mikethemadbiologist

It's OK If You're a Republican, I suppose: Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT. The fund aggressively "shorts" long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning…

Monday, The NY Times had an interesting story about Zurich, Switzerland's intentional policy of making car-based transportation utterly miserable--and thereby convincing people to use other transit options: While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering…

Links for you. Science: Breakthrough: New Flow-Battery Design Provides 10-Fold Improvement Defending Stephen Jay Gould's Crusade against Biological Determinism (the criticisms of Gould's 'misanalysis' aren't are straightforward as claimed) What does it feel like to get bitten by a ground hornbill…

This is another resounding success by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: Nearly nine months after its formation, a $30 billion government fund to foster small-business lending has yet to pay out a single dime, even as the nation struggles with traumatic levels of unemployment.... As of this week…

Because you can never get too much hemolytic uremic syndrome. Erm, that didn't come out right. Look over there! Links! Science: Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) in history--part 4: the bigger picture Epidemiology and social media: conference fail E. coli: Some Answers, Many Questions Still Low-…

Consider this a post wherein I engage in some speculation, and hope that I'm very, very wrong. You see, the 'German' E. coli O104:H4 outbreak ('HUSEC041') has taken a confusing turn: The strain of E. coli blamed for 46 deaths in Germany appears to have resurfaced in France, the French Ministry of…

Links for you. Science: Not Enough Antibiotics: Just an Incentives Problem? The long and winding road to a PhD [infographic] A Proposal of Genomic Analytical Workflow in a Bacterial Pathogen Outbreak Investigation The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Natural Selection and Evolution, with a Key to…

Bill Gross, the managing director of PIMCO and bond trader, sounds like Mike the Mad Chartalist (italics mine; boldface mine): While the current administration admits that the $25 billion in Recovery Act spending on infrastructure only created 150,000 jobs, it also stabilized and improved this…

Links for you. Science: Ancient Europe: Cannibalism in England Fido Might Not Know What You Do and Do Not See National Institutes of Health 1.0 As E. coli continues to claim lives, new approaches offer hope Other: The Next Public Option (about education; last sentence is priceless) Finance…

Besides, we got Bernie Sanders: Nothing you haven't heard around these parts, but it's a nice summary. Rock on, Bernie.

I suppose we can start referring to 'unlocked' iPhones as FreedomPhones. Why? Well, I guess you could say, "Dictatorship, there's an app for that": The days of filming a live concert or sporting event on your iPhone may soon be a distant memory. Apple is developing software that will sense when a…

Links for you. Science: White-Nose Syndrome Science publishers don't care about the public E. coli data released under Creative Commons 0 license Worried about deliberate introduction of the German E. coli germ? Please read this. Department Of Energy Makes $150M Bet On Solar Tech Other: Justices…

Recently, ScienceBlogling Jeff Toney responded to Chief Veterinarian of the National Pork Producers Council Liz Wagstrom's argument that widespread antibiotic use in agriculture has little effect on the antibiotic resistance problem. He concludes: However, the scientific facts support this idea […

I've long held that tenured professors who espouse 'free trade' or 'free markets' should have their tenure revoked--let's see how their tune changes (and I do include Krugman in this*). Ditto pundits with cushy sinecures. Let's put them in a world where they could show up at 9am and be told to…

Gray. Rainy. Here are some links to brighten things up. Science: Massive Neandertal Denisovan introgression Sue the TRex lipbalm How I Taught Third Graders Binary Numbers SNP-based phylogeny confirms similarity of E. coli outbreak to EAEC Ec55989 Other: Michael Hudson: Free Money Creation to…

Matthew Yglesias wonders why Obama didn't push for a debt ceiling increase when he had the chance last year: It didn't happen. Obama said he trusted John Boehner. Harry Reid said he didn't want the debt limit to be raised by the 111th Congress because he wanted to force the incoming 112th Congress…

Links for you. Science: Today's falsehood: Correlation Implies/Does Not Imply Causality Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) in history--part 1 Synthetic biology: Parlor trick, or proof of concept? The German E. coli outbreak: 40 lives and hours of crowdsourced sequence analysis later Deadly Fungus…

You might have heard that last weekend, Netroots Nation, a progressive organization, had its annual convention. Oddly, Right Online, a conservative organization, also its annual meeting--in the same hotel. So two Netroots Nation attendees decided to go undercover. Needless to say, comedy ensues…

Over the weekend, The Washington Post actually committed journalism with a report about the growing income and wealth gap in the U.S. To place it in historical context, they compared two CEOs, one from the 1970s and the current CEO. Here's the blast from the past (italics mine): It was the 1970s…

Links for you. Science: Five statistical things I wished I had been taught 20 years ago Safe havens for disease: Low vaccination rates in some Illinois schools raise risk of outbreaks, experts say (and this picture is worth a thousand words) Bachmann: Schools should teach intelligent design (will…

While physicist Michio Kaku is correct when he suggests that immigration has been an incredible boon for U.S. science, he's dead wrong when he claims that U.S. students are bad at science: The information revolution has a weakness, and the weakness is precisely the educational system. The United…

Links for you. Science: Felisa Wolfe-Simon Does NOT Get It And now, from the Insane Clown Posse wing of the climate change debate... Cheap vaccine eradicates new cases of meningitis A The Noble Priesthood and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves The Government's Addiction Expert Says We Like What We Like…

Bill Mitchell smacks down some silliness from Peggy Noonan about the supposed looming insolvency of the U.S. (italics mine): She [Noonan] should hang her head in shame for providing further myths that will certainly agitate all the ignorant - uneducated (despite long lists of credentials) - and…

Links for you. Science: Genetic family trees show the German outbreak of E coli is a member of small family of germs called EAEC that includes an African germ and is distinct from EHECs Goodbye Team D? When One State's Cuts Hurt Everyone Choprawoo returns, this time with help from Bruce Lipton…

While there are probably more immediate concerns when it comes to the security nanny state the U.S. erected after 2001, such as the continuing erosion of civil liberties (especially when the servant learns to love the lash), this recent article about Boston's Logan Airport security reminds me that…

Links for you. Science: When Food Kills "Surreal" Vegetarian Spider Found -- A First Urban Wildlife Watch: 13 Year Cicadas Angry Crows Attack Police Officers In Everett, Washington Other: It's the Health Care Costs, Stupid In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war…

The projections used by the Social Security Administration to determine when it will become 'insolvent' are notoriously pessimistic, in that they have been estimating that Social Security will be DOOOMED! in 28-38 years going on nearly twenty years. Like Zeno's spear, we never seem to hit that…

Links for you. Science: The outbreak strains have similar pathogencity as Ecoli EAEC strain 55989: Alignment of virulence factors from VFDB Resistance genes plus adhesin in the chromosome? (more O104:H4 goodness) E. coli outbreak and biofilms Creationism creeps into mainstream geology In Politics…

A while ago, I discussed Republican Senator Tom Coburn's NSF snipe hunt. Well, the EU has a doozy of an actual research-related scandal: Italian authorities and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in Brussels, Belgium, have confirmed that they are prosecuting members of a large network accused…

By way of Atrios, we come across this hideous display of victim blaming: Many of the tragedies mentioned about spring from what I see as a naïve faith in the power of the modern sexual revolution. Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers…