Grand Rounds vol. 2, no. 50 has been posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Enjoy!

I was perusing some articles that had accumulated while I was away, looking for ones that I wouldn't want to have missed and also looking for blog fodder (sometimes my day job and my blogging job actually mesh quite well, at least when it comes to discussing biomedical studies), and then I found an article that I had to discuss. Somehow I had missed it in the week leading up to my departure; how that happened I don't know, but it's time to make up for it. In any case, when I saw this article over the weekend, I knew I'd better comment on it, because, mark my words, it will soon be showing up…

Dr. Chris Rangel has posted a good discussion of trauma due to stingray barbs, stingray venom, and Steve Irwin's tragic death yesterday. It's well worth a read.

Mark over at Good Math, Bad Math just posted a lovely fisking of a claim by Peter Duesberg that "all positive teenagers would have had to achieve an absurd 1000 contacts with a positive partner, or an even more absurd 250,000 sexual contacts with random Americans to acquire HIV by sexual transmission." He even gets in some jibes at one of Duesberg's defenders on this point. It's utter poppycock, of course, and Mark does an excellent job of treating this silliness with all the respect that it deserves. It's well worth a read.

The latest RINO Sightings have been posted at Right Thoughts for your reading edification.

Holy crap. I get up on this holiday morning, and what is the first thing that I see when I check out the ScienceBlogs most recent posts, but a bunch of posts on Pharyngula, Pure Pedantry, Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge, and Evolving Thoughts, The Scientific Indian, and Afarensis? Steve Irwin (a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter) is dead: BRISBANE, Australia Sep 4, 2006 (AP)-- Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition. He was 44. Irwin was filming an…

I don't know why, but yesterday I was thinking about Spinal Tap. It's a hilarious movie that I haven't seen in a while, and I've wanted to own the DVD for a while now. Somehow, this thought reminded me of something. Something about the blog. Something that, in my absence and now my return from vacation, I had forgotten to post. A monthly blog ritual, so to speak. Indeed, the memory of one particularly hilarious scene from This Is Spinal Tap triggered a reminder of what I must do. So, here and now, I rectify my oversight: I bet you didn't know that EneMan helped to build Stonehenge, did you?…

John Wilkins over at Evolving Thoughts has posted an excellent brief summary of the history of the eugenics movement. In the process, he makes a strong argument that it was genetics far more than evolution that influenced eugenecists and that the entire eugenics movement was based on the concept that evolution was being thwarted by human society and thus needed "help" (a process that is far more like "intelligent design" than natural evolution). Moreover, he gives examples of scientists who pointed out that, for example, weeding out eugenics through selective sterilization was totally…

This time, the Virgin Mary is on a tree: LOCKPORT -- A Harvey Street woman claimed on Wednesday that she heard the voice of the Virgin Mary and has seen visions of the Mother of God in the trimmed branches of a maple tree in front of her house. Antonia "Toni" Filipertis, 84, a devout Catholic, comes to tears when she relates the story which began about 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Her family firmly believes her. Neighborhood children and adults see and wonder. Several teachers from John Pound Elementary School came across the street to take a look. Principal Roberta Donovan could not swear to the…

While I was catching up on some of the stuff that's happened while I was away, I noticed PZ Myer's article about animal rights terrorists who intimidated a neurobiologist at UCLA named Dario Ringach to the point where he decided to stop doing research on primates. Then I saw that Jake and Bora also weighed in on the issue (although for the life of me I can't figure out how on earth Bora came to the conclusion that animal rights is a conservative philosophy at its core--his explanation is tortured, at best). Here's what happened, as reported in Inside Higher Ed: Ringach's name and home phone…

The latest edition of the History Carnival has been posted at Frog In A Well. Even though I've been on vacation and blogging (not to mention blog traffic) has been light other than reposts, someone actually submitted something I posted, thus keeping someone linking to me in my absence. I hope the lack of activity is due to lots of people being on vacation at the end of August and my relative lack of new material and that things will perk up after Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm taking it easy and counting down the few remaining days of vacation. In actuality, though, the only reason I didn't…

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

Boy, oh, boy, I had to control myself on this one. Yes, dear reader, while I was away this last week and a half, many were the times that I wanted to let loose about this. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) lack of Internet access at some times and other vacation activities at other times interceded. Now that I'm back home (although not back to full blogging, as I'm still on vacation until Labor Day), it's time to weigh in. As you know, I've written extensively (some might say too extensively) about the Abraham Cherrix case, the case of a 16 year old boy who won…

Rapidly dwindling vacation or no vacation, I have to plug the Skeptic's Circle. Some of you may have wondered where the host of this week's Skeptic's Circle has been. After all, a few of you commented that his blog hadn't been updated in three months, even with a notice for the Skeptics' Circle. Fear not! Our intrepid host had to overcome even more than you think (in his mind, that is). Let him tell the tale in this brief excerpt: Welcome to the 42nd meeting of the skeptics circle. Many of you have wondered where I have been over the past months and what has exactly been going on down in the…

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…