Mad rantings about politics, evolution, and microbiology. Comment policy: say what you want, but back it up with an email address. I don't like anonymous trolls.
mikethemadbiologist
Posts by this author
August 5, 2010
Happy Thursday. Links for you. Science:
Advice for Young Aspiring Scientists
Honestly, Research Blogging, Get over yourself
Do I Look Fat in Orange?: Orangutans Have Very Slow Metabolisms
Other:
Can't More Billionaire Tax Cuts Save Us?
What the fuck is my social media "strategy"?
Race And Gay…
August 5, 2010
A phrase that has entered the political lexicon recently is 'structural unemployment', which means that the unemployment were seeing is not due to a recessionary (or depressionary*) downturn, but represents job loss due to a fundamental restructuring of the economy. In the NY Times, we find an…
August 4, 2010
More of the finest hate mongering for you (Remember: Hate mongering is the new blogger ethics panelâ¢). Science:
Back in the Saddle
WashPost/NY Times: To Subscribe or Unsubscribe, that is the question.
New regulations may cut down infections in hospitals
Antarctic Octopuses Discovered With Sub-…
August 4, 2010
Over at The Urban Ethnographer, we find this superb post about riding the subway that will be familiar to anyone who does so on a regular basis. What I love is the taxonomy of riders, including the "packers":
People carry large bulky items with them. In all fairness, though, packers need to be…
August 4, 2010
This is what children with poor self-control become
(from here)
Melody Dye at Child's Play has an interesting post about the famous (or infamous) cookie experiments, which involved observing children presented with a cookie and then left alone in a room. If they wait long enough, they get another…
August 3, 2010
Some links for you. Science:
Why You Should Stop Drinking Bottled Water
How Physiology was Cooler 40 Years Ago
Grantham: Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in 5 Minutes
Other:
WikiLeaks in Baghdad
Why every AG in the country should be suing the credit-rating agencies
"You Don't Look…
August 3, 2010
By way of a very good post about the Tea Parties by Amanda, I came across this post by Ta-Nehisi Coates about the NAACP's call to the Tea Partiers to renounce the racists in their midst:
I have, in my writing, a tendency to become theoretically cute, and overly enamored with my own fair-mindedness…
August 3, 2010
Last week, I wrote about the effects of poverty on educational performance, and, in particular, science education. I received many responses, both in comments and by email. One reason I wrote this is that our current wave of educational 'reform' seems utterly focused on teacher managerial issues…
August 2, 2010
I'm taking a break from hate-mongering to give you some good links. Science:
Drug-resistant strain of E. coli emerges in U.S.: New strain may be on way to becoming 'untreatable,' researchers say
Update: The French case --not MRSA but so interesting
Effects of sleep loss linger longer than you think…
August 2, 2010
There's a new science blogging collective in town: Scientopia. Some of the denizens will be familiar, some are new. Looks pretty cool though. I like that mathematics is a front page 'topic' (hint, hint, Seed Overlords).
Anyway, stop by and check it out. And kudos to them for getting it off…
August 2, 2010
I've decided to take a break from hate-mongering. Instead, I want to discuss two interesting posts about the state of economics by Brad DeLong and Tim Duy. Before I get to them, for those who wonder why I discuss this stuff, I find it fascinating that such an important discipline has had such…
August 1, 2010
Happy Sunday. Links for you. Science:
Traffic reduction: An urgent public health priority
Working With Jerks
Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us
Flying giants: Incredibly rare display as manta rays leap 9ft out of water into the air
Other:
The Senators Who Gave Us 15 Million…
August 1, 2010
...my ten word summary is as informative as a Science or Nature paper.
Ouch.
So Byte Size Biology tagged me with the "Blog of Substance" meme, originally developed by Bora. I usually don't participate in internet meme-ey things because I'm just too persnicketty to write about what other people…
July 31, 2010
It's nice outside, but if you're stuck inside, here are some links for you. Science:
'Friendly bacteria' in pregnancy may prevent eczema in childhood
Drug discovery in academia and NIH, a new type of U01
Fleming Painted With Bacteria
Other:
A crime story
College Students Hide Hunger, Homelessness…
July 31, 2010
I had been considering, over the weekend to write a navel gazing post about The State of ScienceBlogs and Its Relationship to the Mad Biologist. And then Virginia Heffernan of the NY Times wrote a quote picking article about ScienceBlogs, thereby screwing up my weekend blogging (so much stupid, so…
July 31, 2010
Maryn McKenna makes a critical, yet neglected point about the recent whooping cough (pertussis) outbreaks that have been hitting California--one that emphasizes that vaccination not only protects the vaccinated, but everyone else:
Between a day job as Scary Disease Girl and a childhood spent…
July 30, 2010
In his weekend roundup, driftglass reminds us that there was a time when our mainstream pop culture villified torture and praised those who attempted to resist it:
And then Fox TV's Torture Porn Show, also known as 24, made torturing fashionable. Strength was to be had in torturing people, not in…
July 29, 2010
Some Thursday links for you. Science:
The familiar Matamata, known to us all since the 1700s, and its long, fat neck (matamatas part II)
Sunday Protist - Farming forams: a case of protistan agriculture
The Pepsi Challenge: A controversy at ScienceBlogs raises questions about whether "institutional…
July 29, 2010
Since I've been writing a lot about education, I have some brief thoughts about the NY Times report by David Leonhardt about some findings from Tennessee's Project STAR which tracked the long-term outcomes about a randomization trial of kindergartners (slides from a presentation are available as a…
July 29, 2010
Yesterday, I described the relationship between low-income and poor performance in English and math in Massachusetts (see the post for methodological details). Well, I've saved the worst for last--science education:
Just to remind everyone, the horizontal axis is the percentage of children in a…
July 28, 2010
Some Wednesday links for you. Science:
It's more than genes, it's networks and systems
Unsafe at Any Meal
It's My Genome and I'll Do What I Wanna
Other:
License plate of the week
The 5 Signs You're Talking To A Social Media Douchebag.
The Art of the Deal as Entertainment
Gall
'WE WILL REGRET IT…
July 28, 2010
Or, for that matter, jumping into the water with financial sharks under any circumstances. The NY Times has an article about the ongoing legal trials of David H. Brooks, the chief executive and chairman of a body-armor company. The article primarily focuses on what a loathsome piece of shit…
July 28, 2010
I've described before how there is a significant correlation between poverty and educational performance when we use state-level data. But as I pointed out, one of the interesting things is that the residual--the difference between the expected scores for a given state and the actual scores--can…
July 27, 2010
It's hot. Damn hot. Hopefully not too hot for some links. Science:
Evil weed in Baltic Sea puts marine life at risk
Lost in Translation: New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish
On Nature…
July 27, 2010
Well, we can always hope. In a recent column about global warming, Paul Krugman makes this ancillary point (italics mine):
Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehavior. You've probably heard about the accusations leveled against climate researchers -- allegations of fabricated data, the…
July 27, 2010
So, in some quarters, there's been wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Congressional hearings about the direct-to-customer ('DTC') genetic testing industry. I've discussed why I don't think regulation is a disaster before, but I'll add one more issue to the mix: maintaining subject…
July 26, 2010
Just another manic Monday. How's about some links? Science:
Can chance make you a killer?
Hearing loss from iPods and other MP3 players
Researchers confirm subsea Gulf oil plumes are from BP well
Heroin in Vietnam: The Robins Study
Other:
Whites and Privilege
Think Again: Economist, Heal Thyself…
July 26, 2010
The NY Times has an article about the recent revelation of a six-year archive of classified military documents (released by WikiLeaks). In it, we find this lil' tidbit:
There are fleeting -- even taunting -- reminders of how the war began in the occasional references to the elusive Osama bin Laden…
July 26, 2010
One of the things that freaks out some people in the 'hard' sciences (and I use that term broadly) about the social sciences is that they, unlike the hard sciences, they don't restrict themselves to positive statements, but, instead, deal with normative statements. In other (less high-falutin')…
July 25, 2010
Kinda sticky and gross outside. Stay cool with some refreshing links. Science:
One principal component to rule them all?
Hospitals want patients to eat antibiotic-free meat
Joe Mercola's shampoo woo
Real Math Doesn't Use Calculators
Other:
An email (about teenage pregnancy and forced childbirth)…