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People Power in the Fight Against TB

By Liz Borkowski  Last week, Revere at Effect Measure used extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) as an example of why the world needs a resilient and robust public health infrastructure (and just a few days later, an article on an XDR outbreak in South Africa made it to the New York Timesâ list of the 10 most e-mailed articles). Earlier this month, Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, published an article in Foreign Affairs (subscription only) in which she listed TB as one of the diseases thatâs been getting more money and…

will they come?

Academic term will start soon here, just in time for football season. Enrollment is high, due to demographic and economic factors, but, with the slowly developing funding crunch, will the students actually show up and register? Enrollment in institutions of higher education, in the US, is very high right now, due primarily to demographics- the echo of the baby boom is passing through the lucrative 18-22 phase - but also because of higher participation rate and because times are hard. It is rational for people to defer entering the job market and take on the direct and opportunity cost of…

We’re close to universal insurance coverage for kids. The GOP health care bills would reverse that.

The House and Senate health care bills are overflowing with proposals that will strip Americans of access to quality, affordable health care. But perhaps the cruelest part is what they do to children — the most vulnerable and powerless among us. Children can’t show up at the ballot box to protect their health and so it truly is up to the rest of us. Right now, after decades of hard work, the U.S. has achieved near-universal insurance coverage of its littlest residents. About 95 percent of U.S. kids have health insurance. Unfortunately, the House and Senate proposals to replace the Affordable…

Where Anti-Judicial Rhetoric Leads

Rhetorical bombs thrown at courts and judges are a common theme on the right and have been for quite some time. Any judge who rules against them is branded an "activist judge" seeking to impose "judicial tyranny". We hear constant screeds against "unelected judges" who "subvert the will of the people" (curiously, and tellingly, they were dead silent when the courts struck down California's medical marijuana law, passed by popular referendum, or when they struck down Oregon's assisted suicide law, passed twice by popular referendum). Religious right groups have held conferences to do nothing…

Weekend Diversion: The Top 5 Spectacles from Eurovision

"We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years." -Winston Churchill One of the great arenas in the world that knows no international bounds are the performing arts in general, and music in particular. Some of my favorite musical innovations have come from not only foreign countries, but from mixing many different musical cultures together. This weekend, have a listen to this amazing collaboration between James Keelaghan and Oscar Lopez, whose work combines Irish, Flamenco, and Canadian influences together to create this…

Irven DeVore: October 7, 1934 - September 23, 2014

I heard yesterday that my friend and former advisor Irven DeVore died. He was important, amazing, charming, difficult, harsh, brilliant, fun, annoying. My relationship to him as an advisee and a friend was complex, important to me for many years, and formative. For those who don't know he was instrumental in developing several subfields of anthropology, including behavioral biology, primate behavioral studies, hunter-gatherer research, and even ethnoarchaeology. He was a cultural anthropologist who realized during his first field season that a) he was not cut out to be a cultural…

Some books in the sciences pretty cheap

At the moment, all these are anywhere from free to two bucks. The Darwin books are always cheap, the others are probably temporarily cheap. If you've not read The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, you should. It is always avaialable for next to nothing on the kindle, currently this version is 99 cents. Concerning his autobiography--written when Darwin was 59 and originally published as the first part of “The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin” (1887)--Darwin explained: “A German editor [wrote] to me for an account of the development of my mind and character with some sketch of my…

Non-Classical Knights and Knaves

Recently I mentioned my new book Four Lives: A Celebration of Raymond Smullyan. I see the Kindle version is now available, so if you preferred an e-version, now's your chance! The book is a tribute volume to mathematician Raymond Smullyan. He is best known for his numerous books of logic puzzles. In particular, he took puzzles about knights and knaves to a high art. He did not invent the genre, but he definitely elevated it. (I've been trying to trace the history of puzzles of this sort, so if anyone knows any good references then let me know.) We are to imagine that on a particular…

Are red autumn leaves a warning sign to insects?

Autumn is a time of incredible beauty, when the world becomes painted in the red, orange and yelllow palette of falling leaves. But there may be a deeper purpose to these colours, and the red ones in particular. In the eyes of some scientists, they aren't just decay made pretty - they are a tree's way of communicating with aphids and other insects that would make a meal of it. The message is simple: "I am strong. Don't try it." During winter, trees withdraw the green chlorophyll from their leaves, and textbooks typically say that autumn colours are produced by the pigments that are left…

Uniting Primates and Cetaceans Through Personhood

     Dolphins, such as this individual caught and     used by the US Navy, could be granted      personhood rights that protect them from     such abuse.            Image: United Press InternationalIn Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it turned out that dolphins were super intelligent beings from another world who felt protective of the hairless ape creatures that were dithering about feeling self important: On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--while…

Holdren and Lubchenco Confirmation Update: Yes, I Feel Like the Energizer Bunny.

UPDATE - 17:35 CDT: According to the New York Times, all holds are gone as of this afternoon, the Commerce Committee has unanimously approved the two nominees, and they're expected to be confirmed by unanimous consent early next week. But that's because the holds are still going. And going. And going. And there's really nothing new to report. So, instead, I'm going to speculate. But business before pleasure: Please, please, continue to apply pressure to your own Senators and to Majority Leader Harry Reid. I realize that this is getting really old by now. It's probably starting to feel…

What are babies looking for when they look to their mothers?

This is a guest post by Anna Coon, one of my top student writers from fall 2006 If a baby is placed in a new, strange situation, a common reaction is to look to its mother. For example, whenever I met a new baby I was to babysit, she would always look to her mother at first, as if to get her mother's opinion on the potentially frightening situation. But why, exactly, is the baby looking to its mother? It might be for comfort in a novel situation, but it might also be to receive information. A team led by Trisha Striano has developed a study to test whether babies look to their mothers for…

Richard Owen, the forgotten evolutionist

There are few scientific figures as misunderstood as the English anatomist Richard Owen. More often than not, he is portrayed as a sort of Grinch, brooding in his museum and muttering "I must stop this 'evolution' from coming, but how?" Not only was he a severe and vicious old man, generally disliked by all who knew him, but his brilliance was marred by a reliance on the Bible, which caused him to lash out at anyone who dared suggest that life might evolve. So goes the story, anyway. Owen was a figure of such importance to biology in Victorian England that it is impossible to ignore him, yet…

When faith in "alternative medicine" endangers children...

When confronted with skeptics who refuse to stay silent in the face of quackery--I'm sorry, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), a large proportion of which is unproven if not outright quackery--shruggies frequently ask, "What's the harm?" I can reply that so many of these modalities are no more than elaborate placebos reinforced with magical thinking. I can explain why science- and evidence-based medicine is superior. I can even point out that the blandishments of quacks all too frequently convince people to forego or delay effective medical therapy, allowing them to become sicker…

Covering Alternative Medicine---Another perspective

In a piece written for health reporters, journalist Jane Allen gives some useful advice about covering alternative medicine, but there are some gaps that are are hard for a non-medical professional to recognize (and frankly, for many medical professionals as well). She quite rightly urges skepticism, but when looking into ideologic and muddled topic of alternative medicine, skepticism needs to be turned up to "11". A major complaint that doctors have about health coverage is not the objectivity, earnestness, or research abilities of the reporter but the lack of some of the fundamental…

Rick Warren sets his standards

In an interview defending himself against justified charges of homophobia, Rick Warren insisted: For 5,000 years, every single culture and every single religion has defined marriage as a man and a woman. Not quite. As the polygamous founder of the polygamy-espousing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints noted, "ancient patriarchs and prophets like Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, David, and so on were permitted to have more than one wife," and "the Mosaic Law, which both Jews and Christians believe to have been inspired by God, makes provisions for polygamy (see Exodus 21:10 and…

A Follow-Up to Tuesday's Post About God-Guided Mutations

I will now follow-up on my post from Tuesday. In that post I made some criticisms of a recent talk given by philosopher Elliott Sober at the University of Chicago, the video of which is available here. In the ensuing comments, couchloc linked to this paper that Sober had written, the early sections of which discuss essentially the same material as what was presented in the talk. Since it seems to me that the paper confirms everything I said in my original post, I felt it was worth diving in once again. Let me preface this, however, with something that really should go without saying.…

Another week of GW News, June 12, 2011

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomJune 12, 2011 Chuckles, Bonn, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk Equinox Summit, C40, Threats, SRoWE, GFI, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, Hunger, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle,…

A paper on cytokine storm

In the 1918 pandemic deaths occurred either from the usual secondary bacterial infections or the rapidly advancing acute respiratory distress syndrome. The latter, at least, seems also characteristic of the current human cases of H5N1, and in both the 1918 virus and the contemporary H5N1 there is strong evidence that a dysregulated immune system resulting in a "cytokine storm" may be involved (see our brief description of cytokine storm at The Flu Wiki). But what are the details of a cytokine storm and how does the virus cause it? A new paper in the Journal of Virology on an entirely…

Fractal Woo: Video TransCommunication

This is a short one, but after mentioning this morning how woo-meisters constantly invoke fractals to justify their gibberish, I was reading an article at the 2% company about Allison DuBois, the supposed psychic who the TV show "Medium" is based on. And that led me to a perfect example of how supposed fractals are used to justify some of the most ridiculous woo you can imagine. So, I was reading the article about Ms. DeBois. And since there's nothing more fun than a good smackdown of woo promoted by some slime-drenched liar, so I wound up reading their full series on Ms. DuBois, and found…

A Moon-stravaganza!

The Sun stood still and the Moon stayed -- and hastened not to go down about a whole day! -Joshua 10:12-13 Did you have a good New Year's Eve? Did you enjoy not just the fireworks and champagne, but also the Blue Moon (2nd full Moon of the month) that was out that night? Were you in a fortunate enough part of the world that you not only saw the full Moon, but also managed to see the partial lunar eclipse that happened? How this happened is pretty simple: the full Moon is always on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. When the side of the Moon that's lit up faces Earth, we see it as…

The Vegetarian's Hundred.

Sean assesses his familiarity with the Omnivore's Hundred. I thought about playing along, but it's pretty meaty, while my diet is not so much. However, Sean was kind enough to post a link to the Vegetarian's Hundred, a list of one hundred vegetarian food items everyone should try at least once. (Unless you're vegan, at which point maybe you need to propose your own hundred.) If you want to play along, here's how you do it: copy the list, including my instructions, and bold any items you have eaten and strike out any you would never eat, and then post it to your blog. I'm going to add the…

The Marvelous Migrating Whooping Crane

They used to hunt whooping cranes. Between that and habitat loss, the number dropped from nearly 20,0000 to a mere 1,400 during the first half of the 19th century, and continued to drop to an all time low of 15 birds in 1941. Fifteen birds, in 1941, represented the entire species. All those birds were members of a single flock that migrated between the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, USA and Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada. Most people know the story, or at least, the vague outlines of the story. Much has been written about them, including several books such as Cranes:…

The Best Parts of Science

(Again from the archives) After having written about the worst, why not write about the best things about science? Here goes: 1 - Discovery. One of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a researcher was peering down at the microscope and seeing something that I know has never been seen in the history of mankind. It's funny, the first thing you want to do is ... tell somebody. When my thesis advisor discovered that cells have different types of microtubules (a truly unexpected finding) it was the middle of the night. Apparently, he rushed off to explain the big discovery to the only other…

The Best Parts of the Scientific Life

(From a previous entry on my old blog) After having written about the worst, why not write about the best things about science? Here goes: 1 - Discovery. One of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a researcher was peering down at the microscope and seeing something that I know has never been seen in the history of mankind. It's funny, the first thing you want to do is ... tell somebody. When my thesis advisor discovered that cells have different types of microtubules (a truly unexpected finding) it was the middle of the night. Apparently, he rushed off to explain the big discovery to the…

Fodor on Natural Selection

Philosopher Jerry Fodor offers up the latest example of a familiar genre: essays declaring the forthcoming demise of natural selection, coupled with very little in the way of supporting argument. He is writing in the London Review of Books. There's quite a bit I find wrong with Fodor's essay. In this post, however, I will focus solely on what I take his main argument to be, and explain why I find it inadequate. Fodor writes: In fact, an appreciable number of perfectly reasonable biologists are coming to think that the theory of natural selection can no longer be taken for granted. This is…

Pairing Science and Atheism Redux

Last week, I posted a long argument for why I believe pairing science and atheism is a poor strategic choice for scientists. The response to that article has I think been largely positive, but I do want to address the criticisms of it now that I have had a chance to read all the comments and posts about it. Let me state clearly, though, that I think all of the counter-arguments are legitimate. The world is a complicated place, and I have no special insight into its workings. Further, if any people find my arguments pejorative, I apologize. It was my intent that this discussion be conducted…

Starbutts, or: How is it still a thing that people are shooting coffee up their nether regions?

Many are the "alternative" medicine therapies that I've examined with a skeptical eye over the years. The vast majority of them rest on concepts that range from pre-scientific to religious to outright pseudoscientific to—let's face it—the utterly ridiculous. Examples abound: Reflexology, reiki, tongue diagnosis, homeopathy, ear candling, cupping, crystal healing, urine drinking, detoxifying foot pads, "detox foot baths," and the like. The list goes on. Of these, one of the most amazingly silly and ridiculous alternative therapies of them all, if not the most ridiculous—although, to be fair,…

Group selection & the naturalistic fallacy

Over at Bora's place he talks about a paper on group selection. In regards to the scientific idea and its broad relevance to evolutionary biology, I am mildly skeptical. That being said, this comment drew my attention: While endorsing DS Wilson's Unto Others, Richard Lewontin mentioned an unsavory aspect of group selection (NYROB, 10/22/98): namely, war is a mechanism of the differential survival and reproduction of whole groups. Out-group aggression goes hand in hand with in-group cooperation. It is very advisable to be mindful of the Naturalistic Fallacy when considering group selection.…

The Brain of McCain Fails Mainly on Spain

So John McCain apparently doesn't realize that Spain is: 1) not in the Americas; 2) fighting alongside us in Afghanistan and is a NATO ally; 3) not our enemy. Here's the backstory: Per a post on Josh Marshall's site, I just listened to an interview John McCain did with a Spanish journalist recently. The interview is in English, but there's a Spanish translator translating the tape into Spanish at the same time. So the English part is difficult to hear. I am however fluent in Spanish, and what Josh reports is exactly what the Spanish version shows.Namely, that John McCain didn't appear to…

The Canard of 'Responsible Fiscal Policy'

For most people reading this blog, especially the scientists, budgets matter. Not only is most of the cool science stuff you read about here funded by government funds, but, unless you're independently wealthy, you're going to need an uncut, untouched by Peter Peterson Social Security. Regarding budgets and deficit spending, we constantly hear about 'responsible fiscal policy'--that is, we can't engage in deficit spending (I've dealt with this silliness here and here). But political wishes notwithstanding, unless we want to reduce our savings (the stuff individuals and businesses own), we…

California bound (and tied)

Stephen Johnson is a career professional, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is reported to be very religious and to hold prayer meetings with select staff at the start of the day. Apparently he also takes "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" seriously. Too bad he doesn't take the US law and his sworn responsibility to protect its citizens from environmental hazards as seriously. New revelations show he is a liar, morally corrupt and intellectually dishonest. I guess prayer has its limits as a motivator of probity: Environmental Protection Agency chief…

Higgsapalooza

In the beginning there was light. Sort of. When energies were high enough, particles were effectively massless and the universe was a nice seething mess of particle/anti-particle creation and annihilation. As the universe cools, a symmtery, the Electroweak symmetry breaks, a field condenses out, and interesting stuff starts happening. Hence we get chemistry, and the autocatalytic evolving goo that reaches out and ties to puzzle out where it all came from. In the Standard Model of Particle Physics, the rest mass of the spectrum of normal matter particles is dynamically generated. The mass we…

April-May 2008: Deadly for Antenna Tower Workers

From April 12 to May 22, seven workers have been killed while working on antenna towers, many of which service our wireless communication system.  One worker was killed in Wake Forest, NC; another in San Antonio; a third was killed in Frisco, NC; another in Moorcroft, WY; a fifth man was killed in Natchez, MS; another in Haubstadt, Indiana; and the 7th worker was killed near Miami.  All seven workers fell from elevations.   I was alerted to this troubling trend on the website Wireless Estimator and in an article "Fatal Bandwidth" (Fortune, May 28, 2008 ) in which writer Philip Elmer-…

The Autism/Vaccines Fraud

I have to admit I'm somewhat surprised (even if Orac isn't). We all knew that Andrew Wakefield's research was bogus and the link between vaccines and autism was engineered by ideologues who fear vaccines irrationally. But fabrication of data? Sloppy research is one thing, but the need for cranks to be correct, no matter what reality reflects, has resulted in yet another example of egregious dishonesty. This is in line, however, with what we know about cranks. Mark Crislip recently wrote an interesting piece on mathematics crankery which bears upon just this phenomenon. Mathematics is a…

Ankylosaur week, day 7: Animantarx

And so, here we are, at the end of it all. Ankylosaur week has come and gone, but oh what a week it was. As I said at the beginning, the whole aim was to save myself work and time by not producing anything new - and this worked, more or less. Did I clear the backlog? Did I hell, but at least I tried... So which ankylosaur ends the series? Initially I had hoped to cover bizarre little Liaoningosaurus paradoxus but, I won't lie, my choice of taxa has, in part, been inspired by the presence of attractive images and, sad to say, for little Liaoningosaurus I've found squat other than the photo…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Songbirds Prefer The Latest Music: Golden Oldies Just Don't Cut It With The Chicks: When it's time to mate, female white-crowned sparrows are looking for a male who sings the latest version of the love song, not some 1979 relic. And territorial males simply find the golden oldie much less threatening. Duke University graduate student Elizabeth Derryberry played two versions of the white-crowned sparrow song to the birds as part of her thesis research and found that a 1979 recording didn't inspire them nearly as well as a 2003 recording of the very same song. Birds Take Cues From Their…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 22 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Genetic Patterns of Paternity and Testes Size in Mammals: Testes size is used as a proxy of male intrasexual competition, with larger testes indicative of greater competition. It has been shown that in some…

The Agonized Deaths of Dinosaurs Captured in Stone

tags: researchblogging.org, archaeopteryx, dinosaurs, mammals, fossils Archaeopteryx fossil showing the distinctive head-back death pose of many articulated fossilized birds, dinosaurs and early mammals. Archaeopteryx is an ancient feathered dinosaur. This specimen is at the Humboldt Museum, Berlin. The skull is approximately two inches long. If you've looked at the articulated 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx fossils, you probably have noticed that they all have a weirdly similar pose; their heads are thrown over their backs, mouths open and tail curved upwards. Scientists have been…

Stand Up Before You Hurt Yourself!

A few months ago, Travis Saunders wrote at the Scientific American Guest Blog about the dangers of excessive sitting. He warned that those of us who faithfully log our exercise hours might still be at an increased risk of negative health effects if we spend too many hours sitting at a desk or lounging on the couch. This isn't just because sitting burns fewer calories than walking or standing, but because sedentary behavior is associated with changes in triglyceride uptake, HDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance. (Go read the whole thing.) Now, the New York Times Magazine is taking on the…

Hajj stampedes and the challenges of crowd control

The death toll from last week's stampede at the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca has passed 700; on Saturday, Saudi Arabia's health ministry reported 769 deaths and 934 people injured. Basma Attasi reports for Al Jazeera that the stampede occurred when two waves of pilgrims collided -- but that there are conflicting reports about why that happened: One crowd had just finished a ritual in which pilgrims throw pebbles at three stone columns representing the devil - a rite central to Hajj - when it ran into another wave of people heading to perform the rite. Sources close to the government said…

Poetic Physics

Via Making Light, Chris Clarke at Creek Running North has some sharp words in response to the alleged Deep Thoughts on his Starbucks cup: When Einstein explained his theory of relativity, he couldn't express it in the precise, scientific writing of physics. He had to use poetry. Poetry: the connection of words, images, and the relationships that gives [sic] them meaning. Quantum physics changed the world. No longer can we view the world in separate, mechanical ways, but we must accept the reality of interconnection, unity, and togetherness. Life is poetry. This pearl of wisdom is attributed…

The Bacon Shortage

Bacon. Photograph by Flickr User Kentbrew It appears that there is going to be a bacon shortage. It is estimated that the total amount (in poundage, I assume) of swine that will be produced next year will be several percent, about 10% most likely, less than expected. It is said that there will be an approximate doubling of the cost of pork production, not necessarily doubling the cost of bacon and other products at the consumer end, but certainly squeezing the farmers and raising costs in the grocery store significantly. Presumably this will mean a shortage of all pork products, and quite…

New British Studies Confirms Climate Change Consensus, Daily Mail Gets It Totally Wrong

Since the Daily Mail is a British thing and the latest form of entertainment in Britain is Libel Tourism, I won't say to you that the Daily Mail is a rag full of lies and deceit. Instead, I'll let you be the judge. These studies: Decline in solar output unlikely to offset global warming 23 January 2012 - New research has found that solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years but that will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. Carried out by the Met Office and the University of Reading, the study establishes the most likely…

Climate Change = Extreme Weather = More Climate Change

The last several decades of climate change, and climate change research, have indicated and repeatedly confirmed a rather depressing reality. When something changes in the earth's climate system, it is possible that a negative feedback will result, in which climate change is attenuated. I.e., more CO2 could cause more plant growth, the plants "eat" the CO2, so a negative feedback reduces atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas bringing everything back to normal. Or, when something changes in the earth's climate system, we could get a positive feedback, where change in one direction (…

Which one of you little rascals Sokaled AiG?

Answers in Genesis started this so-called peer reviewed journal called Answers, and the latest publication therein is such a confused mess that I'm wondering if it could be a hoax. Here's the abstract, but I think just the title alone would be sufficient to tell this is codified lunacy: An Apology and Unification Theory for the Reconciliation of Physical Matter and Metaphysical Cognizance. Because one is tangible and the other intangible, the physical and metaphysical are generally treated separately. But this dichotomy is illogical; at the very least it is inconsistent with reality, for the…

Gender Issues Start Sooner Than You Think

Via Joerg Heber on Twitter, a great post on gender divisions in STEM by Athene Donald: As children try to work out their personal identities, the difference between 'boy' and 'girl' is as fundamental and omnipresent as it gets - and they receive the clear messages that collectively society gives out about the attributes implicitly associated with that distinction. Inevitably they are likely to 'hear' the message that boys are noisy, into everything and generally vigorous and enquiring, whereas girls are 'expected' to be good, docile, nurturing and passive. Parents may do all they can to…

What makes an IDiot?

While Creationists get a free-pass to call scientists 'Nazis' and 'liars' and 'baby killers', Larry Moran gets a lot of crap for calling IDiots, 'IDiots'. While Ive always found that pet name more than apt, some people get their panties in a wad over it. I think maybe what we need is a nice example of IDiot behavior to illustrate, for everyone, why 'IDiot' is such an accurate descriptor for the major proponents of Creationism. Luckily, Casey Luskin has just provided me with just that! A perfect example to demonstrate what makes an IDiot an IDiot. So we are left to decipher his jargon-…

What did temperatures do as the last glacial minimum ended 120K years ago?

A commenter on the most recent edition of het's AWOGWN asks an interesting set of questions: How would temperature data have been seen during the last 10,000 years prior to the peak of each of the previous Milankovich cycles? What caused the temperature to reverse course in those cycles and why would we not expect it to occur again this time? First, here are the quick answers to those three questions, then some discussion.  1. It is not currently possible to resolve the temperature record that long ago to anything close to what we have today.  2. The cause of the temperature reversal is not…

Mike Argento on Forrest's Testimony

Mike Argento, a columnist for the York Daily Record, writes about the testimony of Barbara Forrest and it seems that he definitely got the point of the whole exercise, from the historical record she referenced to the shameful tactics of the TMLC attorneys. First, he writes of their attempts to impeach her testimony by questioning her about her association with humanist groups: Along about the 658th hour of Dr. Barbara Forrest's stay on the witness stand, during Day Six of the Dover Panda Trial, I started looking for her horns. Never did see them. It was right about the time that defense…