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My picks from ScienceDaily

Bone Parts Don't Add Up To Conclusion Of Hobbit-like Palauan Dwarfs: Misinterpreted fragments of leg bones, teeth and brow ridges found in Palau appear to be an archaeologist's undoing, according to researchers at three institutions. They say that the so-called dwarfs of these Micronesian islands actually were modern, normal-sized hunters and gatherers. First Prehistoric Pregnant Turtle And Nest Of Eggs Discovered In Southern Alberta: A 75-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant turtle and a nest of fossilized eggs that were discovered in the badlands of southeastern Alberta by scientists and…

Great Science Questions

Seed has started this thing they're calling "Ask a Science Blogger," in which we're supposed to take provocative questions and answer them here. You know, like those ice-breaking party games, supposed to get the social bonding thing going, foster unity, etc. Only thing is, they don't quite get the idea yet—they're asking the science bloggers to come up with questions to ask the science bloggers. "What's that?" I say, "why not cut out the middleman and not ask the questions that nobody's asking that we're being asked to answer? Saves time." That's too mean-spirited, so let's turn it around in…

The currently most popular independent political websites

The latest press release from ComScore - Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Explosive Growth at Independent Political Blogs and News Sites this Election Season - has all sorts of interesting statistics about relative traffic, etc., of the top independent (i.e., unaffiliated with MSM) websites and blogs. One tidbit I found particularly interesting: Looking at the demographic profiles for the top three sites, HuffingtonPost.com, Politico.com and DrudgeReport.com, one can conclude that visitors to these sites tend to be older, wealthier, and more likely to be male than the average U.S.…

My picks from ScienceDaily - circadian edition

Circadian Clock May Be Critical For Remembering What You Learn, Researchers Say: The circadian rhythm that quietly pulses inside us all, guiding our daily cycle from sleep to wakefulness and back to sleep again, may be doing much more than just that simple metronomic task, according to Stanford researchers. Working with Siberian hamsters, biologist Norman Ruby has shown that having a functioning circadian system is critical to the hamsters' ability to remember what they have learned. Without it, he said, "They can't remember anything." Time Of Day Influences Yield For Pharmacologically…

ScienceOnline09 - Meals

The Conference is pretty long this year, yet people need to eat! There will be free food and coffee at Sigma Xi on Saturday and Sunday for breakfast and lunch, as well as a wine-tasting and a cocktail party at the Friday Wise event (though, it is not a full meal - "The networking reception will consist primarily of desserts, wine, coffee, and some non-alcoholic beverages. So unless you want to have dessert for dinner, please make plans accordingly."). But, it is a free conference with limited funds, so for other meals you need to pay for yourself. That does not mean you are on your own,…

Tweetlinks, 9-26-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time: How would Einstein use e-mail? College students are not as intelligent and Smarter people go to college, so average university students less intelligent? How blogging has augmented my career More crappy flu journalism, this time Alternet [rant alert!] @TrixieTracker @chillnc I remember as a blog is now a very useful phone App The Secrets of Time Square's Ridiculous Billboards Friday Weird Science: The Hyena Mating Game RT @thegarbagegirl: We've reached the garbage patch! [20 minutes ago from web] //the amazing…

“Liberty” University really ought to look at the first word in their name

I suppose it's only a surprise that it took them this long, but Liberty University has shut down the college Democrats. They were able to put up with the existence of a few very conservative Democrats for a whole 6 months before pulling the plug. Liberty University has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying "we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by" the university. "It kind of happened out of nowhere," said Brian Diaz, president of LU's student Democratic Party organization, which LU formally…

Next week in Boston

As you may have noticed, I'll be in Boston next week. On March 8th, I'll go to the Science Cafe: THE TOPIC: It may seem Hollywood, but there are many accomplished scientists currently scanning the skies for signs of alien intelligence. What are they looking for? Flying saucers and little green men? Actually, think talk radio and TV soap operas. We've been broadcasting signals like these for around 80 years, and some are powerful enough to reach other star systems. So there is a chance that aliens are out there broadcasting similar signals--signals we may be able to detect. But how will we…

How to distort atheist goals

The Telegraph has a lovely article on how The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies is going to brainwash children. Here's the kind of mud they're slinging: Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute said: "Atheists are becoming increasingly militant in their desperate attempts to stamp out faith. It is deeply worrying that they now want to use children to attack the Christian ethos of their schools. "Many parents will also be anxious at the thought of militant atheists targeting their children." Oh, lordy, lordy. "Attack the Christian ethos"? He says that like…

I get email

Yeah, crazy people write to me, too. Hello dear Ladies and Gentlemen! I would like inform you that Scarlett Johansson “actress” actually is a clone from original person Scarlett Galabekian last name, who has nothing with acting career, surname Galabekian, because of adoption happened in 1992. Clones was created illegally by using stolen biological material. Original person is very nice (not d**n sexy), most important - CHRISTIAN young lady! I'll tell you more, those clones (it's not only one) made in GERMANY - world leader manufacturer of humans clones, it is in Ludwigshafen am Rhein,…

What I try to do when I travel abroad across several time zones

How do I try to beat jet-lag: - book an overnight flight that lands at the destination in the morning, if possible. This really helps. - start gradually shifting my daily schedule of meals, activities, sleep, a few days in advance. - once I pass security and have about an hour before take-off, I take clonapen (not sleeping pills and no, not melatonin, though some people swear about it - it makes me depressed because of my extreme owl-eness and SAD). This (as I am a little anxious of flying) helps me fall asleep very quickly, sometimes before we are airborn, sometimes right after they serve…

Cheap saints

The Vatican is champing at the bit to turn Pope John Paul II into a saint, and central to their case is the story of Jory Aebly. Aebly was a young man who was mugged, shot in the head, and expected to die…but he recovered, fortunately. What's the connection to a dead pope? Well, there isn't much of one. In the hospital, he was given a rosary that had supposedly been blessed by the pope, and his religious family now credits John Paul II for his recovery. Never mind that the pope had been dead for four years. What also isn't mentioned is that Aebly's friend, Jeremy Pechanec, who was also mugged…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Keeping Beer Fresher: Scientists in Venezuela are reporting an advance in the centuries-old effort to preserve the fresh taste that beer drinkers value more than any other characteristic of that popular beverage. Futuristic Linkage Of Animals And Electronics: The same Global Positioning System (GPS) technology used to track vehicles is now being used to track cows. Brown Argus Butterfly Sees Positive Effects Of Climate Change: Global warming is generally thought to have a negative affect on the habitats of many animals and plants. Not for the Brown Argus butterfly, however. This insect seems…

Science reporting basically OK?

The media monitor: "Timothy Caulfield has spent years listening to scientists complain that the media does a poor job of explaining science. As research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, he has heard this so often, he says, that he started to believe it too. Finally, he decided to find out for himself. Caulfield pored over the print media's coverage of genetic discoveries from around the English-speaking world and compiled a list of 627 newspaper articles reporting on 111 different scientific journal articles. Together with a team of coders, all of whom had…

Equestrian sports in Serbia

Before I went back to Belgrade, I did not know if there was a website with information about the racing and equestrian activities there. There used to be one some years ago, but it has not been updated in a very long time. So, I was happy when, while there, I was given URLs of the Belgrade Racecourse website and the Federation for Equestrian Sport of Serbia website. The former looks good and easy to navigate. The latter is little old-timey in appearance but that may be on purpose, to emphasize the long tradition. It is also a little too PDF-happy for my taste - it is OK to use the…

New and Exciting in PLoS Biology

Birds Do It, Bees Do It, but Candida albicans Does It Differently: The yeast Candida albicans lives an unnoticed and mostly harmless life as a member of our gut flora. However, mainly in an immunocompromised host, it can proliferate and cause severe, life-threatening infections. Within this normally mild-mannered, single-celled fungus beats the heart of a reproductive adventurer. For while it appears to be incapable of meiosis and therefore true sex, it engages in an unusual and offbeat alternative--after it mates, its progeny randomly cast off chromosomes to restore the diploid number, or…

My picks from ScienceDaily

You Are What You Eat: Some Differences Between Humans And Chimpanzees Traced To Diet: Using mice as models, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology traced some of the differences between humans and chimpanzees to differences in our diet. Migrating Birds Detect Latitude And Longitude, But How Remains A Mystery: Eurasian reed warblers captured during their spring migrations and released after being flown 1,000 kilometers to the east can correct their travel routes and head for their original destinations, researchers report. Conspicuous Social Signaling Drives…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Seismic Images Show Dinosaur-killing Meteor Made Bigger Splash: The most detailed three-dimensional seismic images yet of the Chicxulub crater, a mostly submerged and buried impact crater on the Mexico coast, may modify a theory explaining the extinction of 70 percent of life on Earth 65 million years ago. Jacky Dragons Are Born When The Temperature Is Right For Their Sex: An Iowa State University researcher spent four years in Australia studying reptiles. Dan Warner, a researcher in the ecology, evolution and organismal biology department, has been working with the jacky dragon, a lizard…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Duke)

There are 14 days until the Science Blogging Conference. We have 220 registered participants and the registration is now closed. The anthology should be published in time for the event. Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Lisa Warner, Bill English, Aaron Lerner and Jonathan Tarr are coming from the Duke University campus. If you are registered, you will get to meet them in person very soon. Now is the good time to: Find and exchange information about hotels, rides, etc. Do you want to…

Survivor: Pharyngula! Day One.

I mentioned before that we're a bit full up on commenting kooks, and it's time to purge a few. Here's a short list of our contestants this week, a few of the obnoxious people who are lurking about in the comments right now. We're going to get rid of some of them, one at a time. Barb Alan Clarke Facilis John Kwok Pete Rooke RogerS Simon Everyone gets to vote them off the blog — just leave a comment with the name of the competitor you like least, and I'll tally them up on Wednesday morning, and the winner gets evicted. But wait! There's more! We have to have an immunity challenge, don't we?…

My Picks from ScienceDaily

Genes Determine Mate Choice, At Least For Fat Tailed Dwarf Lemurs: How do we choose our mates? For quite some time now, scientists suspect that it is not for looks or fashion, neither for love or sympathy. It may be the genes that determine our preference for certain males or females. A new study provides support for this idea by looking at lemurs in Madagascar. Beyond A 'Speed Limit' On Mutations, Species Risk Extinction: Harvard University scientists have identified a virtual "speed limit" on the rate of molecular evolution in organisms, and the magic number appears to be 6 mutations per…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Mystery Of A Third Olfactory System Unlocked: Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have found a "nose within the nose," a unique olfactory system within the noses of mice that is able to "smell" hormones involved in regulating water and salt balance in the body. This research may lead to new insights into the complex system of "chemical communication" between individuals. First Orchid Fossil Puts Showy Blooms At Some 80 Million Years Old: Biologists at Harvard University have identified the ancient fossilized remains of a pollen-bearing bee as the first hint of orchids…

Eight Random Facts Meme, Take 2

Paul, Danica and Daveawayfromhome recently tagged me with the Eight Random Facts Meme, although I have already done it before, so let me try to come up with Random Facts Nine Through Sixteen. 9. I used to sing karaoke every Tuesday while in grad school (well, everyone goes crazy in grad school), always singing the most unlikely songs, e.g., country, the sappiest oldies and the songs by female vocalists. I do a mean "I Will Survive"- even DJs crack up. 10. I got fired once - I was 14 or 15 at the time. So, instead of mucking out horse stalls, I spent some time clipping hedges and mowing…

Pilobolus, Antlion and the Vertebrate Eyes

On Pilobolous: When I first wrote my post on Pilobolus (here and here) I really wanted to do something extra, which I could not do at the time. If you scroll down that post, you will see I reprinted the Figure 1 from the Uebelmesser paper. What I wanted to do was find (and I asked around for something like that) the exact times of dawn and dusk at the site where Uebelmesser did her work and thus be able to figure out the dates when the tests were done and the exact phase-relationship between the dawn and the time when Pilobolus shoots its spores. Now, I see that such a chart exists (via) and…

Hypocritical gomers of Oklahoma, unite!

Those creationists sure do love their hypocrisy: on one day, they whine about their version of "academic freedom", which means demanding that creationism be given equal time with legitimate science in the classroom, and the next they throw a hissy fit because someone they disagree with is speaking, such as Barbara Forrest or Richard Dawkins. After failing to block Dawkins from speaking at OU, the Oklahoma legislature is looking for excuses to retroactively punish the university for spending money on his visit. They seem to have this idea that academics they dislike should always work for free…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Local scientists 2)

There are 47 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. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 161 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 200). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Tyra Dunn-Thomas is a recent PhD from the Iowa State University program…

"The Truth and Truthiness, together at last!"

If you look over to you right (you may have to refresh your page or click on internal links and thus raise my pageviews to see it) you will see an ad on the right side-bar that takes you to PLoS ONE. The first 50 readers of scienceblogs who click on that ad and complete registration will receive a Free PLoS ONE T-shirt. And then, once registered, use that registration to rate, annotate and comment on articles there. If you looked around Scienceblogs.com over the last couple of days (I think it is gone now), you could also see the ad for Colbert Report on the top of the page. So, with some…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Bonobos!)

There are 72 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 119 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). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Vanessa Woods is the author of It's every monkey for themselves and a researcher with the Hominoid Psychology Research Group. She…

How to build a better peer-review system

Mark Patterson writes in Bringing Peer Review Out of the Shadows: ----------------------- Hauser and Fehr propose a system for holding late reviewers to account by penalizing them when it's their turn to be an author. A slow reviewer's paper would be "held in editorial limbo" for a length of time that reflects their own tardiness as a reviewer. The short article was intended to provoke a discussion about how to improve peer review - an opening card as Hauser and Fehr put it. So far, 16 responses have been added from readers, and the general view seems to be that incentives would be more…

The Grand LOL-PZ Birthday Bash Linkfest

Today is PZ Myers' 51st birthday. We've done it last year and the year before. As I did last time, I will collect a linkfest of all the posts - especially those that use the LOLCats generator (Greg has collected some pictures if you want to use them). First out of the starting gate: Greg Laden: Happy Birthday PZ Myers! Maryannaville: There's a Page looking for a Mr PZ Myers located in the lobby Tangled Up in Blue Guy: Happy Birthday PZ Of Two Minds: Happy B-Day PZ! Evolving Thoughts: So, here I am in Arizona, still Effect Measure: Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: a PZ Myers Revelation Page 3.…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Fused Nasal Bones Helped Tyrannosaurids Dismember Prey: New evidence may help explain the brute strength of the tyrannosaurid, says a University of Alberta researcher whose finding demonstrates how a fused nasal bone helped turn the animal into a "zoological superweapon." Jet Lag, Circadian Clocks Explained: Circadian clocks regulate the timing of biological functions in almost all higher organisms. Anyone who has flown through several time zones knows the jet lag that can result when this timing is disrupted. Now, new research by Cornell and Dartmouth scientists explains the biological…

New and Exciting in PLoS Community Journals

As always on Fridays, there are new papers published in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Computational Biology. A few picks - but you go and check them all out: Surveillance of Arthropod Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases Using Remote Sensing Techniques: A Review: Kalluri et al. review the status of remote sensing studies of arthropod vectorborne diseases, including simple image classification techniques associating land use and land cover types with vector habitats, and more complex statistical models linking satellite-derived multi-temporal meteorological observations with vector…

My picks from ScienceDaily

St. Bernard Study Shows Human-directed Evolution At Work: The St Bernard dog - named after the 11th century priest Bernard of Menthon - is living proof that evolution does occur, say scientists. Biologists at The University of Manchester say that changes to the shape of the breed's head over the years can only be explained through human-directed evolution through selective breeding, an artificial version of natural selection. Humans And Monkeys Share Machiavellian Intelligence: When it comes to their social behavior, people sometimes act like monkeys, or more specifically, like rhesus…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Marine Biologists)

There are 92 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 95 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). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Peter Etnoyer is 'a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University…

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Once More a Ghost

As many of you undoubtedly know, a short video of what might be an ivory-billed woodpecker was captured in 2004 in an Arkansas swamp. However, further analysis casts more doubt as to the identity of the bird in the footage: the videoed bird appears to flap its wings at 8.6 times per second -- the rate of a pileated woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus. Additionally, Martin Collinson from Aberdeen University, UK, has re-analyzed the footage and says the bird in the pictures appears to have black trailing wing edges rather than the unique white features associated with the ivory-billed woodpecker,…

Vanishing Tropical Glaciers

Located in the Andes Mountains of South America, the Quelccaya Ice Cap is the largest tropical body of ice in the world. According to recent research, one of the glaciers in this ice cap, the Peruvian Qori Kalis (pictured), is rapidly melting and could soon vanish completely, providing the clearest evidence yet for global warming. "I would not be surprised to see half of it disappear in this coming year," said climatologist Lonnie Thompson, from Ohio State University, at the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) annual meeting in San Francisco. Thompson has been studying the Qori Kalis glacier…

Viagra Saves Premature Baby's Life

Born after just 24 weeks of gestation and weighing only 1lb 8oz., Lewis Goodfellow was a premature baby. Worse, one of his lungs failed so he was unable to get enough oxygen into his bloodstream. Things became so dire for this infant that the family began to make funeral arrangements. However, doctors at the Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary in the UK then decided to try an experiment that might save the baby's life: Viagra (Sildenafil). Viagra is more commonly associated with male impotence, but it works by opening up small blood vessels in the body. Doctors hoped it would do the same for…

Blind Snake Rediscovered in Madagascar

Madagascar blind snake, Xenotyphlops mocquardi. A rare blind snake has been rediscovered in Madagascar a century after its last sighting. The snake, which looks like a long, skinny pink worm, was only known from two other specimens, both discovered in 1905. "They're really rare because they're subterranean," said blind-snake expert Van Wallach of Harvard University who described the new specimen. "You can't just go out anytime you want and collect these things. You can dig forever and never find them." Scientists captured the snake, called Xenotyphlops mocquardi, alive in 2005 during an…

Global Warming Data That Required a Global Village

The previous story about global warming has an interesting background story regarding how the data were obtained. Basically, these data (pictured, right) were the result of the 250,000 people around the world helping the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists by downloading their software onto their home computers so they could compute a single simulation of the future. The resulting data predict that temperatures in Britain will be about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer by 2020 than in the 1970s, chosen as the baseline for this project. Since temperatures are already nearly 1 degree…

Big Business Is At It Again

If you haven't read the front page (above the fold) of today's NY Times, well, take a peek: it's a rather long story about Eli Lilly's antipsychotic "wonder drug", Zyprexa (one of the drugs I am supposed to take but often don't because of its excruciating expense). Apparently, it causes nearly 1/3 of its users to gain at least 22 pounds -- with some people gaining over 100 pounds -- after one year of use. Not only that, but it also causes diabetes. According to the story, doctors have been talking about these side effects since 1999 -- where the hell were my doctors when prescribing this drug…

Good news about Daniel Hauser

The boy who was in the news recently for his Hodgkin lymphoma that his family wanted to treat with ineffectual homeopathy and herbs is actually getting better — now that the courts have ordered him to continue the medically functional chemotherapy treatments. He doesn't like chemotherapy, though (and who would?), and there are these interesting rationalizations going on. Daniel Hauser was not at the court hearing but later told The Associated Press he had hoped he would be able to stop chemotherapy, which he said makes him ill. "I get really sick when I do it," the teen said during an…

The Best of June

I posted only 105 times in June. It is summer, and in summer traffic falls, weather is too nice to stay inside, and blogs tend to go on vacation or at least slow down. And I wrote about it in No, blogs are not dead, they are on summer vacation. But this does not mean that this blog was on vacation. Along with a bunch of cool videos and announcements, I wrote several other posts, some garnering quite a lot of commentary, most in some way touching on media, blogging and science journalism. See, for example, Why is some coverage of scientific news in the media very poor? Or Am I A Science…

PRISM: Fighting Against Open Access

tags: PRISM, open access, OA Because you are here and reading this blog, I assume that you value being informed about science and having the opportunity to access original research articles yourself, if you so choose. However, not everyone agrees that providing the public access to this information is important, nevermind that most of this research is paid for by the public with their tax dollars. PRISM, the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine, is a group of scientific and medical activists who are fighting against Open Access (OA) for research articles. They claim…

Leafhopper

tags: Rhododendron Leafhopper, Graphocephala fennahi, Image of the Day I noticed you have been featuring insect images regularly on the blog. [This is] a pic of a Rhododendron Leafhopper, Graphocephala fennahi, that I took yesterday. These are quite common (but small, about 1/4 inch in length) cicadellids in North America, but have also colonized the UK and continental Europe after they were introduced (accidentally) in the UK about 70 years ago. Image: David A. Rintoul, KSU [larger] More about this species below the fold .. Leafhoppers and their relatives, the cicadas, are insects that…

Tulsa, Oklahoma must be paradise

That's what I must conclude from Anna Falling's priorities. She's running for the office of mayor, and her #1 most important issue, the one she's made the centerpiece of her campaign, is to get creationist displays installed in the Tulsa Zoo. For Anna Falling, the road to city hall runs through the Tulsa Zoo.  She's made her Christianity central to her platform and now the exhibit depicting the Christian story of Creationism is her first campaign promise. "Today we are announcing that God will be glorified in this city.  He shall not be shunned. Upon our election, we hereby commit to…

Web Phylogeny of This Blog, May 2006

The "Phylogeny" of Scientific Life. Image: created by Websites as Graphics. KEY: What do these colored dots mean? blue: for links (the A tag) red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags) green: for the DIV tag violet: for images (the IMG tag) yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags) orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags) black: the HTML tag, the root node gray: all other tags After PZ posted the graphical representation of web tags for his blog, I couldn't resist doing the same for my site, especially since this graphic superficially…

Netroots Nation dives into inanity

Netroots Nation, the big lefty political/blogging meeting, is organizing sessions for their conference in August. Unfortunately, they seem have given up on the idea of a secular nation, because this one session on A New Progressive Vision for Church and State has a bizarre description. The old liberal vision of a total separation of religion from politics has been discredited. Despite growing secularization, a secular progressive majority is still impossible, and a new two-part approach is needed--one that first admits that there is no political wall of separation. Voters must be allowed,…

Put your affairs in order, biologists. Your time is nigh!

We only have a month or two left. I have been reminded of a prediction made in the July/August 2004 issue of Touchstone magazine. Brace yourselves. Where is the ID movement going in the next ten years? What new issues will it be exploring, and what new challenges will it be offering Darwinism? Dembski: In the next five years, molecular Darwinism—the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level—will be dead. When that happens, evolutionary biology will experience a crisis of confidence because evolutionary biology hinges on the evolution of…

Hrm, A Gun or an Abortion?

A 22 year-old pregnant woman, who was unable to afford an abortion, carried her fetus to the middle of the third trmester and then shot herself in the belly, killing the fetus. The woman claims she did this because she was impoverished, she already has two children and because her boyfriend was mentally abusive to her. Basically, she felt trapped and diminished to the point where she felt that she had no other options available to her. There is no doubt that this event is both serious and very tragic, but is this woman a criminal? Should she be prosecuted for murder or for illegal abortion…

Is your toothbrush loaded?

So, Santa Cruz is as lovely as ever. Damn. I'll have to browse a real estate brochure to get a sense of perspective back. Interesting thing on the plane out of DC... For some strange reason it is impossible to get a flight out of State College round this time of year, at least for a finite price. So, I drove to DC, in a rainstorm, at 5 in the morning, and the #$^!(() rental car radio was broken. Bastards. Airport security was fun. For real. Guy on the metal detectos was doing a good keep the punters amused stand up routine. Didn't help the lady in front of me who hadn't got the "no fluids"…