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Virginia Ultrasound Bill Back from Dead

Turns out I gave Virginia governor McDonnell too much credit after he rejected the VA ultrasound bill on the grounds the state should insert itself into medical decisions. He's gone and flip-flopped as a slightly revised version of the bill passes through the VA Senate: The 21 to 19 vote, mostly along party lines, came a week after Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) asked legislators to revise the bill following protests on Capitol Square and repeated mocking on national television. Lawmakers amended the original bill, which mandated that women undergo a transvaginal ultrasound, a procedure that…

Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) sell out science

I'm never shocked by what Issa can do in a never-ending downward spiral of serving business interests, but it's sad that NY rep Carolyn Maloney has joined him backing a bill to sell out science. Once again the publishers are trying to destroy public access, and make everyone pay to read science you've already paid for with your taxes. The Research Works Act reads: No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that-- (1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research…

New Blog Endorsement Guidlines Released by FTC

Bloggers, under new guidelines issued by the Federal Trade Commission, you must disclose gifts or payments for products that you review! Also your endorsements cannot be false or misleading! The FTC's release advises: The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that "material connections" (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers - connections that consumers would not expect - must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other "word-of-mouth"…

Thanksgiving thoughts

This is my annual Thanksgiving post ("annual" because I wrote it last year and I'm reposting it this year. It's companion piece is over at my old place). --PalMD It's easy to see what Christmas means to an atheist---another day off work. What about Thanksgiving? This nominally secular holiday is practiced throughout North America by people of most faiths and cultures, and by those of no faith at all. But to whom are we giving thanks? Can "thank" be an intransitive verb? This question falls into the same category as many ethical questions about atheism, such as "where do atheists get…

Trick or Treat! Alternative Medicine Book Review in the Journal

Today's Journal is worth a read for this important development: something reasonable actually appeared in the Opinions section! Scott Gottlieb, one of the AEI's ogres, penned a review of Trick or Treatment, a book on America's obsession with alternative medicines, by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst. This apparently is not your typical rant against alternative medicines. Gottlieb notes: ...Based at the University of Exeter in England, [Dr. Ernst] leads a research group that has spent 15 years studying alternative remedies, trying to separate snake oil from science. Mr. Singh, his co-author, is…

Ham, Get on Message!

Jon Hurdle reports in today's Times on nine Philadelphia-based institutions that are planning a "Year of Evolution" program for February 2009, to celebrate Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species. Check out the comments of Ken Ham, which I think are totally off message: Ken Ham, the president of the Creation Museum, said he expected to see more pro-evolution events as the Darwin anniversary approaches. Mr. Ham said that in response his museum was planning its own exhibits on the origins of life. "The culture war is definitely heating up," he said. Mr. Ham, who also…

Medicine is fun!

Well, I'm back from a great vacation, and buried under an avalanche of work. Just to give you a hint of what an internist actually does... My office schedule is full---really full. Everybody needs to see me, plus the various sick people I have to squeeze in. It's great; being busy is fun, but it's time consuming. Then there's my desk. It is covered in lab results, home care orders to be signed, hospice orders, medication refills, prior authorizations... And of course, back to teaching, including evaluations, etc. So, it may be a bit quieter around here for a while, but I wanted to point…

Just one more note on Expelled

Many of my fellow bloggers, and many fellow Michiganders, have noted a breath of fresh air out of (ironically) the Motor City. This quote from Real Detroit Weekly's review of Expelled hits on an important point. By way of background, the following quote refers to the incident where biologist PZ Myers (who happens not to believe in any gods) was kicked out of a screening of the movie: Mathis laughs before offering two reasons why he told the security guard at the screening not to let Myers in. First, Mathis says, "He has viciously attacked me personally and attacked the film." Just to…

First, do no harm---Chiropractors, are you listening?

As you may have read earlier, the only thing chriopractic has ever really been shown to do is to help low back pain about as well as conventional therapy. That doesn't stop chiropractors from doing whatever they want. It sure seems harmless enough, though---you back or neck hurts, some guy moves it around, and you feel better---and all without drugs! What could it hurt, right? With any medical or physical intervention, things can go wrong, sometimes horribly wrong. For example, when I treat someone with an ACE inhibitor, I run the risk of causing a serious drug reaction. But the benefits…

In bizarre religions ritual, cult members murder their child

Hat-tip to PZ for shining some light onto local idiocy. The basic story is an old one---family kills kid by refusing medical care for a curable condition. In this case, it's a child with type I diabetes. This hits close to home for two reasons: I'm an internist, and my nephew is a type I diabetic, diagnosed at four years of age. In the case above, an innocent child was killed by ignorance. Perhaps there is a preacher somewhere behind this murder. I'd like to know. The parents prayed for their ailing daughter, but "apparently didn't have enough faith." The child died of diabetic…

Values Voters and Neo Nazis

I see that I'm in good company in my curiosity about why Ron Paul enjoys so much crank magnetism. And his crank magnetism and appeal to racist groups can't be denied. Here for instance, is Ron Paul posing with Don Black, culled from the neo-nazi Stormfront website: Now, I think its unlikely Ron Paul knew who this was when he posed for this shot, but between this and their endorsement of Paul on Stormfront radio, I think it's pretty well confirmed who their candidate is. Also note, this picture was taken at the "Values Voters Presidential Debate" just as a reminder of who "Values Voters"…

Transparency in Propriety Info Databases, or Did the Pizza Place Sell Your Cell Phone Number?

Have you ever forgotten to pay a bill and received a call about it on your cell phone? Ever wonder how they got your number? Well, you may have given it to them, but if you didn't, they probably bought it from a commercial data broker, a company that sells personal information to businesses and law enforcement. Many of these companies exist, the most prominent are Choicepoint, Lexisnexis, Merlin, Tracersinfo, and Experian. They essentially operate search engines with proprietary information, and for a small charge, will sell all sorts of information about you. But how did the data…

Another monkey put in charge of the zoo

WaPo reports on the appointment of Susan Orr: The Bush administration again has appointed a chief of family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who has been critical of contraception. Susan Orr, most recently an associate commissioner in the Administration for Children and Families, was appointed Monday to be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs. She will oversee $283 million in annual grants to provide low-income families and others with contraceptive services, counseling and preventive screenings. In a 2001 article in The Washington Post,…

Internet Roundup

Here's what I'm reading this morning. An Orangutan stole a womans pants in Malaysia. That's got to be embarrassing, but at the very least, you'd have a story to tell people for the rest of your life that is sure to entertain. Congress, having solved all other problems is looking into the language of hip-hop. Someone needs to find the youtube of this testimony. But rapper and record producer Levell Crump, known as David Banner, was defiant as lawmakers pressed him on his use of offensive language. ''I'm like Stephen King: horror music is what I do,'' he said in testimony laced with swear…

What's more annoying, creationists or vegans?

An art teacher has been "removed from the classroom" for proselytizing to his students about his vegan lifestyle. Apparently after being born-again into veganism, he wouldn't stop talking to kids about living "cruelty-free" during class. The kicker? He now wants to charge the school district with child endangerment for encouraging them to drink milk. Dave Warwak, 44, also said he plans to ask the McHenry County state's attorney to file child-endangerment charges against the school district because the school continues to promote milk and other animal products as part of a healthy diet.…

Wheaton is a weird place

Wheaton has a good academic reputation, but man, it's the little things that make it frightening. I would not want to live in the theocratic world it represents. Hank Fox has a couple of stories about Wheaton. The first is the blog of a recent graduate of Wheaton who determined halfway through his undergraduate education that he was an atheist. It sounds like it was rough. He's ended the blog, though, with a statement that "…now that I'm slightly closer to the real world, I just don't think it's that important whether you're an atheist or a Christian" — which is true. The differences are…

IDFilter

A fun thing about reading things on the ID sites and then actually checking primary sources is how bizarre Uncommon Descent is as an information filter. I guess this would be an example of the dreaded "framing" of science which I don't want to fight with my sciblings over. Take for example their discussion of Guillermo Gonzalez's qualifications in light of his failure to get tenure. UC says: "he has had his research featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American." Then you see what they're talking about and you see they're talking about this negative review of "…

Denialists' Deck of Cards: The 2 of Hearts, "Bad Apples"

Yesterday, I discussed how "no problem" is a chorus in denialist rhetoric. But sometimes, something bad has happened, and it's more or less impossible say "no problem" with a straight face. What can a denialist do? The 2 of Hearts, Bad apples! Yes, to the extent that something bad may have happened, blame it on "bad apples." You know the type. The barrel isn't rotten. Therefore, there's no problem! Remember, "no problem" is a chorus. Get used to saying or hearing it. Watch for this important technique--a spokesperson from a trade group will make some guarantee that an industry…

I get email

Michael Korn, the crazed creationist from Colorado who has threatened evolutionists with physical harm, keeps sending me email. His latest is an enumeration of the sins of evolutionists as exhibited in the movie, Expelled, which seems to have him quite worked up. He ranks us by evil; I'm #2*. I'm going to have to try harder. At least Korn is getting better at making his threats oblique. After listing our wickedness and telling us he's looking forward to a "McCarthy-type campaign" that will take care of us for good, he offers us this heartwarming benediction: Despite my disdain for all you…

Clinton and Obama parrot the "vaccine and autism connection inconclusive" line

Via Razib, Obama on vaccines: "We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it." --Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008. and Clinton: I am committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines. I have long been a supporter of increased research to determine the links between environmental factors and diseases, and I believe we should increase the NIH's ability to engage in…

Less is more when it comes to antibiotic use?

Over at Evolgen, RPM notes an interesting study in PNAS, looking at antibiotic use and how it serves to drive the emergence and maintenance of antibiotic-resistant strains. The current paradigm for antibiotic use is to prescribe relatively high doses of drugs for a few days to a few weeks (or months, in the case of tuberculosis), and patients are cautioned to stay on them until all the doses are finished. However, the new study RPM describes suggests this may be doing more harm than good, looking at what happens with Plasmodium species treated with antimalarials in a mouse model. Do…

The perils of being a night owl

Last year, I mentioned some ongoing research suggesting a link between exposure to light and the development of breast cancer. As I mentioned then: While we know a good deal about factors that can contribute to breast cancer risk--including genetics (such as mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes) and lifestyle choices (late or no childbearing, high fat diet, lack of exercise), many environmental risks for breast cancer remain controversial. Even the effect of cigarette smoking on breast cancer development remains uncertain, as does the environmental light idea. For a nice update and…

Reporting on the Creation Museum...it all makes sense now

As a native Ohioan and longtime creationist watcher, of course I'm morbidly fascinated with (and dismayed by) the opening of the new Creation Museum just outside of Cincinnati. I'm not going to give a full response to its ridiculous "science;" others have done that across the blogosphere (collected by PZ here). However, you may have seen the New York Time's particularly bad piece on the museum opening (if you haven't, you can find it here), where the writer--instead of commenting on the atrocious science--lauds the museum's "daring" more than once, for example. Well, John Hawks has dug up…

The broad reaches of melamine

Over at Deep Sea News, Craig has a heartbreaking story about the death of his dog a year ago, and it's possible connection to the current pet food recall. I admittedly haven't been paying very close attention to all the updates on this. I have two small dogs of my own, a 10-year-old chihuahua and a 8-month-old Boston terrier mix, and they both get boring dry food that hadn't been implicated in the recall, so I tuned out a bit after assuming their food was safe. However, Craig's post noted that this melamine spiking has been going on for as long as 15 years, and the American Veterinary…

Nothing to do this weekend?

Just a reminder that there will be a symposium this weekend discussing evolution and intelligent design at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. The event is geared toward those interested in matters of faith or science; teachers; principals; college students majoring in education, science and religion/philosophy; clergy; and parish educators. Scholarships are available for the first 200 K-12 educators, board of education members, school administrators, etc. who apply--still plenty of those left, so if you know anyone who'd be interested, point them in our direction. I'm including the text…

Friday Blog Roundup

There are several issues this week that attracted multiple bloggersâ attention: It might sound like a good idea for Medicare to stop paying to treat avoidable complications, but Chris Rangel at RangelMD, N=1 at Universal Health, and Orac at Respectful Insolence have some concerns about the this rule change. Matt Madia at Reg Watch alerts us to a proposed rule that will make it easier for companies to engage in destructive mountaintop-removal mining. Meanwhile, Gristmill is featuring reports from Gabriel Pacyniak and Katherine Chandler, who are traveling throughout southern West Virginia - and…

Latest Victims at Crandall Canyon: MSHA Inspectors

MSHA reports: "At approximately 8:39 pm (EDT) Thursday night, a significant bounce occurred at the mine.  Three rescue workers are confirmed dead, including one MSHA inspector.  Six others remain hospitalized.  At this time, all rescue efforts have been suspended." The MSHA inspector who was fatally injured in this latest coal-pillar rockburst was Mr. Gary Jensen, who worked out the MSHA's Price, Utah office.  Gary was a member of MSHA's mine rescue team.  Before joining MSHA, he worked as a coal miner for SUFCO Coal and had also been part of that company's mine rescue team. Another…

New Mine Safety Bills Introduced in Congress

Several members of the U.S. House and Senate introduced bills today to strengthen mine safety and health protections.  A  statement issued by Congressman George Miller (D-CA) says the bill builds upon the legislation passed in June 2006 called the MINER Act.  The House bills are HR 2768 and HR 2769  with co-sponsors of these House bills are: Bishop, Timothy (D-NY), Chandler, Ben (D-KY); Hare, Phil (D-IL); Holt, Rush (D-NJ); Kucinich, Dennis (D-OH); Mollohan, Alan B. (D-WV); Murtha, John (D-PA); Payne, Donald M. (D-NJ); Rahall, Nick J., II (D-WV); Sarbanes, John P. (D-MD); Woolsey,…

Friday Blog Roundup

This week, Congress has been wrestling with the reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act; Merrill Goozner at GoozNews reports from Capitol Hill about the questions that FDA Acting Deputy Commissioner for Policy Randall Lutter couldnât answer at a hearing and about the provisions that should be in the bill but arenât. Matt Madia at Reg Watch reports that FDA drafted the bill for Congress after numerous meetings with pharmaceutical industry representatives. (Check out our past posts on PDUFA for background.) Meanwhile, Bill Miller at DeSmogBlog notes that pharmaceutical companies…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Hearings, proposed legislation, and lawsuits have followed the the Chemical Safety Board's release of its 2005 Texas City refinery blast report, which faulted BP's broken safety culture and criticized OSHA for lax inspections and enforcement: Houston Chronicle: At a House of Representatives hearing on the disaster, lawmakers blasted OSHA for its lax enforcement of safety rules. AP: OSHA announced that it will nearly double the number of workers trained to perform the advanced inspections called for in the CSB report. Houston Chronicle: On the anniversary of the blast, families of the 15…

Friday Blog Roundup

William Broadâs NYT piece on Al Goreâs global warming science has been causing a stir in the blogosphere this week (original article here). Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate write, âIt is rather ironic then that William Broad's latest piece on Al Gore plays just as loose with [the facts] as he accuses Gore of doing;â David Roberts at Gristmill says itâs âthe worst, sloppiest, most dishonest piece of reporting I've ever seen in the NYT.â Tim Lambert at Deltoid faults Broad for failing to check out claims made by climate change skeptics and for misrepresenting scientific reports.…

Strengthening the FDA: Start with a Conversation

 by Susan F. Wood, PhD On Wednesday Feb 21 at 3:00, the project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at GWU School of Public Health and Health Services is hosting what hopefully will be a very exciting afternoon.  Former Commissioners of the FDA will gather to discuss the future of FDA, bringing their experience and priorities together for an unscripted public conversation.  FDA faces many challenges - some new, some old - but we need new ideas to help shape the upcoming legislative proposals that Congress will be taking up this year.  Hearing from several former commissioners,…

Norovirus outbreak in Iowa

Ames, Iowa may not exactly be thought of as a major tourist destination, or sporting venue. Last week, however, it was both, as the host of the first ever Special Olympics USA National Games, with Ames serving as an "olympic village." Most of it went off rather smoothly, but it also became newsworthy for another reason: Illness identified at Special Olympics Several people affiliated with Special Olympics teams who fell ill this week have tested positive for norovirus, a common cause of what is known as the stomach flu, state health officials announced Saturday. Overall, 52 people…

Bloggers break another story

Blogger reveals China's migratory goose farms near site of flu outbreak The hypothesis that migratory birds are responsible for spreading avian flu over long distances has taken another knock. Last year, an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain in thousands of migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in western China provided what seemed the first firm evidence for the idea. Because the lake is so remote, experts assumed infected birds had flown up from southern China. But it has now emerged that, since 2003, one of the key migratory species affected, the bar-headed goose, has been artificially reared…

Mercury and mythology

I very briefly mentioned new research suggesting mercury fillings aren't harmful back here last month. In Saturday's Guardian, Ben Goldacre (who runs the Bad Science blog) had a short article on the topic. In it, he addresses the lack of coverage of the research in the UK media, despite stories in the last decade suggesting how dangerous mercury was. He notes: Panorama did an excellently chilling documentary in 1994 called The Poison in Your Mouth. As far as I am aware there is no Panorama documentary in the pipeline covering the startling new research data suggesting that mercury fillings…

A confluence of idiocy

You know how dumb Egnor sounds with his mind outside the brain cell-phone silliness? He sounds as dumb as Deepak Chopra writing more brain-dead new agey nonsense for the Huffington Post. To gain credibility, the mind outside the brain must also be mirrored inside the brain. If your brain didn't register what the mind is doing, there would be no way to detect the mind. Like a TV program being broadcast in the air, a receiver picks up the signal and makes it visible. The brain is a receiver for the mind field. The field itself is invisible, but as mirrored in our brains, it comes to life as…

Geckos love Tet Zoo

If you didn't know, I've been away. The last four articles that have appeared here were all scheduled to publish in my absence. I've been in Romania and Hungary where I had a great time - saw lots of neat animals (fossil and living) and hung out with some neat people. I'll talk about some of this stuff in due course. For now, here's a really nice picture, kindly provided by artist-animator Ethan Kocak. Ethan keeps and breeds geckos and, as you can see from this photo of one of Ethan's New Caledonian giant geckos Rhacodactylus leachianus henkeli, it seems that these lizards are big fans of at…

Dinosauroid cave art discovered

It started with a visit to the zoo. Those remarkable African birds, the ground hornbills, got me thinking about Dale Russell's hypothetical thought-experiment (Russell 1987, Russell & Seguin 1982): what if non-avian dinosaurs (specifically, troodontid maniraptorans) had not bought the farm at the end of the Cretaceous but, instead, had continued to evolve? One thing led to another and I ended up both disagreeing with Russell's concept of a human-like erect-bodied short-faced flat-footed tailless dinosauroid, and speculating about what - in my view - a 'real' dinosauroid might look like…

They really are that crazy

Answers in Genesis, that site that tries to promote an alternative view to natural origins, has put up an article to answer that question that I'm sure is pressing on everyone's mind as we get close to Halloween: Are demons real?. You won't be surprised to learn that AiG's answer is that yes, they are. According to the Bible, demons are real spiritual and personal beings, not just forces or phenomena in the physical and psychological realm. Various Bible passages reveal that they have intellect, emotions, and will. They think, hate, and choose plans of action against God, Christ, and mankind…

Dromomerycids: discuss

You don't hear much about dromomerycids these days, it's always protoceratids hogging all the limelight. Here's one of the more obscure forms, the derived cranioceratin dromomerycine Procranioceras skinneri from the Miocene of the USA (originally named as a member of the speciose genus Cranioceras). All dromomerycids are North American and they were mostly a Miocene event, petering out after the Middle Miocene and disappearing during the Early Pliocene (Janis & Manning 1998, Semprebon et al. 2004). They resembled various bovids and deer in proportions and probably lifestyle: some seem to…

A Quick Peek at X-ray Crystallography at the Diamond Light Source

tags: A Quick Peek at X-ray Crystallography at the Diamond Light Source, X-ray Crystallography, Diamond Light Source, proteins, Synchrotron, Van Morrison, wavelength, streaming video This is a short video recorded on a trip to the Diamond Light Source by a group of Imperial College crystallographers. The video attempts to give a flavor of the strange things that they do to protein crystals when trying figure out the structures of the molecules within them. Music, "Wavelength", is by Van Morrison. X-ray crystallography is a technique for determining the precise arrangement of atoms within a…

A stork in ice and snow

The White stork Ciconia ciconia is a well-known migrant, moving from Europe down to Africa (either via the Iberian Peninsula or via the Middle East) during the winter. Increasingly, however, birds are choosing to over-winter in Europe. The numbers are startling: in southern France, eight birds over-wintered in 1996-1997, but 172 did so in 2003-2004 (Archaux et al. 2004). This winter, one individual over-wintered at Lake Mjøsa, near Hamar, Norway. Nicknamed 'Sture' [shown at top of article], it scavenged at a local rubbish dump and (as of early January) was surviving night temperatures of -…

TEDTalks: Jeremy Jackson: How We Wrecked the Ocean

tags: How we Wrecked the Ocean, oceans, fish, fishing industry, introduced species, biological pollution, chemical pollution, climate change, coral bleaching, Jeremy Jackson, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video In this bracing talk, coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson lays out the shocking state of the ocean today: overfished, overheated, polluted, with indicators that things will get much worse. Astonishing photos and stats make the case. So in a nutshell: we've wrecked everything around us: the water, the air, the animals, the climate, and any illusion of world peace we ever had. We're…

These are “evolutionary leaders”?

I was sent a petition to call for conscious evolution. I have no idea what this means. I don't think the creators of this petition have the slightest idea, either. I don't even understand the point of pledging to "elevate consciousness". I do know that these loons seem to like the word "evolution" an awful lot, abusing the term to the point where I want to just slap it out of their hands and tell them "NO! Not until you learn what it actually means." And, of course, it is somehow being appropriated by these kooks to imply something about spirituality. Here's the fluff they write. We now…

The Octopus reimagined

Warren Ellis set his readers to a task: to draw an old pulp comic book character, the Octopus. The Octopus had a stunning description. One of the more outré of the pulp characters-and given the genre, that's quite saying something, believe me-the Octopus was actually the villain of the piece in his single issue, The Octopus v1 #4, 1939, written by...well, it's not exactly clear. It might be Norvel Page, or it might be Ejler and Edith Jacobsen. A rather over-the-top mad scientist, the Octopus worked from a big city hospital and plotted world conquest. His appearance might explain his desire…

You can't win

I have a…errm…reputation for offending Catholics. It's undeserved, since I try so hard to offend everyone, but also because some Catholics are too easily offended. Can you spot the unforgivable offense the writer is complaining about in this story? Your April 27 front page had an article, "World government race to contain swine flu outbreak." The article was from the Associated Press. A picture of a priest distributing the Eucharist had a caption, "Catholics who entered a closed door Mass line up for a communion wafer Sunday at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City." That one line drove…

Eliminate peer-review of baseline grants entirely?

This is very interesting, referring to Canadian system: Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant: Using Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC) statistics, we show that the $40,000 (Canadian) cost of preparation for a grant application and rejection by peer review in 2007 exceeded that of giving every qualified investigator a direct baseline discovery grant of $30,000 (average grant). This means the Canadian Federal Government could institute direct grants for 100% of qualified applicants…

ResearchBlogging.org, v.2.0

The cat is out of the bag! The version2.0 of ResearchBlogging.org is ready to go and you can test it out: After a week of late nights and hard coding, our development team has released the beta version of the site to our entire userbase! You can visit the new site here: http://72.32.57.144/index.php/ We are planning on launching the site at the researchblogging.org address over the weekend, but you can get a head start now setting up your account, customizing it the way you like, and trying out all our new features. (note: All passwords have been reset, so you'll need to use the "forgot…

Palin?

Palin is the one I was afraid of. Not much to say. I have collected some good links here - check them out. McCain needed to appease the unhappy base. And he needed to make inroads into the Zero-information "independents". And he needed more women. And he needed the last remnants of racists that have not yet left the Dems with Nixon and Reagan elections. Sara Palin does it all for him. Her extreme social conservatism gets the base. Her good looks and zero name-recognition appeal to the "open minded Center". She has does not have a Y chromosome which, unfortunately, is enough for some…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Eyes Evolved For 'X-Ray Vision': Forward-facing Eyes Allow Animals To 'See Through' Clutter In The World: The advantage of using two eyes to see the world around us has long been associated solely with our capacity to see in 3-D. Now, a new study from a scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has uncovered a truly eye-opening advantage to binocular vision: our ability to see through things. Sticks And Stones: A New Study On Social And Physical Pain: We all know the famous saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," but is this proverb actually true?…