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The Bottleneck Years by H.E.Taylor - Chapter 97

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 96 Table of Contents Chapter 98 Chapter 97 The Trial, March 18, 2061 Although I had resolved never to expose Edie and Anna to Jon's vitriol since the first call, I didn't have a lot of choice when it came to the trial. Unfortunately, I had a class at the same time. By the time I got back to my office, it was over. The video transcript was not yet online, so I headed home. It was a warm day. As I walked along the lake, the trees were turning green. Birds were singing. Ducks splashed in the water. It was beautiful, but I rather dreaded what I…

A letter to you about saving the ocean

Dear Reader. The following letter was written by Randy Repass and Sally-Christine Rodgers and it concerns you and the planet earth. The publication of this letter is happening in numerous blogs at the same time, coordinated by Sheril Kirshenbaum. We are both lifelong boaters. What we have learned from sailing across the Pacific over the past 6 years, and especially from scientists focused on marine conservation, is startling. Whether you spend time on the water or not, Ocean Acidification affects all of us and is something we believe you will want to know about. What would you do if…

The oceans are in trouble, which means we all are

As someone with a marine biology degree, I've been asked to help spread the word about the threat to ocean ecosystems from falling pH levels -- what everyone who doesn't have a marine biology degree calls ocean acidification. It's a worthy cause. Read the following letter, review this report and then go to this site and do something about it: We are both lifelong boaters. What we have learned from sailing across the Pacific over the past 6 years, and especially from scientists focused on marine conservation, is startling. Whether you spend time on the water or not, Ocean Acidification…

Senate TSA Oversight Hearing -- Wed Nov 17

Via Cogitamus: The Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security will hold a Transportation Security Administration Oversight Hearing tomorrow. For more info: Jena Longo - Democratic Deputy Communications Director, (202) 224-8374 Nov 17 2010 - 10 AM Russell Senate Office Building - 253 The committee chair is Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) phone (202) 224-6472. The ranking member is Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison 202-224-5922. The subcommittee chair is Sen Byron L. Dorgon (D-ND) phone (202) 224-2551. The ranking member is Sen Jim DeMint (R-SC) phone (202) 224-6121. Regardless of…

IBM Tongue Bytes

Source. A strange email arrived in my Inbox recently asking me for a picture of my tongue, assuring me "lifetime benefits." First I wondered how this email escaped my Spam filter. But then I wanted to explore. Here's the email {you likely will have received it too}: Dear distinguished guest, How are you recently? Is everything ok? I am Sasha from Traditional Chinese Medicine center (short for TCM), the assistant of Dr.Huang, it's my honor to contact you via this email. I hope our TCM center have left nice memories for you. It's our responsibility to give our remote concern to you since…

Angels and Demons - Feeding our love of conspiracies

Tomorrow Angels and Demons comes to theaters across the country. One in a long series of movies that profits from the idea that underneath our regular, ordinary world, there are powerful forces controlling the scenes. I understand the appeal of these movies, it's an entertaining concept. A fictional conspiracy engages your intellect, creates a mystery, makes you think about the world and who is in control. But we have to remember when we see these films that these are works of fiction for entertainment. The Illuminati are not real, this sadly ludicrous belief still persists for some…

Wanted: supermassive black hole binary researcher

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral scholar position to work with Prof. Mike Eracleous and collaborators. The successful applicant will join a team working to identify close, supermassive binary black holes through a combination of observational tests. The postdoctoral scholar will be expected to plan and carry out observations related to this project and lead the effort of analyzing the data and publishing the results. A Ph.D. in astronomy, physics, or a related field is required, and research experience on active galactic nuclei is highly desirable. In addition, experience with the…

Students Debate "Internet & Community," Part B

This spring in the sophomore-level course I teach on "Communication and Society," we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter the nature of community, civic engagement, and social relationships. (See reading list.) For many college students who grew up "online," it's easy to take for granted the "virtual" society we live in, seldom pausing to consider how it might be different from more traditional forms of community life. Therefore, one of the goals of the course was to encourage students to think systematically and rigorously…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

Tuesday - let's take a look at 4 out of 7 PLoS journals. 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: Disrupting Circadian Homeostasis of Sympathetic Signaling Promotes Tumor Development in Mice: Cell proliferation in all rapidly renewing mammalian tissues follows a circadian rhythm that is…

Calling all African science blogs!

What's wrong with this picture?: You're looking at a screenshot of a map detailing the origins of each of the last 500 visits to Terra Sigillata. I took this shot at about 2 pm local time in Durban, South Africa, home to cognitive science blogger Michael Meadon at Ionian Enchantment. Michael is a graduate student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and I learned about him via a Twitter referral - from whom I can't recall. Be that as it may, last week Michael put out a call last week for "Africa's science nerds": Africa, then, needs skeptical, reasoned, and scientific voices, not only to…

We're OK TO GO!

As you have undoubtedly heard from sources more overtly journalistic than this one, SETI is back online! After federal and state financial cutbacks forced the institute's shiny new Allen Telescope Array (ATA) into indefinite hibernation earlier this year, cosmically-minded geeks all over the globe donated money in droves, bringing the search for extraterrestrial life back from oblivion. Over $200,000 in donations from thousands of fans -- including Contact's own Jodie Foster, science-fiction writer Larry Niven, and Apollo 8 Astronaut Bill Anders -- will get science operations up and running…

Math by Mail: Going Strong at 30

Sometime around junior high, this Weizmann science writer stumbled upon Mathematical Games, the late Martin Gardner's monthly math puzzle at the back of my mom's Scientific American, and I became a devotee. The best ones, of course, were those that required a little sideways thinking, and these yielded the pleasure of that "Aha" moment when the answer became clear. (For more on the neurobiology of the Aha moment, look at our site.) So it is no surprise (to me at least) that of the hundreds of science education programs offered through the Davidson Institute of Science Education (the…

First Day at PloS

This post has been written in advance and scheduled for automatic posting. At the time this post shows up, I'll be sleeping my first night in San Francisco. A few hours later, I'll be at PLoS offices and will hopefully have online access soon after so I can post my first impressions. As most of you probably know, I got a job as an Online Community Coordinator at PLoS ONE. Today is my first day at the job! I got the job in an unusual way as well - by posting about it on my blog (and the managing editor posting a comment "Is this a formal application?"). The rest is, as they say, history…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (The Serbs are coming!)

There are 83 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 109 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Tatjana Jovanovic, better known to the readers of this blog by her online pseudonym 'tanjasova' was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia,…

Atheist Voices of MN Authors' Event - Har Mar Barnes & Noble

Wed, October 10th Join us at the Barnes & Noble in Har Mar Mall in Roseville at 7pm, Wednesday, October 10 for a fun evening. The Atheist Voices of Minnesota will be featured for an authors' event and we would love to see a room full of occupied seats! Six of the book authors will read and/or discuss their essays and then be available to take questions from attendees. The featured authors are Norman Barrett Wiik, Stephanie Zvan, Robin Raianiemi, Tim Wick, Kori Hennessy, and August Berkshire. The host will be Eric Jayne. After the one hour (maybe an hour and a half) event some of us will…

At Nature Biotech, Science Communication Re-Considered

In this month's issue of Nature Biotechnology, I join with other authors to suggest several bold new initiatives in science communication and journalism. The Commentary article includes an overview of key issues and trends in the field and closes with a series of specific recommendations. The article is based on a workshop held this past year in Washington, DC, organized by Timothy Caulfield and Tania Bubela of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. The authors reflect the participants in that workshop and include representatives from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and…

The World Doesn't Need More Promotional Blogs

Over at the Book Publicity blog, Yen takes up the question of Internet publicity (via SF Signal): Yesterday I spoke at an AAR / Association of Authors' Representatives panel together with Connor Raus (who runs digital advertising agency CRKWD) about understanding social media and how to use it effectively -- as you know, a favorite topic of mine here on The Book Publicity Blog. I don't have time to summarize the entire panel here (and you don't have time to read a summary of the entire panel), but I did want to tackle the issue of timing, a common question among book publicists, authors,…

This is a Scam

I know you know this, but does everybody? It is a new approach to getting your banking details. Please pass it around. Would you like to work online from Home/Temporarily and get paid weekly?We are glad to offer you for a job position at our company. We need someone to work for the company as a Representative/Book keeper in your country. This is in view of our not having an office presently in your country. My name is Kachy Williams working as a Sales Consultant Manager for a fabric company in United Kingdom called Dhillon Fabrics. I found this medium an opportunity to contact you and…

Anthology update....

The entire file is now finished - the last quick round of proofreading is all that's left before the Grand Unveiling right at this place (likely tomorrow morning). Since people nominated the best science posts and those tend to be the most substantial posts which tend to be very long posts (sometimes in two or more parts), the book will be much thicker than I expected - around 330 pages! This, unfortunately, will also make it a tad little bit more expensive (still not hugely expensive - this is online, print-on-demand model of publishing after all). I got 13 out of 50 letters of agreement/…

Welcome to Yet Another Science Blogging Community: Phenomena!

Yes, the science blogging community has certainly seen some gyrations in the last few years with a bunch of new networks sprouting up, sometimes from the ashes of other networks, sometimes completely on their own. The latest is Phenomena: A science salon hosted by National Geographic magazine. Phenomena is a gathering of spirited science writers who take delight in the new, the strange, the beautiful and awe-inspiring details of our world. Phenomena is hosted by Jamie Shreeve, Executive Editor for Science at National Geographic magazine, who invites you to join the conversation. So far at…

Science Online London 2009

You have proven your fitness, evolutionarily speaking, not when you have babies, but when your babies have babies. So I am very excited that my babies - the three science blogging conferences here in the Triangle so far - have spawned their own offspring. Not once, but twice. The London franchise will happen again this year. And just like we changed the name from Science Blogging Conference into ScienceOnline, so did they. Science Online London 2009 will take place on Saturday August 22, 2009 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, co-hosted by Nature Network, Mendeley and the…

Eleven (sand)pipers (sand)piping.

My better half and I were able to join friends on a beach walk yesterday. We hiked a little more than five miles from Goleta to Santa Barbara, and along the way we saw at least eleven sandpipers. At least, I think the birds we saw were sandpipers. Perhaps those of you who are birders can help with the identifications. All of the birds we were lumping in the category of sandpipers were wading along the shoreline and periodically poking their beaks in the sand, presumably to harvest and eat some tasty morsels. However, while these birds all looked pretty similar from a distance, on closer…

Archaeology Magazine Jan/Feb

Blogging's been low what with many boxes to unpack and no broadband connection. But things are getting into shape at home. Hope I find the electric drill tonight so I can get some of the paintings up off the floor. Archaeology Magazine is a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America and so tends to concentrate on areas of the world where US archaeologists work. I recently got a complimentary subscription and received the Jan/Feb issue, whose cover story is a richly illustrated feature piece about Maya beauty ideals (abstract available on-line). My dentist was fascinated to see the…

More on the Congressional Order of Merit

Geez, Congressman Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) sure is a busy guy. Since I mentioned his fundraising scam for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)--the "Congressional Order of Merit"--last month, myriad new reports of Cole's activities have emerged. For proof, just check out the comments on the earlier post. If that's not enough, though, there's plenty more from around the blogosphere: Thirteen Colonies The South of Iowa Online Guide to Mediation This one, though, is my favorite. From John Baer of Philadelphia Daily News: I DON'T WANT to suggest the national Republicans are…

Der-der-der-DERR-der Der-der-der-DERR-de-DER-de-de-DERR-BOOM BOOM

For the last day, ScienceBlogs has been teasing some big news on Twitter. Perhaps we were all Belle de Jour in disguise? Maybe we would rip off our masks to reveal the mainstream media lurking underneath? Maybe we would even, gasp, shock, start blogging about science? No, it's none of these. The cat, now let loose from its bag/box in a flurry of collapsing probabilities, is that we're joining up with National Geographic for a big, sciencey love-in. There'll be a fair bit of cross-promotion on both sites, and we suddenly get access to a massive archive of pics and videos. And to clarify, Not…

Food Preservation and Storage Class Syllabus

This is the the time of year for most of us when everything is ripe and abundant in our gardens and at local farms, and learning to put food up can make it possible for you to enjoy summer in winter, and continue eating locally as long as possible. It can be overwhelming when you start preserving, so if you'd like a friendly voice to walk you through it, please join us. The class is on-line and asynchronous, and you can participate at your own pace. Every week we'll have projects involving what's overflowing in our gardens and markets to get you familiar with the basics of preserving the…

The 140conf

As you probably know, The Bride of Coturnix and I went to NYC last week to attend the 140conference organized by Jeff Pulver who I finally had a pleasure to meet in person. The speaker line-up and the program schedule had to be slightly modified as a few people got stuck in Europe under the volcanic ash and could not come in time. But there were plenty of smart people in attendance who could readily jump in and join the panels in their place. There were a total of about 1000 people the first day and only slightly fewer on the second day. There were only a handful people there who I've met…

Moving Day

Friends, readers, and new Sciblings: bioephemera has moved to a new home here at Scienceblogs! I'm happy to be here with so many bloggers I respect. And it gives me warm fuzzies to know they invited me to join them because. . . well. . . probably because they didn't have any blogs starting with b. If you're a regular reader from the old bioephemera, you'll notice some superficial changes. There's a new banner, and as part of my assimilation into the Sb collective, I must comply with this IKEA-esque, milquetoast color scheme. Sigh. But let's be honest; it is easier to read black text on a…

A Nation Obsessed With Jade Goody's Cervical Cancer But Not Mentioning Why She's Dying From It

London (and much of the U.S.) is currently obsessed with Jade Goody, who is dying of stage 4 cervical cancer at the age of 27 in a very public way: On television. One thing I find amazing is that, in the mountain of media coverage on this (including articles in the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, etc), I'm not seeing reporters mentioning one very important fact:  According to one story (no longer online, but quoted in this interesting post at TBTAM), Goody had multiple abnormal pap smears in her teens.  She went in for a few treatments to have the abnormal cells removed, then ignored…

Title IX and Women's Success

From the Chronicle of Higher Education today: Women who play sports in high school are more likely to earn a college degree than women who do not, according to a new study by Mikaela J. Dufur, an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, and Kelly P. Troutman, an adjunct instructor of anthropology and sociology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania...The findings..."suggest a societal benefit to female sport participation in the form of increased educational attainment," they say. Therefore, they argue, "rather than looking for ways to excuse schools from Title IX…

Rev. Haggard to get online MA in Psych - Also no longer gay.

I'm proud to report that Ted Haggard is no longer gay since he underwent three whole weeks of very intensive counseling. He was so impressed with his counseling that him and his wife are going to attend university and get their masters degrees in psychology (I'm psyched he's joining me in my chosen profession!). It sounds like they'll be going to Phoenix Online University or somewhere similar and hopefully counseling people to ungay themselves just like he was so successful in doing! All praise Rev. Haggard! The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced…

ScienceBlogs Welcomes the World's Top Scientific Institutions to Our Network

We here at ScienceBlogs are pleased to announce that beginning today, we will be helping to spark the next generation of research communications by introducing new blogs to our network from the world's top scientific institutions. The initial list includes: CERN, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), SETI Institute, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The SETI Institute, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Brookhaven National Laboratory blogs are live now - you can find them at: http://www.scienceblogs.com/SETI/ http://www.scienceblogs.com/weizmann/ http://…

MIT Scores New Quantum Information Science Graduate Training Program

News from the other coast: MIT has won an IGERT to start an interdisciplinary graduate program in quantum information science. From the press release: MIT has been awarded a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a pioneering doctoral-study program in the growing field of quantum information science (QIS), which has evolved rapidly recently with a new influx of ideas from quantum physics and poses great potential in supercomputing. Website up an running here. Isaac Chuang sends me some info on the program. Note for undergraduates: looks like a summer program is…

On my way to ScienceOnline'09

Once again, I'm sitting in my favorite airport with free wifi, bound this time for Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, for ScienceOnline'09. The conference has grown to feature two days of official sessions, plus a third day of semi-official goings on, and the place will be lousy with blogospheric glitterati. I'm going to be leading a session late Saturday afternoon on "Online science for kids (and parents)". I'll be highlighting a selection of the good content that's out there already, and I'm hoping that there will be some folks at the session interested in talking about how to create…

Moving in...

Greetings all, Not Exactly Rocket Science has now officially transformed and rolled out into the ScienceBlogs network. So to readers who have tracked me here, new Not-Exactly-Rocket-Science virgins, my new SciBlings, and people who have mistakenly stumbled here during their search for porn - hello! The blog is about explaining new research in a way that anyone can understand, regardless of their scientific background. I generally post about 3 times a week and more if time permits. Also, I'm giving a talk on science blogging this Thursday at London's Apple Store on Regent Street, alongside…

How was it for you? Interview with Graham Steel

Graham Steel attended the Science Blogging Conference last week - but only virtually! He has been a strong proponent of Open Access, frequent commenter on PLoS ONE articles, a patient advocate and, more recently, a blogger on his own. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? What is your Real Life job? Dear Squadron Leader Zivkovic. Thanks for inviting me to contribute. I remain a McNative and McResident of Glasgow, Scotland. For the last 20 years, my real life job has been dealing with…

How to get minority kids interested in geology field work? Check out Rue Mapp's Outdoor Afro blog!

While many folks 'round these parts have been focusing on tweets and posts from the Society for Neuroscience meeting, several of our geology blogger colleagues have been at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA). Geobloggers rock and we've got a great outcrop at ScienceBlogs. They're usually really gneiss people and they don't take any schist from anyone. And while their ideas may not always hold water, they are quite often a gas. I really get a recharge out of them and their attitude is uplifting. Put simply, I am an alluvial fan. I hope that she doesn't mind the…

Post-doc with a leading Sleep research group

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITY in SLEEP MEDICINE Charles A. Czeisler, Steven W. Lockley, Christopher P. Landrigan, Laura K. Barger Harvard Work Hours, Health and Safety Group Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School The Harvard Work Hours Health and Safety Group focuses on understanding the consequences of extended work hours and disordered sleep schedules on health and safety across a range of professions and populations. We also develop and test countermeasures to prevent the increased risk of accidents and injury for both worker health and…

How to Protest a ‘Psychic’

How to do things, from someone who actually does things: How to Protest a ‘Psychic’-- Dr. Caleb Lack There is a big difference between writing and talking about doing something, and actually doing something in the Real World.  Confuse the two at your own risk. For instance, while it is fine and dandy to demand on your blog that all skeptic/atheist meetings have child care provided, it is another thing entirely to secure the necessary insurance for child care, find the money to pay for that insurance, find volunteers trained in child care/CPR/basic medicine, train all the volunteers in a…

Does online match-making really work?

The NYTimes has an article today about the "science" of online match-making. I put that in quotes because there really isn't any clear evidence about whether it works either way. You have no doubt seen the ads on TV for the two most popular match-making sites: eHarmony and Chemistry.com. These two differ in approach from the other popular dating site match.com because eHarmony and Chemistry pick matches for you according to a secret algorithm while match.com lets you pick for yourself. (The people at match.com own Chemistry.com, and I assume created it as a competitor for eHarmony.)…

Grad Student Dooced for Blogging

This is old news, but I just heard about it. A microbiology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin has a blog. He finished his rotations and chose a lab. His to be advisor found out about the blog and read it. After concluding that the student did not really want to be in grad school, he decided to not accept the student into his lab. The grad student got dooced: Yesterday I received an email from my (former) PI, a Dr. WH, that I can no longer join his lab, despite having already joined about a week and a half ago. Needless to say I was perplexed... I frantically emailed my (former)…

MA Academy of Sciences Has a Big Shinding This Weekend at Boston's Museum of Science

It's supposed to be rainy, so why not attend? Carl Zimmer will be there. MAS does really cool outreachy things like teacher training so they're worth supporting, even if you can't attend. Anyway, this found its way into my email machine: Join the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences as we spend a day at the Museum of Science, Boston celebrating science and our efforts to improve the state of STEM education in Massachusetts! We've got a packed day planned for our members and registrants, and we'd love nothing more than to spend the day with new and not-so-new friends! Interested? You may…

Historic images coming to iPhone on DukeMobile 1.1

Seen yesterday in the local AP feed: Looks like a great partnership to access historic images on the iPhone or iTouch to satisfy pretty much any scholar or history enthusiast: Duke and Apple to join forces DURHAM -- Scholars and students who once had to travel to museums or libraries to view collections of historic images can now do so by clicking on their mobile device instead. With the launch of DukeMobile 1.1, Duke University Libraries now offer the most comprehensive university digital image collection specifically formatted for Apple's iPhone or iTouch devices. It includes thousands of…

What could be better than undergraduate research in Las Vegas?

Well, probably getting a stipend to help you do it. And, the really cool thing is that's part of the deal! Hustle, hustle the deadline is March 7th, and all the contact info is below. The NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates program in Environmental Microbiology at UNLV is accepting applications. This grant provides students with the opportunity to work on a research project for a 10 week period with a faculty mentor. Students receive a $4000 stipend, round trip airfare, and housing in a UNLV dormitory. Mentors have projects in the following areas: ⢠Adaptation of…

NY Times Ends Pay for Premium Content

This e-mail just came in overnight - a great move by the New York Times: Dear TimesSelect Subscriber, We are ending TimesSelect, effective today. The Times's Op-Ed and news columns are now available to everyone free of charge, along with Times File and News Tracker. In addition, The New York Times online Archive is now free back to 1987 for all of our readers. Why the change? Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free…

More health news from Canada

For your Saturday morning reading pleasure, here are two articles following up on my dichloroacetate (DCA) and bogus internet pharmacy death posts this week. Each was recommended by my clandestine operative from the Great White North, PharmCanuck: Canadian cancer society warns of untested drug Heather Logan, the director of cancer control policy at the society who trained as a nurse, has worked with people fighting to prolong their lives. Logan said she sympathizes with those who are buying the drug and mixing it at home as a last resort, but stresses there are serious safety concerns. "The…

#scio10 preparation: Things I like about having conversations online.

In the comments on my last post, a number of people made the suggestion that something about the nature of online interactions may encourage people to say things they would never say to someone's face, or to be more impulsive in their responses, or surf on waves of free-floating anger, or what have you. While this may sometimes be the case -- for some people, in some circumstances -- my initial reaction is that there are a lot of features of online conversations (on blogs or the comment threads following them, in online fora, etc.) that I find can make for better conversations than many that…

The anti-vaccine war on science: An epidemic of fear

Many have been the times over the last five years that I've called out bad journalism about medicine in general and vaccines in particular, especially the coverage of the discredited notion that vaccines or mercury in vaccines somehow was responsible for the "autism epidemic." That's why I feel a special responsibility to highlight good reporting on the issue. Indeed, reporting on this issue is so uniformly awful that when I see something this good, I want to do everything in my power to hawk the hell out of it. So, I want you to read this article in the November issue of WIRED Magazine…

Of course the dog won

A while back, the Way of the Master (Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron) came out with a board game, Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. I imagine the Discovery Institute cringes in pain every time those two clowns associate themselves with their brand, which is good; but you know it has to be an awful, horrible, brain-damaging game, which is bad. I thought about picking up a copy just for the kitsch value, but just couldn't bring myself to pay them money for it (and now it seems to have vanished from their online store). But Chad bought it and played it against his dog (his wife was too smart to…

Battling misinformed consent: How should we respond to the anti-vaccine movement?

As Vaccine Awareness Week, originally proclaimed by Joe Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher to spread pseudoscience about vaccines far and wide and then coopted by me and several other bloggers to counter that pseudoscience, draws to a close, I was wondering what to write about. After all, from my perspective, on the anti-vaccine side Vaccine Awareness Week had been a major fizzle. Joe Mercola had posted a series of nonsensical articles about vaccines, as expected, but Barbara Loe Fisher appeared to have sat this one out, having posted nothing. Well, not quite. More like almost nothing. I noticed…