purepedantry | January 25, 2007People can be really, really dumb sometimes:
Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilize kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week -- with sometimes disastrous results.
A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges.
They described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them.
But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge.
"Just wanted you to know that your article on…
purepedantry | January 25, 2007German scientists are having trouble getting their sloth to work:
Scientists in the eastern German city of Jena said Wednesday they have finally given up after three years of failed attempts to entice a sloth into budging as part of an experiment in animal movement.
The sloth, named Mats, was remanded to a zoo after consistently refusing to climb up and then back down a pole, as part of an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Jena's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology.
Neither pounds of cucumbers nor plates of homemade spaghetti were appetizing enough…
purepedantry | January 25, 2007The binding problem is one of the great mysteries of modern neuroscience. Briefly, we know from a variety of studies in humans and primates that the specific features of the sensory world -- particularly the visual world -- are broken down into their separate components by the brain to be processed in parallel. This means that information for say color and information for say orientation are processed separately by the brain.
The benefit of this system is that it allows your brain to take the insane amount of information in the perceptual world and process more of it, more rapidly. The…
purepedantry | January 24, 2007Ronald Bailey at Reason has an interesting theory: Federal funding drives out private funding for research resulting in a net loss (or at least no change) for researchers. His best example is what has happened during the ban on Federal money for embryonic stem cell research. Since the Federal funding has dried up, the researchers involved have been being supplemented by private funding.
Money quote:
When Bush first restricted federal funding to embryonic stem lines derived before his nationally televised speech on the subject in 2001, researchers feared that such limits would send a…
purepedantry | January 24, 2007It would appear that today will be Sex Day at Pure Pedantry. So be it.
I didn't know this but mouse and rat sperm have funny shaped hooks at their tips. To the right is a picture of sperm from a variety of mouse and rat species (click to enlarge).
A) Variation in hook design across nine murine rodent species: (1) Bunomys fratrorum, (2) Mus musculus, (3) Rattus norvegicus, (4) Dasymys incomtus, (5) Pseudomys oralis (6) Maxomys surifer, (7) Melomys burtoni, (8) Apodemus sylvaticus, (9) Apodemus speciosus.
Interesting, but scientists didn't know what this significance of the hooks were.…
purepedantry | January 24, 2007Researchers have discovered a way to prevent premature ejaculation. You just cover your penis in lidocaine, the stuff the dentist uses to numb your face:
Patients with premature ejaculation who used a topical anaesthetic spray were able to delay ejaculation for five times as long, according to a study in the February issue of the urology journal BJU International.
Researchers from the UK and Netherlands studied 54 men with premature ejaculation, randomly assigning them to a treatment and control group. Both groups reported that without any therapy they normally ejaculated an average of one…
purepedantry | January 23, 2007Anyone who has ever had an annoying child sit behind them in the plane will crack up at this:
AirTran Airways on Tuesday defended its decision to remove a Massachusetts couple from a flight after their crying 3-year-old daughter refused to take her seat before takeoff.
AirTran officials said they followed Federal Aviation Administration rules that children age 2 and above must have their own seat and be wearing a seat belt upon takeoff.
"The flight was already delayed 15 minutes and in fairness to the other 112 passengers on the plane, the crew made an operational decision to remove the…
purepedantry | January 23, 2007I have to admit I was a little skeptical of this argument, but it is growing on me.
Basically, he is saying that executives are paid ungodly amounts because people are willing to pay them that. If it isn't my money I have no right to begrudge them theirs. And furthermore I really have no idea what CEOs do or how they do it, so I have no basis to judge whether it is worth it.
Money quote:
Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.
All of us have…
purepedantry | January 23, 2007Recently this model, Gisele Bundchen, speculated that the fashion industry is not to blame for anorexia. Rather parents are to blame:
Gisele Bundchen has entered Brazil's growing debate over anorexia, saying families are to blame _ not the fashion industry.
"I never suffered this problem because I had a very strong family base," the supermodel told the local Globo newspaper on Friday. "The parents are responsible, not fashion."
Top model Giselle Bundchen wears a creation part of the Colcci fall-winter fashion collection during the Fashion Rio 2007, in Rio de Janeiro, Friday, Jan 19, 2007.…
purepedantry | January 23, 2007I saw this press release and for one brief happy instant I thought it might be about the band Scorpions and their hit Winds of Change. Sadly, it was just about wind direction changing over the last 30,000 years. Boo. Alright fine. I will still post it:
Dartmouth researchers have learned that the prevailing winds in the mid latitudes of North America, which now blow from the west, once blew from the east. They reached this conclusion by analyzing 14,000- to 30,000-year-old wood samples from areas in the mid-latitudes of North America (40-50°N), which represents the region north of Denver…
purepedantry | January 23, 2007The terror bird or Titanis walleri was a flightless, carnivorous bird present in North America. Researchers at the University of Florida have determined that it was probably present in North America prior to the formation of the land bridge that connected Alaska with Asia North America and South America:
A University of Florida-led study has determined that Titanis walleri, a prehistoric 7-foot-tall flightless "terror bird," arrived in North America from South America long before a land bridge connected the two continents.
UF paleontologist Bruce MacFadden said his team used an established…
purepedantry | January 22, 2007This guy made his home theater look like the bridge of the Enterprise on Star Trek. Check out this picture (click to enlarge):
There are many more pictures on his site.
Wow. I don't really know whether to be impressed or frightened, although its good that there are no love-seats in that room. I doubt he will be needing them.
Hat-tip: Slashdot.
purepedantry | January 22, 2007The Nation has an interesting review about a book on the history of vegetarianism. The book is The Bloodless Revolution by Tristram Stuart. It argues that vegetarianism is important not only as an ethical stance but because it became entangled with several other historical movements:
On the other hand, if life is the highest value and taking it is never, ever permissible, then what are we to do in the case of a poisonous snake that is about to strike a sleeping infant? Kill one to save the other, or stand back and let nature take its course? If all lives are equally precious, how can we…
purepedantry | January 22, 2007I got into science because I like knowledge, but I also got into science because we get the absolute best toys. Railguns, particle accelerators, rapid gene sequencers -- these things still make drool come out my mouth. Anyway, I am almost ashamed to admit it but this sounds really cool:
A demonstration of the futuristic and comparatively inexpensive weapon yesterday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren had Navy brass smiling.
The weapon, which was successfully tested in October at the King George County base, fires nonexplosive projectiles at incredible speeds, using electricity…
purepedantry | January 22, 2007Michael Barone argues in his column that one of the problems with our political process is the way in which we pick our President:
The single most glaring defect in our mostly admirable political system is the presidential selection process. You can point to other defects -- the equal representation of the states in the Senate, judicial usurpation of decision-making on sensitive issues -- but the downside risks are greater in the selection of the one official who is far more powerful than any other. So what's wrong with it?
It starts too early, takes too long and ends too abruptly. Thirteen…
purepedantry | January 21, 2007The Labyrinth
by W.H. Auden
Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperament for getting on.
The hundredth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.
"Where am I? Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.
If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I'm sure,
The Universe in miniature.
Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What…
purepedantry | January 19, 2007The Eli Lilly leaked documents story has exploded.
Just to recap, on Dec. 17th last year the NYTimes reported on documents leaked from Eli Lilly that show that the company tried to play down the side effects of Zyprexa, a popular schizophrenia drug. The documents were released by the company to a lawyer suing them on behalf of plaintiffs who got diabetes and other problems while on the drug. These documents were under a court ordered seal.
Then an unrelated lawyer from an unrelated plaintiff case subpoenaed those documents, and he released them to the NYTimes and others. The documents…
purepedantry | January 17, 2007Why do I love stories about monkeys so much:
An escaped chimpanzee at the Little Rock Zoo raided a kitchen cupboard and did a little cleaning with a toilet brush before sedatives knocked her out on top of a refrigerator.
The 120-pound primate, Judy, escaped yesterday into a service area when a zookeeper opened a door to her sleeping quarters, unaware the animal was still inside.
As keepers tried to woo Judy back into her cage, she rummaged through a refrigerator where chimp snacks are stored. She opened kitchen cupboards, pulled out juice and soft drinks and took a swig from bottles she…
purepedantry | January 16, 2007The Stanford Prison experiment was a very famous -- now infamous -- experiment in social psychology that was conducted in 1971 by Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, Stanford psychology professor. You probably remember him if you took a high school or college intro to psychology course because he made a very popular set of instructional videos on psychology that are often used in such courses.
The experiment randomly assigned male undergraduate students to participate in a two week mock prison. They were randomly assigned to be guards and inmates. However, things went horribly wrong. The guards faced a…
purepedantry | January 16, 2007The global warming debate has been going for a long time, and both sides have become deeply entrenched. Unfortunately, this polarization is beginning to impede the achievement of any reasonable solution. Further, the proponents of steps to fight global warming deride the other side's motives while denying that theirs are in any way tainted. This is not a fair or acceptable behavior, particularly when it is behavior by scientists.
Cathy Young -- a contributing editor at Reason -- had this to say about it:
There is a growing number of voices in the scientific community that reject both…