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February Pieces Of My Mind #2

Nalin Pekgul: "Us Muslim immigrants used to invite Jehovah's Witnesses to practise our Swedish". Movie: Sweden, Heaven and Hell. Hilariously over the top Italian exploitation mockumentary about late-60s Sweden that manages to tell volumes about Italy instead. Narration similar to the closing voice-over in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Relentless blonde breast flaunting throughout. Grade: Recommended. Movie: The Danish Girl. Transgender journey in 1920s Copenhagen and Paris. Main character's self-absorption and sudden unwillingness to doink A. Vikander get kind of old. Grade: OK. Imagine…

Swedish Heritage Board: "We Have Abandoned All Scientific Ambition"

In today's paper issue of main Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter is a news item headlined "Hobby Researcher Gives New Signs to Stones" (currently not available on-line, but here's another relevant piece). It relays a few statements from museologist Ewa Bergdahl of the Swedish National Heritage Board regarding the Ales stenar visitor's sign debacle. Bergdahl is head of the Heritage Tourism unit. --There isn't just one single truth. This place is so incredibly more complex than previously believed, says Ewa Bergdahl, unit director at the National Heritage Board. [...] The Heritage Board has long…

On line surveillance of emerging infectious disease?

Enough monkeys banging on keyboards over enough time should produce, through random chance alone, sensible prose now and then. But if the monkeys are bloggers and reporters and other people, the noise they generate would become merely pseudo-sensible because of (highly unlikely) chance events, but it should actually contain some information. With a little tweaking and a lot of filtering and analysis, it is possible to monitor the chatter for signs of emerging infectious diseases and quite possibly get on top of some of these events faster than otherwise possible. In one of the most…

PLoS supports scientists

I have to give a huge round of applause to PLoS, specifically, PLoS ONE, and their handling of the XMRV fiasco. Some of you might remember, early 2010 PLoS published the very first 'Umm... XMRV isnt there...' paper, Failure to Detect the Novel Retrovirus XMRV in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. To a scientist, it was interesting, but not that big of a deal. People publish conflicting findings all the time. Eventually we get to the bottom of it. Whatever. Its annoying when you are in it, but its kinda funny to outside observing scientists. The reaction from the initial studys principle…

Atheism gets some face time in Canada

The cover of the latest issue of Maclean's magazine, which is the Canadian equivalent of Time or Newsweek, asks "Is God poison?" The secondary headline to the feature, which is online, says "a new movement blames God for every social problem from Darfur to child abuse." Well, I don't know if it does all that, but at least the magazine is finally paying attention to the rise of what, for lack of a better term, is being called "new atheism." The piece starts off well enough, if rather belatedly, by reviewing the recent crop of books extolling the problems with religion (Dawkin's The God…

ON STEM CELL BILLS, BUSH & CO. WIN THE BATTLE OF THE VISUAL: SC Proponents Worked PR Wonders to Get This Far, But the Power of the Bully Pulpit Is Hard to Beat; Embryo Research is Transformed Visually Into Research on "Young Humans"

I'm sorting through all the news coverage this week, and will be having posts forthcoming summarizing the major frames and narratives that appeared in Editorials, Op-Eds, soundbites, and news coverage, but to start, the most stunning outcome from yesterday's veto was to witness the clear dominance that Bush & Co. displayed when it came to visual framing. The battle over visuals is important. While the press tends to contextualize the issue and is more favorable ground for getting pro-research interpretations into coverage, the majority of Americans are going to rely on TV reports,…

Superfetation in cute, cuddly, badgers

I used to work on Eurasian badgers, Meles meles, a fascinating mustelid carnivore that is relatively easy to observe in the wild. My work was in cranial morphometrics - measuring skulls and detecting differences - and I was more interested in variation in sexual dimorphism than anything else (though I wrote two papers on the possible menas by which the species colonized Ireland). The following press release by the University of Chicago Press caught my eye. In a fascinating new study forthcoming from The Quarterly Review of Biology, biologists from the University of Oxford explore a rare…

Science on the Campaign Trail

A really great Issues in Science and Technology article by Sheril and our ScienceDebate2008 colleague (and CEO) Shawn Otto is now available online here. It is a look back at the unprecedented ScienceDebate initiative and the not inconsiderable impact it had on the campaign--despite numerous hurdles, including an uninterested media and candidates who were not exactly jumping to debate science policy. An excerpt: Although the candidates still refused to debate, instead attending yet another faith forum at Saddleback Church in California, Science Debate 2008 was able to obtain written answers…

Massive amounts of meta

As I approach my one year anniversary of blogging here on ScienceBlogs.com, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of blogging. Being here on Sb has done a lot of good for me, from speaking engagements to opportunities to write academic & popular articles, but I have also been thinking of what my "next step" should be. Coincidentally, last night a number of bloggers posted some unrelated articles that corresponded to my own questions and concerns about science blogging. At the World's Fair, Benjamin considers the failure of blogging to initiate…

The Australian has another go at bloggers

The punditariat at the Australian has lashed out at bloggers yet again (see here and here for previous examples). This time it's David Burchell, whose thesis is that all bloggers provide is a "vast outpouring of pseudo-expertise and vituperation". Naturally bloggers have responded, with Gary Sauer-Thompson writing There is no attempt by Burchell to engage with any Australian political blogger. All are condemned and tossed into the waste bin without any argument. Burchell's position is one in which the reasoned arguments of Australian political bloggers on public issues is characterised by…

23andMe gets scooped on hair curl genes

Medland et al. (2009). Common Variants in the Trichohyalin Gene Are Associated with Straight Hair in Europeans. The American Journal of Human Genetics DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2009.10.009 A couple of weeks ago I reported on a presentation by 23andMe's Nick Eriksson at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Honolulu, in which Eriksson presented data on a series of genome-wide association studies performed by the company using genetic and trait data from its customers. Along with genetic analysis of a variety of other traits (such as asparagus anosmia and photic sneeze) Eriksson…

Public Comments Open on Draft NIH Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research

About a week ago, the NIH announced its draft guidelines covering the funding of human embryonic stem cell research. You can read the draft guidelines here and my post on the topic here. As these are draft guidelines, they are open to a month-long period of public comment before the final guidelines are released, and an online system for accepting comments has just been opened up. Comments must be received by 11:00 pm EST on May 26, 2009, and you can enter your comments here. Below, I have pasted the comments I submitted: To Whom It May Concern: These comments are in response to the Draft…

Science: It's a girl thing. Excuse me while I die inside.

Yet another well-meaning yet soul-crushingly misdirected initiative from the public purse, this time as the European Commission engages in a cack-handed attempt to convince the high-heeled, lipstick stained people they've conflated with women in general that science is a Girl Thing.   It seems to assume that it's impossible for women to be interested in chemistry unless it's in the context of cosmetics, or biology except insomuch as fashion.  If you can stomach it, here's a the video in all its garish horror -  Science: It's a girl thing (now removed in shame by the makers - mirror below). It…

The Multi-dimensioned Mind, The Inexperienced God

[Repost from gregladen.com] New findings reported by Harvard researchers in the journal Science suggest that the mind is typically viewed as having multiple dimensions that relate to specific important characteristics of individuals. This study has implications for how individuals develop ethical or moral stands on topics such as abortion, and how individuals view god, life, and death. The study was based an online survey (n= 2,000+). The results suggest that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: One is "agency," or the individual's ability for self-control, morality…

Death by supplements

The annoying death crud that has gripped me continues apace. Fortunately, I happen to have a rather interesting guest blog post that I've had lying around a while, and now seems like the perfect time to use it. It comes from Dr. Arnon Krongrad, an expert in prostate cancer and minimally invasive surgery. I'm publishing it because he has a rather interesting observation about the use of supplements and how it may contribute to the development of aggressive prostate cancer. Here is Dr. Krongrad's contribution: What would you pay to have erections? Would you pay with your life? A report from…

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm Walt Crawford. This is another blog in ScienceBlogs' new Information Science channel. As with the pioneers, John Dupuis and Christina Pikas, it's not a new blog. And as with those two--both of whose blogs I've followed for years--I was pleasantly surprised when ScienceBlogs contacted me, in the person of Erin Johnson. I was maybe a little more surprised, since I'm neither a science librarian nor, technically, a librarian at all. (I don't have an ML[I]S and am exceedingly unlikely to get one at this point, barring an honorary degree.) I've been hanging around library and information…

Hype, hype, hype

Update: The paper this post discusses is available online and is open access. It can be found here. A new ScienceDaily piece reports on new molecular clock data that suggests modern birds have an "ancient origin" about 100 million years ago. My first thought upon reading the brief article was "This is news?" yet the details of what the paper actually says is going to be important in any discussion of the results. I haven't read the actual paper yet, but article notes that the authors are referring to the diversification of modern birds, or Neornithes (see comments below, & thank you to…

Podcast vs. Lecture. Let the battle begin

I found this link on twitter from New Scientist. 'iTunes university' better than the real thing This pretty much sums it up: "Students have been handed another excuse to skip class from an unusual quarter. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person." The article also mentions a research study by McKinney that gave half of a class of 64 podcast lectures instead of a traditional lecture. Looking at the details, it doesn't seem like too convincing of a study.…

Financial Bubbles

Another day, another sinking stock market. The Dow has officially entered bear territory, which is defined by a drop of 20 percent or more. Many variables are responsible for the financial malaise, from rising gas prices to a weakening job market, but the root cause seems to be the busting of the housing bubble. In retrospect, of course, bubbles are easy to recognize and ridicule. What were all those Wall Street suits thinking when they bought up so much subprime debt? Didn't they realize that the booming real estate market was bound to implode? And yet, such irrational exuberance is a…

#SBFAIL Continues

Yesterday, Bora Zivkovic announced he was leaving ScienceBlogs. This is kinda huge. Bora is as close to a scienceblogging god as any scienceblogger will admit to believing in. He gives every evidence of omnipresence and omniscience about the interplay of science and the internet. He's created many of the ideas that keep the scienceblogging community together, not least the Science Online conferences. And his Sb farewell shows why he's so beloved. He seems to have taken the two weeks since Pepsiblog was announced and decided to go out with a bang. He analyzes what Scienceblogs did well,…

Antony Flew Goes to Heaven

Anthony Horvath is responding to my reviews with some flustery bluster. He's insisting that you must buy his stories in order to have any credibility in questioning them, which is nonsense: I'm giving the gist of his fairy tales, and he could, for instance, clarify and expand on the themes of his story, explain what I've got wrong and where I'm actually seeing the True Christian™ message, but instead he chooses to run away and hide while flogging people to buy his stories. He does throw out a hilarious complaint cloaked in his refusal to address anything I've written, like this: As before, I…

Open Lab Update: Twenty Days Left!

Only twenty days left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit! I've already started to contact potential judges for this year's anthology. We're ready to roll! Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far. The instructions for submitting are here. You can buy…

Open Lab 2010: Only One Month Left to Submit!

There is only one month left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit! I've already started to contact potential reviewers for this year's anthology. We're ready to roll! Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries The list is growing fast - almost FIVE HUNDRED posts have been submitted so far! Check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are…

Top US scientists weigh in on Tripoli 6 campaign

As the October 31 date for the resumption of the trial of the Tripoli 6 looms, the world scientific community is weighing in. From the ScienceNow section of the journal Science: U.S. scientists are adding their voices to mounting international pressure on Libya to release six foreign medical workers who could face execution within weeks. A letter published online today by Science--written by virologist Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore, Maryland, and co-discoverer of HIV, and signed by 43 other scientists--accuses the Libyan government of using the medics…

Aharon Katzir: 40 years after

We recently witnessed the disagreement over the official memorial for the 11 Israeli athletes killed at the Munich Olympics 40 years ago. Fewer remember the terrorist attack in the Lod airport a few months earlier – in May – in which 24 people lost their lives. One of those was the head of the Weizmann Institute’s Polymer’s Department, Prof. Aharon Katzir. (Somewhat ironically, in light of the later attack, Katzir had just returned from Germany, where he had co-organized a conference with Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen.) Aharon Katzir Aharon Katzir and his brother, Ephraim, who would later…

Reading Diary: Required Reading: The "Very Best" of CronkNews.com

As anyone who's a regular reader of my Friday Fun series will know, I'm a huge fan of The Cronk, that paragon of higher ed satire. In fact, you could call me the grand high poobah of Cronk fandom with the Cronk as the Sultan of Satire! You can see some of my posts here, here and here and even more here. I love the Cronk, you love the Cronk, we all love the Cronk. And now we all have a chance to put our money where our mouths are and kick a little cash towards the hard working gang that entertain and amuse us so regularly. They fine folk who produce the Cronk have published a print book…

A stealthy library scout, armed with a lead pipe

The authors over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe have posted about my recent manifesto on Stealth Librarianship. There's some pretty healthy debate, agreement, disagreement, qualification, additions and subtractions going on there, so please do check it out: Lead Pipe Debates the Stealth Librarianship Manifesto. Some excerpts: What Dupuis fails to mention here is that many academic librarians MUST publish in traditional, peer-reviewed library publications while striving to attain tenure. I am not personally in a tenure-track position, so I have the liberty of not fretting over where I…

No more Citizens Anonymous

Being private isn't the same as being anonymous according to the Bush administration. So what does privacy mean, according to Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence? Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information. [snip] "Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety," Kerr said. "I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of…

"Why Do You Blog Meme"

I got tagged with a meme by Greg who is trying to track the branching tree of this meme, so go check his post out (especially let him know if you do one of your own). He is also instructing us that the post is supposed to be full of links.... I love blog memes, and I have done many of them, most of which in one way or another reveal "why I blog": Academic Blog Meme, Beautiful Bird Meme, Random Quotes Meme, Silly Blog Meme, Four Meme, Hanukah meme, Zero Meme, Dirty Thirty Meme, Thinking Blogger Meme, States Meme, Obscure-But-Good-Movies Meme, Four Jobs Meme, The Blogging Blog Meme, Year in…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Why do people assault those who are trying to help them (or their family members)? Alcohol, drugs, and dementia are among the causes, and the result is that health care workers and social workers face a high risk of on-the-job injury. The Edmonton Journal reports that nearly 20 percent of the Workers Compensation Board of Alberta claims are for violence aimed at health care workers (thanks to Tasha for the link). At The Doctorâs Office online WSJ column, Dr. Benjamin Brewer reports that a study at a large Florida hospital found 74% of the nurses reported being physically assaulted during…

Alligators vs melons: the final battle

For millenia, a battle has raged between alligators and water melons. Who will win? Well, the answer's obvious: one has a bite force of over 15,000 Newtons, and the other one's a water melon. Yes, the alligator vs water melon craze has gone mainstream, as testified by its appearance on Sky News... though, god help them, they managed to mistake an alligator for a crocodile. Hopeless. Anyway... It's gratifying and amusing to see an alligator destroy a water melon with such devastating ease [for more information, see the accompanying text at youtube]. But there are a few other things of interest…

Lindau - I have arrived

I have arrived. The trip was OK. Terminal 2 at RDU rocks - I was there far too early (due to trip-excites) and spent 3 hours online on my iPhone. At Heathrow, wifi is pay-only, and I could not detect any at the Zurich airport. There is no AT&T signal to be picked up at Heathrow, Zurich or Lindau, so I am not using the iPhone at all. The wifi at the hotel is decent (a little slower than at home) and they say that it is much better at the conference center. For some reason, AA switched airplane types. I was looking forward to sleeping 7 hours on the B777 (it is never completely full so I…

ScienceOnline09 - workshops

Most sessions (see the Program) at ScienceOnline09 are supposed to be highly interactive - in the spirit of an Unconference, based on the idea that: The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage. But, there will be a few exceptions. First, there will be several quick demos on Sunday morning. But also, four of the sessions are meant to be more in a workshop mode, where we expect that the people on stage will actually have greater expertise than people in the audience and that the reason people will choose to attend these…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Neanderthals Speak Again After 30,000 Years: Dr. Robert McCarthy, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, has reconstructed vocal tracts that simulate the sound of the Neanderthal voice. Slowly-developing Primates Definitely Not Dim-witted: Some primates have evolved big brains because their extra brainpower helps them live and reproduce longer, an advantage that outweighs the demands of extra years of growth and development they spend reaching adulthood, anthropologists from Duke University and the…

Science Debate 2008 - my Question #5: Food

To keep the conversation about the Science Debate 2008 going, I decided to post, one per day, my ideas for potential questions to be asked at such a debate. The questions are far too long, though, consisting more of my musings than real questions that can be asked on TV (or radio or online, wherever this may end up happening). I want you to: - correct my factual errors - call me on my BS - tell me why the particular question is counterproductive or just a bad idea to ask - if you think the question is good, help me reduce the question from ~500 to ~20 words or so. Here is the fifth one, so…

Science Debate 2008 - my Question #4: Who has Scientific Authority?

To keep the conversation about the Science Debate 2008 going, I decided to post, one per day, my ideas for potential questions to be asked at such a debate. The questions are far too long, though, consisting more of my musings than real questions that can be asked on TV (or radio or online, wherever this may end up happening). I want you to: - correct my factual errors - call me on my BS - tell me why the particular question is counterproductive or just a bad idea to ask - if you think the question is good, help me reduce the question from ~500 to ~20 words or so. Here is the fourth one, so…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Bats Play A Major Role In Plant Protection: If you get a chance to sip some shade-grown Mexican organic coffee, please pause a moment to thank the bats that helped make it possible. At Mexican organic coffee plantations, where pesticides are banned, bats and birds work night and day to control insect pests that might otherwise munch the crop. Animals Are 'Stuck In Time' With Little Idea Of Past Or Future, Study Suggests: Dog owners, who have noticed that their four-legged friend seem equally delighted to see them after five minutes away as five hours, may wonder if animals can tell when time…

Update, and question about computer problems

You may have noticed very sparse blogging last couple of days - just the pre-scheduled Clock Quotes... Well, I have some laptop problems (Dell PC with WinXP, only FF as browser). The first inklings of problems showed up right after the AAAS meeting last month. I have been dutifully cleaning with Symantec, Spyware Doctor, SUPERantispyware and Spybot Search&Destroy almost daily since then. My Malwarebytes does not work - after uninstalling it, I get an error when trying to reinstall. Ad-Aware does not let me start (says I am a wrong user for it). WTF? The problem is this - Google sites…

ResearchBlogging Awards 2010

I was in Boston last two days, and mostly offline, so the news of the announcements of ResearchBlogging.org Awards found me on Twitter, on my iPhone during a brief break of the PRI/BBC/Nova/Sigma Xi/WGBH/The World meeting. Thus, apart from a couple of quick retweets, I did not have the opportunity until now to take a better look and to say something about it. You can see the news at the Seed site and download the official press release. And listening to the podcast about the awards AND opening the envelopes with winners's names is great fun. Then, take some time to go through the list of all…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Celeste wrote last week about how the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. broke the story of how a previously unpublished report sent to Congress by the Mine Safety and Health Administration two weeks before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster warned about serious enforcement lapses, including incomplete inspections and inadequate enforcement actions. In addition to that story, another of Ward's Charleston Gazette articles last week highlighted another MSHA issue related to that mine disaster, which killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia: U.S. Mine…

Day 4: at last, tabs 8

Our first proper "late" row, since we're now proud mebers of division 2. Time at the start to say hello to Amelie before being rudely interrupted by the 4 minute gun. I was busily trying to plaster up my hand having torn a callus off and... oooohhh, it did hurt a bit. Meanwhile, back at the rowing. Tabs 7 were sandwich boat, but we knew we were faster than them, and anyway they were tired after rowing over; they faded away after about 20 strokes. So our aim was tabs 8, who we chased unsuccessfuly on the first night. But we knew that ahead of them was St Ives, who they had failed to catch the…

Thrusters in Space

Bart: Go, Dad, go! Lisa: How doth the hero, strong and brave, a celestial path to the heavens paved! (The family stares at her.) Lisa (dejected): Go, Dad, go. -The Simpsons Last week, I got a question from one of my online friends, cmgraves. His question was straightforward: How do thrusters work in space? On Earth, when we want to speed up, slow down, change our direction, or to change our motion in general, we always have something to push against. This is true whether you're a runner and have the ground to push against, or a turbofan engine with the air to push against. But in the…

Gay Marriage = Civil War? Frightening

I came across this blog while following links and all I can say is "wow". Ironically, it has the fluffy name "Sunny Days in Heaven" while its author seems to be advocating a civil war to stop the advance of civil rights for homosexuals. In a post yesterday on this blog, the author is discussing a National Review Online article that criticized right wing radio talk show host Dennis Prager for comparing the battle over same sex marriage with the battle against Islamic terrorism because both are vital for "the survival of civilization". Jonah Goldberg, writing on the NRO blog, took Prager to…

Queer Theory of Ancient Gods

Very timely with the discovery of the Kaga foil-figure model, my buddy Ing-Marie Back Danielsson has published her PhD thesis in archaeology, Masking Moments. The transitions of bodies and beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (available on-line). There's a picture of a foil-figure or other late-1st Millennium human representation on almost every page. The viva is on Thursday Friday 20 April in Stockholm, and the opponent none other than that enfant terrible of the British Neolithic, Julian Thomas. Reading his fine 1991 book Rethinking the Neolithic, I remember wondering if there is anything…

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Let me say these things, because they are important. Bora was wrong. Scientific American was wrong. Ofek was wrong, Wrong, WRONG. If you follow science blogs beyond this one, you have no doubt run across the gigantic debacle that erupted this past weekend; if not the first few paragraphs of this Slate piece give a reasonably compact summary. The shorter short form is: an editor at a blog network called Danielle Lee a whore (which was wrong), she wrote a blog post about it (emphatically not wrong), and the responses to that splattered a gigantic festering mess of Wrong all over everything. So…

Links for 2010-02-03

Researchers use infrared cameras to determine taste quality of Japanese beef "Imagine going into a local supermarket or butchery, pulling out your cell phone and using its camera to instantly check for the best piece of meat on display. That is one of the applications that some in Japan hope could become possible one day from scientific research into using infrared cameras to grade the taste of high-quality beef."f (tags: optics food science physics biology Japan news) I don't know what this has to do with eBooks, but I'll blog it anyway § Unqualified Offerings "The Defense Secretary and…

Photoelectric Follies

I spent most of yesterday helping out with an on-campus workshop for high school teachers and students. Seven high school physics teachers and seventeen high school students spent the day doing a half-dozen experiments to measure various physical constants. I was in charge of having them measure Plack's constant using the photoelectric effect. The actual measurement (made using a PASCO apparatus) takes about fifteen minutes, so I gave each group a quick explanation of the history: Einstein proposed the particle model of light as an explanation for the photoelectric effect in 1905, and nobody…

Joint Annual Meeting, Day 1

I'm liveblogging the Joint Annual Meeting of the HRD directorate programs, and although the internez is spotty, I will update as we can. We began the morning with a keynote by Dr. Wanda Ward, Assistant Director for the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at NSF. The first half of her talk was largely about the different programs in HRD (Human Resources Division) and elsewhere that speak to (a new acronym to me:) BP, or "broadening participation." A few items of note: [Follow along at the JAM twitterfeed here. So far it looks like I'm the only one twittering... can it be so?] She…

Blue Steel Hero

No, it's not a song by Foreigner - these are the names of two products "promoted and sold over the Internet for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED) and for sexual enhancement." In yet another instance of a trend that would be comical if not so serious, the US FDA has announced that "Blue Steel" and "Hero" supplements contain chemical relatives of sildenafil, the active constituent of the prescription medication Viagra. "Because these products are labeled as 'all natural dietary supplements,' consumers may assume that they are harmless and pose no health risk," said Janet Woodcock, M.…

"China Needs an Ecologized Social Democratic System"

China, the new great polluters. With their tremendous industrialization comes tremendous pollution. But what is the relationship between their shifting political system and the possibilities for a more ecologically sensible pattern of development (assuming that phrase is internally logical, "ecologically sensible pattern of development")? Here is an interview from last Fall with Dale Wen, Chinese Native, Cal Tech PhD, and author of China Copes with Globalization: a Mixed Review, published by the International Forum on Globalization. The interview touches on GMOs, western lifestyles in…