mikethemadbiologist

Who would ever think that 'wastewater lagoons'--lakes full of animal shit--could be so interesting? And important in understanding how agricultural antibiotic use increases the frequency of antibiotic resistance genes. A recent study looked at the abundance of tetracycline resistance genes in…

You might not know this, but your body produces a whole bunch of antibacterial compounds, one of which is lactoferrin. It's found in breast milk and mucosal substances such as tears and saliva. Lactoferrin hasn't really been investigated as a medical antibiotic because many disease-causing…

...missing circuits in your head. James Carroll, in House of War, describes the bumpy road that nuclear hawk Paul Nitze, who advocated nuclear first strikes during the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis, had during his Senate confirmation hearings (p. 281-2; italics and bold mine): And…

Last night, I was reading some of the comments you leave here, and, in response to a post about a surgeon who thinks evolution is irrelevant to medical practice (Got Antibiotic Resistance?), fellow ScienceBlogling Mark left a comment. I'll get to the comment in a minute, but tragically, I hear…

I haven't been able to respond to Michael Egnor's idiocy about evolution because I've been recovering from a meeting, but fortunately my fellow ScienceBloglings have. But I'll add my two cents anyway. Here's the really stupid part from Egnor (italics mine): Doctors don't study evolution. Doctors…

The latest snafu from the War Department: we're sending soldiers to Iraq who are unfit for combat. From Salon: "This is not right," said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a spine problem that doctors say would be damaged further by heavy Army protective…

Here's a topical Senate speech for you; see if you can guess who said this: Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 3,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and…

Merry Daylight Savings Time! Here are some links for you. First, the science stuff: I have some thoughts on the possible approval of cefquinome use in cattle. Also, I have some interesting factoids about MRSA for ya. There's a new strain of norovirus in town. From the Neisseria gonorrhoea files…

One of the little things I liked about Rick Weiss' cefquinome article was a diagram about how antibiotic resistant strains evolve. One of the confusing things about the evolution of resistance (and natural selection, for that matter) is the notion that the evolution of resistance happens among…

There's something very interesting about the unfolding story of the possible FDA cefquinome approval (I've covered it here). After doing a Technorati search, virtually all of the blogs that discuss this issue are either non-partisan or progressive/liberal (I say 'virtually' because I might have…

(from here) Much has been written about the Scooter Libby verdict, so I don't have much commentary to add. However, I will make a prediction: Bush will not pardon Libby. Here's why: The lord of the manor does not sacrifice himself for the serfs. Underneath all the 'jus' people' duds, Bush is an…

Or maybe terrifying is a better word. I just returned from the Network on Antimicrobial Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus meeting, where I learned some very interesting things about S. aureus (since I'm going to refer to MRSA, methicillin resistant S. aureus repeatedly, go check this link if you…

Thanks to everyone who bloglinked to me--I added you last night. If you're interested in trading links, or if you already link to me, let me know below. So stop by these joints and say hello: Jon Swift Divine Afflatus cannablog Independent Bloggers' Alliance The Thermal Vent The Burned Over…

I'm at a meeting (out of town), so I won't be able to add people to my blogroll until Wednesday, but thank you to everyone who linked to me, the anti-Kos. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here. The Mighty River keeps blogrollin' on.

...high levels of resistance to cephalosporins and beta-lactam antibiotics are sure to follow. Sunday, the Washington Post covered the FDA approval of the use of cefquinome in cattle to treat respiratory pneumonia. The article provides a pretty good synopsis of what happened, so I won't summarize…

This is what happens when you leave posts in the Blogerator: someone beats you to it (hat tip: skippy). Unlike certain famous* bloggers, whose initials are Kos, I don't like to purge live blogs. Instead, I've been inspired by skippy. I would like anyone who links to this blog, and to whom I don…

Seeing the Forest wonders how the ridiculous post-Oscar smear of Al Gore was pulled off by a no-name organization with assets of $100,000: ...no one should have been surprised when Al Gore was attacked for the positive press he and his movie received last weekend. An Inconvenient Truth was sure to…

There's a very interesting Boston Globe story about Paul Levy, the CEO of Boston's Beth-Israel Deaconess Hospital. He's not only a CEO, but also a blogger. His blog, Running a Hospital, is, well, self-explanatory--I guess you can blog about work...if you're the boss. Levy appears to have started…

I just finished reading NY Times columnist Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina. While it's a good recap of the last six years, there isn't much that's new in the book (if you've been paying attention), until you hit the last chapter where…

It sure looks that way. Last night, I was talking to a colleague and he told me that several groups, including his, are seeing a very interesting pattern in commensal Escherichia coli (those E. coli that live in everyone's gut and aren't making us sick). In humans, it appears that roughly 20% of…

Moselio Schaechter, former American Society of Microbiology president, has a blog, Small Things Considered. It's pretty good. But the promo letter ASM sent around had one annoying thing (italics mine): Microbes have entered the blogosphere courtesy of past ASM president Moselio Schaechter,…

John Emerson on David Brooks' most recent expedition in ersatz sociology--this time a rant about the parenting habits of Brooklynites: I think that Brooks' problem is that he's an affirmative-action hire whose job description requires him to represent the conservative point of view. (His fluffiness…

Thanks to YouTube, bloggers regularly post video. Sites like Flickr allow the posting of pictures. But there's one thing that I haven't seen--or more accurately, heard. Are there any bloggers who incorporate music (or other sound files) into their blogging? I don't mean an mp3 that can be…

Beta test version of Conservapedia graphical interface. Isn't he reassuring? What happens when you take Science Blogs "basic concepts" and add it to Conservapedia, the information website for fucking morons? You get more fun than a barrel of monkeys (which, of course, are not related to humans…

When I heard that Republican Senator and presidential candidate John McCain spoke at the Discovery Institute, I was disappointed but not surprised. In March, there's going to be a report released about antibiotic resistance in bacteria. A major finding of the report: roughly 40,000 people die…

A recent Gallup Poll about support for the Iraqi Occupation notes something very interesting: Jews are more likely to oppose the war, even after party affiliation is taken into account. Gallup states, "It is unclear why Jewish Americans show such strong opposition to the war." My answer? Because…

...the man who helped bring you Iran-Contra, you know you've gone too far. Seymour Hersh has a new article in the New Yorker about the Bush Administration's Middle East 'strategy.' It's more ridiculous than Iran-Contra. Why do I say that? Because we're backing indirectly Sunni groups in Lebanon…

Here are some links for you; science first: Whenever I hear creationists talk about 'information theory', it's always pretty clear that they don't know what they're talking about. ScienceBlogling Mark smacks once such creationist around. Conservapedia mistates mutation (I know, dog bites man).…

Here's an interesting little bit about intolerance by Karl Popper from The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a…

What happens if you want to fight a war, and the generals threaten to not show up? From the Sunday Times: SOME of America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.…