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Deep Coral Mounds in the Straits of Florida: A Paradigm Shift

I was worried that 2006 might pass without a sea change for deep-sea research until I ran across an article by Grasmueck et al in Journal of Geophysical Research that made my paradigm shift. Recent deep surveys by the researchers from Rostenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at University of Miami used an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to reveal more than 200 coral reefs in waters 600-800m deep off Grand Bahama Banks in the Straits of Florida. Following that, they used a drop camera to identify living scleractinian assemblages. These findings support the case that deep…

Hurricane stokes tuna consumption, Part 4

I am liveblogging Hurricane Dolly from Corpus Christi, Texas. It's raining here in the Coastal Bend. Not too much wind. Thanks to the storm we have a "snow day" at school. Plus, I don't have to water the lawn for a week. Things are looking up, but flooding is forecast for the region, so there could still be trouble. My wife brought a camera to the supermarket last night to document the supermarket's reaction to the storm here in South Texas. We expected large pallets of drinking water, but there's no evidence of profiteering. Rather, it seems there was a run on sliced bread and tuna fish.…

Hydrothermal Vent Octopus Ladies Discovered

Researchers have been very concerned about the paucity of females of Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis, an octopus inhabiting the hydrothermal vent community of the Eastern Pacific Rise. One senior, conservative squid researcher even went so far as to comment that this octopus was some part of a "queer spineless agenda." Others scoffed at his remarks and asked for a "civil union" between the fighting factions of cephalopodologists. Finally, after hundreds of ten years, the mystery has been solved. A single female Vulcanoctopus was captured in 2004 and 4 years later has been described by González…

Email Hoaxes and a Little Math

Recently I received emails from two associates regarding a "get rich quick" scheme. It's made the rounds before and quite frankly I was surprised to see it poke its ugly head up again. While these hoaxes are mildly irritating, it only takes a moment of thought to determine that they absolutely must be false. Why don't people think? The premise of this particular scheme is that Bill Gates has teamed up with AOL to create a new email tracking system. It must be true, the message says, because the author heard it on Good Morning America. In essence, you forward the message to a bunch of people.…

A Mnemonic Device for Electrical Students

Sequences, whether it's the colors of the rainbow, the names of the planets, or ages of Earth's geologic past just scream for mnemonic devices such as acronym-sentences. Some of these can be quite entertaining in their own right, and even more entertaining if you make them up yourself. For example, beginning electrical engineering and technology students are faced with the task of memorizing the resistor color code. The code is used to denote the nominal value of resistors with a total of ten colors corresponding to the numerals 0 through 9: 0 Black 1 Brown 2 Red 3 Orange 4 Yellow 5 Green 6…

The Joys of Cottaging or...

...Why Bathroom Sex is So Hot. The Salon newsletter popped up in my gmail files within the past hour with the aforementioned article by James Hannaham. It's a pretty interesting essay on the allure of public restroom schwinging and whether or not such acts make a guy Teh Gay or Not Teh Gay, as Senator Larry Craig would claim. From the article: Imagining that closeted gay men are the only ones involved in bathroom sex is naive, since it assumes that homosexual acts are synonymous with homosexual identity, which is silly. One hardly needs to be reminded of the many hyper-masculine settings…

Fandom Meme!

So you've got your Harry Potter fandom, your Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, your Pirates of the Caribbean fandom and your Star Trek fandom.* Isn't it about time for an Evolutionist/Rationalist fandom? Well, isn't it? Check out my answers to the meme** that's sweeping the fan-i-verse! Note added in proof: The responses to this meme may readily be extended to any scientist-fandom, e.g., see comment #1. Have at it! 01. The first character I first fell in love with. Charles Darwin. Sweeeeeet! 02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now. Thomas Huxley - Darwin's bulldog…

Arachnosex, pt. 2: Spiders Love to Snuggle!

Just as a toddler who persisently pokes the light socket with a fork, looking for the forbidden jolt, so I invariably open spider links on Live Science. This latest salacious spidey-bit did not disappoint. I'm beginning to think that spider sex on Live Science is equiavlent to the cheesecake shots in Rupert Murdoch tabloids. Creepy: Spiders Love to Snuggle by Jeanna Bryner. Excerpts below the fold... While not usually considered paragons of tender, familial love, some spiders do have a touchy-feely side. Scientists have discovered two arachnids that caress their young and snuggle together…

Ricky Gervais can't just say "Merry Christmas", now can he?

So instead, he's written a Christmas essay about why he's an atheist. It's not bad. He pegs why people get so sniffy at innocuous words from an atheist, and what we all have to live for, so there's that. So what does the question "Why don't you believe in God?" really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking "what makes you so special? "How come you weren't brainwashed with the rest of us?" "How dare you say I'm a fool and I'm not going to heaven, f-- you!" Let's be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered…

My story of faith

Andy says the Washington Post is asking for personal "spiritual stories". They want it under 400 words, and they're looking for "a time of crisis that tested your faith, the person who most influenced your beliefs, a life-changing event that shaped your spiritual identity, or a religious teaching or ritual that you find especially moving." Awww, how heart-warming. I sent mine in. I doubt that they'll accept it, so I've put a copy below the fold. My story of faith When I was a young man, I was a regular member of the Lutheran church. I attended Sunday services, I went to Sunday school, I was…

How astrology works

You've been wondering about that, too, haven't you? Prepare to be disappointed again, because the source of this bit of egregious misinformation is none other than that raving nutcase, Mike Adams of NaturalNews. He claims that astrology has a scientific basis: Skeptics must be further bewildered by the new research published in Nature Neuroscience and conducted at Vanderbilt University which unintentionally provides scientific support for the fundamental principle of astrology -- namely, that the position of the planets at your time of birth influences your personality. Hey, Vanderbilt is a…

The violence isn't at all surprising…it's from offended religious folk, after all

This is genuinely screwed up. Supporting separation of church and state can get you beat up in Hawaii. When Senate President Colleen Hanabusa introduced a reverend to say the invocation, Mitch Kahle stood from his seat in the gallery of the Senate chambers and said, "I object. My name is Mitch Kahle and I object to this prayer on the grounds that it's a violation of the first amendment of the constitution of the United States. I object." Kahle's protest lasted about seven seconds. Then he stopped talking and sat down. The Senate's Sergeant at Arms was determined to remove Kahle. When Kahle…

Bill Richardson

It's far too early for me to endorse any candidate for President in '08. I hope to wait until '07 is a little older, maybe even until '08 actually arrives. We've got a good crop out there. I've met Barack Obama, and found him to be an incredibly smart, incredibly charismatic guy, not to mention a captivating public speaker with a strong record in state and federal government. John Edwards' speech in Lawrence was inspiring, and his continued commitment to raising the profile of issues like poverty gives me hope for him and the nation. But for now, I'm a Richardson booster. No other…

HuffPo cements its reputation as the liberal site for credulous idjits

The Huffington Post now has a post up from some guy named Rory Fitzgerald reacting to the suggestion that the Pope be arrested for crimes and conspiracies of his organization by urging that Richard Dawkins be arrested for "atheist crimes"…such as those committed by the Nazis and Stalinists. I had no idea that Adolf Hitler was a member of the Richard Dawkins Foundation! You learn something new every day. But, you know, he's right. If RDF staffers were running a child-porn ring, and Dawkins was moaning "Oh, this will ruin the reputation of my foundation, I must do what I can to hide these…

Endorsements for Wempe

Jack Wempe, who opposes creationist Board member Ken Willard, gets two endorsements from Republicans. Donna Viola, who attempted to unseat Willard in the primary, says that Wempe "truly cares about educating our kids in this state," and that this is not sour grapes. "What the current majority of our State BOE has done and is continuing to do has undermined the intelligence of our kids in this state!" Sue Greenleaf, a party-line Republican voter, also writes to endorse Wempe. There was a time that I would have never considered [endorsing a Democrat] and would consider anyone who did a…

Where is Bacon hiding?

In the last week, there have been three candidate fora Oct 3, Olathe Chamber of Commerce Candidate Forum, Bacon was a no-show. Oct 3, Candidate Forum in Osawatomie, no Bacon Oct 5, Candidate Forum in Ottawa, no Bacon As Don Weiss tells me "One might think he doesn't care." You'll have a chance to help Don at a fundraiser on October 19th from 4:30 – 7:00 PM. The reception is at the home of the Andersons, 15927 W 161 Terrace, Olathe, KS 66062. And as a special bonus people who pony up the $15 contribution, the astoundingly popular Governor Sebelius will swing by to talk to the crowd at…

Who is serious about national security?

Spook Larry Johnson explains new revelations from reporters at the Nation: Valerie Plame was working undercover as a senior CIA operations officer. Valerie Plame was working on issues related to Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to keep America safe. Valerie Plame traveled overseas as part of her undercover work and was protected under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Valerie Plame was betrayed by President Bush and his political appointees. Is someone serious about the threat of Iraq going to out a secret agent working to uncover where Iraq's WMDs were? Only if she wasn't…

Quantitative genetics strikes back! (?)

The Genetics of Human Adaptation: Hard Sweeps, Soft Sweeps, and Polygenic Adaptation: There has long been interest in understanding the genetic basis of human adaptation. To what extent are phenotypic differences among human populations driven by natural selection? With the recent arrival of large genome-wide data sets on human variation, there is now unprecedented opportunity for progress on this type of question. Several lines of evidence argue for an important role of positive selection in shaping human variation and differences among populations. These include studies of comparative…

Book Progress #30

It is amazing what a little perspective can do. For most of August I was hard at work on the chapter on whales, ignoring nearly every other section. This allowed me to focus on what I wanted for one of the most important chapters of the book, but now that I have gone back to some of my earlier writing I have to admit I am horrified. When I opened up the chapter on the evolution of birds I could not believe what I was reading. How could I have written such drivel? I started to edit the first part of the bird chapter, but no matter what I did I could not see a way to turn what I had already…

Running as fast as I can to stay in place

My wife and I reading while dinner cooks on the fire. Taken at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware this past May. So much work to do, so little time. The summer whizzed by at a rate faster than I expected, and now I'm just two days away from the start of the fall semester. (As my wife commented the other day, I'm continuing my education in spite of the university's best efforts.) There has been a lot to keep me busy. Outside of working on my book, I have been putting the finishing touches on a proposal for a paper about Edward Tyson's 1699 dissection of a chimpanzee (although, if accepted,…

Can't blog now, writing...

Things have been a little slow here on the ol' blog as of late, but for good reason. Outside of a schedule change that has thrown my writing off, I've been hard at work on my Huxley paper (which I actually just finished). Many thanks to everyone who helped by offering encouragement, sending papers, and answering questions; I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product in print in the near future. Little did I know that working on the paper would give me enough self confidence to look for other opportunities, however, and now I've got a few other projects. I found a home for my piece of…

Who murdered the Virunga gorillas?

A female Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) photographed last year at the Bronx Zoo. That's the question posed in the cover story of the latest issue of National Geographic. On July 22, 2007 five mountain gorillas (Gorilla berengei berengei) were murdered at Virunga, the population made famous by the work of Dian Fossey and her book Gorillas in the Mist. Combined with an earlier attack in the area seven gorillas were executed for unknown reasons within the space of two months, the presence of several warring Congolese militia factions in the area providing an overabundance of suspects but a…

The Eohip and Doclodip

In the course of rooting through the literature for more information on Eohippus, Hyracotherium, and the various associated genera (it's been a chore to find out their names, much less the relevant papers!) I stumbled across this 1927 poem by Richard Ashman, published in The Science News-Letter. It is obviously not meant to be accurate, but I have to say that the concluding verses made me laugh. The Diplo-doclodipus A sad young Eohippus, once, Who pattered through the gorse, Was sobbing as he pattered, for His fondest hopes were shattered, for He'd failed in all that mattered, for He wasn't…

Michelle Malkin: Blind or Dumb?

Who knew wearing paisley would be so controversial? A screen-grab of Rachel Ray from the Dunkin' Donuts commercial that's causing such a fuss amongst some conservatives. I don't often write about politics on this blog (at least politics not associated with science policy & education), but I'll make an exception in this case. TV personality Rachel Ray recently did a commercial for Dunkin' Donuts in which she wears a black & white fringed paisley scarf. It reminds me of a scarf that was tied around the neck of a stuffed peccary my mother once bought at a Texas airport, but I fail to…

Saturday notes

I'll be away at the AMNH for most of the day today, but here are a few general "housekeeping" notes until I get back; A very special edition of The Boneyard (#20) will be coming up next week. (See this post for the full details.) I haven't received any submissions yet, but just keep in mind that everything has to be in by 12 PM Eastern time on May 17 to be eligible. I'm very pleased to announce that Beatrice, a female cat my wife and I fostered on-and-off for about a year, has finally been adopted. We've still got Huxley right now, and even though he was sick for a few days he has fully…

The seal of Iguanodon

"An Iguanodon proper," as it appears "on the dexter side" of the Maidstone coat of arms, added in 1949. Although the teeth of Iguanodon were discovered in 1822, more definitive skeletal remains of the dinosaur did not appear until 1834, which were discovered in Maidstone, Kent in England. These remains, as well as others from the same locality and elsewhere, allowed for skeletal reconstructions to be made of this animal, although the similarity of the teeth of Iguanodon to a living iguana seemed to dominate artistic depictions until the famous Belgium fossils were discovered. Over a…

In the days of the fierce Iguanodon

John Martin's 1838 depiction of an Iguanodon attacked by a Megalosaurus.[source] The other day I received a review copy of Ralph O'Connor's fantastic book The Earth on Show, and it has quickly become one of my most favorite tomes. (I know I'm a bit behind on reviews; I hope to get some done this weekend.) Reading it has definitely sparked plenty of thoughts about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as monsters, a post on which I'm working on presently (I'm away from my library at the moment, though, so I won't be able to dig into my bookshelves until later today). Descriptions of…

Wherein Gmail pisses me off

I'm sure other Gmail users have noticed how they modify the ads that show up based upon the content of your e-mails; a little creepy, but I can understand the logic of it. Still, discussing evolution in an e-mail exchange seems to only to attract creationist adverts, and I am sick and tired of seeing advertisements for Expelled and "refutations" of evolution from everystudent.com all over my inbox. I don't think I've ever seen an advert for something positive about evolution, and that's really a shame; if people are talking about evolution via e-mail they're only going to get links to…

Fitness Fun

I hate to be left out. ScienceBlogs, Starts with Bang has started a fitness theme that we are encouraged to participate in. I like to participate. I even had some good ideas. Here is what I was thinking: Look at the physics of Wii-fit (actually, this one is good, I should come back to it someday) Energy and forces involved in a push-up Blogging push-up challenge - where I do a push-up for every 10 visits to my blog each day for a week (my estimation is that this could end up being dangerous - or maybe safe) The physics of the gymnastics kip move. This one IS on my todo list since my two…

Grades: Obedience or Evaluation

It is the end of the semester, and I hear stuff. A lot of this stuff I do not like to hear. This is a sample (essentially): "I don't have to take the final in that class, the instructor said I just have to organize some folders instead" "I got an A on all the tests, but the instructor said my grade was a B because I missed too many classes" Those are just two examples I have heard recently. When I hear these kinds of things, I try not to pass judgment on other faculty because I am only hearing one side of the story (I can only imagine what crazy things students say about me). However, I…

Palin-spastic: Climate change denial

Yesterday, Sarah Palin demanded that Charlie Gibson: Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that. Except, well: Last year, she told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, "I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity." And in an interview Newsmax magazine just released, which was conducted before she was selected as John McCain's running mate, the Alaska governor said, "A changing environment will…

Gobama!

Republican pitbull Alex Castellanos says that, after that acceptance speech: "whoever didn't get picked for Republican VP today may be a lucky Republican." It was truly an exceptional speech. He didn't overplay the day's anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Sure, his nomination is a huge step towards the realization of that dream, but had he said that, he'd have been attacked as arrogant. His attacks on McCain were razor sharp, but never crossing the line into cruelty (a line I'll admit to having crossed already, and one I'll only respect when McCain starts…

It's all my fault

PBS has a crew in the Vatican, looking to see some signs of light from a secretive organization. Here's an account of one audience — it sounds hopeless. First some flunky came out to make this declaration: The last couple of months have been very difficult, he went on, with so many questions being raised about things that happened long ago. But he said, "This is the time for truth, transparency and credibility. Secrecy and discretion are not values that are in fashion at the moment. We must be in a condition of having nothing to hide." Ah, now it's all in the distant past. Once again, they…

Twits

Doop-de-doo, killin' time between sessions by checking the RSS feeds, and what do I find but Billy Dembski, the Heisenberg of cats, mouthing off on global warming. "So much for the 'scientific consensus' regarding man-made global warming," the boy adventurer expounds. "As I recall, there’s another consensus in science…something in biology about how we got here…" He then links to the study discussed here. The paper about which Dembski gets all worked up is prefaced by this warning: The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with…

Deep thought

In 20 years, historians will try to figure out how global warming moved from an issue that scientists and wonks were alone in caring about. Nancy Pelosi began her prepared statement talking about her creation of a climate change committee in the House. At the Netroots Nation panel on space policy, and a DNC platform discussion about space afterward, researching, averting and mitigating the effects of climate change were taken as necessary components of NASA' s mission. Al Gore spoke a couple days ago about creating a carbon-free energy system in ten years, and it honestly isn't unrealistic…

Mars

We live in a truly stunning time and place. The lovely vistas in the finest of science fiction movies could never produce the simple awe I feel when I look at NASA's image of sunset on Mars: We did this. Next time someone tells you that the government can't do anything right, point them to this. I also think that images like this are a partial answer to the occasional gripe you hear that money spent on the space program would have been better spent fighting disease or poverty. First, it's naive to think that this is a zero-sum enterprise. We're running a budget deficit year after year…

Bye-bye McLeroy, Hello Dunbar

Arch-creationist dentist Don McLeroy is limping and quacking his way off the Texas Board of Education, but there's still plenty of crazy left behind. Cynthia Dunbar recently appeared on a far right-wing radio show to preach her revisionist history, her dislike of atheists and Christians who aren't part of her sect, and plead for more god in the schools. Texas Freedom Network provides a synopsis; listen to the actual show at the peril of your sanity. Speaking last week on a far-right talk show, The American View, (read more about the show here) Dunbar — a Richmond Republican representing a…

On the "upset" in New Hampshire

The expectations game is a fickle mistress. Two weeks ago, I doubt anyone would have been surprised at Hillary Clinton winning the New Hampshire primaries, and indeed the big surprise would have been that she and Obama essentially tied (both candidates got the same number of delegates). Of course, two weeks ago we hadn't seen the Clinton campaign's apparent collapse in Iowa, nor the growing gap in post-Iowa polls. And so, in the course of less than a week, Hillary went from inevitable winner, to doomed candidate, to insurgent. There's no doubt that the results were surprising, precisely…

Whale Sharks in Captivity

I love whale sharks. There's something very uplifting about such an enormous animal being so gentle. But I think it's pretty clear that whale sharks don't belong in aquariums: A young whale shark that sank to the bottom of its tank at the Georgia Aquarium this year and died had been forcibly fed for months, a practice that may have punctured its stomach and caused an infection that led to its death, scientists said Wednesday. The whale shark was fed with a tube after it seemed to lose its appetite over a period of months last year, said Robert Hueter, director of the center for shark research…

Scientific Imperfections

Here at Scienceblogs, we spent a lot of time debunking various types of unscientific falsehoods (aka "woo," religious believers, and the conservapedia.) As far as I'm concerned, that's just great. The world always is always suffering from a shortage of skepticism. We need more empiricism and less certainty. But it's worth reminding ourselves of the obvious: peer-reviewed science is also vulnerable to bad biases, false suppositions and sloppy interpretations. Data doesn't generate itself. Over at Overcoming Bias, they've compiled a short list of recent examples. Here are the most damning: A…

Cognitive Forensics

Nick Bostrom offers up a great suggestion for a new academic field: Perhaps we need a new field of "cognitive forensics" for analyzing and investigating motivated scientific error, bias, and intellectual misconduct. The goal would be to develop a comprehensive toolkit of diagnostic indicators and statistical checks that could be used to detect acts of irrationality and to make it easier to apprehend the culprits. (Robin's recent post gives an example of one study that could be done.) Another goal would be to create a specialization, a community of scholars who had expertise in this subfield,…

Look at it as another reason to encourage embryonic stem cell research

I suppose this is a kind of threat—an archaic and quaint threat, but I'm sure some people take it seriously—but the Catholic church has made a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research. The Vatican stepped up its fight against embryonic stem cell research on Wednesday, saying that scientists involved in such work would be excommunicated. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican department dealing with family affairs, said in a magazine interview that "destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion... it's the same thing". "Excommunication applies to all women,…

God Is A Black Hole

I had no idea such things were even possible: One day (far off, no doubt), it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and then there would have to be a way to get that seed, on command, to safely expand into a separate, infinite, unexplorable but very real alternate universe. How might one go about creating this personal universe? Well, it's actually not so hard, at least in theory. According to Robert Krulwich and Brian Greene, all you have to do is create your own black hole, a personal vortex of energy and matter: Not…

Learning in College and the role of instructors

There is something that has been bothering me about students learning in college. The question is, how much do I treat students like adults and how much do I treat them like children? I have been leaning towards treating them like adults. For example: do I require them to come to class? Right now, no. I think they are adults and should choose whether they come to class or not. Do I require them to do homework? No. Again, I recommend homework (and I actually let them count it for part of their grade if they so choose). So, I give students the ability to choose what to do. In…

Lotteries

Here's an old post from July 08: The devious slogan for the New York State lottery is "All you need is a dollar and a dream." Such state lotteries are a regressive form of taxation, since the vast majority of lottery consumers are low-income. The statistics are bleak: Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is also starkly regressive, with lower income households being much more likely to play. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, or about 9 percent of all income. A new study by…

Efficiency

The human brain, it turns out, is even more efficient than previous estimates: Fifty-seven years ago, Nobel laureates Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley came up with a model to calculate the power behind electrochemical currents in neurons--a great step forward in understanding how the brain worked and how it divvied up resources. The only problem was that their subject was not a person, or even a rodent, but a giant squid. Today, researchers announced that they have found a more accurate model for mammal brains, which elevates some of their transactions to three times more efficient than that of…

F-16

An inspired metaphor for the inherent instability of the brain by Moshe Bar: The fighter plane F-16 is the first aeroplane intentionally designed to have an aerodynamically unstable platform. This design was chosen to enhance the aircraft's manoeuvrability. Most aeroplanes are designed to be stable such that they strive to return to their original attitude following an interruption. While such stability is a desired property for a passenger aeroplane, for example, it opposes a pilot's effort to change headings rapidly and thus can degrade manoeuvring performance required for a fighter jet.…

Texas hearings, day 2

I'm currently taping the Texas Board of Education as they consider amendments and motions regarding state science standards. The first big fight related to language in the standards on the books now which refers to "strengths and weaknesses," and to change that to a requirement that students "analyze and evaluate" scientific ideas. Ken Mercer offered the amendment striking the "analyze and evaluate" language, replacing it with old language that had been abused to attack evolution in the 2003 science standards fight. Bob Craig, a Republican who votes with the coalition supporting accurate…

Bailing out the sciences

Science's policy blog reports: [T]he House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee has invited not only noted economists Martin Feldstein, Mark Zandi, and Robert Reich [to discuss the economic recovery bill] but also Maria Zuber, a professor of geophysics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and principal investigator on GRAIL, a NASA mission to measure variations in the moon's gravitational field. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will kick off the discussion, has made it clear that "investing in technology and innovation should be part of any economic recovery plan," says a…

Obama hits back

There's been a lot of ink spilled lately over John McCain's vicious and dishonest robocalls. Sarah Palin criticized her own campaign for running them, and Joe Biden called them "scurrilous," and calling on John McCain: If he's really serious when he said ... that this election is all about the economy, then I say, John, stop your ads, bring down those robocalls. If it's about the economy, argue about the economy. Not about Barack Obama's character. Not about these scurrilous ads. Up 'til now, the Obama campaign doesn't seem to have run its own robocalls, though state parties have been…