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The Stunning Arrogance of Power

Via Sandefur, I found this absolutely incredible display of chutzpah on the part of the city government that won in the Kelo case. Would you believe they are charging those who fought their takover rent for staying in their own homes while they fought in court to prevent the city from taking them? Those who believe in the adage "when it rains, it pours" might take the tale of the plaintiffs in Kelo v. New London as a cue to buy two of every animal and a load of wood from Home Depot. The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional…

Congressman Keith Ellison Arrested

Did he take a bribe? Did he try to buy a senate seat? Did he misuse campaign funds? NO! He was trying to save the lives of thousands, make life better for countless people living under the oppressive regime of the Sudanese government. Minnesota Fifth District Congressman Keith Ellison was arrested along with others at the Sudanese Embassy where they were protesting the current situation in Darfur. Details are available here at MN Progressive Project. Ellison's office has released the following statement regarding Darfur: Today, I join with my Congressional colleagues and advocates from…

Loan Forgiveness for Public Service

As I may have mentioned in the past, we at Chateau Steelypips have benefitted greatly from Yale Law School's loan forgiveness program for graduates taking public service jobs. Since Kate shattered my dreams of a self-funded basement lab by deciding to use her pricey law degree for good rather than racking up billions as Evil Corporate Scum, the funds they provided to help pay off her loans were a crucial element of our finances for the first few years of our marriage. In fact, you could argue that they're the reason there's a physical Chateau Steelypips in the first place-- even in 2002, I…

Why did our government give special preference to Christian pseudo-insurance companies?

This country recently managed to pass a rather lame compromise on health care: there is now a mandate that requires everyone to have health insurance, even if it is from a hodge-podge of insurance companies, with the intent of fairly distributing the expense. Unfortunately, one group got singled out with an exception from this requirement. Can you guess who? Yep, Christians. Did you know that if you are a Christian you are exempt from the taxes, penalties and regulations imposed by the recently enacted health insurance law? All you have to do is to affirm a statement of Christian beliefs…

Written In Stone: Rock Solid

When I first read Brian Switek's blog, I had no idea he was going to write a book. It was long before PepsiGate and before I was even a scibling. Back then, his blog, Laelaps, was still on ScienceBlogs, which is how I happened to stumble across it. I loved it from the first post I read, and instantly added to my Google Reader. His posts were (are!) entertaining, intriguing and well researched. He was among a small handful of science bloggers that I decided I wanted to emulate. So of course, when I found out he was writing a book, I couldn't help but be excited about it. When the package…

Madoff Madness

The New York Times just published the definitive Bernie Madoff piece so far, Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders. Reading about Madoff, I can't help but think about this conversation attributed to J. P. Morgan: Untermyer: "Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?" Morgan: "No sir. The first thing is character." Untermyer: "Before money or property?" Morgan: "Before money or property or anything else. Money cannot buy it...because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom." That sir, was the problem of course. And…

links for 2009-01-29

Astronomers get a sizzling weather report from a distant planet "The researchers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to obtain infrared measurements of the heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit). " (tags: science astronomy news planets) Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Real world reading for fantasy writers "Yesterday, on the Deerskin thread, Mary Frances passed on Lois Bujoldâs recommendation of Womenâs Work: The First 20,000…

Sundry

Various Updates: First of all, Aaron Newton and I will be offering the Adapting-in-Place class again for the very last time for at least six months, and maybe longer. So if you've ever thought of taking the class, now is the time! Adapting in Place is my favorite class - it covers everything from what's inside the walls of your home to appropriate technologies to family issues to money to security. It is the whole picture of how we are going to go forward into a lower-energy, warmer, less wealthy future. The idea is for you to come out with a plan that is uniquely suited to your realities…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Owls' Dawn And Dusk Concerts Promote Visual Communication: Reporting in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE April 8, Vincenzo Penteriani and Maria Delgado of the Estacion Biologica de Doñana, Spain, describe the evolution of white throat badges in association with dawn and dusk vocal signals in certain species of nocturnal bird, which maximise the potential for these species to communicate during hours when light is low. Facebook Use Linked To Lower Grades In College: College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Mosquitoes Create Harmonic Love Song Before Mating, Study Finds: That pesky buzz of a nearby mosquito is the sound of love, scientists have known for some time. But a new Cornell study reports that males and females flap their wings and change their tune to create a harmonic duet just before mating. How Did Life Begin? RNA That Replicates Itself Indefinitely Developed For First Time: One of the most enduring questions is how life could have begun on Earth. Molecules that can make copies of themselves are thought to be crucial to understanding this process as they provide the basis for…

Fatal worker injury in my hometown

Margarito Guardado Resinos, 34, and Nelson Pineda were working together to erect a pre-engineered steel building frame at a construction site in San Marcos, TX. The two were employed by Jetka Steel Erectors of Katy, TX, a firm hired by Bailey Elliot Construction of Austin to erect a new building for Thermon Manufacturing at the central Texas location. (I moved to San Marcos, TX last fall and the Thermon facility is on the service road for I-35, only a few miles from my home.) Just before noon on July 27, 2011 the metal structure collapsed, killing Mr. Resinos and injurying Mr. Pineda.…

Let7 miRNAs, Lin-28, Cancer and Stem Cells

Last past week was incredible. A slew of very important papers stemming from basic science and having deep impacts on cancer and stem cells came out in Nature and Science. Both stories came from labs here at Harvard Medical School, and everyone's been talking about both papers. The first story is complicated - but I wanted to use it to give a history of one aspect of cancer research. I have already written a two part intro into the topic (here and here). The other story, which was presented at last week's New England RNA Data Club, is now available online, I'll sum up the incredible discovery…

Registration information for the Arthur Allen-David Kirby debate

In case anyone from Southern California of a skeptical bent is interested in attending the debate about whether thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, here is the event information that I mentioned yesterday: Vaccines and Autism, Is There a Connection? A Thoughtful Debate Saturday, January 13, 2007 Featuring: David Kirby - Author, Evidence of Harm and Arthur Allen - Author, Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver Event Information: Location: UC San Diego Price Center, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093 Time: Lecture & Debate 10:00am to 12:30pm Reception &…

SONYC Presentation: Enhanced eBooks & BookApps: the Promise and Perils

Waaaaay back on September 20, I flew down to New York City to take part in one of the Science Online New York City panel discussions, this one on Enhanced eBooks & BookApps: the Promise and Perils (and here). Ably organized and moderated by David Dobbs, the other panelists were Evan Ratliff, Amanda Moon, Carl Zimmer and Dean Johnson. Here's a description of the panel: Enhanced ebooks and tablet apps clearly offer new ways to present material and engage readers. Yet some of the software restrictions and rights deals that these ebooks, apps and their platforms use can make them unfriendly…

New Scientist Returns As Festival Media Partner, Bringing Excitement For Curious Minds!

New Scientist, the world's most-read science and technology weekly, returns to the Festival as a key Media Partner, once again greatly enhancing our ability to reach out globally to the growing number of ultra-inquisitive Festival fans who just can't get enough insight into science's new and emerging frontiers! Known as the magazine for "people who ask why", New Scientist, with its solid team of writers and experts, brings a comprehensive and inquisitive approach to reporting on a wide array fast-developing and futuristic developments in science and technology --from space, technology and the…

Mousing the Pacific Ocean

Say Cheese! VENUS Image of a squat lobster at a depth of 90 meters using the instrument's digital camera. The Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) facility, led by the University of Victoria, Canada, recently opened a data portal that provides access to scientists and the general public to an online warehouse of images, sounds and live data from the ocean floor. The $10.3 million VENUS facility offers the world's first interactive, real time portal to the ocean. The underwater network of fiber optic cables and instruments, connected to the Internet, provides a portal to the…

Adviser Says McCain Invented the BlackBerry...

"Grandpa" McCain?: The presidential hopeful relies on his wife and aides to show him things online or to read him email messages. As I've written, McCain's admission that he doesn't know how to use the Internet or a computer has helped feed the Obama campaign's narrative that the GOP candidate is out of touch with average Americans. It's a framing strategy that you can bet McCain's campaign advisers are more than sensitive about. Today, the Associated Press reports that one such adviser has gone so far as to present McCain as a creator of the BlackBerry. From the AP: MIAMI (AP) -- Move…

More on Geobloggers

Anne Jefferson from Highly Allochthonous pointed me to a new essay from Geoscientist Online, the member magazine of the Geological Society (UK). That essay points both to the survey of women geobloggers (previously mentioned here) and a survey done by Lutz Geissler, Robert Huber, and Callan Bentley. (probably haven't mentioned before). In the Geoscientist essay by Michael Welland, he discusses his own slowness in taking up blogging, but also his enjoyment of the geoblogosphere and the community he finds there. He learns of new things he wouldn't come across in his other readings and he…

Cod, climate, and Nature's new Climate Change journal

A new journal from the Nature Publishing Group (publishers of Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and other favorites of mine) has just started a journal about climate change, and to my delight they feature a story about climate change and Atlantic cod, an old love of mine from my time on the Gulf of Maine. Atlantic cod, Gadus callarius Linneaus, by Goode, from the magnificent Bigelow and Schroeder, Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, 1953, the best field guide I've ever read, now online. Cod aren't doing terribly well, because of overfishing and decimation of inshore spawning stocks, though some pockets…

Pacific Biosciences introduces new third-generation sequencing instrument at AGBT

Stephen Turner from Pacific Biosciences gave a dramatic presentation this afternoon launching PacBio's new third-generation sequencing instrument. The room was packed for the seminar, with a palpable buzz, and Turner's presentation was preceded by a theatrical introduction from PacBio CEO Hugh Martin.  The crescendo of Turner's presentation was the unveiling of a video showing the new (and enormous) PacBio instrument, which has been tucked away in a room here at AGBT and revealed to a trickle of VIPs (including Bio-IT World's Kevin Davies) - if that's the kind of thing you're into, PacBio…

Robert Samuelson Continues His Long War on Retirees

I've been remiss in my Robert Samuelson (no relation to the economist who shared the same last name) stupidity watch--the Tea Party Fort Sumter people really bring the crazy. But the idiot who inspired me to create the Samuelson unit is still fighting his long, glorious war against the elderly and the sick: ...Samuelson tells readers: "some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more." Let's see, we…

Peopling of the Americas....

Afarensis has a long post worth reading about new discoveries relating to the peopling of the Americans. This is a controversial topic, Moira Breen has been covering this issue for several years now in relation to the famous Kennewick Man. But, this caught my eye: Still, not all scientists are convinced that the variations found in the skulls are proof of multiple migrations to the Americas. "There is a huge amount of variation among the first Americans, more than you see among any other population outside of the Pacific," said Joseph Powell, an anthropologist at the University of New…

The iPad Will Improve SCIENTISMZ Eleventy Gajillion Percent! Or Not. Who Apple Is Really Targeting

I keep reading stories about how the iPad will revolutionize everything--or not (here's one example). There are also lots of complaints about how the iPad is betwixt and between an iPhone (or similar device) and a laptop. But these posts are missing the point: the iPad is an attempt to sell computers to the approximately forty percent of households that don't own one. Not only is this an opportunity to sell something to a consumer sector that otherwise wouldn't buy any computers, but it also might ultimately, by serving as an introduction to the web, email, and basic computer operation,…

Hal's parking garage

In many cities we are out of parking spaces. We could restrict cars, but that would be un-American. So we find ways to cram more and more cars into the same space. That's what a new breed of robotic parking garage does. Cars are stored on top of each other on automated lifts that can move the cars along three independent directions, shuffling them up, down and sideways. It can even learn the usual times of drop off and pck up and shuffle the cars dynamically so they are closer to an easy pick up level. Twice as many cars can be accommodated in the same space and pickups take on average 30…

An ode to Dr. Oz

The Digital CuttleFish writes another good verse. This one is for Dr. Oz. Tomorrow's Table I'm healthy and wealthy; I've outgrown my past; When I need to lose weight, I can diet or fast; Starvation is not in the lot I've been cast-- My perspective is clearly not skewed. I can buy the best produce they've managed to breed, Have it shipped to my doorstep with mind-boggling speed; In a world of such plenty, I don't see the need For genetically modified food We can learn about foods from the Frankenstein myth And distill what we know into substance and pith: It's much safer, our going without…

Shout out to "Community Matters DC blog"

Shout out to Community Matters DC who posted about what's going to happen at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in the Fall. USA Science & Engineering Festival Festival Dates: 10/10/10 - 10/24/10 Expo on the National Mall: October 23 & 24, 2010 http://www.usasciencefestival.org/ The Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival will be the country's first national science festival and will descend on the Washington, D.C. area in the Fall of 2010. The Festival promises to be the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the…

Malawi redux

This morning we reported some hopeful news about the desperately poor country of Malawi, where childhood mortality is incredibly high but being slashed. It's still too high. Way, way too high. And in response I found this very sad post from another blogger, this one a doc now in rural Canada, but once in Malawi: Malawi in the news The good: Malawi made a top ten list. The bad: It was top ten child mortality, in the world. The good: Malawi is doing something to change that. In 2000, under five mortality was 225 per 1000. Tireless work by various groups have more than halved this number and…

Swine flu: speculating about spread or lack thereof

Over at ScienceInsider (Science magazine's blog) Jon Cohen speculates about why swine flu seems to have spread faster and more widely in North America (Mexicon, US, Canada) than Europe and Asia. CDC thinks one reason is that by the time it was discovered here it had already spread widely. The Europeans, with advance warning, were then able to contain it with aggressive use of antivirals among travelers from the affected areas. I'm not ready to buy this. This doesn't make sense to me, although nothing about flu viruses make sense, so I could be wrong about this. But it wouldn't explain why…

Sometimes there is justice for alties

Yes, there is. This time for maker of an "all natural" penis enhancer Steve Warshak (and some family members as well) who was sentenced for 25 years! Steve Warshak, 42, founder of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, also was ordered to pay $93,000 in fines. He was convicted in February on 93 counts of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. Federal prosecutors accused the company of bilking customers out of $100 million through a series of deceptive ads, manipulated credit card transactions and refusal to accept returns or cancel orders. U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel ordered the company…

Another Open Letter to Jenny McCarthy

Dear Jenny, Thank you! Thankyouthankyou thank YOU! You see, my medical education had a few gaps. I was unfortunate enough to do my training during the last couple of decades, which means I never saw measles, pertussis, polio, and many other vaccine-preventable diseases. Well, last year, I saw three cases of pertussis! Sweet! And it looks like, if I play my cards right, I may get to see some measles. It's not that I don't know anything about measles. I mean, I've read Hippocrates, Rhazes, Osler, and all the other ancients. But to see the real thing, to experience the real fear, well…

A question for Mathematicians - What is (monogamy)100

So asks the copyranter over this latest example of human stupidity: What's even funnier than the absurd notion that a "Hearts on Fire" diamond will buy you monogamy (or that diamond purchases aren't so frequently given in penitence for the sins of infidelity) is that really all it says is your man is a sucker. Not everyone agrees that the cut is special. If you wander New York's diamond district on 47th Street and ask about Hearts on Fire, you'll hear that it's just another ideal-cut diamond, differentiated only by its marketing. Charles Rosario, a senior vice-president at Lazare Kaplan,…

I Wanna Be Yo High-Class Ho

Okay, I have a proposition for all of you, dear readers. In an attempt to increase my sicko rating while simultaneously adding some spice to my otherwise boring science blog, I have written an ad for a rare job opportunity, especially for all you struggling female scientists out there (below the fold); Are you a female PhD in either the sciences or maths, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty? Are you tired of lying around in bed all day, depressed and unemployable, with nothing meaningful to do with your life? Well, you never need get up again, because in six short weeks I can train…

Meet My London Traveling Companion: Professor Steve Steve

tags: Professor Steve Steve World-famous evolutionary biologist, Professor Steve Steve, supervises a blog writer. Image: Not sure who snapped it [larger view]. . Those are not my hands, nor my laptop, but that picture gives you the general idea of what to expect when I visit London at the end of August because I have made arrangements for Professor Steve Steve to accompany me! How exciting! I only met Steve Steve for the first time last year at the SciBling meeting in NYC, but I've never traveled with him before. Amazingly, Professor Steve Steve is doing what I've only dreamed of doing…

Lee Raymond retires with stonking payoff

So says the Independent (though not quite in those words). The Indie is probably the most climate-sensitive newspaper in the UK. And $400M is pretty big. But rather than bash LR, or Exxon (disclaimer: I have in the past benefited from the sale of Exxon shares, and may in the future), I'll inquire *why* LR has ended up with so much dosh, and what this means. And of course the obvious reason is that as far as the shareholders are concerned, his tenure at the head of Exxon has been a massive success, financially. The greenies can whinge all they like but as long as this continues, Exxon is…

Thursday Sick Kid Blogging

Last Saturday, at my book signing in Vestal, The Pip spit up a lot, several times, and wouldn't stop crying. This lasted a few hours, and by the next day, he was more or less back to normal. When I dropped him off at day care on Monday, I mentioned this, and the teachers in his room said "Oh, the stomach bug. Yeah, that's going around." Kate stayed home Monday, feeling wretched, but was back to normal by Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon while picking SteelyKid up I started to feel achy and nauseous, and had a rotten night, but was more or less OK by Wednesday afternoon (which accounts for the lack…

Links for 2011-03-24

The Procrastination Flowchart You Are Here (tags: internet pictures silly) Award-winning journalism job post | a few tasteful snaps "We want to add some talent to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigative team. Every serious candidate should have a proven track record of conceiving, reporting and writing stellar investigative pieces that provoke change. However, our ideal candidate has also cursed out an editor, had spokespeople hang up on them in anger and threatened to resign at least once because some fool wanted to screw around with their perfect lede." (tags: journalism jobs internet…

Links for 2011-03-17

What we know, and don't know, about Japan's reactors "In response to the confusion, speculation and apprehension surrounding the rapidly unfolding events at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the aftermath of last week's earthquake and tsunami, a panel of MIT nuclear engineering, public health and risk assessment specialists convened on Tuesday to explain how the reactors work, what we know about what has taken place there so far, and how to put the risks to the population in proper perspective. In introducing the panel discussion, Richard Lester, head of the MIT Department of…

Tuscany with Children

I write this sitting in a rental car near the Cathedral of Montalcino, a small Medieval fortified hilltop town in the heart of Tuscany's brunello wine district. Sweat is running freely down my forehead and nose, no matter that the windows are open and the car is in a shaded alley. Wife and children are shopping for groceries while I have saved our vehicle from a parking ticket. Montalcino is a maze of terracotta masonry and grey stucco, steep narrow streets, and glimpses of amazing vistas across the vineyards and valleys far below. A guide leaflet in Babelfish English informs me that the…

Goodbye, Mr. Sandefur

Timothy Sandefur has decided to leave the world of blogging, I am sad to report. Now that he is preparing to wed the lovely Erin and owns his own home (one can almost visualize the honey do list), the time and energy he has to devote to Freespace has dwindled and he has decided to cash in his chips. He signs off with a typically passionate defense of liberty: My final message is to always love your freedom, and fight for it with all you can. It is the rarest, and most precious, possession on earth. Without freedom, no other joys are meaningful; no victory is worthy; no riches are wealth; no…

Original Paella

(Recipe from Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World) Chicken Stock: 3.5 cups Saffron Threads: 1.0 pinch Extra Virgin Olive Oil: 3.0 Tbs Onion, Minced: 1.0 medium Rice, Short/Medium Grain: 2.0 cups Shrimp, Cut Up: 2.0 cups Salt, Pepper: to taste Parsley: for garnish Pre-heat the oven to 500 F, and warm the stock with the saffron. Heat oil in 10-12 inch overproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, and cook until translucent (4-5 minutes). Add the rice and cook until "glossy" (whcih I take to mean "all the grains are well coated with oil"), 1-2 minutes. Add salt, pepper, stock,…

Tablet PC Software Query

As mentioned a while back, I recently obtained a Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet PC, which I've been playing around with a bunch. I like it quite a bit-- the handwriting recognition is a whole lot better than the older Toshiba model I used for a while last year, and the interface works a little more smoothly. Of course, it runs Vista, and the Office redesign is a world of pain, but you can't win 'em all. There are a couple of things I'd like to be able to do with this that I suspect will require new software. In particular, I'd like to be able to use it to make occasional sketches, and put…

Scientific Optimism

As usual, John Brockman has asked a large number of prominent science types to answer a broad and general question, and posted the results to the Web. This year's question: WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY? Many of the answers are of the form "I am optimistic that my personal research topic or political obsession will transform the world for the better," but not as many as I feared. A large number of physics types talk about the LHC and other experiments that are expected to come on line this year, and predict a new "Golden Age" for particle physics. I haven't read all of them (or, really…

How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

I haven't been doing these as regularly as I was earlier in the year, but here are a few interesting bits of news about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: LA FISICA SPIEGATA AL MIO CANE, is now available. That's the Italian edition, which Google translates to something like "Explaining Physics to My Dog." Emmy is disappointed in that translation-- she was hoping it had something to do with spaghetti, preferably with meat. This appears to be a review of the Chinese edition, though I can't read a word of it, and Google Translate isn't really up to the task, rendering one whole paragraph as "…

Camera Lens Questions

I am planning to buy a telephoto lens for my camera. From time to time, I want to take pictures of the various critters Emmy chases in the back yard, and that would be a whole lot easier if I didn't need to get so close to them. And, of course, I strongly suspect there will be outdoor sports in SteelyKid's future, which will demand some zooming for action shots. My camera is a Canon Rebel XSi, their entry-level DSLR model. Back when I bought it, I flagged this telephoto lens based on a recommendation in some "DSLR essentials" article or another. It still seems like a reasonable choice, but I…

Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2009?

The overlap between my readership and SF fandom is not as high as one might like, but I thought I would throw this out there anyway: What were the best science fiction and/or fantasy stories of 2009? ("Stories" here can mean anything from short stories to novels to feature films. We're all about inclusiveness, here at Chateau Steelypips...) My interest in this is not purely academic, as I am eligible to nominate works for the Hugos (as a member of this past Worldcon), and I intend to purchase a supporting membership for next year's Worldcon, allowing me to vote for the 2010 Hugos. I don't…

Why Does Windows Suck So Much?

So, a month or two ago, I started occasionally getting an error message from iTunes, saying that it was unable to save the library file because the disk was full. This seemed improbable, but when I checked, the C: drive did, indeed, have very little space left. I deleted some stuff, restarted (which freed up a surprising amount of space by itself), and went back to my usual routine. It happened again, and then I did a comprehensive sweep of old install files and upgrade residue and the like, and freed up 1.2 GB. A couple weeks later, the message was back, in spite of making an effort not to…

Single-payer and the cost game

Having written the below as a comment on my previous post , I realized it should perhaps be its own post. My previous post drew notice to Malcolm Gladwell's recent article and blog posts about the competitive disadvantage our employer-based health-insurance system (and retirement system) inflicts on many American industries. Only hours passed before a commenter offered the (well-worn) argument that providing the obvious solution to this problem -- a national single-payer system providing universal health care -- "would be disastrous ...[if done] before tackling the cost issue." This "but…

Chemists can, sometimes, do pretty work

One of the advantages of working at a small university that puts a variety of disciplines cheek-by-jowel in a single building is that I get exposed to all sorts of different stuff. It sometimes has its downsides — I'm on an interdisciplinary search committee, so next week is consumed with seminars in statistics and computer science, all very mathy, that will sorely strain my brain — but I get to learn stuff all the time, which makes me happy. So this semester I'm always trundling stuff up and down between the second and third floors for my genetics lab, and the third floor is where all the…

Just what every child needs!

Just what every kid wants! For children of extreme fundamentalists looking to be raptured, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Spider-Man, or Superman just won't do! What would Jesus think when He returns? Harry Potter represents witchcraft, an abomination! Star Wars replaces God with The Force. Superheroes are too frivolous, and Superman is too obviously a Christ-figure. So what's the answer if you're a concerned fundamentalist parent who wants to maximize the chance that her child will be one of the chosen when the Rapture comes? Why, Armor of God PJ's, of course! Yes, according to the manufacturer…

Let's Face It - All Roads Lead to Celery

A report from MSNBC identifies seven food items commonly thought to be nutritious (or at least harmless) but actually either filled with nasty ingredients or stripped of healthy ones. If I may be permitted, I'd like to summarize the author's findings. The seven deadly snack foods (and their sins of comission and omission) are these: 1. Granola bars - aw, c'mon - that ain't true...they are good for you...I refute it thus! [kicks display rack full of Three Musketeers] (sugar and chocolate, little protein/fiber/vitamins) 2. Bottled tea beverages - (full of sugar and spices, but little tea,…