September 9, 2008
I've often wondered why there wasn't more focused discussion on a great paradox in the way public-school teacher contracts are structured in this country. On one hand teachers seek to be considered as professionals; on the other, they seek (and generally get) union contracts that structure their…
September 9, 2008
From the "Where Do They Find the Time" Dept, via Clive Thompson's collision detection:
Chinese scientists unveil "the anti cloak" -- technique for defeating invisibility shields
Okay, the war over "invisibility cloaks" has officially begun. A team of Chinese scientists have just announced that they…
September 9, 2008
Today's Very Short List Science item is one I am happy to have dug up and, as it were, spat out. It's about the Barf Blog, a blog about food safety.
From the VSL Science site:
Cupcakes, cold cuts, E. coli -- the paths to food poisoning are many, but they all lead to the same ignominious place:…
September 9, 2008
The evidentiary landscape regarding antidepressant efficacy seems to grow ever more slippery. Now comes a study, drawn to my attention by the busy-eyed Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons, that finds that the beneficial effects of placebo treatment of depression last longer than generally thought.
As…
September 8, 2008
A couple months ago I became a subscriber to Very Short List, an email list that sends you just ONE web link a day, 5 days a week, as a way of clueing you in to something that is both good and overlooked: Might be a movie, a web site, a blog, a book.
I've now become a (modestly) paid "advisor"…
September 8, 2008
Hi Readers.
Wanted to clue you in to a couple web pleasures. One is Edge: GIN, TELEVISION, AND COGNITIVE SURPLUS A Talk By Clay Shirky, in which Shirky talks about how society's "cognitive surplus" -- the time and brain power contained in the free time created by the Industrial Revolution and the…
September 5, 2008
You want mail, write about cell phones and DNA.
Earlier today, when I posted a heads-up to a Science story about questions raised about data-tampering in what Science called "The only two peer-reviewed scientific papers" showing strong links between cell phone use and DNA mutations, I noted I was…
September 5, 2008
Roy Oswalt, bringing it.
Some good hits from the last week or so (but not too many off Roy):
SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT: Fraud Charges Cast Doubt on Claims of DNA Damage From Cell Phone Fields -- Vogel 321 (5893): 1144a -- Science
As shocking a story as the title suggests.
Oops, update: As that…
September 4, 2008
Alex Ross, the New Yorker's wonderful music critic, on the strange and amusing history of how the classical music concert assumed its present form -- which, as he notes, often seems to constrain rather than unleash the music.
August 28, 2008
You can't make this stuff up. From Very Short List: Science
Brian May, the bushy-haired guitarist for Queen, recently completed his astrophysics thesis, which he began in the early 1970s as a grad student at Imperial College in London. Although May was a promising young scientist, he decided to…
August 28, 2008
A couple of the shinier stones I've come across on the web lately:
Somatosphere is a new blog about medical anthropology (think sociology and politics of medicine, only with a bit more critical distance; it's about how culture shapes medicine) written by McGill University post-doc Eugene Raikhel…
August 27, 2008
Walter Benjamin is a very interesting writer, with a wild range of work (music, Marx, hashish, much much more), a highly distinctive style and one of those early-20th-century European lives that seems impossibly full of intense cultural force and historical fate; his memoir of his youth, Berlin…
August 27, 2008
When I called out a Scientific American post yesterday about a rise in measles cases because of unvaccinated children, I forgot to include a link to a longer story on the same issue that ran in the NY Times. It's short, but worth a look as well:
Measles Cases Grow in Number, and Officials Blame…
August 27, 2008
Surgeon, attributed to Jan Sanders van Hemessen, c. 1550. Museo del Prado, Madrid
Over at Biophemera, a ScienceBlog I've somehow overlooked to date, biologist and artist Jessica Palmer ponders a question raised by a number of Renaissance paintings depicting surgeons removing "stones of madness"…
August 26, 2008
This one's causing a dust-up over at the Scientific American's "60-Second Science" blog
Measles is back, and it's because your kids aren't vaccinatedDavid Biello
If you didn't vaccinate your kids, you too could find yourself partly responsible for the resurgence of a disease thought eliminated in…
August 26, 2008
What's the world coming to? This irresistible news nugget comes from Al Tompkins at Poynter Online:
Beer Kegs Attract Thieves
USA Today said:
Across the country, crooks are snatching stainless steel kegs in alleyways behind bars and breweries or not returning them after keggers to sell for scrap…
August 22, 2008
And not-so-good news. As much of the math instruction in my own hometown school district (which was recently ranked as one of the best in the nation) is abysmal, news about poor math skills and instruction catches my eye. The news below, from Science, adds to the growing pile.
U.S. HIGHER…
August 22, 2008
And some good news, from Inside Higher Ed:
'U.S. News' Sees Drop in Participation
Even though many colleges will boast today about their placement in the annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report, more colleges than ever are declining to participate in the survey that makes up the single…
August 22, 2008
from the NY Times:
Sour Grapes
The news that Wine Spectator magazine was scammed into giving an Award of Excellence to a non-existent restaurant has been greeted with guffaws by schadenfreude fans and with fury by the magazine's editor.
But longtime readers of the Dining section might have seen…
August 22, 2008
Man uses Barbie fishing rod to make record catch - Boston.com
You can't make this stuff up. I love the look on the guy's face. Is he weeping from happiness, or just strugging to hold up that 21# fish?
From the AP via the Boston Globe:
ELKIN, N.C.--David Hayes' granddaughter just asked him to…
August 21, 2008
MONTPELIER, Vt.--Ben & Jerry's is pulling the plug on its scoop shop in Vermont's capital.The ice cream maker announced Friday it's closing the store in Montpelier next month, after more than 20 years in business.The ice cream maker, which owns and operates scoop shops in Burlington, South…
June 18, 2008
Nothing like that first cup of the day
Personally I am glad to read this:
First came the fine news that red wine may help prevent Alzheimer's. Now a 20-year study (admittedly a bit flabby) of 125.000 health-care in Spain found that drinking 2 or more cups of java a day may help prevent heart…
June 16, 2008
From Mind Hacks, which turns up such gems (and thoughtful essays) with astonishing regularity
Serious threats distinguished by style over substance:
Last September's Journal of Forensic Sciences had an intriguing study comparing email and handwritten threats to members of the United States…
June 16, 2008
Via the invaluable Knight-Ridder Science Journalism Tracker comes woeful news from the L.A. Times: One of the few remaining success stories, the Alaskan salmon fishery, is under threat by a parasite whose expansion seems related to climate change.
I'm trying to finish an unrelated story myself, so…
June 11, 2008
Unusual penetrating brain injuries
from NeurophilosophyThe e'er enchanging Neurophilosopher has a radiologically rich roundup of penetrating injuries to the head. Paintbrushes, nails, Don't try this at home.
May 30, 2008
A particularly nice post by the Times' Tyler Knepper, who keeps the
"Bats" blog: Luke Scott explains why hitting is so very difficult.
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/why-baseball-really-is-a-game-…
May 28, 2008
For Claudius Conrad, a 30-year-old surgeon who has played the piano seriously since he was 5, music and medicine are entwined — from the academic realm down to the level of the fine-fingered dexterity required at the piano bench and the operating table.
C.J. Gunther for The New York Times
IN…
May 26, 2008
A Chopin Nocturne...
from Derek Bownds' MindBlog by noreply@blogger.com (Deric)Bownds blogs on neuro matters -- and, each week, posts a video of him playing a bit of classical music on his piano. Gotta like it.
FDA To Mine Big Databases For Safety Problems
from Pharmalot
The effort, called…
May 26, 2008
A couple weeks ago Slate ran a piece asking "Are doctors shilling for drug companies on public radio?", which I took brief note of in a previous post. Now I've written up a longer reaction (actually a reaction to the reaction to the Slate story) for Columbia Journalism Review's "Observatory" blog,…
May 21, 2008
My (very short) story on a new omnidirectional treadmill for spatial cognition research is up at the Wired site:
An Omnidirectional Treadmill Means One Giant Leap for Virtual Reality.
...This April, a team based at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, unveiled…
