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Nice Bond Rating You Have There, It Would Be a Shame If Something Happened to It: S&P Innoculates Itself Against Fraud Charges

There's been a lot of excellent posts debunking Standard & Poor's recent downgrade of U.S. debt on the merits--it is poor assessment of risk. Yes, there are substantive economic arguments against S&P's evaluation. But S&P is also fundamentally corrupt. The Coalition of the Sane must point this out too--there is an ethical dimension here, not just an economic one. The critical point is this: during the last year, every negative statement by S&P has followed action by the federal government to investigate possible fraud by S&P (and other ratings agencies) during the…

Interview with Michael Nielsen, author of Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science

Welcome to the latest installment in my very occasional series of interviews with people in the scitech world. This time around the subject is Michael Nielsen, author of the recently published Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science and prolific speaker on the Open Science lecture circuit. A recent example of his public speaking is his TEDxWaterloo talk on Open Science. You can follow his blog here and read his recent Wall Street Journal article, The New Einsteins Will Be Scientists Who Share. I'd like to thank Michael for his provocative and insightful responses. Enjoy…

The consequences of blogging under one's own name

Sadly, a crank has silenced another skeptic. Many of you may know EpiRen, which is the Twitter and blog handle (and sometimes commenting handle here) of René Najera. René is an epidemiologist employed by the state public health department of health of an East Coast state and has been a force for reality- and science-based discussions of medicine, in particular vaccines. In fact, he's come out as a strong defender of vaccines against anti-vaccine lies. Unfortunately, EpiRen is no more, at least online; that is, if he wants to keep his job. As related to my by Liz Ditz, A Public Servant,…

Download Counts Predict Future Impact of Scientific Papers

The gold standard for measuring the impact of a scientific paper is counting the number of other papers that cite that paper. However, due to the drawn-out nature of the scientific publication process, there is a lag of at least a year or so after a paper is published before citations to it even begin to appear in the literature, and at least a few years are generally needed to get an accurate measure of how heavily cited an article will actually be. It's reasonable to ask, then, if there exists a mechanism to judge the impact of a paper much earlier in its lifetime. Several analyses now…

WIC, Formula and Nursing

I opened my talk at the Community Action Partnership annual conference this year with the observation that like that weird looking guy from the old "Hair Club for Men" commercials, I'm not just a spokesperson, I'm also a client.  All foster children under 5 years receive WIC, the US program that provides SUPPLEMENTAL (this word will be important in a moment) food for pregnant and nursing women, and babies and children under five.  We haven't always used WIC for our foster children - a lot of the food it provides is industrial and not something we eat a lot of, but Baby Z. is formula fed, and…

Birds in the News 175

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Boreal or Tengmalm's Owl, Aegolius funereus. Boreal Owls are circumpolar, occupying subalpine and northern, or boreal, forests around the globe. These seasonally monogamous birds nest in small cavities; woodpecker holes, other natural tree cavities, or man-made nest boxes. These small owls occasionally irrupt from their northerly homes in search of food. Image: orphaned [larger view]. This edition of Birds in the News is dedicated to Snowflake and Biosparite, and to Miriam, whose $upport was inspired by Birds in the…

Hey, You Can't Say That! Or can you?

I have received, from a friend, a draft of an intra-institutional guideline for employee blogging and online behavior. The employer has been anonymized. The document has been written by non-scientist non-bloggers at the institution and is making the rounds prior to formal review and approval. We have talked about this at ScienceOnline'09 in the session Hey, You Can't Say That!. Here are some of the bloggy responses to that session to get you up to speed: Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Semi-live Blogging Scienceonline09: Day 2 Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 2: generalised ramblings…

We Are Living Below Our Means, Not Above Them

A constant refrain one hears when the deficit hawks let loose their piteous cries is that we are living beyond our means. Surely, our budget deficit and national debt are signs of that. Lord, for the sins which we have committed before thee... Or not so much. As I've discussed before, public debt can lead to inflation when resources, human or physical, are limiting. And when resources are limiting, public deficit spending can also lead to misallocation of resources. But when they're not, we are simply holding ourselves back for want of currency. Millions of people are un- and…

Once in a lifetime opportunity to profit from bird flu in Indonesia

Indonesia and Nigeria have a couple of things in common. One is bird flu. So far, both countries have a stubborn endemic infestation of the virus in their poultry, and neither has been successful in bringing it under control. Indonesia also has the distinction of more human fatalities from bird flu than any other nation, by far: 57 deaths. The closest runner-up is Vietnam with 42. Not to worry. Indonesia will have this dire situation under control by this time next year: Indonesia, which has the world's highest bird flu death toll, plans to ramp up its fight against the virus and hopes to…

The hazards of chicken off the bone

If you've ever boned a chicken (and who hasn't, right?) you know it isn't easy. It's hard on the hands and dangerous if you are doing it fast, with sharp knives. How fast? Say, a few thousand chicken breasts a day? Every day. Day after day. And doing it for chicken feed (metaphorically speaking), so you can't afford health insurance. But at least you get some medical care if you're hurt at work. From the company: Mike Flowers is a powerful gatekeeper. He often decides whether to send poultry workers to a doctor when they get hurt on the job or complain of chronic pain. "I think we do a pretty…

More reasons to oppose the latest awful iteration of GOPcare

Many of us were cheered by Senator John McCain’s announcement of his opposition to the horrible Graham-Cassidy bill that would gut Medicaid and wreck the individual insurance market. But Senate Republicans could still pass this bill, and will keep trying until the clock runs out at midnight September 30th. Last week I explained why the bill is so damaging to public health, and Kim Krisberg rounded up opposition statements from major organizations that work on healthcare. Two items that have come out since then are also worth considering. Senate Republicans are rushing to vote before the…

The Next Big Science Revolution

SETIcon feels like a curious mix of an AAS annual meeting and a science fiction WorldCon. Unfortunately, this extends to the concept of the parallel session. So, it is necessary to pick and choose. So, "Asteroids: Junkpiles or Resources?" - Yes. "Hubble 3D" - I really want to see Frank Summers' rendition, but I'll get another chance. And, while I do want to know "When I can buy a ticket to the Moon", I got the rah-rah spiel on the impressive progress in commercial space already. Hence the panel on: "The Next Big Science Revolution" - I gots to know. As apparently does everyone else. Another "…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Biological Basis For The Eight-hour Workday?: The circadian clock coordinates physiological and behavioral processes on a 24-hour rhythm, allowing animals to anticipate changes in their environment and prepare accordingly. Scientists already know that some genes are controlled by the clock and are turned on only one time during each 24-hour cycle. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that some genes are switched on once every 12 or 8 hours, indicating that shorter cycles of the circadian rhythm are also…

Allergic To Domestic Life

Have any of you started a project that you thought would take ten minutes to complete, only to find that the project has morphed into a huge and tangled event that has taken over your entire life? I am trapped in the middle of such a project right now. [Image source: Half the deck]. This project started when I decided to buy one sheet rock screw so I could rehang the little metal shelf in my bathroom above the toilet (after the ceiling caved in a few months ago, I had to remove everything from the bathroom, and this little shelf was one of those items. In the process, one of the screws was…

Birdbooker Report 74

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird literature." ~ Edgar Kincaid The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…

November Pieces Of My Mind #3

There was a major 19th century arts magazine titled Glissons, n'appuyons pas. This means "Let's glide, not support", that is, "Let's live an easy life without having to support ourselves". Opera reviews were a big thing in the mag. Private parking is "idiot parking" in Greek, because here the word idiot means "private person". Our sense of the word comes from the ancient distinction between a skilled person who could take part in public affairs and an untrained one who was just himself, an idiot. The Greek word for the mentally challenged, meanwhile, is vlakas. I saw an old high-wheel…

Independent Scotland doesn't seem like a good idea to me

Yes, Stoat, the pundit you've all been waiting for. Well, at least one person asked. Coming back from hols I misread a headline on my phone (I don't have data roaming so gloriously missed everything while I was away) that suggested that Scotland had voted for independence. "Good for them" I thought, though I was surprised they'd been that brave. Then I realised I'd misread it. Anyway, the point is that whilst my overall opinion is that the Scots should vote against independence, my view isn't very strong, and I do at least feel emotionally in favour of independence. But as an exercise I'll…

More Moon Deceit

I found this post on Blogesque through John Gorenfeld's site. It details how the Rev. Moon's speeches are often sanitized when translated into English. His translators take out some of the nuttier things he says in order to make them more palatable to non-Moonies. Specifically, he provides a more accurate translation of Moon's speech before the American Clergy Leadership Conference in October of last year and points out that nearly half the speech was redacted in the version that appeared on the Moon website. Among the crazy or creepy things left out: I am the founder of [the] Washington…

WIMPy Physics.

Some of you may have heard in the news recently about a possible detection of the particles that may make up dark matter: Detectors in the mine, part of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment, were tripped recently by what might be weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. WIMPs are among the most popular candidates for dark matter, the invisible material that scientists think makes up more than 80 percent of the mass in the universe. Recently detectors in the mine recorded two hits with "characteristics consistent with those expected from WIMPs," according to a statement posted…

Zen and the Art of Dracaena Growing

Sometimes I see sad-looking plants on clearance, buy them, and try to heal them.  This activity provides me with a gratification that is similar to that which comes from healing sad-looking people, but without the tribulations that occur if it does not work as well as we had hoped. I even have some of these plants in my office (although none of the worse cases go there).  At stressful times, I may go and look at the parts of the plants that are growing well: apical meristems, leaf primodia, and axillary buds -- or green shoots, in the vernacular of our time.   I just look at them.  I don't…

Is suicide bombing a means of population control?

I was struck by an NPR story this morning where they talked to a pathologist in Afghanistan. He conducts the autopsies on the remains of suicide bombers there. The doctor argues that a great many of them had mental or physical disabilities: Dr. Yusuf Yadgari, a forensics instructor at Kabul Medical University, says 60% of the bombers they've examined had a physical ailment or disability. When you factor in mental problems, Yadgari says the number grows to include more than 80% of all suicide attackers in Afghanistan. He says these "outcasts" may become suicide bombers because it's a way to…

Casual Fridays: When do you wear your glasses?

We received quite a few complaints about last week's Casual Fridays study, most of them centered around our scientifically inaccurate eye exam. In our defense, the Snellen chart is only designed to be a rough measure of visual acuity. General practitioners use it as a first-pass to determine if patients should be referred to eye doctors or optometrists, who always use additional tests beyond the Snellen chart to determine prescriptions. We're not prescribing eyeglasses, just trying to get a rough sense of respondents' vision. We thought giving a simple test would be easier than asking folks…

Ask a Science Blogger: what should I pack for the collapse of civilization?

Civilization's imminent collapse is upon us. What's in your survival pack? There are many ways that civilization could collapse, so let me put my assumptions on the table: I'm considering a world where the electrical grid, phone and internet communications, and running water and waste water treatment systems are no longer operative. For sure you can't drive to the store for a loaf of bread because the stores will have been long since looted and the gas stations have no more gas. I am not assuming sea levels rising dozens of feet all at once (since that will put me and mine well…

A myth memorialized (a.k.a. "Simpsonwood Remembered")

Here is the myth of Simpsonwood being memorialized on the seventh anniversary of the meeting where, if you believe the mercury militia, the CDC, in cahoots with big pharma, tried to suppress the "truth" that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. it is a myth that was popularized by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s misinformation-laden Salon.com article two years ago that trotted out every pseudoscientific and fallacious argument claiming that vaccines, specifically the mercury in the thimerosal preservative used in vaccines, causes autism. Here are some commentaries that reveal the myth for what it…

Normal-people problems

We're not supposed to pick favorites among our patients, but I have one. We'll call her Brenda. Brenda heard about our clinic through a friend of hers, a guy she used to smoke crack with. She'd been off drugs and booze for almost a year when she came to see me. Now that she was sober, she said, she realized she had "normal-people problems"--joint pain, high blood pressure, obesity--and needed a normal-person doctor. She had anything but a normal-person mouth, however, and from the moment I met her, said anything she wanted to, any time she wanted. She never held back the many, many things…

Retro Retro: The dangerous posts

Merry Christmas! OK, now that I've got you smiling and thinking of Santa and Elves and Snow flakes, Sugar Plum Fairies (hey, sugar, are you reading this?) and dancing gingerbread boys, let's look at some of the more dangerous yet popular items from this blog's past. Item 1: It is OK to be an atheist, but not an uppity atheist When you get a chance (but not right now, only when you have absolutely nothing whatsoever else to do) have a look at Matt Nisbet's latest thinly veiled attack on PZ myers*. It is the usual crap. Atheists are not allowed to express annoyance, disgust, or anger, or to…

Evan Almighty review

When God (Morgan Freeman) approaches Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell) about becoming Noah, it requires some lifestyle changes. Baxter, a news anchor from Bruce Almighty who has become a congressman, is compelled to grows a bushy white beard, discovers an appreciation for the brown robes favored by Charlton Heston's Moses, and suddenly has a hankering for another of Moses' favorites – unleavened bread. His wife obliges by offering pita, and since neither the Baxters, the director nor the audience realize that pita is leavened, everyone is happy. Anyone looking for a retelling of Noah's flood that…

On winning

I can't say I've followed every nuance of the auto bailout. At first I was inclined to think that letting the Big Three go bankrupt and rebuild wouldn't be the worst thing ever, since they'd probably get restructured somehow into more viable entities. But in this business climate, who would buy them? And what would happen to all those workers? To all those pensioners? To all the families that rely on UAW insurance? To all the communities built around Big Three factories, or around factories for Big Three suppliers? Especially with the prospect of an honest-to-god depression on the…

Who's to blame for Sci-Hub? Librarians, of course!

And by blame, I mean "blame." Yesterday the flagship journal of the AAAS, Science, published a series of feature and editorial articles on Sci-Hub, the unauthorized article sharing site. Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone The frustrated science student behind Sci-Hub My love-hate of Sci-Hub It's a Sci-Hub world data set Overall, the articles are pretty good descriptions of the Sci-Hub phenomenon and relatively even-handed, especially coming from one of the big society publishers like AAAS. There was one bit in the main article, Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone, that really…

Should we talk about disciplines?

In "common parlance" we throw around chemistry, biology, physics, and all, sort of throwing off the diversity within these disciplines. Gosh, in my comps I answered (or attempted to answer) a question about how useful it was to talk about "scientists" and non-scientists. Going the other way, I'll frequently discuss "research areas" or "invisible colleges" (Price [a] and of course Crane[b]*) or even some of the other groupings of scientists: lab/university/organization social circle [c] paradigm (Kuhn) [d] epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina)[e] thought collective (Fleck)[f] core set (Collins…

The Physics of Frustration: "Quantum Simulation of Frustrated Classical Magnetism in Triangular Optical Lattices"

One of the benefits of having joined AAAS in order to get a reduced registration fee at their meeting is that I now have online access to Science at home. Including the Science Express advance online papers, which I don't usually get on campus. Which means that I get the chance to talk about the few cool physics things they post when they first become available, without having to beg for a PDF on Twitter. This week's advance online publication list includes a good example of the sort of cool ultra-cold atom physics that I talked about at and after DAMOP, so let's take a look at this paper in…

PopSci Returns as Valued Festival Media Partner!

Popular Science, one of the leading sources of news in technology, science, gadgets, space, green tech and more, is returning as a key Media Partner with the Festival! In doing so, PopSci joins a growing list of other top science media leaders who will be serving as Festival sponsors, including Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, MIT's Technology Review, Chemical & Engineering News, School Tube.com, ENGINEERING.com, EE Times and PBS Kids. PopSci has been a major source of science and technology news since its award-winning magazine Popular Science was founded back in 1872. Its online…

A medical journal is born

Yesterday a new medical journal was launched, Open Medicine. It's the product of Drs. John Hoey and Anne Marie Todkill, former editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, who were fired last year in a conflict over editorial independence. Their publisher, the Canadian Medical Association, tried to exert editorial direction and the editors resisted. It was, as they say, un scandale. The editors have risen, souls and reputations intact. Moreover, OM will be joining the growing ranks of Open Access journals with open review policies: Open Medicine is a new general medical journal. It…

Not an “accident”: William Jeffrey Belk, 29, suffers fatal work-related injuries at Boise Cascade plywood plant in North Carolina

William Jeffrey Belk, 29, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, September 26 while working at the Boise Cascade Wood Products plant in Moncure, NC. News reports provide some initial information on the worker’s death: “The Chatham County Sheriff's Office says a worker at a wood products company died when a piece of machinery fell on him.” John Sahlberg, senior vice president of Human Resources at Boise Cascade, told The Sanford Herald: "The equipment had a C-clamp, and somehow or another, the C-clamp was up and came down on him. We don't have details as to what he was doing or why the…

Back to Work

As a lot of you probably knew long before I did (we loaned our computer to our housemate who is frantically prepping for his orals ;-)), Scienceblogs took down the Pepsi blog. This actually exceeded my requests to management as parameters for me coming back. I had asked that Scienceblogs create a separate area for its advertorial content, mark it explicitly as such, and distinguish it visually from the other blogs. They removed it entirely. So I'm back. There are other issues at scienceblogs as well, which you've probably all heard about now - I think my colleague Martin Rundkvist gets a…

Global Health Links

A few recent items highlight programs and innovations that are helping improve health in developing countries: Journalist and Nieman Fellow Christine Gorman spent three months in Malawi to learn about a new program thatâs tackling the countryâs severe nursing shortage with higher pay and more support for nursing education and training.  Sheâs been writing about her trip and the issues it raised for her on her blog, Global Health Report, and now reports that the American Journal of Nursing has published a photo essay on nurses in Malawi, featuring text from Gorman and photos by Eileen…

Occupational Health News Roundup

âThe Cruelest Cuts,â the Charlotte Observerâs excellent series about âthe human cost of bringing poultry to your table,â has won five journalism awards for the Observer. Reporters Ames Alexander, Kerry Hall, Franco Ordoñez, Ted Mellnik, and Peter St. Onge undertook a 22-month investigation to get the story. They filed FOIA requests for hundreds of poultry-plant inspection files, and interviewed more than 200 current and former poultry workers. What they learned was that poultry-plant workers suffer high rates of crippling injuries, but companies cover up the problem - and workers fear losing…

ScienceBlogs Kicks Ass

tags: Seed Media Group, online media, science news, science writing, public outreach, education, announcement, press release Yesterday, The Mothership (Scienceblogs.com), released their traffic figures from the launch of the site in January 2006 through the first quarter of 2010. These numbers are quite impressive, regardless of which universe you inhabit [free PDF]: Visits for the quarter ending March 31 grew by 41% year-over-year to approximately 13 million, and page views topped 25 million. Monthly unique visitors grew to 2.4 million worldwide and in the US surpassed 2 million for the…

Call for articles: User-led Science, Citizen Science, Popular Science

A special issue of JCOM, Journal of Science Communication, has just issued a call for submissions, with the deadline moved to June 1st, 2009: Science is increasingly being produced, discussed and deliberated with cooperative tools by web users and without the institutionalized presence of scientists. "Popular science" or "Citizen science" are two of the traditional ways of defining science grassroots produced outside the walls of laboratories. But the internet has changed the way of collecting and organising the knowledge produced by people - peers - who do not belong to the established…

Correlation is not causation: what came first - high Impact Factor or high price?

Bill decided to take a look: Fooling around with numbers: Interesting, no? If the primary measure of a journal's value is its impact -- pretty layouts and a good Employment section and so on being presumably secondary -- and if the Impact Factor is a measure of impact, and if publishers are making a good faith effort to offer value for money -- then why is there no apparent relationship between IF and journal prices? After all, publishers tout the Impact Factors of their offerings whenever they're asked to justify their prices or the latest round of increases in same. There's even some…

Ettiquette for blogging a scientific meeting - a question

I will be going to a scientific conference next week. Believe it or not, this will be the first purely scientific meeting I'll attend since I quit grad school and started blogging (all the others had to do with science communication, blogging, technology, journalism, Internet, publishing...). So, I am thinking.... I remember going to scientific meetings meant going to a nice little Florida resort and spending a couple of days with one's friends and colleagues, isolated from the rest of the world, talking about science 24/7. It is an opportunity to share your latest work and ideas with an…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Insects Evolved Radically Different Strategy To Smell: Darwin's tree of life represents the path and estimates the time evolution took to get to the current diversity of life. Now, new findings suggest that this tree, an icon of evolution, may need to be redrawn. In research to be published in the April 13 advance online issue of Nature, researchers at Rockefeller University and the University of Tokyo have joined forces to reveal that insects have adopted a strategy to detect odors that is radically different from those of other organisms -- an unexpected and controversial finding that may…

Summer Plans

I'll be leaving in one week and staying in San Francisco for one month. I'll be busy, to say the least. What should I do with the blog in the meantime? After all, it is the middle of the summer when everyone is travelling or enjoying the great outdoors and the online traffic is pitiful - my traffic is about half of what I had in April and May. So, I doubt I'll be penning long thoughtful essays (unless I get really inspired once or twice). I think I'll sit down one of these days before I leave and schedule for automatic posting a Clock Quote to appear every day around 4am for the next…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Organizers)

There are 104 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 81 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). Starting today, I'll start introducing the participants here, pretty much daily. I'll start by getting the organizers out of the way first ;-) Anton Zuiker is a blogger and a journalist, and currently works as manager of internal communications at Duke Medicine. He is…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Flying Lemurs Are The Closest Relatives Of Primates: While the human species is unquestionably a member of the Primate group, the identity of the next closest group to primates within the entire class of living mammals has been hotly debated. Now, new molecular and genomic data gathered by a team including Webb Miller, a professor of biology and computer science and engineering at the Penn State University, has shown that the colugos -- nicknamed the flying lemurs -- is the closest group to the primates. Anne-Marie has more. Fossil Record Reveals Elusive Jellyfish More Than 500 Million Years…

Links and files from ConvergeSouth and ASIS&T

My brain is fried. My flight home was horrifying - the pilot warned us before we even left the gate that the weather is nasty and that he ordered the stewardess to remain seated at least the first 30 minutes of the flight. Did the warning make the experience more or less frightening? I think it made it more so. Yes, the wind played with our airplane as if it was a toy, but knowing that the pilot thought it was nasty made it less comforting that he is confident himself in his abilities to keep us afloat. The scariest was the landing - we were kicked around throughout the descent until the…

Weekend fun: Build your own virus!

If you're going to create a new life form (even if it's only digital), Sunday Saturday seems like the best day to give it a try. Reposted from an earlier year. Build-A-Virus is a quick, fun, and simple game that was created and put on-line by Bioreliance, now owned by Invitrogen. This game is lots of fun, even when your students are college instructors. In this activity, you create a new virus by picking different physical characteristics. The game works like this: First, you choose whether the virus has an envelope or not. Next, you choose whether the genome is single or double-…

Not an “accident”: Bud Wesley, 65, suffers fatal work-related injury in Belding, MI

Bud Wesley, 65, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, November 30, while working at Spectrum Industries in Belding, Michigan. The Daily News reports: The incident occurred at about 5 a.m. The city’s police chief said that Mr. Wesley “was a part of the night maintenance crew at the facility. They were doing some high-level work and he fell from his working position.” The company’s president said that Mr. Wesley was employed by the firm since 1998. Spectrum Industries is a privately-held firm with 400 employees. Its business involves “the application of functional and decorative…

Fornvännen's Spring Issue On-Line

Fornvännen's spring issue (2010:1) is now on-line and available to anyone who wants to read it. Check it out! Michael Neiss analyses the intricate animal interlace on a weird new 8th century decorative mount. It looks like it might be Scandinavia's earliest book-cover fitting! Did it adorn the cover of a manuscript of the gospels or of the Elder Edda - or of something I shudder to even think about? Ylva Sjöstrand finds thought-out structure among the innumerable elks carved on rocks at Nämforsen during the Neolithic. Henrik Klackenberg and Magnus Olsson discuss a papal lead seal found…

Funny Poker Hand

So I was playing poker online, a little .25/.50 no limit game, and this hand comes up. New player had just sat down and he was under the gun. He raised to $1.50. I'm on the button with pocket queens, so I reraise to $5. New player calls. Flop comes 2-5-7 rainbow; he checks, I raise, he goes all in. It's still only a small percentage of my stack and I've got the big overpair and figure the only way he's got me beat is with kings or aces, so I call his reraise. Cards are flipped up, he has A 5 and hit his set of 5s on the flop. The river brings a beautiful queen, I rake the pot and he's…