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
June 29, 2010
Scott Brown apparently thinks helping conservative Southern senators is more important than helping Massachusetts:
A Senate bill that extended unemployment benefits, funded summer jobs and provided cash to balance state budgets is no more after a Republican-led filibuster couldn't be broken.…
June 29, 2010
Definitely breaking new ground around here. A recent paper in PLoS ONE examines the hypotheses surrounding the ecology and evolution of Komodo Dragon saliva. For those of you whose Komodo Dragonology is a little bit rusty, the saliva of Komodo Dragons can lead to infections that weaken or even…
June 28, 2010
Merry Monday. Links for you. Science:
Bones from a Cheddar Gorge cave show that cannibalism helped Britain's earliest settlers survive the ice age
Hyperlinks support the type of reading scientists have always done
Web genomics exposes ethics gaps. While connecting SNPs to playful traits such as…
June 28, 2010
If you don't know who Pete Peterson is, let me help you (We like helping!):
...we can now return to the never-ending attempt by conservatives to gut Social Security. One of the key figures and bankrollers in that attempt is financier Peter Peterson. By key, I mean that he has spent around one…
June 27, 2010
Two weekend days with sun? NEVAH! Let's celebrate with some links. Science:
Cricket farm wiped out by fast moving virus
Do they have an app for hand sanitizer? Demo iPads at city Apple stores are crawling with bacteria
Baby's first bacteria depend on route of delivery
Many dramatic research…
June 27, 2010
By way of ScienceBlogling Ed Brayton, we discover that the Right Reverend Schenck is back in action, anointing political structures hither and yon. From Ed (italics mine):
This week begins the confirmation hearings for President Obama's nominee to the United States Supreme Court, Elena Kagan. I…
June 26, 2010
Happy Sunny Saturday. If you're stuck inside, here are some links. Science:
Healthcare providers still aren't washing their hands enough
'Jaw-dropping' levels of heavy metals found in whales
Human foetus feels no pain before 24 weeks, study says. Finding in major review of scientific evidence…
June 26, 2010
If a Democrat said something as half as derogatory about someone's background, he or she would be pilloried non-stop as an 'out-of-touch, liberal elitist.' But if John Kasich, former Republican Congressman who is running for governor of Ohio, is any guide, IOKIYAR is still operative:
The first…
June 25, 2010
Ian Welsh, in "The bloody obviousness of most good predictions", describes how many people simply can't bring themselves to state the obvious:
The Prof, a wonderful teacher who went by Dr. Anderson, and to whose door I once tacked a list of 15 intellectual disagreements, asked the class a simple…
June 24, 2010
Links for you. Science
Worry grows over white-nose syndrome's widening reach among bats
Clinical trial conflict of interest for doctors
Does greater competition improve performance or increase cheating?
NIH to examine payback on research grants
Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities…
June 24, 2010
The Texas GOP--from the same state party that gives Representative Joe "I'm sorry" Barton--has gone out of its mind. Someone over at Media Matters, who clearly needs to be given hazard pay, looked through the Texas Republican Party platform. While there is so much stupid in there, for me, this…
June 24, 2010
We come across this very depressing article about how Detroit is becoming 'unsettled', in that it is suffering from a massive population decrease, leading to some unprecedented solutions:
But a new momentum has taken hold here that embraces just that: shrinking the city in order to save it.
"There'…
June 23, 2010
It's Wednesday, and that means...I dunno? Links? Science:
Tons of Bushmeat in Paris, Study Finds
High-Yield Agriculture Slows Pace of Global Warming, Say Researchers
Other:
Against Boycott and Divestment
Exchange: The Editors and Eric Alterman on the Flotilla Attack
Simpson's Social Security…
June 23, 2010
When I first saw the title of this PloSOne article, "Unauthorized Horizontal Spread in the Laboratory Environment: The Tactics of Lula, a Temperate Lambdoid Bacteriophage of Escherichia coli", I thought, "Hunh?!? You can actually publish articles about laboratory contamination?", but it's actually…
June 22, 2010
Some links fahr ya. Science:
Republican Governance: Researchers Could Tell You Where Oil Was Headed - IF Their Funding Hadn't Been Slashed
things are often not what they seem to be...
AIDS in DC
Small Fossil Mammals Reveal Wounds Left by the Last Great Extinction
Outsourcing My Research Group…
June 22, 2010
You mean, conservatives lied to us? From the NY Times coverage of the guilty plea by Faisal Shahzad in Times Square bombing plot:
...Mr. Shahzad was unapologetic, characterizing himself as "part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people."
"I want to plead…
June 22, 2010
Others have commented on this ridiculous Chronicle of Higher Education article about the "avalanche" of publishing (seriously, how hard is it to use Web of Science or PubMed?), but I wanted to address the authors' three suggestions. First:
First, limit the number of papers to the best three, four…
June 21, 2010
Well thank goodness for that. It must be perfectly fine then, I suppose. Nevada Republican Senate candidate, Sharron Angle supported a prison anti-drug program that raised some controversy due to its ties to Scientology. Angle, in an interview, replied (italics mine):
Seeking to "clear the…
June 21, 2010
Monday. Bleech. Maybe some links will fix things? Science:
Nighttime Beach Cleanup Will Be Deadly for Sea Turtle Hatchlings
Cousteau Says Technology Can Clean Gulf Oil Now
C. Diff and how dentists overuse antibiotics
Other:
On the Curious and Misguided Defenses of BP
McCaskill says she has votes…
June 21, 2010
This post might put me at odds with much of the science bloggysphere, but I think a lot of the concern over congressional and FDA hearings over whether 'over-the-counter' genetic screening and genome sequencing should be regulated is overblown. Maybe my feelings are influenced by my concerns about…
June 20, 2010
It's a stormy Sunday. Might as well read links. Science:
Legionnaires' Disease Linked with Wiper Fluid
The Human Genome Project: Hype meets reality
Reebok inoculates workers after at least 1 gets measles (but VAKSEENZ R EVUL!!!)
Pan-resistant?? The rise of Acinetobacter
In which I have seen the…
June 20, 2010
One of the problems with the rise of behavioral economics is that too often behavior is defined as irrational, the result of cognitive screwups. I've dealt with this issue before, but James Kwak convincingly argues that the BP oil disaster is not due to a cognitive failure to assess risk:
I have…
June 19, 2010
Are you shomer shabbos? If not, here are some links. Science:
Science is sufficient for any inference
Genetics & the Jews (it's still complicated)
News break: Developing-world drug resistance
Other:
More Dirty Details From My BP Mole
Grace Slick. Marty Balin. Paul Kanta. Jorma. . . Something…
June 19, 2010
The reason your dividends were (past tense) higher than U.S. Treasury yields is because there was risk involved in this investment, even if you pretended otherwise. That's why you get more money back--because you're holding more risk. Privately held companies are not back by the full faith and…
June 18, 2010
It's quittin' time! Links for you. Science:
Multiple vaccines in infants are harmful, a theory disproved
Ozzy Osborne. Now genomics is getting somewhere.
Sperm whale poo offsets carbon by fertilising the oceans with iron
Nature's Bubble Business Model
Other:
Medicare cuts will strengthen doctors…
June 18, 2010
By way Atrios, I stumble across a list of ways to combat unemployment put together by progressive wonks--and it explains why the so-called left is so politically impotent (I've removed the elaborative paragraphs):
1) Offer bonuses for long-term unemployed persons who find work.
2) Offer bolstered…
June 18, 2010
Or more precisely, why do some patients not follow their doctors' orders even when it is blindingly obvious that they should do so? In Monday's NY Times there was an interesting article about patients who are being paid to take their medicine in a reliable manner. I was going to write about the…
June 17, 2010
Last week, I described how the pair of swans living on Boston's Public Garden's Lagoon* have a predilection for attacking ducklings. Last night, the swans were at it again. But last night, this took a very sinister turn: I think Juliet got a duckling. I could have counted wrong, but I think the…
June 17, 2010
Have you heard about this great thing called the Internet? I found some links on it. Science:
Bad news: From MRSA to LRSA
Vaccine against 2009 pandemic flu also protects mice against 1918 strain
A line in Clark Hoyt's final column bothers me
Other:
For today's active man
GABRIEL GETS IT RIGHT
The…
June 17, 2010
President Obama has been arguing that if he had tried to regulate the oil industry before the BP disaster, it would have gone nowhere and Republicans would have pissed and moaned about oppressive regulations:
In an interview with POLITICO, the president said: "I think it's fair to say, if six…