purepedantry | April 26, 2007I don't know if you caught this story, but one of our fellow bloggers here at ScienceBlogs, Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle, was threatened with legal action when she reproduced a figure from a published paper in one of her blog posts. The original post is here (now with the figure removed).
She has posted her correspondence with the journal here (the journal in question is Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture owned by Wiley). Happily the issue has been resolved -- apparently one of their junior staff members was somewhat overzealous -- but the argument also resulted in staff…
purepedantry | April 26, 2007The Economist has a great article summarizing all the ways in which the debate between evolution and religion has gone global. It also does a good job of analyzing the different strains within the American debate, depicting it as much less monolithic:
Even in the United States, defenders of evolution teaching do not see their battle as won. There was widespread dismay in their ranks in February when John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, accepted an invitation (albeit to talk about geopolitics, not science) from the Discovery Institute. And some opponents of intelligent design…
purepedantry | April 25, 2007I don't know if you have been following this story, but there have been massive honey bee die-offs recently in the United States. Considering that honey bees are the primary pollinators for many of the crops grown here, this is a problem that greatly exceeds just the bees.
Scientists have been racing to figure out what the problem is, and many theories have been suggested to explain the bee die-offs, most of them completely ridiculous. Most of the non-ridiculous ones are focused on the possibility of transmitted disease in the bees or some environmental toxin. To distinguish the two, I…
purepedantry | April 24, 2007Here is your philosophical conversation to ponder over for the day. (I am cleaning out links, and this is the sort of stuff you get when I am cleaning out links.)
I recently read an interesting interchange on about Weber's idea that a state is defined by a monolopy on the legitimate use of force in reference to the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech.
Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy argued that no Western state actually possesses a monopoly on force making this definition largely irrelevant:
I want to claim that this echo of Weber (who said "Today ... we have to say that a state is a…
purepedantry | April 24, 2007If you read the statistics, it isn't difficult to question the effectiveness of abstinence-only education in schools. It is about as effective as telling a three-year-old to not eat that big cookie on the table and then leaving the room to see what happens. However, I was under the distinct impression that there were still many people in denial of this fact -- hence my surprise when I read the following editorial in the Christian Science Monitor:
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. The abstinence-only sex-education programs on which the federal government has been spending around $176…
purepedantry | April 23, 2007For those of you who don't have time to shower and have a cup of coffee (or who have failed miserably to do those things simultaneously), why not consider caffeinated soap:
Tired of waking up and having to wait for your morning java to brew? Are you one of those groggy early morning types that just needs that extra kick? Know any programmers who dont regularly bathe and need some special motivation? Introducing Shower Shock, the original and world's first caffeinated soap from ThinkGeek. When you think about it, ShowerShock is the ultimate clean buzz ;)
...
Shower Shock is an all vegetable…
purepedantry | April 23, 2007Managers of Russia's new media have informed their journalists that from now on 50% of the news must be positive:
At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be "positive."
In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of…
purepedantry | April 23, 2007Excellent analysis from an article in Science on the recent funding woes (sadly behind a subscription wall). Money quote:
Meanwhile, research institutions everywhere were breaking ground on new facilities and expanding their faculty. In a 2002 survey, AAMC found that new construction at medical schools had exploded: From 1990 to 1997, schools invested $2.2 billion in new construction, compared to $3.9 billion from 1998 to 2002. But that paled in comparison to what was to come: an expected $7.4 billion in new construction from 2002 to 2007. AAMC has not yet confirmed whether these plans were…
purepedantry | April 20, 2007A controversial portrait -- possibly of the writer Jane Austen -- was put up for auction at Christie's yesterday. (Actually it failed to sell.) The controversy is over whether the picture is actually of her. (A photo of the portrait is to the right.)
All of that is very interesting, but not nearly so interesting as the argument I heard on NPR on why it isn't her: the woman in the picture is too attractive.
Some skeptics have argued that the short hair and empire-waist dress weren't stylish until Austen, who was born in 1775, was much older. They say that the young girl in the painting is…
purepedantry | April 20, 2007As I indicated in my previous post (also related to Lindsay Lohan), being a redhead derives from a recessive allele in the Melanocortin Receptor 1 -- a receptor from Melanocyte Stimulating Hormone.
MC1R mutations also result in the phenotype of
A) Being super hot
and
B) A higher risk for skin cancer
so it would be useful for individuals of such a genetic inheritance to identify themselves and one another (you know...by ways other than their hair...).
To accomplish this task, Realm of Redheads sells the t-shirt on the right. The geeky goodness of this shirt boggles the mind.
purepedantry | April 19, 2007Hat-tip: Shelley.
This site is awesome!!!
They did all these experiments with Peeps like what it takes to dissolve a peep or what happens to a peep in a vacuum. I am so going to do some of this stuff when I get home.
My favorite: the peep fear response (from being put in a test chamber...read: microwave).
It is the opinion of the authors that these data clearly demonstrate an adaptive fear response to stressful stimuli in the peep species. This response likely evolved in order to intimidate potential predators through the awesome size and prowess achieved in a frightened peep.
Peeps may…
purepedantry | April 19, 2007The murders at Virginia Tech are horrible and tragic, but they have also spawned a lot of hysterical claims. I think that is why I haven't talked about them. I have no desire to get swept up in that hysteria.
Last night on NPR, they interviewed Dr. Russ Federman, director of counseling at the University of Virginia, about what universities can do to prevent such incidents in the future. (Listen to the whole thing. It is short and worth it.)
I am paraphrasing here, but he basically said: When horrible things like this happen, we like to believe that we can make them never happen again…
purepedantry | April 19, 2007Outcast chimp prefers humans to other chimps:
We all know not to feed the animals when visiting the zoo. Now the Antwerp Zoo has urged visitors to, please, stop staring at the chimpanzees.
New rules have been posted outside the chimp enclosure at the city zoo urging visitors not to form a bond with a particular male chimp named Cheetah. He was raised by humans but is now bonding with the seven other apes at the park, a zoo official said Wednesday.
"We ask, we inform our daily visitors and other visitors that one of the monkeys (sic) is particularly open for human contact," zoo spokeswoman…
purepedantry | April 18, 2007It is going to be a big day of other people's work because I don't have time to post anything of my own. However, that doesn't mean the day is news-free. The Supreme Court issued a decision today upholding the Federal Partial Abortion ban:
A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure, restricting abortion rights in a ruling on one of the nation's most divisive and politically charged issues.
By a 5-4 vote, the high court rejected two challenges to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that President George W. Bush signed…
purepedantry | April 18, 2007Reason magazine has a great interview with Jackson Publick, the co-creator of one of my favorite shows The Venture Brothers. For those of you who haven't seen it, it is sort of a parody of all the cartoons from the 60s like Jonny Quest where supergenius kids fought crime and had archnemeses. (The word "archnemesis" has a plural, right?) Money quote:
Reason: The cliches of this material, though, like the mystery-solving whiz kids and the Dr. Evil character, aren't ever treated seriously anymore. Not even in the stuff on the Disney Channel that's meant for kids.
JP: All of that is so…
purepedantry | April 17, 2007I have talked about funding a couple of times (here and here), and I get the impression from the comments about those posts that my views are at the minimum somewhat iconoclastic. Basically, while I would prefer the government to give more to research, at the moment I don't think that the primary issue is that the government isn't giving enough.
In this area, The Health Care Renewal Blog has a great post on the funding problems facing researchers in medical schools. Here's a clue -- they don't have to do with the government's but rather the medical school's priorities:
[Dr Goldman was asked…
purepedantry | April 16, 2007Now that is unfortunate:
Japan's leading toilet maker Toto Ltd. is offering free repairs for 180,000 bidet toilets after wiring problems caused several to catch fire, the company said Monday.
The electric bidet accessory of Toto's Z series caught fire in three separate incidents between March 2006 and March 2007, according to company spokeswoman Emi Tanaka. The bidet sent up smoke in 26 other incidents, the company said.
"Fortunately, nobody was using the toilets when the fire broke out and there were no injuries," Tanaka said. "The fire would have been just under your buttocks."
...
The…
purepedantry | April 16, 2007Thank you, Germany:
Passively listening to Mozart -- or indeed any other music you enjoy -- does not make you smarter. But more studies should be done to find out whether music lessons could raise your child's IQ in the long term, concludes a report analysing all the scientific literature on music and intelligence, which was published last week by the German research ministry.
The ministry commissioned the report -- surprisingly the first to systematically review the literature on the purported intelligence effect of music -- from a team of nine German neuroscientists, psychologists,…
purepedantry | April 12, 2007Kurt Vonnegut died this morning in Manhattan. He was 84.
To hear him read an excerpt of his most famous work, Slaughterhouse Five, go to this interview at Salon. It's my favorite part.
From Slaughterhouse Five:
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?" "That is a very Earthling thing to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?" "Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady-bugs embedded in it. "Well, here we…
purepedantry | April 11, 2007Virginia Postrel has an interesting column in Atlantic Monthly on the aesthetic purpose of fashion in museums:
The Boston exhibit's comment book records a debate between fans, mostly women, who praise the museum for displaying an "inspiring" and "seldom seen" art form and detractors, mostly men, who decry its descent into commercialism. "What's next? Victoria's Secret's Xmas Collection?" writes one. "People in the museum world complain that fashion is not art, and they think it is unworthy of being in an art museum," says Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of…