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Annals of McCain - Palin, XVIII: quoting Reagan

My father was an old fashioned "physician and surgeon," something we don't have today. He did everything: delivered you, took out your appendix or tonsils, treated your parents' heart disease, your childhood diseases, your broken bones, your kids' childhood diseases, the diabetes you got later in life and the heart disease that went along with it. And probably delivered your grandchildren, too. He went to the office seven days a week, made housecalls in the middle of the night, met cooks from the White Castle hamburger chain in his office at 3 am to sew up their lacerations, made his own…

Annals of McCain - Palin, IV: did I say that?

So with socialism Republican style (socialize the losses, privatize the profits) both Obama and McCain are saying the saw the meltdown coming. We know Barack Obama gave a prescient speech on the financial markets 6 months ago. It wasn't covered much because it wasn't a very interesting sounding topic. Now John McCain tells us he was concerned, too: "Two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS this morning. "The influence that Fannie and Freddie had…

Flu in Australia: no tears

This is about the particularly severe flu season being endured by our friends in Australia. Southern hemisphere, so the flu season is in full swing there, the reverse of the northern hemisphere. But "full swing" doesn't quite describe it, so I'm going to do this one in two parts ((all links from Flu Wiki Front Page, news for August 18). The great epidemiologist Irving Selikoff once described statistics as people with the tears wiped away. So the first post today will be statistics, or the equivalent, without the tears . Later today I'll do the other part: As the flu epidemic continues to…

Twice as many work-related skull fractures than government estimate

Researchers with Michigan State University’s (MSU) Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine have done it again. First it was work-related burns. Then it was work-related amputations. Now it is work-related skull fractures. The MSU researchers continue to poke holes in the federal government’s annual estimates of occupational injuries. Joanna Kica, MPA and Ken Rosenman, MD used data from acute care hospitals, workers’ compensation records, death certificates and police reports to identify work-related fatal and non-fatal skull fractures occurring in Michigan in 2012. They…

It Comes Back to Food and Energy...Again

Stuart Staniford has a terrific piece that offers a little visual clarity about food, energy, unemployment and the Riots in the Middle East and North Africa: Tunisia is a minnow in the global oil market, Egypt slightly more important. Algeria, however, matters a lot as its oil production is probably close to total demonstrated OPEC spare capacity. Thus serious social instability in Algeria would have major effects on global oil prices. If instability spread to bigger oil producers than that (eg Kuwait or UAE), the effects could be very dramatic. Presumably, the regimes in those countries…

Nate Hagens on Why Natural Resources Don't Matter

I'm a day late with Nate Hagen's piece, but I just have to link here - it has a beauty and elegance I really admire, and Id do wish him the very best of luck in his new venture. In fact, I'm starting to think that maybe I can cash in too! OK - here it is in a nutshell - though I used to think the main problem with economic theory was that it ignored biology on the demand side and ecology on the supply side, I now see the reality is that neither biology nor ecology has incorporated enough economic theory. Basically, my efforts at falsification of positive economics even down to the day to day…

IEDG2008: Model systems are dead, long live model systems

I've discovered a couple of important things at this meeting. One, late night sessions at west coast meetings are deadly for any of us coming from more eastern time zones. At least the morning sessions are low stress. Two, I haven't heard one Drosophila talk yet, and the message is clear: we're now in the stage of evo-devo in which everyone is diversifying and chasing down a wide array of species. There was a bit of model-system bashing, but at the same time, everyone is acknowledging the crucial role of those traditional, but weird and derived, lab critters in providing a point of comparison…

4 Arrested in Animal Researcher Harassment

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that four young people have been arrested on suspicion that they harassed UCB and UC Santa Cruz animal researchers under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. It is clear from the reporting that law enforcement is taking this issue seriously. The FBI and seven other law enforcement agencies were involved, and effort was coordinated through the Joint Terrorism Task Force. From the press release and reporting, it looks as though agents were following these activists in public places, and filmed them using publicly-available computer terminals. Even DNA was…

This reminds me of a joke I once heard...

Dembski misses the point as always with his recent post describing why the vertebrate eye is again evidence of design. You see, the big bad Darwinists used the structure of the eye, which has its photoreceptors in the back behind all the layers of the retina, as evidence that our eye isn't designed, because what kind of designer would have the light pass all the way through the layers of the retina to reach the receptor cells? I'm interested in talking about these cranks today because I think this argument is one that exposes the fundamentally deceptive nature of the DI and proponents of the…

Another "Frontiers In" journal steps in it

Almost a year ago, I wrote about a terrible article that was published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. FiPH is a legitimate, peer-reviewed journal, and they had just published a manuscript that was straight-up HIV denial, titled "Questioning the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: 30 years of dissent." At the time, it was listed as a regular review article; after much outrage, it was re-titled into an "opinion" statement, but not retracted. Now another "Frontiers In" journal has stepped in it, publishing a paper that has the anti-vaccine groupies frothing at the mouth. Published in Frontiers in…

Vaccination doesn't cause autism volume what-are-we-up-to-now?

Oh, let's go back to the start... --Coldplay, "The Scientist" A decade ago, a paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was published in The Lancet, detailing the cases of 12 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Anecdotal reports from parents of several of these children suggested that the onset of their condition followed receipt of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Wakefield concluded following this research that the MMR vaccine was unsafe, and could play a causative role in the development of autism as well as gastrointestinal disease--the first volley in the…

Do I Expect Too Much of MSHA?

Last Wednesday, June 20, I learned from a newspaper reporter that a gold miner was missing at the Newmont company's Midas mine near Winnemucca, Nevada.  I checked MSHA's website, but nothing was posted about the accident.  No problem, I'll cut them some slack.  Maybe within 24 hours they'd provide some details.  By Friday, there was still no news offered by MSHA, so I began to rely on the Newmont company's website and updates posted on the local Las Vegas TV stations (KVBC and KLAS).  (The TV stations' stories provided no more information than that contained in the company's…

How to prevent cannibalism in pheasants

Captive pheasants Phasianus colchicus frequently practise cannibalism: this isn't necessarily as gruesome as it sounds, but mostly consists of repetitive pecking or picking that opens wounds or results in the removal of toes. In chicks, toe and beak picking are common, while vent, wing and head picking more frequently occurs in older birds. Open, bleeding wounds (when visible) cause the birds to attack again, and they will keep attacking until the victim is fatally injured or killed. All gamebirds practise this sort of behaviour in captivity, but pheasants are by far the worst. 'Outbreaks'…

The detachable tails of pigeons

Regular readers might remember the 'pigeon in the fireplace' incident of March 2007, when a Wood pigeon Columba palumbus fell down my chimney during the small hours of the morning and had to be extricated at great personal cost to my epidermis. As I grabbed the pigeon, I was slightly dismayed that its entire rectricial array (viz, all of its tail feathers) came out in one clean, bloodless mass. The word on the street is that pigeons have very shallowly rooted rectrices and can effectively 'drop' the tail when grabbed by a predator, which is pretty neat I think you'll agree. So far as I can…

Which Came First; Social Behavior or Elaborate Ornamentation?

tags: researchblogging.org, social behavior, evolution, Psittacosaurus, ornithischian dinosaur Triceratops. Image: Dinosaur Collector Triceratops are among the most recognizable dinosaurs because of their distinct appearance. They had a large and elaborate bony shield around the back of their head, horns that jut out from the top of their head and nose like spears, and bony knobs on their cheeks. Because these large structures are energetically expensive to grow, they had to serve a purpose and this purpose was likely the establishment of social hierarchies. Thus, these ornaments provide…

Alex The Grey Parrot, Colleague of Irene Pepperberg, Dead at 31

tags: Alex, African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus, cognition, learning, speech disabilities, Irene Pepperberg Alex, the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus and his colored blocks. Image: EurekaAlert. [wallpaper size] As you know, I have spent my life researching, breeding and living with birds, especially parrots. I have also had the distinct pleasure of meeting Irene Pepperberg several times, both at professional meetings as well as at avicultural meetings. However, yesterday, I received the devastating news that Alex the African grey parrot, who was both a study subject and…

So…soap bubbles must be designed!

You've probably noticed that as a soap bubble thins, it acquires a rainbow of iridescent colors across its surface. Or perhaps you've noticed that a film of oil on a mud puddle shows beautiful colors. These are common physical properties of thin film interference. The way it works is that light entering a material with a higher refractive index is both reflected and transmitted. Some of the light bounces back with a partial phase shift, and some of it passes through. In a thin film, it passes through but doesn't travel far before it hits another boundary, for instance between the film and the…

Mumps outbreak in Vancouver

It's déjà vu all over again. The first chapter in Arthur Allen's book "Vaccine" describes the history of smallpox vaccination in the United States. In 1721, in Boston, the prevailing belief was that to get vaccinated was to intervene with "divine providence." If you tried to protect yourself, it meant that you lacked faith in God. Today, I read that a mumps outbreak is happening in Vancouver, Canada. So far 116 cases have been confirmed. Why is mumps, a preventable and serious disease, causing problems in Canada? photo of a child with mumps by by Barbara Rice, from the Public…

a brief history of big physics

Physics used to be simple: the universe was eternal, static and predictable... but there were dark clouds on the horizon. First there was uncertainty, evidence of decay. Lack of conservation. Then all became relative. Transmutable, interchangable, in a revolutionary way. There was sudden change, lack of predictability. A statistical world. Only identical mass aggregates mattered. Some gathered collectively, others became exclusive. There were hints of underlying degeneracies. Evidence was found that things were falling apart, despite noble attempts to maintain our world stationary. First…

Mystery Bird: Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Stelgidopteryx serripennis

tags: Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Stelgidopteryx serripennis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Stelgidopteryx serripennis, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Richard Ditch, 2006 [larger view]. Date Time Original: 2006:03:12 09:45:40 Exposure Time: 1/249 F-Number: 14.00 ISO: 200 Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: Look at those wings! They're obviously long, and we can roughly quantify their…

Mystery Bird: Peach-faced Lovebird, Agapornis roseicollis

tags: Peach-faced Lovebird, Agapornis roseicollis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Feral Peach-faced Lovebird, Agapornis roseicollis, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Richard Ditch, 2008 [larger view]. Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: It was a cold, windy day at New Jersey's Sandy Hook, and our teeth chattered and our eyes teared as we stood knee-high in snow, taking turns at the scope that held the image of a juvenile Gyrfalcon. Suddenly there came a jeering scream from the sky above us,…

Snake Steals Toxins From Toads

tags: Rhabdophis tigrinus, snake, toad, toxins, evolution The Asian snake, Rhabdophis tigrinus, obtains toxins from toads it eats and uses the potent chemicals as a defense against predators, according to a new study. The toxin-containing glands are clearly visible on this juvenile snake as a large ridge on the back of the neck. The snake is native to the toad-rich island of Ishima, Japan. Contrary to popular belief, not all poisonous snakes actually manufacture their poisons. In fact, according to a newly published study, some snakes obtain their poisons from their diet and store them in…

All Things Reconsidered

tags: book review, nature writing, birding, bird watching, collected essays, All Things Reconsidered, Roger Tory Peterson Like most birders, I never met Roger Tory Peterson, although I do own several editions of his definitive field guides for identifying the birds of North America. However, thanks to Bill Thompson, who collected and edited 42 of RTP's best essays from his regular "Bird Watcher's Digest" column into one volume, All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures by Roger Tory Peterson (NYC: Houghton Mifflin; 2006) you will feel as though you have spent several days in RTP's…

What might you make of it?

Suppose you read a press release that started... Bleak first results from the world's largest climate change experiment and continued Greenhouse gases could cause global temperatures to rise by more than double the maximum warming so far considered likely by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to results from the world's largest climate prediction experiment, published in the journal Nature this week. and went on The first results from climateprediction.net, a global experiment using computing time donated by the general public, show that average temperatures…

Selling Stuff With Liberal Chic

Blogging here at Sb has many advantages, one of which is a free subscription to Seed. I received the latest four issues the other day and have been reading them with great interest. It's a very pretty mag with great content. One detail surprises me. Almost all Most of the models in the ads are black. I have an inkling what this may mean: let me explain. Most of Seed's readers are in the US. In the US, black people are on average less well-educated and affluent than white people. Therefore, marketing a US pop-sci mag primarily to black people would be a bad idea. The ads are instead in all…

Conflicting Stories in Jesus Picture Case

A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit in Harrison County, WV, over a picture of Jesus hanging in the hallway of a public high school there. But amusingly, both sides are declaring victory. The ADF, which apparently intervened at some point to represent the school board in negotiations, put out a press release declaring that the settlement "conforms to the board's consistent position that school officials did not violate the Establishment Clause by having had a painting of Jesus Christ on one of its walls." But Americans United, representing the plaintiffs, put out a press release…

ADF on Prayer in Public Schools

This post on the ADF blog has a rundown of what is and isn't allowed in terms of prayer in public schools. Most of it is accurate, saying that prayer groups and Bible clubs are allowed to form and that students are allowed to pray individually and collectively during non-instructional time. But there's one statement in it that I think is, at the very least, exaggerated: Considering the decline in the moral values of America's youth, teen pregnancy, and school violence, SYATP is seen by many as a refreshing and much needed injection of religion and faith in an increasingly dark sector of our…

The greenhouse effect is not the effect that warms greenhouses

Every now and again, people get a little bit confused when they realise that the thing we all call the "greenhouse effect" is not the mechanism that warms greenhouses. This is nothing new; R. W. Wood: Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse pointed it out in 1909. The wikipedia [[Greenhouse effect]] page states this explicitly (because I added it. I had a very long edit war with some bozo who didn't believe it). Sometimes septics - or simply the badly confused - get very excited, because they think it tells you something useful about the actual greenhouse effect - usually, they think it proves…

Alderley Cliff

A weekend in the Peaks for family purposes, and to our great surprise just around the corner was a rather nice cliff. It is very tucked away and rather takes you by surprise. Here's the google maps link. If you scroll out a bit you'll see "Wheeldon Trees Farm holiday cottages" where we stayed, and which has a convenient footpath running down from the right to the cliff (and if you scroll out a bit further you'll see the giant limestone quarry which shows up far better from above; on the ground you hardly see it). Just south - Longnor - is the Dove valley - beware: the pubs don't open until 12…

Hitchens on the Pope

When Christopher Hitchens writes about religion, he is always reliable. Over at Slate he offers his thoughts on the Pope's recent dust-up with the Muslim community: Attempting to revive his moribund church on a visit to Germany, where the Roman congregations are increasingly sparse, Joseph Ratzinger (as I shall always think of him) has managed to do a moderate amount of harm--and absolutely no good--to the very tense and distraught discussion now in progress between Europe and Islam. I strongly recommend that you read the full text of his lecture at the University of Regensburg last Tuesday…

Coal Use by US Educational Institutions Down 64% since 2008

A lot of higher education institutions are old, and back in the day, things were different. Not only were most schools simultaneously on top of and on the bottom of great snow covered hills, but they were often surrounded by nearly medieval settlement, or at least, pre-industrial ones, that lacked things like central heat, electricity, and so on, even after these things became common and normal. I remember the legacy of this reality at my Alma Mater, a small university in Cambridge, Mass. Most of the campus had its own heating system, which was built at a time when centrally distributed…

Dark Energy: Where did the Light go? (Part 3)

Though the Sun is gone, I have a light. -Kurt Cobain Last time we visited dark energy, we discussed its initial discovery. This came about from the fact that supernovae observed with a certain redshift (i.e., moving away from us) appear to be systematically fainter than we were able to explain. But we weren't satisfied with simply saying that there must be dark energy. We asked a lot of critical questions about why these supernovae might appear so faint. First off, we asked the question, "Could these supernovae from far away be different than the type Ia supernovae we have today?"…

Bring him to me!

The Milky Way galaxy is a relatively big spiral galaxy. So is Andromeda. There are about 20 dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound to us; combined with us, all of this makes up the local group. But Andromeda is moving towards us, and eventually, it's going to merge with us. I'll once again show you a video of what this merger might look like: But what would we see, here in the Milky Way, as Andromeda got closer and closer to us? Right now, Andromeda looks like this: But Andromeda is also very far away: about 2.3 million light years (770 kpc). The center of it is tiny on the sky, but…

The feeble Ken Ham show

I knew the internet would come through with just the right clip and the relevant extracted words, so I wouldn't have to sit through the wretched miasma of the whole O'Reilly Factor to see Krauss vs. Ham, and here it is. Jason has a transcript, if you'd prefer to read text rather than watch some guys talk. Krauss did OK: he was assertive, like you have to be on these shows, and he got in one or two strong sentences (ahh, for a television show that permitted people to express whole paragraphs of ideas…but I dream). I'm not a big fan of Krauss's strategy of conceding too much credibility to…

Water in Space: What Happens?

The Earth is one of those extremely rare, special places in the Universe where water can exist, stably, as a liquid. So much of it exists here on Earth, that if you were to add up all the oceans on Earth together, it would weigh more than 10^18 tonnes, more massive than the biggest asteroid ever, and about as massive as Pluto's giant moon, Charon. But water only has a very small window in which it can be a liquid. For instance, if you took some warm water up to a very high elevation, it would start to boil, and become a gas! The higher up you took it, the lower and lower your boiling point…

Luskin's Breathtaking "Scientific Discoveries"

Casey Luskin has been writing a series of posts on the DI blog that alleges to contain "International Scientific Discoveries Since Kitzmiller Which Support ID." You can see Part 3 here, and you're gonna love it. In the entire series, there is not a single research article that actually supports ID; all Luskin does is cite scientific papers that show disputes over some particular hypothesis within the evolutionary model as proof that evolution must be wrong and hence ID must be right. This is standard issue creationist behavior. But part three takes vacuousness to an entirely new level. There…

Why it matters that the US Olympic Team will wear Chinese made uniforms

There are all kinds of reasons why it does not matter, apparently, that the US Athletes participating in this summer's Olympics in London will be wearing uniforms made in China. These reasons are things like "Everything is made in China" and "They don't make clothing in America anyway" and so on and so forth. But there are also reasons that it matters and that team should, in fact, be wearing uniforms made in US shops. Union shops. Did you know that when a political party runs a candidate or pushes an issue, and they make t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other artifacts of rhetoric, they get…

Build Your Life on Eternal Truths

I just popped out for a burger at Arbee's, and I chose a seat with a good view of the full moon riding high over a Shell gas station. On the wall of the station was a large luminescent white sign bearing the words "Build Your Life on Eternal Truths". Chapel Hill has a huge number of churches, most being very small and privately run by their pastors, so I guess what the Shell proprietor really means is "Make sure to follow a culturally sanctioned subset of the many commandments in the Bible". Or perhaps "Spend a lot of your time participating in church rituals and talking about Christian…

Analysis* of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si?

I like the "Analysis*"; it reminds me of Tesco's "Finest*", where I think they intend the "*" to mean "star" as in quality; but I always read it as "*" as in "footnote: may not actual contain fine quality ingredients". But I digress. In this case, the "*" really is a footnote: Note that scientists only assessed information related to climate science. The following analysis is not an endorsement of the economic, political, or moral content of the encyclical. One can quibble whether reading only a small portion of a document is a useful overall assessment, but clearly if we're interested in…

Medieval Stockholm

I just finished reading Nils Ahnlund's 1953 history of Stockholm up to 1523, which marks the end of the Middle Ages in Swedish historiography. Its 538 pages of text offer less concrete detail than an archaeologist might wish for, and I soon lost track of everybody named Anders Jönsson and Jöns Andersson, but it was an interesting read nevertheless. Here are a few of the best things I learned. Now I finally understand why the inhabitants of Dalecarlia play such a large role in the city's and country's history. I mean, OK, there's reasonable farmland up there, but it is way north and the…

Are there no intelligent creationists?

I've been overestimating creationists. Every time I look at what they're saying about evolution, my estimation drops yet further … you'd think that after years of tracking this stuff, they'd bottom out, but no. The latest examples are some snippets from a presentation by Caroline Crocker. Crocker is one of the martyrs of ID — she was released from a temporary teaching position at George Mason University, and claims it was because she is a creationist, when the real explanation is that she's an incompetent kook. Her powerpoint slides have to be seen to be believed. Here's one example. Can you…

Update on Ten Commandments Case

So most reports are saying that the justices appeared fairly hostile to the idea of removing the Ten Commandments displays. Judge for yourself by reading the transcript of the oral arguments. I was right that Douglas Laycock did not argue the Van Orden case, it was Erwin Chemerinsky of Duke University Law School. One statement sticks out to me, from Scalia: You know, I think probably 90 percent of the American people believe in the Ten Commandments, and I'll bet you that 85 percent of them couldn't tell you what the ten are. And when somebody goes by that monument, I don't think they're…

Thompson Shows Why ID is not Falsifiable

Yesterday, John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown, took the witness stand in the Dover trial and a line of questioning by Richard Thompson inadvertantly demonstrated why ID is not falsifiable. According to the York Daily Record, Thompson was trying to make the argument that because God could have made the genomes of humans and monkeys look very similar, the idea that they are related by common descent is merely "conjecture": If there is a God, then he could have made the monkey and the human with similar genetic material. In the fifth day of Dover Area School District's trial over…

The Genius Gap

Kate was scheduled to argue a case Friday morning in Federal court in Manhattan, so we decided to make a weekend of it. I drove down after class on Friday, and we went to dinner with Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on Friday night, and spent Saturday at the Met, getting some culture. Kate's a big fan of stained glass, so whenever we're there, we make it a point to check out the Tiffany windows they have on display. This trip, there was the added bonus of a special exhibition of items from Louis Comfort Tiffany's country estate, which showed the extravagent results you get when an artist is…

Liquid Wrench: Profanity in a Bottle

It was May, 1992, and I was in a stupor of post thesis-completion cortisol letdown and alcohol-induced lethargy, and Mark Pagel was talking to me as I slouched in a large comfortable chair in the Peabody Museum's smoking lounge. "It's obvious what they need to do," he was saying, and I could tell from the look on his face, even in my foggy state of mind, that a morsel of wisdom marinated in humor was about to be served up. I swear this stuff works great. "Hrmphsmeh," I replied, indicating that he should continue, I was interested. "They need Ross Perot." "Hrmph???," I knew Mark (and…

How diverse were early hominoids?

And hominids. We know the fossil record underestimates diversity at least a little, and we know that forested environments in Africa tend to be underrepresented. Given this, the diversity of Miocene apes may have been rather impressive, because there is a fairly high diversity in what we can assume is a biased record. But I'd like to make the argument from another angle, that of modern ecological analogues. Let us assume that the greater apparent diversity of apes in the middle and late Miocene compared today can be accurately translated as a modern reduction in ape diversity. Not…

Honey Bee Colony Collapse: Its like, a virus.

Since ~2006, honey bee colonies in the US have been dropping dead overnight. Literally. They call it 'colony collapse disorder'. While large populations of organisms dying is disturbing, no matter the species, we need honey bees-- they help pollinate so many of our crops. I grew up in the banks of the Missouri River, around apple and peach orchards (who always had their own bee hives, and honey) and hell, I eat everything on that list... What is killing our bees? People have accused GMOs and wireless internet and pesticides and antibiotics... We didnt have a clue before. It might be…

My savior: Ketotifen Fumarate

I never had allergies until I moved to Oklahoma. Evidently, when the wind comes sweeping down the plain at +45 mph, its carrying billions and billions of grains of cedar pollen. So even though I grew up in a damn forest, Im now allergic to 'trees'. *bonus* Arnie is allergic to trees AND grass. A dog. Allergic to trees and GRASS. *fume* Well, the past couple springs I just suck it up, take two benadryl every night (give two to Arnie) and just deal with it. But this spring I got a new bit of allergy fun-- Itchy eyes. Im not talking 'aw balls something is in my eyes' itching, I mean 'OMFG DO…

Sportz Is Hurting America

Over at the Mid-Majority, Kyle Whelliston (formerly of espn.com) has a great essay on the "Sportz" phenomenon: Sports are great. Actual participation is awesome, but watching other people do sports can still be pretty good too. These days, people can watch sports anytime, anywhere and in whatever state of undress they choose. These are truly the days of miracles and wonders! All thanks to the Sports-Industrial Complex, which brought you mantertainment, lite beer and the Sports Bubble. When sports became industrialized in the latter part of the 20th Century, the S.I.C. became the conduit…

Traces of a Triassic Kraken?

At first I thought this discovery was really cool, because I love the idea of ancient giant cephalopods creating art and us finding the works now. But then, reality sinks in: that's a genuinely, flamboyantly extravagant claim, and the evidence better be really, really solid. And it's not. It's actually rather pathetic. It consists of the discovery of ichthyosaur vertebrae lying in a flattened array. They look like this. Photo shows shonisaur vertebral disks arranged in curious linear patters with almost geometric regularity. The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a…