the word stooges comes to min -- for the Bush administration's contempt for any science not consistent with…