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CDC's NIOSH corrects statement about asbestos, a known human carcinogen

Earlier this month, in my post "CDC's NIOSH says WHAT about asbestos???" I reported on the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) new treatise on asbestos, and my dismay with the agency's characterization of the mineral as a "potential occupational carcinogen." NIOSH's current intelligence bulletins are supposed to convey the most up-to-date scientific information on a hazard and risk of harm from exposure to it. All the leading scientific organizations across the globe, including the World Health Organization's IARC and HHS' National Toxicology Program, recognize…

Would fear of losing money get you to the gym?

Gym regulars might grumble when classes and locker rooms fill with resolute new members each January, but the crowds rarely last long. I'm sure many gyms' revenue models depend on members who pay monthly fees but use the facilities infrequently, if at all. These people (and I've been one in the past) are essentially throwing money away by not going to the gym, but that doesn't seem to be enough to get them out of bed and into spinning class at 6am. The rewards of better fitness are much more distant than the allure of another half hour of sleep. The Boston Globe's Susan Johnston reports on a…

Throttled!

Yeesh, not only am I busy at this meeting, but two factors are conspiring to keep me away from the web. The internet service in this hotel is abominable — I've tried both the wireless and wired access, and it's like trying to read the 21st century internet over a 300 baud modem. I tried to edit a few trolls' comments, and while I waited to load the page, I took a shower, walked a mile down the street, got breakfast and coffee, came back, found the maid service had cleaned up the suite (nice!), sat down to the computer, and just then it finished. I suspect the fact that the hotel is packed…

Fatal work injury that killed Kevin Purpura, 39, was preventable, OSHA cites Woda Construction and Sandow Development

Kevin Purpura's work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see OSHA's findings in the agency’s recent citations against Woda Construction and Sandow Development (here and here.) The 39 year-old was working in January 2016 at a loft-style apartment redevelopment project in Wheeling, WV. The initial press reports indicated that Purpura was: "inspecting metal studding surrounding an elevator shaft” when he fell several stories to his death. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred. The (Wheeling, WV) Intelligencer reported that the project developer was the Woda…

Trial of Mining CEO Blankenship: Quotes from Week 8

The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is in its eighth week. Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette continues to provide updates from the courtroom, but far fewer now that most of the action is behind closed doors where the jury is deliberating. Ward explains that Blankenship’s attorneys have yet again asked “the judge to declare the jurors deadlocked and order a mistrial.” Judge Irene Berger disagreed. Ward writes: “Noting that the trial was lengthy and involved complicated charges, Berger said that the jury’s deliberation time to date was not unreasonable. ‘I think…

Two Medieval Ruins

I drove down to Norrköping Thursday morning to look at two small Medieval castle ruins for my new project. The one at Landsjö in Kimstad is difficult to reach because it's on a small island in a lake where nobody keeps a boat. So I had bought one of those big tractor-tyre things (that people tug after their motorboats) and a hand pump, and borrowed a kayak paddle from my dad. Turned out that the textile sheath that forms the floor of the ring I was sitting in was anything but watertight, so my bottom got soaked in 5°C lake water. No matter, I was thrilled to get out to the island, which is…

On My Mind

I've got a lot on my mind. Bronze Age deposition book: visiting some sites on Friday, data collection almost done, have started doing stat analysis and writing interpretations, need to write gazetteer entries while I remember details of how I've managed to pinpoint find spots. Also time to decide what my next project will be! I had hoped that a new place of employment would guide me in this decision. But no. Strategically, I should probably write something about the High Middle Ages or the Early Iron Age now to continue broadening my scope. Can't do Mesolithic, would have to learn to knap…

Swedish Humanities Graduates Face Dim Financial Prospects

I read a recent report from the Swedish Institute of Futures Studies titled Humanisterna och framtidssamhället, "Humanities Scholars and Society in the Future" (freely available as a PDF). I found some but not too much of the usual unrealistic sloganeering about how useful the humanities are to society, and a lot of pretty sobering statistics. In the following note that the typical basic degree in Sweden is the MA. I translate: "… among those with a basic degree as highest qualification, humanities graduates clearly have the lowest annual incomes in 2008 ... Humanities graduates with basic…

Best Reads of 2009 and 2010

Looking for a good book? Here are my best reads in English of the past two years. 2009 The Colour of Magic. Terry Pratchett 1983. Lavishly ornate humorous fantasy. Dancing with strangers. Inga Clendinnen 2003. On contacts between the first English penal colony and the aboriginals at Sydney Cove in 1788-92. On the Origin of Species. Charles Darwin 1859. (Abbreviated version of the 1st edition, ed. J.A. Secord 2008.) Don't miss the appended collection of contemporary reactions! The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Michael Chabon 2000. Two Jewish kids make up a comic-book super hero…

On Moral Relativism

In the context of religion versus atheism. Dear Reader Jason has expressed a need for moral absolutes that is quite common among conservatives. Wrote he, "The bane of atheistic thought based on naturalism is that it cannot account for objective moral absolutes. All that is left is societal ideals and individual preference." "There are two tribes, A and B. Tribe A is composed of hunters and warriors; however, within the community itself they are loving and caring to one another. Tribe is B is composed of farmers and gatherers; they are peaceful and loving to one another. Tribe A decides that…

Golf Ball Autopsy

Not everyone knows what's inside a golf ball. I do. Or I thought I did. When I was a kid a friend of mine taught me how to open golf balls. You need a hacksaw (Sw. bÃ¥gfil) and preferably a vise (Sw. skruvstycke). It's impossible to open them with a knife or wire cutters - you're guaranteed to stab yourself if you try. After removing the dimpled hard white shell, we found a layer of soft black rubber, then tens of meters of tightly rolled-up thin brown rubber band, and at the ball's centre a small limp ampoule of soft black rubber that felt like it contained oil. I don't recall opening that…

Four Years of Blogging

Today is my fourth birthday as a blogger! (Here's my first entry from 2005.) I see myself as the proprietor of and main contributor to a small daily paper on subjects that interest me. And I am enjoying myself! Trafficwise, the mean number of unique readers per day has been as follows. 2006: 157 daily readers 2007: 852 daily readers 2008: 937 daily readers 2009: 714 daily readers (update 3 Jan) These stats might suggest that the blog is ailing, but actually the mean values for '07 and '08 are skewed by huge spikes on a single entry each for those years (here and here). If we looked at the…

All hail the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change

Via a wiki edit (which I rather unkindly sabotaged, though I doubt my version lasts for long) I discover the grandly named "Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change''. DeSmog reports that its thick on the ground at the septic extravaganza. The existence of the "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change" outside SF's mind is uncertain; as indeed is the report: I can certainly find the summary, but the report itself is ellusive, or possibly illusive. The summary, oddly enough, is copyright SEPP, which makes you think it…

Why is climate modelling stuck?

Why is climate modelling stuck? asked mt, and Bryan weighs in too. So I don't see why I shouldn't too. This is no kind of comprehensive list or manifesto, the way mt's is. Just some random thoughts. First of all, there are too many GCMs, and some of them are cr*p, so much so that they should simply be thrown away. I suspect that certain countries simply built them because they wanted "their" model to appear in the IPCC reports. There are 20+ coupled GCMs in IPCC, and we don't need that many. I don't know how many we need - certainly more than one. In fact, I rather suspect that of the total…

The impact on the stability of the Greenland ice sheet as well as on global weather patterns would likely be nearly unimaginable?

I have got complained at for responding to "The impact on the stability of the Greenland ice sheet as well as on global weather patterns would likely be nearly unimaginable" with "...as for the impact on the weather, there is no reason to suppose any problem." This in the context of the recent loss of Arctic sea ice. So maybe its worth discussing a bit. The refs for this are the press release containing a pretty pic that is a bit misleading; the Stroeve et al paper that started it; and my somewhat dismissive take. Stoeve et al get obs trends (for September, ie ice minimum - no-one is…

Polar Bear numbers

Inel drags me into the polar bear wars again by quoting the Heartland Institute: "Real-world evidence shows polar bear numbers are increasing rapidly throughout the Arctic". She offers no evidence against this, which is fair enough as they offer no evidence for it past the bare (geddit?) assertion. So wot is happening to PB numbers? As in, now, not as in, wot might happen in the future. The top google hit for polar bear numbers is Nude Scientist (under myth: Climate myths: Polar bear numbers are increasing). They say "There are thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears in 19…

Aard Turns Five

I began blogging at Blogspot a bit more than six years ago. And five years ago to the day, Aard went live here on Sb! Blogging and the interaction with you, Dear Reader, are a continuing source of daily enjoyment to me. But looking at the surroundings, things sure have changed at Sb in five years, though you can't tell from the site design. Aard is one of the longest-running blogs still active here. These days I feel more like I'm at Blogspot again: works well, no frills, no fraternisation with the neighbours. Sb is no longer a hip well-funded site that attracts big bloggers. We haven't had a…

Sun Horses

Scandinavian Bronze Age art features a number of motifs having to do with the movement of the sun through the heavens during the day and the underworld during the night. Here on Aard, we've previously seen a recently found sun-chariot rock carving, which most likely depicts a wheeled bronze model. But more commonly, there's a horse pulling the sun's disc across the sky without the benefit of wheels. This motif is known from several rock art sites on Sweden's west coast. Awesome rock art surveying team Roger Wikell, Sven Gunnar Broström and Kenneth Ihrestam have recently found the first two…

On My Mind, Sunday

I'm a single dad now for two weeks while my wife's in China shooting interviews for a documentary series. Aard's been getting a lot of comment spam lately, and the filter isn't working properly, so I've turned on comment moderation. After digging in that cave I did four hours of metal detecting at the Lilla Härnevi hoard site because it has been ploughed and harrowed since April when we were there in force. Only one semi-worthwhile metal find: one of those fyrk coins of Queen Christina's. Also two pieces of knapped imported flint, and Magdalena found a grindstone. No hoard bits. I bought…

Swedes Confused About Slugs

All multicellular land species of life in Scandinavia are invasive: the area was covered by kilometres of ice until yesterday, geologically speaking. But some species are more recent invaders than others. Where I live, we currently have three species of large-bodied snail or slug: the Black slug (Arion ater, Sw. svart skogssnigel), the Burgundy snail (Helix pomatia, Sw. vinbergssnäcka) and the Spanish slug, (Arion vulgaris, Sw. spansk skogssnigel). That's the order in which they arrived: the Blacks during prehistory, the Burgundians most likely during the Middle Ages, and the Spaniards from…

Aard T-Shirts? Help Needed!

A company has offered to sponsor Aard with 15-30 free printed t-shirts bearing the design of my choice, delivered to a US address. I'd like to accept their offer, and so I need help from my readers. 1. I need a hi-res design to put on the shirt. I only have the blog's venerable masthead as a lo-res file, and the anonymous artist who made it four years ago doesn't reply to email on their old address. If you want to submit a design, please write me for info on how to go about it. 2. I need a regular commenter based in the US who is willing to take delivery of the t-shirts and send them on to…

Dear readers: I hope you die soon

That's the sentiment Terry of Rapture Ready expressed. Don't believe me? Here's the direct quote: There are two important statistics to note: 1. Each month about 160,000 people visit Rapture Ready. 2. Every year, the mortality rate claims around 1 percent of the population. Internet usage by the elderly is somewhat lower than that of the general population, but it still means that hundreds of you people who are reading this right now will not be here the same time next year. For you folks who become part of the mortality figures in the coming days, I commission you with the same task:…

No Sign of Cleopatra

I suddenly have this unaccountable urge to comment on the current issue of National Geographic Magazine. Maybe that isn't so strange. I mean, after all, I like reading the mag and I'm on record as saying, in the Swedish Skeptics quarterly no less, that my ideal museum exhibition would be a 3D version of a Nat Geo feature story. Though I wonder if that's the only reason. Well, anyway: Nat Geo covers quite a bit of archaeology, usually of the same Great Civilisations and Opulently Furnished Tombs of Antiquity kind that we meet with in more specialised international pop-archaeomags such as…

Hurricanes and AIT, again

Prompted by the proofs of my review of AIT for Met Apps (oh, the fame!) I looked at the site again and found The Science. What they list there is very thin and with no useful links. I would have hoped for something better. Anyway, their first point is "The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years." and they source this to Emanuel, K. 2005. Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature 436: 686-688. Now E does say This combined PDI has nearly doubled over the past 30 yr, but never uses the word "category". And this is not…

DeSmog Leaks Advance Copy of Think Tank's IPCC Attack

DeSmog Leaks Advance Copy of Think Tank's IPCC Attack it says, and it is so. Presumptuously it calls itself the Independent SPM, but I think Septics SPM is more appropriate. Wot they have done is to draw up their own fantasy list of conclusions they would like the AR4 to make, based on the April 2006 IPCC draft. Anyway, now this thing has been leaked everyone will comment. Including me. First off, they are trying to puff their piece as written by "fully qualified experts" as opposed to the IPCC faceless bureaucrats, nicely forgetting that the IPCC is written by the scientists. As if to…

Has climate science converged (enough)?

Nude Scientist (thanks Eli) has a feature on wot bits of AR4 will be controversial. Which I think is a bit premature and maybe a bit silly too, but I guess they have to write something in the absence of a quotable draft. Anyway, the bit that stuck out to me was: Michaels has analysed publications by climate scientists in the journals Nature and Science between mid-2005 and mid-2006. He found 115 articles of which 83 said that the likely impact of the greenhouse effect was going to be worse than previously suggested, 23 saw no change and only 9 said that things were not as bad as previously…

Weird stuff from Pielke and Wunsch

RP Sr joins the ranks of people telling us its been hot/cold somewhere on earth in some month, but more interestingly points to an essay by Carl Wunsch. Its one of a series, by various worthies, including TIm Palmer. I'm not quite sure what the point is, though... they don't seem to be much good... if you want to know about GE, youre better off with the wikipedia article. Wunschs article is particularly stupid (yes I know he's a great man, that doesn't mean he doesn't say stupid things on occaision) that (I paraphrase) concludes that since the ice ages caused big changes in the past we…

Talking animals with more sense

The German Family Ministry (does anyone know if inclusion of the word "family" in an organization title is as ominous auf Deutsch as it is in English?) wants to ban a children's book. The book is about two little animals on a pilgrimage to find god, and in the end they don't find him anywhere, and conclude that they haven't been missing anything. There's a good reason to ban it, I'm sure… "The three large religions of the world, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, are slurred in the book," the ministry wrote in a December memo. "The distinctive characteristics of each religion are made…

Consensus or Collusion?

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: More and more the models share all the same assumptions, so of course they all agree! And every year fewer scientists dare to speak out against the findings of the IPCC, this is a clear indication of the pressure there is to conform. Answer: The improving agreement of model results and the increasingly similar physical representations of the climate system from model to model may well look like just sharing code, or tweaking til things…

Democratic Hypocrisy on Foley

I really must be getting old because my memory seems to be getting worse. I can't believe I didn't remember the Gerry Studds scandal, especially since the congressmen and bookmarks joke that I told the other day I first heard in the wake of that scandal (I was in high school at the time and taking part in our state's Student Congress as a senator). I knew that there was a scandal way back when involving a legislator and a page, but had forgotten all of the details until last night when I saw a mention of it that jogged my memory. But it's important to recall those details because it shows…

Greetings, fellow Slime-Snake-Monkey-Mutants!

There is this fellow, Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., who claims that the tales of the Bible are verified by ancient Greek art — ho-hum, the usual confirmation bias and failure to recognize that the existence of common motifs in Western mythology does not imply the reality of a supernatural interpretation — who has gone further and urges the use of shaming insults against "Darwinists": To shock the Darwinists out of their denial of the overwhelming evidence in Greek art for the reality of Genesis events, the author urges Creationists to refer to evolutionists as what they imagine they are--"Slime-…

Frist Officially Off the Deep End

I didn't think i could get any angrier about the Republicans' zeal to ban internet gambling; I was wrong. Now Bill Frist is trying to get that ban passed as part of a defense authorization bill so that it can't be voted against: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is trying use a bill authorizing U.S. military operations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, to prohibit people from using credit cards to settle Internet gambling debts. Frist, R-Tenn., and his aides have been meeting with other lawmakers and officials in both the House and Senate to get the measure attached to a compromise Defense…

9/11: Remember the Scapegoating

Today is, of course, the 5th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centers. While we are remembering how that day made us feel - and it's a day etched in my memory in extraordinary detail - let us also keep in mind that some of the most influential religious right leaders immediately tried to put the blame on everyone they hate. Here's Jerry Falwell on the 700 Club speaking to Pat Robertson on September 13th: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the…

Another Anti-Gay Free Speech Case

As much as I hate to agree with the Alliance Defense Fund, I am forced to once again. They have filed suit in North Carolina over a high school refusing to allow a student to hand out religious literature to his fellow students regarding homosexuality. According to the complaint, the school allowed students to hand out literature promoting the Day of Silence, a yearly event in which students stay silent for the day to protest anti-gay bigotry. But when Benjamin Arthurs tried to hand out literature promoting the Day of Truth, the religious right's answer to the previous event, he was told he…

War on Christmas: Here's What Sets Them Off

I swear, by the time Christmas gets here I'm gonna be on a clock tower with a high powered rifle if this crap keeps up. The Worldnutdaily has this report on Sam's Club and their horribly offensive "holiday" advertising. The American Family Association threw a hissy fit because Sam's Club's in-house magazine had an ad that used the word "holidays" instead of Christmas. They launched a huge campaign against it: The company's August/September issue included one page of Christmas items, but they were listed as "holiday" items instead, according to the AFA's Randy Sharp, who told WorldNetDaily the…

Good Ol' Church/State Hypocrisy

One of the arguments I frequently make when the religious right defends some instance where the government is providing tax funds to support a Christian religious exercise or giving Christians exclusive access to government property is that if you changed the religion being supported to Islam instead of Christianity, most of the arguments they use to defend such displays would quickly become totally unconvincing to them. As long as it's Christianity being supported and endorsed, they're fine with it. Let a judge put up a 4000 pound monument to the Quran in a courthouse, or let a school try…

Krauss on Scientifically Illiterate School Boards

Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and astronomer from Case Western Reserve University, has an excellent essay in the New York Times yesterday about attempts to weaken science education by school boards with absolutely no understanding of science. He points to Kansas and the fact that the members of the state board of education pushing to change the science standards were utterly ignorant of the very subjects they were attempting to legislate on: The chairman of the school board, Dr. Steve Abrams, a veterinarian, is not merely a strict creationist. He has openly stated that he believes that God…

ABC News Story on Bleu Copas

Bleu Copas is the latest in a long line of arabic-speaking military personnel - something we have an enormous shortage of - to be discharged for being gay. ABC News covered his story, and the video can be viewed here. He makes a very important point. At a time when the military has been scrambling to find enough people who speak Arabic to keep up with the flow of intelligence information that needs translating, an astonishing 55 American soldiers with Arabic language skills have been discharged solely because they're gay. It all points out some undeniable hypocrisy on the part of the anti-gay…

Gay Marriage Improves Straight Marriages?

No, not really. But it's at least as plausible as the absolutely ridiculous argument from the religious right that gay marriage will "destroy traditional marriage". And the evidence, minimal as it is, at least points to a correlation at this point. Massachusetts has now had gay marriage for two years. What has happened to straight marriage in that state since then? Talk To Action has the story: the divorce rate has dropped. That isn't big news. Massachusetts has the nation's lowest divorce rate and the divorce rate has been going down nationally for two decades. But how about this trend:…

Ralph Reed's Finger Pointing

I find this really funny. Ralph Reed is blaming John McCain for his loss in the primaries in the race to be Lt. Governor of Georgia, according to National Review: Here's the view of what happened from the Reed camp: Once the Abramoff stuff exploded, it was going to be a very tough road for Reed. Glen Bolger did a poll for the campaign in January showing that it was possible for Reed to win, but his negatives were very high and he would have to squeak by. Reed had a choice to make, and decided to stay in the race and try to make it happen. In the end, soft Republicans appear to have broken…

Lists of Dissenting Scientists

The DI loves to put out lists of scientists who "dissent from Darwinism". Because such lists make no actual arguments, they are pure appeals to authority. That authority is often misplaced, of course, since a large percentage of those on the list have no more training in the relevant fields (fields where evolutionary theory is involved) than a non-scientist would have. According to the NSF, there are 543,580 scientists in the US (that doesn't include engineers). Which means that even if we grant them all of the engineers and all of the scientists with no training at all in evolutionary…

Pim Van Meurs on the Design Inference

Pim Van Meurs has an excellent post at the Panda's Thumb that looks at Dembski's design inference and why it is really nothing more than a "god of the gaps" argument, contrary to the common claims of ID proponents that there is a positive way to detect design: Okay, let's start with how ID tries to infer design, namely by using the Design Inference. In order for something to be designed, it needs to be 'specified' and sufficiently 'complex'. So what is really meant by these terms? Specification basically means that there exists an independent description of the event or system, and as Dembski…

Genre Follow-Up

Technorati reveals a bunch of responses to my weekend post on genre fiction, and I wanted to at least note a few of them here. Over at Brad DeLong's, he highlights my comments about story pacing, which sparked some interesting comments. A number of people object that books and movies are too long these days, compared to the past. While there's no denying that many books have swelled, I think that's sort of orthogonal to the sort of pace I was talking about-- you may or may not think that the action advances the plot quickly enough, but there's more happening at any given moment in most modern…

Proud prudes of America

Sometimes you just have to shake your head at the indignant, smug prudes who want to control what you read. Here's a story of a young lady who wants to dictate what her peers are allowed to see. Lysa Harding, 15, couldn't believe the sexually charged prose of the novel she checked out from the library at Brookwood High School. Her grandmother was offended, too. Now they're refusing to return the book, "Sandpiper" by Ellen Wittlinger, saying other teens shouldn't be exposed to it. She read it, her grandmother read it, but you better not read it … because it's about teenagers having sex (never…

Bored by the Landscape

The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy/ theory side, is the Strings 2006 meeting in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the SUSY06 meeting, which was extensively blogged by Clifford and others. This would probably be a good time to post a long entry about how string theory is all a bunch of crap, as that's been a reliable way to generate traffic in the past, but I just don't really have the heart for it. From my outsider's perspective, the big issues seem to be exactly the same…

World Cup Update

I was awakened rather too early yesterday by the dog, so wound up dozing on the couch for a lot of the Portugal-Iran game. Which was pretty doze-worthy, actually-- Portugal approached the game sort of like an NBA team, and played eleven loosely connected games of one-on-one, and while Iran was game, they just didn't quite have the players to keep up. We had a bunch of shopping to do in the middle part of the day, so I missed Ghana's stunning upset of the Czech Republic, but we did make it home in time to see the entire USA-Italy game. The US team played with a lot more energy than they showed…

World Cup Update

Between graduation yesterday and a trip to Williamstown Saturday (to see the Clark brothers exhibit, which was very cool), I didn't actually get to watch much soccer over the weekend. I caught most of the second half of the ancestral homeland's humiliating loss to Ecuador, and most of England's one-nil victory over Paraguay (though not the actual goal). Scattered thoughts below the fold: Boy, do American soccer announcers suck. The guys doing the England game for ESPN were just dull. In contrast, the YooKaydain team they had for Poland-Ecuador (One English, one Irish) was a hoot. At one point…

Two Cultures in Meetings

Prompted in part by Rob Knop's post on meeting with humanists, an observation about the nature of academia attributed to our late Dean of the Faculty, a former Classics professor: The key difference between disciplines in terms of administrative business on campus is that scientists tend to do their research work (experiments, calculations, simulations) in on-campus labs and offices, while humanities faculty do their research work (reading, writing, and thinking) at home. This means that humanists only come to campus in order to teach classes and socialize with colleagues, while scientists…

Let the Games Begin

Classes start today for our Spring trimester, which is both the home stretch, and one of the most brutal academic death marches in the business-- we wind up running into June every year (last day of finals is June 7), well after most colleges are out of session. By the end of the term, the weather is nice, the students are cranky (because the weather is nice, and their friends at other school are all out), the faculty are cranky (because the weather is nice, the students are cranky, and their friends at other schools are all out), and everybody's sort of tip-toeing around, because the whole…

The String Theory of Other Sciences

I realized the other day that since moving to ScienceBlogs, I'm turning into John Scalzi (Does my new body have a brand name?), what with all the posting of cute images (and spending an inordinate amount of time taking pictures with an eye toward posting them), and assigning other bloggers homework. If I had a novel, I'd put it on the web, and make millions! Or something. Anyway, it's nice to have at least one of those things turned around on me: RPM at evolgen is asking for the "string theory" of other sciences: the most controversial and possibly overhyped fields of study. RPM has obviously…