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Friday Blog Roundup

Pharmaceuticals seem to be a big topic in the blogosphere this week. Roy M. Poses MD at Health Care Renewal has more on the Zyprexa memos â which, if you havenât been following this issue, reportedly show that manufacturer Eli Lilly suppressed information about this schizophrenia drugâs harmful side effects. Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata reports on the perils of buying drugs online (and, in a post from last week, he worries about the number of people Googling DCA), and Orac at Respectful Insolence delves into the topic of experimental drug availability. As has been the trend recently,…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The state of Kentucky has been in the spotlight lately as legislation to protect social workers and mineworkers has failed to live up expectations. The stateâs House of Representatives stripped funding from the Boni Bill, named after social worker Boni Frederick, who was killed when she took a child to a final home visit with his mother. The billâs sponsors hope funding will be restored in conference committee. In the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, Representative Jim Gooch has refused to bring a mine safety bill up for a vote; a Louisville Courier-Journal editorial notes…

The Atheist's Revenge!

As you've already heard, the Atheist Foundation of Australia was hit with a denial-of-service attack earlier this week (you can learn more about it in this interview of Jason Ball by Catherine Deveny). I rather like their planned unofficial response. This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God (in this context, the Christian god, God, as distinct from the Greek god, Zeus, the Egyptian god, Ra etc etc) with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as…

I get silly e-mails

Hmmm, they did not actually see the blog - if they did they would notice it has been abandoned more than two years ago and that the top post says, in large bold letters: "This Blogs Is Dead!". And they probably did not see when I hosted Skeptic's Circle (three times). Bwahahahahaha! Anyway, too busy now, but if you want to debunk and make fun of this piece of quackery, go ahead, it's all yours: fromF B reply-tofb200883@yahoo.com tocoturnix@gmail.com dateThu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:47 PM subjectInterested in a review on http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com ? Hello, I'm the webmaster of http://www…

ScienceOnline'09 - Registration is Open!

First, there was the First NC Science Blogging Conference. Then, there was the Second NC Science Blogging Conference. And yes, we will have the Third one - renamed ScienceOnline'09 to better reflect the scope of the meeting: this time bigger and better than ever. ScienceOnline'09 will be held Jan. 16-18, 2009 at the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. Please join us for this free three-day event to explore science on the Web. Our goal is to bring together scientists, bloggers, educators, students, journalists, writers, publishers, Web developers and others to discuss,…

ScienceOnline09 - Open Access

Continuing with the Program we have set for theScienceOnline09, here are some sessions dealing with the Open Access, the freedom of information and the world of publishing: Open Access publishing: present and future: This session is moderated by Bill Hooker and Bjoern Brembs: The world of scientific publishing is undergoing rapid change. Where is it now? Where is it going? What will happen to Impact Factors? Will there still be journals 20 years from now? How will a scientific paper look like? Who will be the 'peers' in peer review? Open Access in the networked world: experience of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Diversity In Primary Schools Promotes Harmony, Study Finds: For the first time, children as young as 5 have been shown to understand issues regarding integration and separation. The research confirms that the ethnic composition of primary schools has a direct impact on children's attitudes towards those in other ethnic groups and on their ability to get on with their peers. Who's More Likely To Do Sports? White, Middle Class, And Middle-aged: The comfortably off, white, and middle aged are the most likely to participate in sporting activities, reveals a 10 year study published ahead of print…

Scienceblogs taking over Europe!

Seed Media Group, publisher of the Seed Magazine and the Seed Scienceblogs (the site you are on right now), made an announcement last week (PDF) about its new international partnership with Hubert Burda Media conglomerate: The partnership will initially lead to the European development of ScienceBlogs, the largest online science community (www.scienceblogs.com). Since its launch in January 2006 by Seed Media Group, ScienceBlogs has grown to include 65 blogs across all areas of science, and attracted more than 1.7 million visits in August (Google Analytics), its twentieth straight month of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Researchers Can Read Thoughts To Decipher What A Person Is Actually Seeing: Following ground-breaking research showing that neurons in the human brain respond in an abstract manner to particular individuals or objects, University of Leicester researchers have now discovered that, from the firing of this type of neuron, they can tell what a person is actually seeing. Are Humans Evolving Faster? Findings Suggest We Are Becoming More Different, Not Alike: Researchers have discovered genetic evidence that human evolution is speeding up -- and has not halted or proceeded at a constant rate, as had…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Evolution Of New Species Slows Down As Number Of Competitors Increases: The rate at which new species are formed in a group of closely related animals decreases as the total number of different species in that group goes up, according to new research. The research team believes these findings suggest that new species appear less and less as the number of species in a region approaches the maximum number that it can support. Zoologists Unlock New Secrets About Frog Deaths: New research from zoologists at Southern Illinois University Carbondale opens a bigger window to understanding a deadly…

Ingratiation

I see words as providing people with a deeper and richer meaning to their emotional and professional lives, especially because much of our lives rely on words. So not every word that I use in this little feature is completely unfamiliar to you, or at least I hope it isn't, because teaching you obscure words is not my primary intention, although I do sometimes do this to give you some fun. Instead, my goal is to demonstrate the beauty, versatility and subtlety of the English language and to acquaint you with the many wonderful languages that have contributed to English. And of course, I hope…

Tech in Education at #140conf (videos)

This week in NYC, at #140 conf, I was most impressed by the talks and panels about education, and the use of online technologies, Web, and particularly social networks like Twitter in the classroom. You know I am interested in this - just search my blog for names like "David Warlick" and "Stacy Baker", or dig through my "Education" and "Science Education" categories. These videos are all short - 10 or 20 minutes long, so I strongly recommend you watch all four clips: Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) - Social Media + Education: Real Time Communication and Education: Aparna Vashisht (@Parentella…

Best of January

I wrote 134 posts in January. Unsurprisingly, a lot of that had to do with ScienceOnline (but there was other fun stuff as well, including some cool videos, images, etc.). I went to see a talk about Ecology, conservation, and restoration of oyster reefs in North Carolina and wrote a post about it. At the beginning of the month I announced the PLoS ONE Blog Pick Of The Month and later introduced the 3-D articles in PLoS ONE. We also announced the posts that will be published in The Open Laboratory 2009! In preperation for ScienceOnline2010, I wrote several posts breaking down the Program by…

What is it with creationists and the iPod Touch lately?

Classy. My Prof Got Run Over By An iPod (Biology) from Mark Nauroth on Vimeo. The fundies are very concerned, because they have rightly noticed that when their kids go off to college, they come back better educated…which often means they become more liberal and reject traditional religious beliefs. What to do? How about creating desperate online courses with 'hip, edgy' music and bad acting to tell teenagers not to do those things? You really have to see that caricature of a movie at that link: a family says goodbye to their sweet little girl going off to college; she comes back 9 months…

Extreme Weather Creates Rare Clouds Over Antarctica

Nacreous clouds above McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Image: Matt Thompson. Nacreous means pearlescene or pearl-like, and these clouds are commonly referred to as "mother of pearl clouds". These rare clouds form at altitudes of 15,000-25,000 meters (50,000-80,000 ft) above the earth's surface only when the sun is several degrees below the horizon, so other clouds at lower altitudes appear black. Their dazzling iridescent colors result from refraction of sunlight through tiny water-ice crystals that are carried by very strong, extremely cold winds in the stratosphere. But because the…

Make your own debate

ScienceDebate 2008 is a an idea whose time has come. But, it may not happen. So, maybe we can make our own debate. via NASAwatch There is a pair of primary debates coming up - Jan 30/31 for the republicans and democrats respectively. It is sponsored by CNN, politico.com and the LA Times. Politico is soliciting on-line for questions to the candidates. Keith over at NASAwatch suggested his reader swamp it with NASA policy questions to try to get one into the actual debate. Scienceblog readers could do the samesomething similar - send in a lot of good, coherent, concise question on general or…

ScienceBlogs and National Geographic

Announced today: Dear Readers, It is our great pleasure to bring you news of an exciting new partnership, starting today, between ScienceBlogs and National Geographic. ScienceBlogs and National Geographic have at their cores the same ultimate mission: to cultivate widespread interest in science and the natural world. Starting today, we will work together to advance this common mission through new content, applications, and initiatives. We will bring acclaimed voices from National Geographic into our rich discussion on ScienceBlogs, and National Geographic will invite their worldwide audience…

Avian Anatomy Books -- New Links

tags: online books, ornithology, birds, anatomyAvian Anatomy books I have been informed that the previous link for one of the avian anatomy books has been deactivated. I am not surprised by this since my source warned me that this would likely happen. But there is still demand for this book, so I have downloaded it, along with the other one, to RapidShare, where you can get your free copies. I have updated the link on the previous blog entry, too. The first book, The Anatomical Atlas of Gallus by Mikio Yasuda is the English edition of the Japanese book published by the University of Tokyo in…

Balko on Carruthers Arrest

Radley Balko is quoted in this ABC News story about the arrest of BetOnSports CEO David Carruthers. He points out the futility, the hypocrisy and oppressive nature of the coming crackdown on internet gambling. First, the futility and hypocrisy: "It's wrong for about 1,000 reasons," said Balko, "but the main ones are it's not gonna work -- it'll just push it underground." Balko argues that any attempts to curb Internet gambling are bound to fail and are hypocritical due to the legal nature of online horse and lottery betting, which benefit individual states. And of course, he's right. Unless…

Volokh on First Amendment History

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who blogs, has an excellent article in the National Review Online. He correctly points out that constitutional law is a good deal more complex than we often hear from conservatives throwing out such noble-sounding but mostly meaningless catchphrases as "original intent" and "strict construction". Speaking of the free speech clause of the first amendment, Volokh writes, This also shows the error of faulting liberal judges for "making up the law" in this area. Unfortunately, the First Amendment is so general that judges have to create legal rules that turn…

The Nobel Doesn’t Mean Gravitational Wave Astronomy Is Over; It’s Just Getting Good

"Wormholes are a gravitational phenomena. Or imaginary gravitational phenomena, as the case may be." -Jonathan Nolan Yes, we detected gravitational waves, directly, for the first time! Just days after Advanced LIGO first turned on, a signal of a 36 solar mass black hole merging with a 29 solar mass black hole gave us our first robust, direct detection of these long-sought waves, changing astronomy forever. Einstein’s General Relativity was validated in a whole new way, and over 40 years of work on developing and building LIGO was vindicated at last. The inspiral and merger of the first pair…

Presidential Politics

There are two Presidential election campaigns underway at the moment. Both feature establishment / incumbent parties that are pretty much in disarrary, wracked by missteps and accusations of corruption. They're opposed by candidates who are somewhat unexpected. One of these campaigns is unquestionably Important, and will affect my life and the lives of everyone in the world in the future. The other is, well, not terribly important to me, or 99.999999% of the world's population. Am I a Bad Person, then, for being absolutely captivated by the train wreck that is the SFWA presidential election (…

The Agony Files: U. S. Championship Edition

I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but the U. S. Chess Championship is currently going on in St. Louis. I have been dutifully following the games online, of course. It is one of the great cruelties of chess that forty perfect moves can be undone by one moment of carelessness. We amateur players blunder all the time, of course, but somehow it's always a bit comforting to see the top players do likewise. For example, here's a position that occurred in the game between Benjamin Finegold (playing white) and Yasser Seirawan: We have come to the finale of a long endgame. Finegold had…

The Internet Makes Everything Better

For one obvious example, I'm typing this on a plane-- Southwest has started doing wi-fi on some flights, and it is totally worth $5 to be able to web-surf in flight.It would be even better if the flight wren't packed, so I could type more comfortably, but I'm ok with just reading (once I post this). Another example is the way that net access enabled me to have a far better time in Miami last night than I ordinarily would have. Everybody from the meeting I went there for took off, so I was on my own for the evening, and South Beach isn't my kind of scene, being neither rich nor famous nor fond…

Links for 2009-11-14

WTF, Aerosmith? WTF? | Popdose "Never has there been a band so unbelievably great and so sadly shitty at the same time. That, to me, is the Aerosmith legacy, and it's only bound to get worse. Yet, there is something that still seems sacred about this band, beyond mere nostalgia. I just think they need to go away for good before we'll be able to figure out exactly what that is." (tags: music culture popdose blogs) Book Review - 'What the Dog Saw - And Other Adventures,' by Malcolm Gladwell - Review - NYTimes.com "The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself…

Previous K2 Spice/synthetic marijuana coverage in The Washington Post

In remarking Sunday on coverage of the synthetic marijuana products in The New York Times, I totally missed that a more detailed article appeared the day before in The Washington Post. With contributions from Aaron C. Davis, the article by writer Michael W. Savage provided an insight into Spice use in Adams Morgan and around the District. The second page of the online article goes into much more detail than the NYT article by addressing the pros and cons of state approaches to outlaw the compounds and products. Savage also included commentary by Marilyn Huestis, chief of chemistry and drug…

Update from Norman

Saturday was the last full day of the OSLEP course and we had the students thinking about religious and other reactions to Darwinâs ideas; three hours on St George Jackson Mivart, Alfred Russel Wallace, Ernst Haeckel, and Charles Kingsley, followed by another three hours on American anti-evolutionism. The students really seemed to get into the material and Iâve been very impressed with what theyâve been able to accomplish since Wednesday. For those that may be interested, on Wednesday we discussed natural theology (Paley & Hume) and Darwinâs life. Thursday was devoted to discussions of…

Feynman Lectures Online - Thanks Bill!

Microsoft Research's Project Tuva website is up. Project Tuva is a collection of seven searchable Feynman lectures aimed at a popular audience (with extras coming online in the future.) The rights to these lectures were obtained by Bill Gates after he was entranced by them over twenty years ago. Well worth watching, especially if you're about to give a popular science talk (I've always been fascinated by how Feynman uses his hands in describing physics.) Even more interesting, in my egocentric universe, are the comments by Mr. Gates himself about Feynman: Someone who can make science…

QEC 07 Videos Online

Interested in quantum error correction (who isn't!) Daniel Lidar informs me that the talks from the QEC07 conference are now all available online. See such amazing acts as Tutorials Dave Bacon [ppt][video] Daniel Gottesman [ppt][video] Raymond Laflamme [pdf][video] Lorenza Viola [pdf][video] Keynote David Cory [ppt][video] (no audio) John Preskill [pdf][video] Peter Shor [ppt][video] David Wineland [ppt][video] Invited Robert Alicki [pdf][…

UW-Madison Lecture: What's Next for Science Communication?

Next week on Thursday, June 25 I will be visiting one of my favorite cities Madison, Wisconsin to give a lecture titled "What's Next for Science Communication?" It's part of a summer speaker series sponsored by the Dept. of Life Sciences Communication and the Holtz Center on Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wisconsin. If you are interested in the themes discussed in last week's article at Nature Biotechnology, then you will definitely want to come out to the presentation. If you can't make it, online video will be available and Wisconsin Public Television will be re-…

In the Clamor Over George Will, Pundits Win But Public Loses

Back in January, Desmog blog noted what they dubbed a "troubling" trend online, plotting a rise in mentions of "global warming + hoax." The graph was construed as evidence of growing strength for the climate skeptic movement. At the time I observed to a few colleagues that the graph probably also reflected the intense interest in so-called "denialism" among the liberal climate netroots. By constantly responding to and attacking the climate skeptics in blog posts and comments, liberal bloggers were only bringing additional attention to their claims. The same observation currently applies to…

The malignant Jack Cashill

Perhaps you have no idea who Jack Cashill is — he's not a person of great consequence, but he is representative of the deranged right. I first ran across him as a creationist activist, which tells you right there that he's a few bushels short of a hogshead. He was featured on A Flock of Dodos as the fervent but somehow, supposedly, reasonable political voice of creationism. He didn't have two heads, he didn't tie anyone to a stake and set them on fire, so by golly, he must not be that bad a fellow…which is an interesting phenomenon, that we so readily set aside significant intellectual…

Starts with L, Rhymes with Rife

If you sometimes look around and ask yourself, "So what is life, anyway?"--even if you haven't ingested some illegal substance--you may be interested in a story I've written for Seed magazine. "The Meaning of Life" is the cover story for the August issue, which just turned up at my doorstep. The story isn't online yet, but when it does pop up, I'll make a note of it. The idea for the story crystallized during the course of my work on my next book. My initial idea for the book was to investigate this very question, "What is life?" There is actually a lot of new research and thinking going into…

Blood biomarker of heart disease discovered in dogs

Image of elderly dog By Jon Sullivan via Wikimedia Commons The mitral valve is located between the left atrium and left ventricle of the heart where it serves an important role in preventing backflow of blood into the left atrium as the ventricle contracts. Mitral valve prolapse, a condition that occurs in humans, is characterized by regurgitation of blood into the left atrium, which receives blood from the lungs. Hence, this condition can lead to congestive heart failure as blood backs up in the lungs. Scientists at Tufts University, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, were studying…

Latif sets the record straight (again) on "several years of cooling"

Thanks to the dogged determination of über climate blogger Joe Romm, here's what Mojib Latif wants us all to understand about his previous references to a short-term cooling trend: Given all the warnings about and plans to forestall global warming, people may be surprised to find, over the next several years that, over parts of the Northern hemisphere, summers are no warmer than before, maybe even a bit cooler-and that winters are as cold, or a bit colder, than they have been in the past couple of decades. This is because the climate may go through a temporary halt in warming. It's nothing…

Casual Fridays: Are all MP3s equal?

There's a lot of debate online about whether people can really tell the difference between the various audio formats -- AAC, MP3, you name it. Does it really make a difference? Recently I saw a blog post suggesting that the methodology for many so-called studies on the phenomenon was flawed. If you're going to test this sort of thing, listeners shouldn't be aware of the format they're listening to. And they shouldn't be asked to compare two versions of a song, they should simply rate how good each particular recording sounds. According to this post, few studies take the time to be rigorous…

Is "friends with benefits" beneficial?

The name sounds so benign: what could be better than friendship? Why, friendship with benefits, of course! But when a friendship moves from platonic to sexual, even if both partners claim they're not "romantic," doesn't the dynamic of that relationship necessarily change? It's a puzzle that's often discussed in locker rooms, chat rooms, and online forums, but according to the New York Times, hasn't been the subject of much formal study. An article in the Times discusses one recent study on the subject, conducted by communications researchers Melissa Bisson and Timothy Levine: [They] surveyed…

ScienceBloggers talk about Virginia Tech

Earlier today I wrote a post about optical illusions. I was hoping it would distract me from thinking about the Virginia Tech shootings. It didn't. I began to see connections between the illusions and the tragedy: That sinking feeling that somebody was being shot, that spiral like a gun sight. The problem is that human brains are connecting machines: we can connect anything to anything else. Trying not to think about the shootings was the worst thing I could do. How should I be handling it? I should be talking about it directly -- preferably face-to-face or over the phone. I did spend some…

Study: Playing video games helps kids transition to adult life

A new longitudinal study suggests that playing online role playing games can help kids prepare for the world of adult responsibility: Young players who become members of a clan, guild or faction (terminology depends on the game) find they have responsibilities to attend to if they wish to receive any kind of reward, rank advancement or recognition. There are also penalties if they disobey rules or fail to meet commitments. A faction may require the player to participate in missions/quests or other tasks such as mining materials or guarding a prison. Successful missions/quests result in the…

James Hansen: The Bilbo Baggins of Climate Politics

In the latest issue of New Scientist, I've got a review of climate change journo Mark Bowen's new book, Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. I have to say, this book is right up my presumed alley, and yet I had a hard time getting through it. You can't read the entire New Scientist review online, but here are a few parts: Unfortunately, while Bowen gives play-by-play details - who emailed whom, who sat in on what meeting - Hansen remains curiously distant, or just plain absent, from much of the narrative. The story of his past is…

The New York Times on Hurricane Policy, and More

In anticipation of the start of hurricane season, today's Science Times had a pair of great articles on hurricanes, global warming, and coastal defenses in the U.S. I have just put up a post at Huffington Post, entitled Risky Scenarios, that comments on the latest Times package. You can read it here. Meanwhile, my forthcomig book about all of this, Storm World, has gotten another positive early review--this time from Booklist, which is published by the American Library Association. Here's what gets said: Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming. Mooney, Chris (…

Details, Details, Details

Once again, I can't keep up with all the latest reactions to Nisbet-Mooney. There are just too many of them (over 160 comments at PZ's blog alone; and even my own blog is pushing 40 right now). I'm in Australia prepping a series of talks, and that's the top priority at the moment. However I'd like to make one major comment: There's a somewhat disingenuous critique circulating out there, which is that we don't give any specifics, or even that we don't back up our argument with data. On the contrary, the Science article was amply referenced, and Matt and I have been continually elaborating on…

Hooray, DonorsChoose t-shirt winners!

I'm just thrilled with our final numbers from our DonorsChoose campaign -- because of your generosity, $2953 are going to go help 1,126 needy kids learn some critically important science. And I'm also psyched that Sciencewomen came in second of all the Scienceblogs participating in both amount donated, and numbers of donors (43!!) We came in 4th in terms of the number of students reached. Congratulations, everybody. I've also finally pulled together the list of winners of our t-shirt drawing. Methods and winners are below! Okay, so I feel the need to share my "random selection" in a…

Didja feel the earthquake?

I woke up at 5:30ish realizing the room was moving. Irrationally I thought it might be because of the geothermal installation - maybe the foundations had been disturbed and the house was going to fall down! Or maybe there were burglars, as I heard a crash downstairs. As my brain kicked into gear, I realized it must be an earthquake, leapt (I got air, I tell you) out of bed, and stood in a door, but it was pretty much over by then. I came down stairs anyway to see if it was burglars. It wasn't. Nothing was damaged, so far as I can see. My first thought was to call my husband but I didn't…

An online book by a prosopagnostic

Bill Choisser (left) has written an online book called Face Blind!, where he describes his experiences of prosopagnosia, a neurological condition in which the ability to recognize faces is impaired. In extreme cases, prosopagnostics are unable to recognize family members, and even their own face. Prosopagnosia (commonly known as face blindness), often occurs as a result of damage to a region of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, located near the inferior (lower) surface of the temporal lobe at the midline. The damage may be due to head injury, stroke, or various neurodegenerative…

Why do we get fevers?

The answer is that it increases lymphocyte motility, helping to fight the infection: Nobody likes coming down with a fever, but feeling hot may do a body good. Researchers report online 5 November in Nature Immunology that a fever in mice revs up the immune response by helping white blood cells enter lymph nodes, where they join the battle against microbial invaders. All mammals can develop fever when they're sick enough, and even cold-blooded animals with infections, such as fish and lizards, will seek warmth to raise their body temperatures. This suggests that fever somehow helps the body…

Cancer = Stem Cells Gone Wild!

This recent discovery actually makes a lot of sense: errant stem cells are often the cause of cancers and tumors, and therefore should be better targeted with chemotherapy. Stem cells are the precursors to all tissues, good and bad, and many cancers could be considered the result of stem cells' division process gone awry. Suddenly, stem cells may be producing massive amount of cells with no particularly purpose, which don't belong, and actually destory healthy normal cells. This is often the result of genetic mutations caused by chemicals, age, radiation, UV exposure, genetic predisposition,…

Encyclopedia of Life

There is a new website, rel="tag">Encyclopedia of Life.  It is an online resource that aims "to document all species of life on Earth."  One featured species is Pissodes strobi (Peck), the White pine weevil. src="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/image%0As/beetle.jpeg" class="inset" height="231" width="460"> The site currently contains: About 25 href="http://www.eol.org/content/exemplars">exemplar species pages. These pages show the kind of rich environment, with extensive information, to which all the species pages will eventually grow. These pages have been…

FASEB: Urge Congress to Support the NIH and NSF

From the Federation of American Scientists for Experimental Biology (for all you non-biologists who are wondering who FASEB is): Urge Congress to Support Research Increase for NIH and NSF Depends On It! ACTION REQUIRED NOW! The 2 Most Important Weeks for NIH and NSF Funding in FY2008 Dear FASEB Society Members: The next two weeks are the most important for determining the level of appropriations that can be attained in FY2008 for the research agencies we support (NIH, NSF, DOE, VA, USDA and NASA). The Budget Committees are meeting this week to finalize the level of discretionary spending…

Swiss Government Enacts Strict Pet Laws

UPDATE: Looks like the fount of wisdom that is The Time's Online lost a thing or two in the translation. Lucky for us, informed Zooillogix reader and sometimes D&D player, Dragon's Sorrow End, has set the record straight. The government of Switzerland has passed the most comprehensive laws in the history of pet ownership to protect the well being of social animals. In hopes of creating an "informed population," the laws cover everything from guinea pigs to rhinoceroses. Here are some of the more interesting regulations: - Dog owners are required to become qualified in a two-part course…