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Words & Music from a Pioneer of Fear, Joe LeDoux

For those in or near NYC, a notable event: Fear researcher Joseph LeDoux, whom I profiled a while back in Scientific American Mind, will lecture about fear -- and then, fearlessly, play with his R&R band, 'The Amygdaloids.' (The amygdala is the brain's fear center.) I can't make it, much to my chagrin, but having met LeDoux -- who is highly enjoyable company and has done Nobel-Prize-level work defining fear's neuralogical pathways -- I know this will be a highly fascinating, fun, and funny evening. at the NY Academy of Sciences 7 World Trade Center (250 Greenwich St @ Barclay), 40th…

Political Analysis via HTML

Gotta love this. The geeky (but attractive) blog Radio Bantik: Days in the Life of an Alpha Geek, runs a comparative politico-coding analysis of the  website engineering behind the McCain and Obama websites. Great stuff, brought to my attention by the Columbia Journalism review.  I spent some time this morning examining the technology policies of Barack Obama and John McCain. Policies aside, I was immediately struck by the differences between their web sites. So what do the two sites say about the candidates? Two Different Platforms The candidates’ platforms could not be more different:…

Drugs R Us: More Rx drugs found in water supply

Quite bizarre. No evidence one way or another whether (or how) this might actually affect us. But it's an odd thing to ponder. Via Furious Seasons, I'll just let him deliver it: September 12, 2008 The AP Finds Even More Pharma Products In America's Water Supply Back in March, the AP's investigative unit uncovered the fact that the water supplies of many American cities contained small amounts of pharmaceutcials, including hormones and mood stabilizers. Now, the AP has uncovered even more medications in urban water supplies, adding 17 more big cities to its list (for example, Reno, Nev.,…

From Wall St Journal: "Employers Pick Workersâ Pockets on Health Insurance"

Why aren't your wages going up? Maybe because you're the one paying for the health insurance your boss is supposedly paying for. That's the gist of a new commentary in JAMA, which I'd missed till the Health Blog at the Wall Street Journal brought it to my attention: "Who Really Pays for Health Care?," the recent commentary by bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and economist Victor Fuchs,  argues that employer-provided health care is not as valuable a benefit as it is cracked up to be because employers basically pull it from pay raises employees would get otherwise. The result, the article says, is…

Spills of War

It's good to see NASA hasn't completely abandoned its mandate to look after the home planet. As its Earth Observatory notes: Among the casualties of the conflict between Lebanon and Israel in the summer of 2006 was the Mediterranean. Israeli raids in mid-July on the Jiyyeh Power Station released thousands of tons of oil along the Lebanese coast, perhaps rivaling the Exxon Valdex accident in 1989. By August 8, the spill covered approximately 120 kilometers (75 miles). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying onboard NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture on August 15…

Science Grad Student/Blogger On Twitter? Add Yourself To The List! #scio12

So, as you might have seen from the picture, I crashed PZ Myers' recent talk at the Society for Developmental Biology. He said a lot of good things - about science communication and the need to make a more direct connection between scientists and the general public, among other things. But the one thing really stuck with me was his direct call out for scientists to blog and tweet. I feel the exact same way, but moreover, I think graduate students need to take on the challenge. Why grad students? Well, a number of reasons. For one, let's be honest: our generation is just more tech savvy than…

Pearl & Hermes

For the past five days, I have been snorkeling and diving at Pearl & Hermes Atoll. P & H is one of the prettiest places I have ever been - stunning, vibrant reefs, calm, blue waters - the works. It's stupid pretty. The atoll has the highest standing stock of fish and the highest number of fish species in the entire Northwest Hawaiian Islands - and you can tell the minute you're in the water. It's an atoll in the truest sense, in that most of it is underwater, with only a handful of small, sandy islands fringing its edges. While the reef covers over 194,000 acres, only 80 of that is…

Weekly Dose of Cute: Baby Tern

The Hawaiian archipelago has a lot of amazing and adorable creatures. Here's a great shot of a baby white tern, or Manu-o-ku, c/o my lab mate Tonatiuh. It was taken by National Geographic explorers in 2005 while they were in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.When people think of Hawaii, they think of the 8 main islands where people live, but the archipelago stretches another 1,200 miles and includes many islands and atolls with vibrant coral reefs and amazing wildlife. This area is so special it's practically off limits to everyone but scientists, protected by NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary…

Travel Channel's Steppin' Up!

Ok, so Nat Geo got it all started by putting Parasites in their "In the Womb" series. Then Animal Planet jumped on board with "Monsters Inside Me". Now I get to get all gushy about the Travel Channel, and not just for awesome specials on places I wish I could vacation in. Their new series, "Bite Me with Dr Mike," features a lot of my little friends that you all know I just can't get enough of. Meet Dr. Mike (on the right, and here's his blog), aka a man clearly trying to compete with Barry as captor of my heart. He's a virologist with a PhD from Oxford, but even better, he's got a passion for…

Meet Chris Mooney on Sunday

As Bora has posted, the NC Triangle area is about to be paid a visit by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, Seed Magazine Washington correspondent, and ScienceBlogger at The Intersection. The book signing and lecture events are below but I wanted to invite local folks to a meet-up to talk with Chris on Sunday afternoon at 1 pm at Tyler's Taproom in Durham's American Tobacco Historic District. We'll be milling around the bar area until we have a good enough group to be seated (I couldn't afford the $100/hour to reserve their side room). I suspect that we'll be there until…

Misconceptions on herbs and cancer

Curcumin has been much in the news as of late as considerable cell culture data has been suggestive of the compound's utility in cancer prevention and cancer treatment. The impetus for me speaking on this has been the recent report by my ScienceBlogs.com colleague, Razib, at Gene Expression. Unfortunately, the story of curcumin has been clouded by overly aggressive attempts by marketers to manipulate in vitro, or Petri dish, cell culture studies with human consumption. Some very outstanding scientists have been working on the anticancer effects of this herb, but it seems that their efforts…

Triangle Bloggers Barbecued???

A Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey, writes in and says, Dear Roseanne Roseannadanna, I just read of some bizarre Southern ritual whereby Durham-Chapel Hill-RTP bloggers are meeting this coming Friday for a barbecue. What have Triangle bloggers done to anyone such that they should be barbecued?? The ones here at ScienceBlogs.com seem nice enough, but even getting past the horror of the thought, that Coturnix would need a little more meat on his bones to be considered even remotely tasty. Sincerely, Richard Feder Ft. Lee, NJ Well, Mr. Feder, you've got it all wrong. It seems that…

Breast cancer research loses a major leader

Is it me or does anyone else feel like Terra Sigillata is becoming ScienceBlogs.com-version of the obituaries section of your local newspaper? This just in from the NCI Cancer Bulletin: Dr. Robert B. Dickson Dies at 54 Former NCI investigator Dr. Robert B. Dickson died on June 24, in Kensington, Md., at the age of 54. He was considered one of the world's leading researchers in breast cancer. Dr. Dickson began his career in 1980 in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of NCI's Center for Cancer Research (CCR), where he was the first scientist to discover the link between estrogen and breast…

Happy Blogiversary to the Grand Poobah

Yesterday, Matt over at Pooflingers Anonymous celebrated his one-year blogiversary. (Question: should it really be "anniblogary" to reflect the Latin, annum?). To understand the nature and concept of poo-flinging, I direct you to his mission statement. When I first began reading blogs, I was truly astonished, but not surprised, at the amount of uncritical and unscientific blather being espoused by deniers of evolution and medicine, as just two examples. It was through people like Matt, Skeptico, Prometheus, and my current SiBling, Orac, that I first learned how the battle against irrational…

Michael Steele Clearly Doesn't Get The Meaning of "Minority Party"

As a blogger, I've got to say that I love Michael Steele. All I have to do when I'm having a hard time trying to find something to write about is pop over to Google News and type his name into the box. (I don't have a news alert set for him because I don't want to be overwhelmed with material.) Today's source of inspriation comes from an op-ed Steele wrote for yesterday's Politico. It started on a note that almost made me feel a faint glimmer of hope that the GOP just might possibly be starting to figure out how to begin to start playing a constructive role in national politics: The…

Where's the outrage?

As of when I'm writing this post, a Google News search for the words "Inhofe" and "treason" returns no hits. When I search on "Inhofe" and "sedition", I get the same results. That's also true for a search on the milder combination of "Inhofe" and "inappropriate". What the hell is going on here? I realize this is old news, but one week ago yesterday, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) issued a press release and the YouTube video embedded below. I don't understand why I'm not seeing any outrage. Just in case you're audio was malfunctioning, or you just didn't believe your ears, those helicopters…

Non-breeding behavior must be punished

Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya has called for the arrest of all gay couples in the country. He's probably been listening to the American Christian evangelicals who've been busily poisoning Africa for the last century or so — the West has been such a blight on that continent for so long. Anyway, what's interesting is his rationale for outlawing gays — anti-gay ideology goes hand-in-hand with a dismissive view of women. The premier thrilled the crowd in a largely conservative country when he asserted that the country's recent census showed there were more women than men and there was no…

Breast Cancer, Genetic Testing, and Public Policy

There's a wonderful three-part interview with Shobita Parthasarathy, author of Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care , over at The World's Fair. The interview is broken up into three parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Here's an excerpt from Part 1 to get your mouth watering: WF: What's your argument? SP: I argue that the influence of national context is felt far beyond public policy and political debate to the level of practice, fundamentally influencing human genome science and technology. Through a comparison of how genetic testing…

Two-Year Blogiversary

Two years ago today I wrote my very first blog entry, which wasn't terribly interesting, but I did invite readers to listen to me rant about gender equity in engineering and science; Intelligent Design, the Christian Right, and the inadequate response of the scientific community; what's lacking in feminist critiques of science; and anything else that gets me riled. How do I live up to my original promise? I do a pretty good job with the ranting business and anything else that gets me riled, I think. I write much less about Intelligent Design than I did in the early days of the blog,…

Eleanor Baum Joins National Women's Hall of Fame

The Spring 2007 issue of SWE Magazine has an article on the newest inductees into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Among them is Eleanor Baum, the fifth SWE member to be so honored. The others are Lillian Moller Gilbreth, Beatrice Hicks, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, and Sheila Widnall. Baum is currently dean of engineering at Cooper Union. You could while away some pleasant time just browsing among the list of members of the Hall of Fame. Baum was nominated for the Hall of Fame by Jill Tietjen, a past-president of SWE. Jill has a distinguished career as an engineer and is the…

Hooray for Global Warming by James S. Robbins - A Synopsis

Possessing, as I do, numerous credentials that allow me to pontificate in an authoritative fashion** upon the significance, meaning, and import of global warming, I, James S. Robbins, am here to tell you the truth. Who gives a rat's ass about global warming? We here in the U.S., and our neighbors in Canada, will be just fine, and really, who else counts? I mean, if you don't care about massive species extinctions, and the disappearance of entire island nations, there's really not a whole lot else to worry about. You lose a little shoreline here, you gain a little over there. We'll bulid…

Do you believe in evolution?

Asks MSNBC's Chris Matthews of the GOP's Mike Pence. The latter dances around it, trying to avoid asserting what science knows to be true, but this raises an interesting problem: does one have to "believe" in evolution? I mean it's a physical process (the "fact" side) which has a number of explanatory models (the "theory" side). I don't believe in facts; I deal with them. And I don't believe in explanations; I am satisfied with them (or not, as the case may be). This is not about belief, which implies that acceptance of the satisfactory nature of evolutionary explanations is somehow…

Deploying the Injured and Breaking the Army.

Via today's Daily Kos Cheers and Jeers, I learned about a story in yesterday's Denver Post that details allegations that the Army is deploying troops who should be left at home (I missed Olbermann's take on it last night). According to the article, commanders are deploying soldiers who don't meet basic medical standards. The article focuses on a couple of cases, with one - the case of Master Sgt. Denny Nelson - getting the most attention. Master Sgt Nelson suffered a serious injury to his foot prior to deployment, and was not supposed to run, jump, or lift more than 20 pounds. That's a bit…

Tropical Cyclone Sidr: How Bad Will This Be?

You wouldn't necessarily know it from looking at most major American news sources, but there's a massive tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal right now, and it's heading right for one of the most vulnerable areas on the planet. If the most recent storm track predictions are accurate, the eye of the storm will most likely make landfall somewhere between Calcutta and the mouth of the main channel of the Ganges. Currently, the most optimistic forecasts suggest that the wind speeds at landfall will be in the neighborhood of 115 knots (132 mph) - and there's some data suggesting that it could be…

I get email

Some of the email I get is simply crackpots trying to give me information. I received a lovely example this morning, and since he wants to share, I'm willing to help him. Dear Dr. Myers, When God said He stretched out the Heavens in the Old Testament, and will fold them back again in the New Testament, He was using Hebrew and Greek to explain Planetary Orbital Jumping. Our four gas giants behave like electrons in that they can pivot in relation to each other. Jupiter will soon migrate back to it's original orbit farther from the Sun as the other three gas giants return to their original…

It's the hypocrisy, stupid.

The answer: massive, monumental, unashamed, unadulterated hypocrisy. The question: name one reason that Congress has an approval rating that's rapidly heading for negative numbers. It's the flipping hypocrisy. It's huge, its taken over the joint, and its on both sides of the aisle. I'm ranting, if you haven't guessed already, about last night's antics in the Senate. The "we're going to stay up all night to show how naughty the Republicans are being" stunt. It's not like we haven't seen it before - the Republicans did exactly the same thing in 2003 to show how bad the Democrats were for…

More "Tonya Harding" Legal Tactics from the Administration

It looks like the administration is continuing to use one of their favorite tactics in the war on terror - handicap the defense by intimidating their lawyers before they get into the courtroom. Ed Brayton calls this the "Tonya Harding strategy," and he's right - the government wants to win, and they're not above putting a cheap hit in if they think it'll increase their chances. Earlier this year, a senior pentagon official publicly suggested that companies should boycott law firms that provide pro bono defense to Gitmo detainees. That particular escapade did nothing for them. It outraged (…

How Green is Mary Jane?

It's 4:20. Do you know what's happening in your National Parks? If you listened to Morning Edition yesterday, you know exactly what I'm about to talk about: the environmental damage that pot farms have been causing in our national parks. The problem is actually pretty simple: cannabis cultivation typically doesn't fit the certification guidelines of the National Organic Standards Board. To put it another way, ganja isn't a green crop. Pot is a big business cash crop. It's also a crop that really can't be grown in large wide-open fields. Anyone who wants to make a big profit growing…

In praise of scientific ignorance - Claude Bernard

"I support ignorance. There is my philosophy. I have the tranquility of ignorance and faith in science. Others cannot live without faith, without belief, without theology [or theory - the original is smudged. JSW]; I do without all of these. I do not know, and I shall never know; I accept this fact without tormenting myself about it." [Stebbins, p 135f] The French is this (can anyone translate the final sentence for me?): Je supporte l’ignorance: c’est là ma philosophie. J’ai la tranquillité de l’ignorance et la foi de la science. Les autres ne peuvent vivre sans foi, sans croyance,…

On the death penalty

Shelley of Retrospectacle has asked us: Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty? I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty. No government has, in my opinion, a right to cold bloodedly take a citizen's or visitor's life under rule of law. While I believe it also fails to act as a deterrent, and makes permanent any miscarriages of justice (of which there are plenty, ranging from prejudice against stereotypes to outright falsifying of evidence…

An exotic mix

One of the pitfalls of blogging is that you can go for days without finding anything worth saying, and then get a bunch of things worth noting all at once. Today is such a day. So here is a heterogeneous collection of links and topics for your delectation (I love that word, and "heterogeneous"): 1. The AAAS has released a book called The Evolution Dialogues, which addresses the relation between Christian theology and science, with a study guide to come. More power to Christians, I say, if it helps them understand the actual science. 2. Here is a release about the loss of retrocyclin, a…

My picks from ResearchBlogging.org

In case you missed them, here are the posts I chose as "Editor's Selections" yesterday for ResearchBlogging.org. The amazing malleability of our body image. Volunteers felt real pain watching someone hurt a fake hand. Can we use EEG to predict whether an antidepressant will be effective? Maybe, but only if researchers are allowed to test the proprietary "magic numbers" What's your brain doing during a lucid dream? William Lu discusses a recent study, and links to a page describing how to induce your own lucid dreams. Finally, I think I wrote a pretty good post last week too. Decide for…

Who should be president?

And why would an Australian care? It's another country, so what business is it of mine? Well, apart from the fact that whoever is US president affects the rest of the world (and historically the best party for Australian benefit is Republican, as their anti-protectionism tends to help Australian exports), there's the fact that a good many of my friends are American. But that isn't it. Nor is it the Iraq farce, the cronyism, the corruption, or the belief that somehow a Democratic president will magically return America to the right path. It's simply this: America and the rest of the world…

Speaking scientific factiness to power

When the Republicans began their deconstruction of American democracy, under Newt Gingrich, one of the immediate targets was the emasculation of the Office of Technology Assessment. Since that time, the Republicans have mangled, misused and rhetorically denied any science that failed to fit their self-interests or those of their sponsors, as Chris Mooney detailed in his magisterial The Republican War on Science. There's an old saying - you are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. If there is nobody telling American legislators what the facts are, they seem…

Now this is a proper wedding ceremony

I only recently discovered 9 Chickwood Lane, which is a really odd cartoon strip with ballet dancers, veterinarians and a visiting space alien named Thorax. Before I found this (and Pibgorn, which is in the same universe), Thorax officated at the marriage of two of the characters. Being an alien, he delivered this ceremony, which beats hollow any other service I have ever read: Nearly beloved, we are tethered to gather here in the light of Sod, and in the essence of this prolongation, to join this womb and this mammon in hounds of moley batrimony. This is an oily estate, and fairthore not…

Thom Yorke at it again - another science related song makes the top of the Billboard Charts

Well, I have to say that this radiohead fellow has me quite impressed. Not only did his band, Radiohead, at one point, propel a song about human cloning to the #1 Billboard Chart spot (no mean feat), but now, he's bringing his eerily and hauntingly beautiful musical prowess to the debate surrounding global warming. This time, it's a solo effort, an in between project, called "The Eraser," which I just picked up. When pressed about the content and perhaps most notably the album art, he's quoted as saying: In the paper one day, [Friends of the Earth activist] Jonathan Porritt was basically…

It's a lucky thing for stem-cell research that the following passages aren't in the bible.

Looks like an appropriate time to put this one up on the blog. I have to say that this was the one of the easiest pieces I've ever written. It's also the only one that got published at McSweeney's with no additional editing whatsoever. - - - IT'S A LUCKY THING FOR STEM-CELL RESEARCH THAT THE FOLLOWING PASSAGES AREN'T IN THE BIBLE. The petri plate is the work of Satan. How does God know what a petri plate is in this ancient time before the advent of scientific achievement? It is because he's God, which is really handy for that sort of thing. Go forth my children and use the word "embryo"…

Medics in Libya's Trial Postponed (Again)

The trial for 6 medics in Tripoli who are being tried for infecting children with AIDS (and from what can be gathered were falsely accused) has been postoned til the end of October: The retrial of six foreign medics facing a possible death penalty on charges they infected hundreds of Libyan children with the AIDS virus was adjourned on Thursday after a defense lawyer failed to show up in court. "The trial was postponed until October 31," said the court President Mahmoud Haouissa, citing the absence of leading defense lawyer Othmane Bizanti. The six medics have been detained since 1999. A…

A conversion story

Here is a sad, sad story: it's the tale of Michael Glatze. He was a gay man, a gay activist, someone who supported and helped gay kids. Now he's straight and crusades for gay conversion therapies. How, you might wonder, did that happen? You won't be surprised to learn that it was that potent combination of fear and the Bible. Michael didn't begin to question his life path, he told me, until a health scare in 2004 that led to what he calls his "spiritual awakening." That year, when Michael was 29, he experienced a series of heart palpitations and became convinced that he suffered from the same…

Shameless Self Promotion: OLIG2 is a schizophrenia susceptibility gene

OK, so I am not actually on this paper, but my boss is. It is also what I am doing my thesis on, so I thought I might mention it. The article is entitled "Convergent evidence that oligodendrocyte lineage transcription factor 2 (OLIG2) and interacting genes influence susceptibility to schizophrenia" and was published in the August 4th issue of PNAS. For many years all the work on schizophrenia focused on the dopamine system -- I think this is largely because dopamine-affecting drugs are used to treat it. There was also a great deal of interest in other transmitters such as glutamate, in part…

There is a manatee in the Hudson

There is a manatee in the Hudson; which is interesting because I had always associated the Hudson with industrial waste, bad smells, the periodic dead person, and kayakers who seem to have no problem floating amongst those things: Over the past week, boaters and bloggers have been energetically tracking a manatee in its lumbering expedition along the Atlantic Coast and up the Hudson River. John H. Vargo, the publisher of Boating on the Hudson magazine, put out an alert last week, much to the incredulity of some boaters. "Some were laughing about it, because it couldn't possibly be true," Mr.…

Scientist to Men: Don't sleep over

Muahaha. It has now been proven that men should not sleep over: If you have ever thought you were stupid to sleep with someone, consider this. Sharing your bed could actually make you stupid if you are a man - at least temporarily. Even without having sex, bed sharing disturbs sleep quality, say Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria. The team recruited eight unmarried, childless couples, and used questionnaires and a wrist activity monitor, an "actigraph", to assess sleep patterns after 10 nights together and 10 apart. Men and women fared differently. While…

The Western Blot Gods are Angry with Me

I am doing Western blots today, and none of them are working. For those of you who do not know what a Western blot is, a Western blot is a technique to detect proteins in a sample of cell lysates. First the proteins are purified. Then the protein in the sample are suspended in loading buffer that contains a detergent called SDS and boiled. This denatures the proteins and coats them in a negative charge (SDS is negative). The proteins are then separated by weight in an electric field (bigger proteins move more slowly through the gel) and transferred to a sticky membrane. Finally the…

Ask a Scienceblogger: Anti-smoking campaign is one of science policy's greatest successes

This weeks Ask a Scienceblogger is: What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy? I don't know if this is unsung but it bears repeating because it is truly a triumph of science over those who would prefer the research had not been done. In 1964, the Surgeon General released the Surgeon General Report: Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking representing one of the first of the US governments comprehensive strategies to reduce smoking. The report occured in the teeth of public opinion and industry lobbying. Periodic updates have been…

More developments on internet filtering: the religious connection

As I feared, the internet filtering issue has now been taken up by special interests. The conservative Christian political party Family First, run largely by the Hillsong evangelical denomination, has one senator, but the balance of power is so tight they wield disproportionate power, and as PM Kevin Rudd and several of his cabinet colleagues are themselves religious, the FF interests are likely to be pandered to, as they were by the conservative Howard government. Senator Steve Fielding wants the filtering to include pornography and gambling, both of which are legal for adults in Australia…

Pfizer sales force cuts

One of PharmMom's first jobs, before or around the time I was born, was as secretary for a Pfizer drug sales rep back in the golden days of the pharmaceutical industry (1960s). Doc Bushwell and I have been going back and forth the last couple of days on my post regarding Takeda Pharma's interesting (and outsourced) ad campaign for their sleeping pill, Rozerem. (btw, Doc, I look forward to your promised "frothing rant" on direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising.). Researchers abhor the amount of money poured into pharmaceutical sales and marketing because, as Doc Bushwell and others…

Casual Fridays: What music goes with what drugs?

A couple weeks back we discussed a study examining stereotypes about music fans and how they related to actual fans' real preferences. Unfortunately, the researchers couldn't test one of the most intriguing stereotypes about music fans: the types of drugs and alcohol preferred by fans of particular genres. So while we know the stereotype of rock fans is that they prefer beer and marijuana to wine and cocktails, the Rentfrow and Gosling study can't tell us whether the stereotype is true. Today's study addresses that limitation. We're also addressing (in a limited way) the complaint that the…

Tripod robots that don't prey on humans

The robots in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds may have been terrifying, but they also had a feature notably lacking in a lot of today's robots: the inherent stability of a tripod. But film realizations of the tripod robots have always suggested they moved in a sort of inefficient shuffle: if you were a tripod creature, how would you walk? Three-legged locomotion doesn't make sense. But researchers at Virginia Tech have begun development on a robot that looks like a tripod but has a simple and elegant gait. Check out this short movie clip showing how it works: Clever, no? An article in New…

Are we at all surprised?

I have to commend him on his honesty: William Dembski has come right out and plainly said that he believes in a 'literal' interpretation of the bible, and that his god actually created the earth in 6 days culminating in the conjuring into existence of Adam and Eve. In writing The End of Christianity today, I would also underscore three points: (1) As a biblical inerrantist, I accept the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and the conventional authorship of the books of the Bible. Thus, in particular, I accept Mosaic authorship of Genesis (and of the Pentateuch) and reject the Documentary…

Semi-Casual Fridays: What curse words really @#$& you off?

Update: New version of the study is up here! #@*& it if I couldn't come up with a shorter Casual Friday study this week. When we started doing Casual Fridays a year and a half ago, the goal was to keep them short -- less than five questions, if possible. They've gradually expanded from week to week, but we've typically been able to keep to around ten questions. But this week I came up with a *@&&ing good idea for a study that just wouldn't cooperate with the length limits. Fortunately, the subject matter tends to be quite arousing: offensive language. What words really get you *…