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Pimp Me Old Papers

As seen in a recent links dump, gg at Skulls in the Stars posted a fun challenge for science bloggers: My "challenge", for those sciencebloggers who choose to accept it, is this: read and research an old, classic scientific paper and write a blog post about it. I recommend choosing something pre- World War II, as that was the era of hand-crafted, "in your basement"-style science. There's a lot to learn not only about the ingenuity of researchers in an era when materials were not readily available, but also about the problems and concerns of scientists of that era, often things we take for…

links for 2008-03-06

The Quantum Pontiff : Twins in Donut Space Mmmmmm.... Paradoxical Donuts...... (tags: physics relativity theory) Laelaps : Preaching to the choir "Has there ever been a time when science has been highly valued by the general public? " (tags: science society class-war culture history) Shockwave traffic jam recreated for first time - tech - 04 March 2008 - New Scientist Tech Japanese scientists create flawless simulation of Washington, DC. Make sure to watch the video. (tags: physics psychology science video youtube) Richard Feynman Needs His Orange Juice | Cosmic Variance What can I…

Anatomy of an Error

If you've been following the Taxonomy Fail and subsequent Myrmecology Win, you'll know that the real Fail was my own. That blurry mash of legs and cuticle is indeed an ant, and I missed it. That I failed to discern an ant in the original image doesn't bother me. After all, the photo was the equivalent of an amber inkblot, with key bits out of focus, and the paper itself provided no support for the identification. I stand by my comments about the burden of proof lying with the authors- the paper did not adequately justify its conclusions. Partly, this is less the fault of the authors than the…

DukeResearch Features our Key West Botanical Garden Talk

Many thanks for some blog publicity go out to Karl Leif Bates, editor of Duke University's online research monthly magazine, Duke Research, and co-founder of Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC). Many of you who attended this past weekend's ScienceOnline'09 gathering may recognize Karl as he was in attendance. Completely independent of any coaxing (Karl was *not* present at my free, Friday Fermentable wine tasting), my post is currently the February 2009 feature on the Duke Research section, Voices: Science in Conversation. The backstory is that, during our December vacation, we…

RadioLab: Experiments in Science Communication

Season 3 of New York Public Radio's RadioLab is coming soon, in May 2007. Seasons one and two are available on-line, at WNYC. Have you heard? It isn't Talk of the Nation -- Science Friday, with Ira Flatow. But it is co-hosted by NPR Science Correspondent Robert Krulwich. He hosts with youngish public radio guy Jad Abumrad. This is good stuff. Along with the very great range of forms of science communication, and of places where science, art, and humanity cannot be separated into strict academic categories (oh, for example, like this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this), radio…

The Promise, the Hype, and the Reality: It's a Different Perceptual Era for Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Over at the Knight Science Tracker, Charlie Petit has a round-up on news coverage of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine's first significant research grants for stem cell research. Though much of the focus in California and nationally has obviously been on the promise of embryonic stem cell research, only four of the 14 funded projects involve these type of stem cells. The emphasis is on projects that could lead to the most immediate clinical results, a strong if not "tacit acknowledgment that the promise of human embryonic stem cells is still far in the future" writes Andrew…

Some fundamental definitions

Someone in all this brouhaha (I can't remember whom and can't find the comment online) claimed that only creationists use the phrase "Darwinian Fundamentalist". The phrase actually originated with Stephen Jay Gould (New York Review of Books, June 12 1997) for the "conviction that natural selection regulates everything of any importance in evolution, and that adaptation emerges as a universal result and ultimate test of selection's ubiquity." He cites Maynard-Smith, Dawkins and Dennett as being "ultra-Darwinists" and thus Darwinian fundamentalists. In fact, Dennett (speaking in March 2006)…

Microcosm: Ars Technica feature, and more podcasts

The field of biology has been wildly successful by taking what's called a reductionist approach, i.e., you tackle a small problem in isolation in order to gain insight into larger questions. In his new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, Science writer Carl Zimmer took that reductionist approach and applied it to a pretty big issue: life itself. For Zimmer, the system that serves as a model of all life, and of humanity's often uncomfortable relationship to it, is the unprepossessing gut bacteria, Escherischia coli. Covering all of life is a big task, and Zimmer made the…

Pray4PZ!

Some gomer has set up a website about prayer with a subsection dedicated to an experiment: they're going to pray for PZ Myers. They're rather vague about what they're praying for, which I guess is tactically useful, since if I stay healthy or drop dead they can then claim success either way. I'm also going to confound their experiment since I'm going to tell everyone to not Pray4PZ, and since their site traffic is so minuscule, I'm going to overwhelm their results. They also have a post titled "Can PZ Myers be reasoned with?", which is amusing — I guess the prayer effort wasn't doing much, so…

Science Reveals How To Lose Weight And Keep It Off

Well, it was a long time coming.  Between the myriad of diet plans on television, magazines, online, and everywhere, someone was bound to finally come up with conclusive evidence on what works and how to make sense of all the (excuse the term) dietary diarrhea. No doubt, you've also noticed that low-fat, high fiber, extra protein, pills, germs, and steel floods every sensory organ we have on a hourly basis. Personally, I've never been all that interested in skinny, but healthy suits me just fine.  I'm not one for regiments or counting calories, but do give thought to what I consume and prefer…

The AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy

One week ago I left for the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy...So what went on over two days in our nation's capitol? LOTS! The event was fantastic! In fact, with so many wonderful contributions, there's no way I could possibly do it justice with a single post, so I'll highlight some of the details of my session here and encourage readers to check out the presentations, listen to talks, read transcripts, and view photos as they're posted throughout the week. My panel was on 'Science and the New Media' along with Seed's Adam Bly and Dr. Anthony Crider, who teaches…

Traumatic Thursday

Yeah, yeah, why is she blogging about Thursday, when it's already Friday? Well, folks, it's gonna take me more than one night's sleep to lower the cortisol levels that shot up in my body yesterday. Lemme share the highlights. An 8 am meeting with the dean. A meeting in which the dean turned the whole organizational structure of the department inside out and left some of us wondering about our professional futures at Mystery U. I'd love to say more, but I think it's probably unbloggable for now. An apparently missing $2000 piece of field equipment purchased with my start-up funds. 45…

Making an exhibit

To follow up on my previous review of KC Cole's book about the Exploratorium, here's a nifty exhibit called "How People Make Things." It's a traveling exhibit (by the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, not the Exploratorium) that demonstrates the basics of manufacturing processes like injection molding and assembly. It's interesting to compare the experience you may imagine having in the exhibit room above to the experience of the website, which uses a one-directional lecture mode (warning: be prepared for the Mr. Rogers cameo). It's ironically difficult to successfully translate hands-on…

Three games was the morning...

If you're poking around, looking for some relaxing diversion before you have to go back to work tomorrow, you've come to the right place. Lately, I've been writing a few casual game reviews for Casual Gameplay, better known as JayIsGames.com. Jay has offered reviews of the best in online casual gaming for many years, and has earned quite a reputation. Being a loyal fan of the site, I love the chance to help Jay and his staff out with the occasional review. OK, well, truth be told, it's a good excuse to relax, something most of us need. Here are a few reviews I've done over the past few months…

The Ethics of Being an Open Access Publisher

BioMed Central advertises itself as "The Open Access Publisher" (see their logo floating next to this text). They publish a lot of journals, but I think the Public Library of Science (PLoS) has the lead when it comes to being THE open access publisher. That's because everything published by PLoS is Open Access -- it's free to read, distribute, and reproduce, provided there is proper attribution. BioMed Central, not so much. That's right, BioMed Central, The Open Access Publisher, publishes paid-access articles. In fact, it publishes entire journals that are not open access. That includes…

A New OpenSource Online Office

"After going premium and suffering some community fragmentation, the OpenOffice.org open source office suite is being taken in a new direction by a company named Ulteo. A brainchild of Gael Duval, founder of Mandriva Linux, Ulteo's mission is to serve as a platform for putting applications onto the web. Using this approach, Ulteo has released a public beta of Online OpenOffice.org, which quite literally puts OpenOffice.org inside a browser." [source] The community fragmentation referred to here is a bit disturbing but not too surprising. You have to figure that Sun is in the OpenSource…

Dover III in Texas?

A few weeks ago I mentioned that the school board in Polk County, Florida looked like they were going to try and get creationism into the classroom when the school science standards are revised in January of 2008, and now it looks like some of the members of the Texas Education Agency might be gearing up to try the same thing. By now I'm sure that most of you have heard of how the Texas Education Agency's director of science, Christine Comer, was forced to resign after forwarding a message about a Nov. 2 lecture by philosopher Barbara Forrest on called "Inside Creationisms Trojan Horse" to a…

Weekend Diversion: And now, they're coming for me. Yeah, me. Because I write for you.

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." -Alfred Whitney Griswold Those of you who read my weekend post have some inkling that I'm a bit of a sucker for beautifully done covers of songs. But when they give me chills listening to them, that's when I know I've really found a special one. This week, I'm proud to introduce Rebecca Loebe to you, whom I discovered while watching her audition at NBC's singing competition: The Voice. Have a listen…

n00b Science Blogging 101: Part 3 - Blogging in Grad School

Welcome to part 3 of the Science Blogging 101 series. You can find part 1 here, in which I discussed my own experiences with blogging, and part 2 here, which I discussed some of the big questions regarding audience, purpose, and so forth. How do you balance blogging with the rest of your work? Do you see it as an extension or part of what you already do in keeping up with the literature or do you just enjoy blogging? Well, I certainly enjoy blogging, otherwise I wouldn't do it. That said, blogging about research is a fantastic way to keep up on the literature. I read through (or, at least…

How much does it cost to get a scientific paper?

The Backstory:  As it stands today,when one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides the funding for a scientific research project, and those results are published, they must be made freely available to public, within a set period of time.  The reasoning behind this requirement is that taxpayers funded everything about the research except for the final publication, and so they have already paid for access. The Research Works Act (#RWA), HR 3699, is a bill in the House of Representatives that would roll back this requirement.  If it passes, taxpayers will most likely have to pay…

Harvard law professors flunk Harvard's college bookstore

So the Harvard Coop fiasco goes into yet another day with lawyers at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society giving the book sellers (part of the Barnes and Noble College Division) a much needed lesson in copyright law. To recap (see also here and here), Harvard undergraduates running a comparison-shopping textbook service online were copying down course book ISBN numbers in the Harvard bookstore and were told to leave. On a second occasion The Coop (the name of the bookstore) called the cops, who, however, refused to intervene. The Coop's reasons were that the ISBN…

World AIDS Day: Educational Breakthrough

By Aman Cross-posted with permission from Technology, Health & Development Tomorrow is World AIDS Day and instead of âbarraging you with [another set of] statistics, gruesome photos, or heart-wrenching storiesâ (quote credit to Mr. Casnocaha), I want to alert you to something we prefer here - solutions, problem solving, technology, and creative thinking. Piya Sorcar, a doctoral student in Stanfordâs Learning, Sciences & Technology Design program has used her considerable skills to figure out how to reach the minds of children in devleoping countries when it comes to HIV/AIDS…

Finding And Classifying Forgotten Sites

I haven't blogged much about my research lately. One reason is that I am only working with it at ~50% this academic year since I'm teaching in addition to my usual 25% editor's job. Another is that I'm in an intensive desk-based data collection phase, which gives rise to a lot of hypotheses and hunches but not much in the way of analytical conclusions. Here's what I'm doing. I've got a great big database of about 400 Bronze Age finds from the Lakes Mälaren and Hjälmaren provinces. This sample is delimited thusly: a) datable finds b) that are not demonstrably from graves or settlements c)…

Fieldwork in Hov and Vretakloster

Polyhedrical weight. 9/10th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson. (Martin here, posting from the hostel of Norsholm on the Göta canal, using my handheld and the cell phone network. To get the post on-line, my dear scibling Janet has kindly agreed to act as go-between.) Coin struck for Heinrich II, King of Germany. Mainz 1002-1014. Dbg 785. Photograph Tobias Bondesson. This is the third April in as many years that I'm reporting from a week of fieldwork in Ãstergötland with my metal detector buddies. I intend this to be the final expedition before I complete my book about late-1st…

Nematodes see without eyes

The humble nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a millimeter-long roundworm which eeks out its existence in the soil and feeds on bacteria. Because it lives in a dark environment, and lacks specialized light-sensing organs, the nematode has always been assumed to be completely blind. However, a new study published online in Nature Neuroscience shows that C. elegans they possess neurons which are sensitive to light. As well as showing for the first time that C. elegans has a rudimentary sense of vision, the findings also shed some light on the evolution of the eye. Despite lacking eyes,…

Healthy Skepticism Toward "Ethically Sound" Stem Cells

I would be remiss if I didn't address the latest stem cell news, since it's already all over the place. An article from today's issue of published in advance online yesterday by Nature describes a technique for deriving a line of human embryonic stem cells by removing a single cell from the eight-cell blastula (created for in vitro fertilization). According to the paper, the blastula can still be implanted and allowed to grow and develop normally, without any apparent damage to the embryo. Not surprisingly, the press has painted this as a potential solution to the "moral reservations"…

Unsolicited words of advice for those participating in online discourse.

(It's worth noting, however, that this may also be useful advice for interactions with others offline.) I don't know what's in your heart. I don't know what's in your mind. I don't have direct access to either of those (because I'm a distinct person from you), and if I did, you'd probably feel violated. The only sensible data I have on what's in your heart and your mind when I'm interacting with you online is how you present yourself -- and your regard for others -- through your words. Here's the thing: words are an imperfect tool for communication. There are lots of them, which makes it…

Mapping the lives and deaths of workers: An emerging way to tell the story of occupational health and safety

When Bethany Boggess first debuted her online mapping project, she didn’t expect it to attract so much attention. But within just six months of its launch, people from all over the world are sending in reports and helping her build a dynamic picture of the lives and deaths of workers. The project is called the Global Worker Watch and it’s quite literally a living map of worker fatalities and catastrophes from around the globe. When you go to the site, you’ll see a world map speckled with blue dots, each representing a reported occupational death, illness or disaster. Here are just a few I…

The dichloroacetate (DCA) "self-experimentation" phenomenon hits the mainstream media

It figures. Whenever I go away for a conference, things of interest to me that I'd like to blog about start happening fast and furious. Indeed, I could only deal with one of them, and I chose to post my challenge to the Paleyist "intelligent design" creationist surgeon, Dr. William Egnor. Now that I'm back, I'll deal with the other major issue that's been a frequent topic of blogging over the last couple of months and bubbled up again into the blogosphere over the weekend. Remember all the posts that I did on dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that targets the…

The fundamental intellectual dishonesty of Eric Merola and his promotion of Stanislaw Burzynski

About a month ago, Eric Merola screened his second movie about "brave maverick doctor" Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as "Burzynski II"), a screening that Brian Thompson and an unnamed colleague from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) attended, took notes, and even managed to ask a question. At the time, I took advantage of Brian's awesome commentary about his experience on the JREF Swift Blog, his copious notes, and my read on Eric Merola's trailers for the movie, what he said in the first movie, and his own promotional…

Birds in the News 168

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Male Scarlet Tanager, Piranga olivacea, photographed in Newton Hills State Park in South Dakota. Image: Terry Sohl, 7 June 2008 [larger view]. Photo taken with a Canon 20D, 400 5.6L. Birds in Science and Technology Climate change will force bone-weary birds migrating to Europe from Africa to log extra mileage, with possibly devastating consequences, according to a study released recently. The annual voyage of some species, which fly north in search of food and suitable climes, could increase by as much as 400km, the…

10+ Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn

NEW: Very first look at Ubuntu Linux 15.04 Vivid Vervet Beta Mate Flavor See: Ubuntu Unleashed Here is a list of things to do after you have installed Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. There is some discussion of whether or not you should upgraded to 14.10 here, but the short version is, for most people an upgrade from 14.04 is not necessary but not a bad idea, and an upgrade from any earlier version is a very good idea. Mostly, though, you should just upgrade. One could ask the question, should you be installing Ubuntu with Unity. You have to like Unity. I personally like to have a wider range…

Why The Iraq Failure Was Predicted

Not predictable. Predicted. Over at DailyKos is a powerful diary by the wife of a Vietnam & Iraq I war veteran. During a discussion with a bunch of conservative college students, the following happened (italics mine): A little blonde got up enough nerve to say something. My husband wouldn't tell me exactly what she said, but I can picture it. My nieces, Thing 1 and Thing 2, are fairly typical college students. They back Bush 110% because he's the president and a Christian and God chose him to be president instead of that arrogant Al Gore or that CATHOLIC LIBERAL John Kerry ( cps…

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson Is Wrong Again About Social Security

I like constancy. Knowing that, come spring, the forsythia will bloom is a good thing. But I don't like knowing that, when Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson writes something about Social Security, it will be error-filled and disingenuous. Sadly, this too is a constant. A few years back, Samuelson inspired me to invent the Samuelson Unit, which, like the Friedman unit, is a period of time, X units in the future, at which point something will happen. Like Zeno's Paradox, we never seem to reach that point, which, even given the past couple of years, is still 27 years away*. Well,…

Why We Really Don't Have a Social Security Crisis

One of the maddening things about the Social Security 'debate' is the assumption that Social Security will be 'insolvent' in several decades (oddly enough, every year like clockwork, the several decades prediction is renewed....). It won't be. The Social Security Trustees release three estimates of the long term health of the Social Security program. These three estimates differ in the assumptions of how the economy will perform, and can be described as: mild historical underperformance, sucky, and 'Oh God, Oh God, we're all gonna die!' These estimates are mandated by law. Typically,…

Today is The Fifth Blogoversary For Living the Scientific Life

Today's my fifth blogoversary, so suggest a few things for me and my readers to do. My celebrations have been somewhat complicated by the fact that I have a 2-inch diameter blister on the bottom of my foot. Even though I drained it (twice, actually), it is still quite painful to walk on. Boo! Thanks to a reader, whom I am dragging all around the city with me, here is my celebratory list: Today: Go to the Whitney Art Museum to see the Edward Hopper Exhibit. Eat Ice cream. Walk around Central Park and (hopefully) pick up tickets to see Shakespeare in the Park. Go to Josh Rosenau's's…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Merry Christmas

It's not just Sunday, but it's Christmas Eve. Time for my annual In Praise of Christmas Sermonette. Because, yes, I am a big fan of Christmas. As a proud member of the godless, I am not a bit embarrassed or chagrined. As far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely secular holiday. I'll explain why, but I also know the winter holidays can be a difficult and sad time for many people. The darkness of the season and the emotional freight of family associations contributes, no doubt. My views are not even shared by everyone in my own family. So this is not meant to be why everyone should like Christmas.…

Prying the gun out of my cold live hands

Old folks are dangerous enough. I should know. I am one. Bad enough you allow me to hurtle down the highway in semi-control of a couple of tons of steel while thinking about science (at least I'm not thinking about decking some young thing or even decking some young thing while hurtling down the highway in semi-control of a couple tons of steel). But put a weapon specially designed for my cold, arthritic hands? (OK, they're not arthritic, but they probably will be soon). This story (hat tip reader emc) is almost too bizarre: A US company claims to have received federal approval to market a 9…

Poker Report - July 7th

Last night we were back to our normal game of 1/2 pot limit holdem, and boy am I glad. But it was a very odd night all the way around. Out of 8 players, only two finished with any money left at all, 6 had busted out completely. Thankfully, I was one of those two, the other being Jeff, who got run over by the deck as completely as I have ever witnessed. He simply could not lose, and if you know Jeff, you know he tried his damnedest to do so. He was staying on crap hand after crap hand and hitting the cards. He'd stay on 3 9 offsuit and hit two 9's on the flop. It was simply unreal to watch. He…

Friday Miscellany

I got book edits this week, gave an exam on Thursday, and pre-registration for our spring term classes is just beginning, so I have a parade of students begging to get into this course or that one to deal with. So I have no more time for detailed blogging, but will do a bit of tab-clearing to end the week. This piece about bimodal exams resonated well with my experiences in intro classes. I see a lot of the same thing, though with less statistical power, given that our maximum class size is 18. But in general, the "well-prepared students are bored, poorly-prepared students hopelessly lost"…

Help Me Locate Kooks

The final chapter of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book is currently envisioned as a look at the misuse of quantum mechanics by evil squirrels: qucks and hucksters of various sorts. As a result, I spent a good chunk of yesterday wading through the sewers of alternative medicine books on Amazon, using the "Search Inside This Book" feature to locate good manglings of quantum theory in the service of quackery. I feel vaguely dirty. I also spent some time on the web page of Bob Park's favorite shills, BlackLight Power, which provides another example of the appropriation of quantum concepts for…

It's Unfortunate That Nobody Ever Talks About Darwin

'cept these folks: Slate, on Janet Browne's new edition of Origin and on Darwin as a writer. Jonah's digging it too; and so is fellow Virginian Jason. The Economist on the globalizing trend of evolution-creationism debates The Chronicle of Higher Education dishes up an essay that discusses these: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett (Viking Press, 2006) The Creation: An Appealto Save Life on Earth, by Edward O. Wilson (W.W. Norton, 2006) Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, by David Sloan Wilson (University of Chicago…

The War on Christmas escalates

Now the Catholic League — you know it's going to get ugly when Bill Donohue joins the fray — has bought a billboard near the American Atheists' billboard. The pro-superstition sign says, "You Know It's Real: This Season Celebrate Jesus". Isn't that sweet? It's just like the religious side to proclaim a falsehood. Anyway, they're welcome to buy the ad space. The real winners here are the commercial enterprises marketing billboards and selling, selling, selling…and when you get right down to it, isn't that what Christmas is really all about? Meanwhile, the British have their own weird version…

Money Can't Buy You Love

Money also can't buy you happiness. It's been reported before, but it's always worth repeating: the rich aren't happier than the rest of us. In the last issue of Science, a team of researchers (including Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman), reported that "The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory...People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities." Of course, this isn't…

Friday Sprog Blogging: animals at the zoo.

Last weekend, the Free-Rides visited the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Here are some of the animals we saw: The giant panda. Younger offspring: It eats a lot of bamboo. Elder offspring: Would do great living in a Chinese restaurant if it had a hundred bucks. Dr. Free-Ride: Why a hundred bucks? Elder offspring: To buy bamboo, of course. Younger offspring: We really only saw them eating. The red panda. Younger offspring: The red panda loves climbing and eats bamboo like the giant panda. Elder offspring: They're more closely related to raccoons, but they still love bamboo. Younger…

Some definitive bad news about preservatives

It's nice to a see a good study every once in a while and after about 30 years of debating whether preservatives cause hyperactivity/attention deficit. I can't go into all the studies that have been done because there are too many. Suffice it to say that the methodologies were always lacking, and the results uneven (whether positive or negative). Now a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial has been conducted and published in The Lancet (you can get it here for free!). They took 153 3-year olds and 144 8-9 year olds and gave them a sweet drink with either sodium benzoate, a common…

Visiting Weekend Horror Stories

This weekend is visiting weekend for the accepted graduate students in the Cognitive, Brain and Cognition and Visual Cognition and Human Performance divisions of the Psych department at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. This is where a whole bunch of awkward prospective graduate students come out to Champaign and we try to convince them that even though there are no buildings over a few stories, no trees outside of campus (only soy and corn), no hills over 10 feet and the town smells a little funny when the Kraft plant is cooking up something or other, that they should come here…

The Mark of the Devil strikes again.

When I was a kid, my friend Karl and I illegally snuck into a movie theater to see "The Mark of the Devil" (or words to that effect) then just out. We didn't sneak in because we didn't have the money. We snuck in because we were 13 or so and that was the only way we could see the movie, which we knew, by the way, was fiction. But some people don't know that this whole "Mark of the Devil" thing is fiction. There is apparently a lawsuit going on right now by some farmers in Michigan, including but not limited to Amish farmers, claiming that te legally required tagging of livestock with…

A devil's catechism

My review of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (currently at #4 on Amazon's bestseller list!) is in the latest issue of Seed, which showed up at my door while I was flying out East. They changed my suggested title, which I've at least used on this article, in favor of the simpler "Bad Religion". You could always buy the magazine to read it, but I'll give you a little taste of what I thought. Oh, yeah…Seed does that nice plus of having an artist render a portrait of the author, so there's also a picture, artfully ruggedized and made much more attractive than I am in reality. Not…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Cassie Rodenberg

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Cassie Rodenberg to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific)…