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My picks from ScienceDaily

Go ahead, rip into them. I know you want to... No Missing Link? Evolutionary Changes Occur Suddenly, Professor Says: Jeffrey H. Schwartz, University of Pittsburgh professor of anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences, is working to debunk a major tenet of Darwinian evolution. Schwartz believes that evolutionary changes occur suddenly as opposed to the Darwinian model of evolution, which is characterized by gradual and constant change. Among other scientific observations, gaps in the fossil record could bolster Schwartz's theory because, for Schwartz, there is no "missing link." Males…

Inbreeding is Not Always Bad

For Some Species, An Upside To Inbreeding: Although breeding between close kin is thought to be generally unfavorable from an evolutionary standpoint, in part because harmful mutations are more easily propagated through populations in this way, theory predicts that under some circumstances, the benefits of inbreeding may outweigh the costs. Researchers have now reported real-life evidence in support of this theory. Studying an African chiclid fish species, Pelvicachromis taetiatus, in which both parents participate in brood care, the researchers found that individuals preferred mating with…

Teen Parenthood for the X-box generation

Parenting is hard. Are you ready (re-posted from October 20, 2005) -------------------------------------------------- Earlier today Mrs.Coturnix and I took Coturnix Jr. and Coturnietta to the pediatrician (and the dentist - they are in the same building). While sitting in the waiting room we saw a strange scene. A father and a son (about 14-years old, I'd say) walked out of the office, the boy vigorously rocking a little baby, the father saying "It's great we have a car. Cars are good things". I guess I made such a face that the receptionist started laughing: "It's a doll". A girl waiting in…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Sleep Problems -- Real And Perceived -- Get In The Way Of Alcoholism Recovery: The first few months of recovery from an alcohol problem are hard enough. But they're often made worse by serious sleep problems, caused by the loss of alcohol's sedative effects, and the long-term sleep-disrupting impact that alcohol dependence can have on the brain. Solving Darwin's Dilemma: Oxygen May Be The Clue To First Appearance Of Large Animals : The sudden appearance of large animal fossils more than 500 million years ago -- a problem that perplexed even Charles Darwin and is commonly known as "Darwin's…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Sea Urchin Genome Suprisingly Similar To Man And May Hold Key To Cures: Sea urchins are small and spiny, they have no eyes and they eat kelp and algae. Still, the sea creature's genome is remarkably similar to humans' and may hold the key to preventing and curing several human diseases, according to a University of Central Florida researcher and several colleagues. Evolution Of The Penis Worm: Research Reveals Embryos More Than Half A Billion Years Old : Images of the developmental stages of embryos more than half a billion years old were reported by a University of Bristol researcher. From A…

Volcanoes, pandemics and crystal versus brass

The Icelandic volcanic eruption is still causing havoc in Europe with ripple effects elsewhere as people and planes are grounded for travel in or out of much of northern Europe. Pressure from the traveling public, air carriers and business is mounting to let passenger and cargo planes fly again. What's changed? Not much. There's about as much uncertainty as there was a week ago, just a lot more pushback. The recriminations are already starting: EU and national transport authorities "over reacted." They should have ... done what? At the same time airlines like Air France-KLM are conducting…

Garden Wrap-Up

Last night was our official first frost, right about at our new average (official last frost date is about October 7 here, but the last 9 years have been increasingly late). I was wholly unprepared - I forgot to check, and had meant to harvest the last batch of Tulsi. Ah well. Green tomato pickles are definitely the order of the day! We'll be eating out of our garden for a long time yet - with season extension, probably until late December or January, but frost is a marker of change, and it seems as good a time as any to evaluate this year's garden. In general, it was a banner year for…

How To Boil a Frog!

I give a lot of credit to people who try and make peak oil and climate movies - trying to overcome the natural impulse of most people to say "Let's not go see that movie about how we're all doomed, instead, let's go see The Expendables" is one of those tilting at windmill things I admire. The problem is that even your doomy blogiste here would probably rather watch a decaying Sylvester Stallone than sit through most of the movies. No matter how thoughtful and well told, nothing is going to get your Grandmother or your 19 year old nephew who likes explosions to sit through _The End of…

Blogging break over & summer reading wrapup

My annual summer blogging break has officially come to a close. I returned to work Monday after a very nice four week vacation. Yes, I use my whole annual vacation allotment all at once and go the rest of the year without any significant break except for Christmas. The first three weeks we spent most of our time at a cottage we rent every year near Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, about 90 minutes north of Montreal. The weather was mostly pretty good, so a great time was had by all -- swimming, canoing and just lounging around reading books. For my part, let's just say a lot of BBQing and drinking…

Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, Spring 2009

Lots of great articles in this issue! Pretty well every one is worth checking out: Percentile-Based Journal Impact Factors: A Neglected Collection Development Metric by A. Ben Wagner, University at Buffalo A Subject Librarian's Guide to Collaborating on e-Science Projects by Jeremy R. Garritano and Jake R. Carlson, Purdue University What Engineering Sophomores Know and Would Like to Know About Engineering Information Sources and Access by Zorana Ercegovac, InfoEN Associates The 2007 STS Continuing Education Survey: Continuing Education Needs of Science/Technology Librarians by Jo Ann…

Iceland Football Demographics

In case anyone hasn't noticed, Iceland is playing England in the Euro 2016 Cup today, round of 16. This is the first time Iceland has been in a major football tournament, the first time, obviously, they have progressed to the second stage, and as I write this they are unbeaten in tournament play. Iceland has a population of just over 330,000. It is about half the size of Wyoming, both in area and population. For perspective, the mens' football team is drawn approximately from the 21-37 year old demographic, which has about 65,000 people in it. Or about 33,000 males. The football squad has…

Alternative Approaches to Science Teaching

Just read a series of interesting articles on inquiry based science: Inquiry Science rocks: Or does it - David Klahr tries to test the efficacy of discovery learning (APS News 12. 2012). Direct Instruction rocks: Or does it - Richard Hake takes issue with Klahr's inferences. To be contrasted with: The Efficacy of Student-Centered Instruction in Supporting Science Learning - Granger et al Science 338 105 (2012) [sub] The amount of data on the efficacy of the different teaching methods is still pathetically small. I am inclined to believe that student center instruction or inquiry science is…

JW$T - tensions bubble up at #AAS221

The James Webb Space Telescope is large, overbudget and in a category of its own. Literally. And now stirring over some controversy as the reality of science funding starts smacking scientists in the face. Last year, as I'm, sure you remember, the JWST funding line was take out of the Astrophysics Division and segregated in its own division, a funding maneuver that has been used before for large overruning projects. This, incidentally, brutally exposed how tight the space science budgets have been squeezed, partly through overruns, partly through tough little missions hanging on longer than…

CyberScience Cluster Hire

New faculty positions in multiple science and engineering disciplines, including astronomy, emphasizing computational analysis and data mining. Penn State is embarking on a transformative cluster hiring initiative in cyberscience – computation- and data-enabled science and engineering – to lead through cyber-enabled innovation in interdisciplinary research. This cross-college endeavor will coordinate multiple faculty appointments to develop new functional capabilities centered on data, models and simulation for deeper insights into the critical problems in Science and Engineering. We seek…

LHC: fake Higgs?

Back at the LHC Shows the Way workshop and slow live blogging of the discussion, with random asides for other stuff... Astronomy Magazine has a contest - win Brian May's PhD thesis! - now separate post with added bonus question Today: fake Higgs - are there some new bosons which are not Higgs, but which look like Higgs. Specifically looking at other scalar or pseudoscalars, or the possibility of spin-2 tensor particles. Aside: cool 2D fluid flow web site - GPU powered 512k sim run live through WebGL - hypnotic turbulence to crash your browser Look for general models where some particle…

Aging and Transportation

The New York Times' latest "Room for Debate" discussion is entitled "2025: A Lot of Old People on the Roads," and it introduces the topic this way: ...the number of drivers 70 and over is expected to triple in the next 20 years in the United States. Older drivers are more likely to be injured, and they often reach the point where they stop driving voluntarily, even before someone takes their licenses away. How will they get around, given that most of them don't live in cities or transit-friendly planned communities? What should transportation planners be doing, if anything, to prepare for…

You want crazy? We got crazy all over the place!

Somebody must have mistaken us for the local insane asylum, because my mailbox this afternoon is full of weird stuff. Could it be…could it be…Friday the 13th? A suggestion for Vox Day: he should debate Jesus' General! This one is kind of sad. A loon who thinks 9/11 was an American conspiracy has gone on a hunger strike, for the nebulous goal of getting a meeting with John McCain (The fool! McCain was in on it!) His wife and friends are rather distressed. Kooks aren't just for laughs; there are people behind them who are hurt by their behavior. Note also: he's a professor of religious…

Immokalee farmworkers shine light on modern day slavery

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) are today's version of David, as in David and Goliath. CIW started in 1993 as a small group of southwest Florida farm workers discussing ways to better their lives. CIW has evolved into a 4,000 strong membership organization of Haitian, Mayan and Hispanic agricultural workers. They've tangled with industry giants like McDonald's, Burger King and Yum Brands through their Campaign for Fair Food, and secured a penny per pound wage increase for workers who harvest tomatoes used in Whoppers, Taco Bell tacos and the like. CIW's latest effort is its Anti-…

MSHA seeks White House approval on rule to prevent black lung disease

The Mine Safety and Health Administration took an important step yesterday to meet a goal set in the Labor Secretary's regulatory agenda: proposing a rule to prevent black lung disease. According to data on RegInfo.gov MSHA submitted yesterday a proposed rule entitled "Lowering Miners' Exposure to Coal Mine Dust Including Continuous Personal Dust Monitors"to OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Typically, OIRA will take 60-90 days to complete their review. Mine workers in the U.S. continue to develop debilitating lung diseases from exposure to respirable coal and…

New worker safety bill introduced in House, protects whistleblowers, targets bad actors

Cong. George Miller (D-CA) is a man of tough talk and swift action. Today, along with 15 other House members, he introduced H.R. 5663 a bill to upgrade provisions of our nation's key federal workplace health and safety laws. Every year, tens of thousands of workers are killed and made ill because of on-the-job hazards, and this year the toll of death made headline news. The Deepwater Horizon disaster and the Upper Big Branch mine explosion alone cut short the lives of 40 workers, with their coworkers' and families' lives changed forever. H.R. 5663 will modernize whistleblower protections…

DoD Defies EPA on Military Site Cleanups

In recent months, weâve learned about the Department of Defense hampering EPAâs chemical risk assessments and slowing the study of health effects from the TCE contaminating Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Now, the Washington Postâs Lyndsey Layton reports that DoD is refusing comply with EPA orders to clean up military bases where chemical contamination poses âimminent and substantialâ dangers to public health. When EPA issues âfinal ordersâ to polluters, those that donât comply can be hauled into court and forced to pay fines of up to $28,000 per day for each violation. When the polluter in…

Friday Blog Roundup

Bloggers turn their attention to the floods in the Midwest: Tara C. Smith of Aetiology is in the thick of the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids floods. She reminds us that preparedness can pay off for floods as well as flu, and that residents need to consider several health issues as the flood waters recede. We wish Tara and her neighbors the best of luck in the weeks ahead. Shirley S. Wang at WSJ's Health Blog considers the challenges facing the Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, which had to evacuate nearly 200 patients and now has an ambitious goal of getting cleanup up and fully operational in…

Friday Blog Roundup

Several bloggers have addressed occupational health and safety issues this week: Revere at Effect Measure considers the factors affecting healthcare worker behavior during a pandemic, and whether itâs advisable for state authorities to order HCWs to work.   John Astad at OSHA Underground describes three combustible-dust explosions and fires that occurred in a single day, and one way stakeholders can address the combustible-dust problem. James Parks at AFL-CIO Weblog reports on a rally by Indian guest workers, who seek alterations to the US guest worker program and an investigation into an…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In Forbes (via Gristmill), Megha Bahree reports on child labor in India. Children chisel stones, weave carpets, and work in fields for low wages, with little time off. Bahree notes that there's a particular demand for cheap labor and small, nimble fingers in crops that require manual pollination, like Monsanto's high-tech cotton. The biotech giant tries to keep its farmers from using illegal child labor, but problems persist. Bahree begins her story with a visit to a cotton field where Jyothi Ramulla Naga -- "who says she's 15 but looks no older than 12" -- earns 20 cents an hour:  At the…

Quotes of the Day

There are a number of memorable quotes in the Center for Study of Responsive Law's newly released report "Undermining Safety: A Report on Coal Mine Safety."   In one section, report author Christopher W. Shaw discusses the mining industry's lobbying for "targeted inspections" (a la the OSHA model) instead of the current requirement for mandatory quarterly inspections.  The AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer Richard L. Trumka---a former coal miner---derided the notion of making MSHA more like OSHA: "OSHA reminds me of an 18-year old Mexican Chihauhua dog that's lost its teeth and hides…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In the Washington Post, Petula Dvorak describes the jobs of social workers in the nationâs capital: As guardians watching over thousands of the city's imperiled children each year, social workers confront armed drug dealers, push past stoned parents, shrug off cockroaches, sit on urine-soaked couches and hug kids covered in scabies. ... Often, the most seasoned caseworkers have been with the agency just five years. According to a 2003 General Accountability Office study, the average tenure of caseworkers nationwide is less than two years, mainly due to low salaries, high caseloads, the risk…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Two recent studies add the knowledge about the risks associated with on-the-job exposure to pesticides. University of Ottowa researchers analyzed 35 studies on parental occupational exposure to pesticides and childhood leukemia, and found that children whose mothers were exposed to pesticides at work while pregnant have twice the risk of developing childhood leukemia. Researchers at Franceâs national institute for health research have helped confirm the link between occupational exposures to pesticides and Parkinsonâs disease, which has been found in other recent studies, too. They found…

Why our health care costs are so high and what we can do about it

By Alison Bass (cross-posted) In order to truly stabilize the economy and rescue Medicare from financial collapse, the Obama administration knows it has to do something about the elephant in the room: ever-rising health care costs. In this week's New Yorker, surgeon-writer Atul Gawande presents an eye-opening discourse on why American health care costs have ballooned in the last decade and what can done about it. To make his case, Gawande visits McAllen, Texas, which is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. In 2006, Medicare spent $15,000 per enrollee in McAllen (…

Las Vegas Sun Wins Pulitzer

Weâve written before about Alexandra Berzonâs fantastic Las Vegas Sun articles on Las Vegas construction deaths, and the paper won the 2009 Roy W. Howard public service reporting award from the Scripps Howard Foundation last month. Now, they've also won a Pulitzer in the Public Service category. The Pulitzer site states: Awarded to the Las Vegas Sun, and notably the courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon, for the exposure of the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions…

Fixing the US Food Safety System

Trust For Americaâs Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have released a report on improving food safety, and one of the chief problems they identify with the current system is a lack of centralized food-safety authority: The report calls for the immediate consolidation of food safety leadership within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and ultimately the creation of a separate Food Safety Administration within HHS. Currently, no FDA official whose full-time job is food safety has line authority over all food safety functions. A speedy effort by the Obama administration to…

Obama Names Solicitor of Labor Nominee

For the first second time in Department of Labor history, the Solicitor of Labor (SOL) will be a woman.*  Yesterday, the White House announced a handful of appointments, including M. Patricia Smith to the top attorney slot at DOL.   This position requires Senate confirmation. Ms. Smith is the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor and co-chair of New York Stateâs Economic Security agency.  Prior to that, she served for 20 years in the Labor Bureau of the New York State Attorney Generalâs Office, including as its chief.  The Commission's website highlights her efforts…

Friday Blog Roundup

The big news in Congress this week is that Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has replaced John Dingell (D-Mich.) as chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee â a move likely to have big implications for national climate policy, as Kate Sheppard at Gristmill explains. Meanwhile, Alicia Mundy at WSJâs Health Blog wonders if the leadership change will let PhRMA and FDA sleep any easier, since Dingell has been âone ornery activist for change at the FDA and the industries it regulates.â  But while weâre looking forward to changes under the new Congress and Administration, other bloggers remind us…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In Milwaukee, 69% of voters cast their ballots in favor of a requirement for employers to provide their workers with paid sick leave. Milwaukee becomes the third city â after San Francisco and Washington, DC â to adopt a requirement for paid sick days.  Georgia Pabst of the Journal Sentinel explains: Under the measure, a full-time worker would earn a minimum of one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, or nine days a year. Businesses with 10 or fewer employees would be required to provide five days a year of paid sick time to full-time employees. The paid leave could be taken for…

Occupational Health News Roundup

On Labor Day, Matthew D. LaPlante reported in the Salt Lake Tribune: On a day purportedly dedicated to America's laborers, much of the nation's labor force remained out in force. According to Development Dimensions International, a human resource consulting firm, about 40 percent of Americans work on Labor Day. Some work because they want to. But most, like [sandwich shop employee Rosemary] Patino, work because they have to. At the height of her career as a nursing assistant, Patino made $15 an hour. "That's not great pay," she said, "but I got full benefits - medical, dental, paid vacations…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Itâs been almost a decade since U.S. corporations, facing a consumer outcry over sweatshops, launched high-profile efforts to ensure that their products were manufactured under fair labor conditions. David Barboza of the New York Times reports that investigations by labor rights groups find dangerous and unfair working conditions persisting nonetheless: The groups say some Chinese companies routinely shortchange their employees on wages, withhold health benefits and expose their workers to dangerous machinery and harmful chemicals, like lead, cadmium and mercury. ⦠And so while American and…

Please Ask Guiliani to Get Specific

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani (R) is basing his presidential campaign on his so-called Twelve Commitments to the American People.  A number of them make me particularly nervous, especially as we learn of the fragile state of some fundamental public health systems.  Problems including lead-laced children's toys, coal mining disasters, e.coli 0157:H7-contaminated foods and unsafe pharmaceuticals come to mind.  Candidate Guiliani says he plans to: "Reduce the federal civilian workforce by 20% through attrition and retirement" "Require agencies to identify at least 5% to 20% in spending…

Quote of the Day

While families in eastern Ukraine are mourning the death of 90 coal miners from the Zasaidko coal mine, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said: "This accident has proven once again that a human is powerless before nature." This disaster was no accident.  This was no unpredictable force of nature.  It was a massive methane explosion that could have--should have--been prevented.  Shame on Yanukovych for suggesting the Ukrainian coal industry is powerless to stop them.  Underground coal mining and methane go hand-in-hand.  Prime Minister Yanukovych may not know this, but miners …

Occupational Health News Roundup

The House Education & Labor Committee has approved a bill (the Supplementary MINER Act) that would speed up deadlines for several mine rescue requirements passed by Congress last year, and require more oversight by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Ken Ward Jr. has the details about the billâs provisions â and MSHA head Richard Sticklerâs criticisms of it â in the Charleston Gazette. In West Virginia, where tougher requirements were adopted after the Sago and Aracoma mine disasters in that state, approvals for wireless communications and tracking systems are already being sent to…

Friday Blog Roundup

Andrew Leonard at How the World Works has rounded up posts about the role of climate change in the California wildfires, and concludes that environmentalists are expressing themselves with nuance. Ben at Technology, Health & Development points out that the particulate-matter density in the areas affected by the fires is still less than levels typically seen in homes where biomass is burned for fuel. Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock reports that the Senate has passed a bill that includes a provision mandating public access to NIH-funded research â a major step for proponents of open…

Friday Blog Roundup

This week saw several new policy statements from presidential hopefuls, and bloggers have opinions about them. David Roberts at Gristmill responded to Barack Obamaâs energy plans, while Amie Newman at RHReality Check focused what Obamaâs saying in Iowa about abortion and abstinence-only sex ed. Jacob Goldstein at the WSJ Health Blog reported on John McCainâs healthcare plan, and Chris Mooney at The Intersection devoted several posts to Hillary Clintonâs statements on science. And, to add to the discussions about childrenâs health insurance, Rob Cunningham at the Health Affairs Blog reports on…

News Flash: Agency announces it will do its job!

MSHA announces '100 percent' plan From The Onion? No.  MSHA (seriously) just announced "a new initiative to complete 100 percent of mandated regular inspections of all coal mines in the country."  Huh?  A "new initiative" to do something that you are already required by statute to do? Perhaps the Secretary of Labor Chao and Asst. Secretary Richard Stickler are a little irked at Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette for publishing a number of stories in recent weeks, documenting that MSHA has failed to conduct its required inspections.  Two of the stories (here and here) followed accidents…

Is this Product Placement in the Wall Street Journal?

Writing in the Saturday (how to make it look like you're rich edition) of the Wall Street Journal, Marisa Acocella Marchetto mentions an expensive, branded drug--Nexium--eight times. She even mentions its slogan ("the purple pill")! As Mark has written elsewhere, it's moronic to take Nexium because there are cheaper, efficacious alternatives, such as Prilosec, which is available over the counter. Consumer Reports noted in 2010 that Nexium was the most expensive PPI, at $248 a month, and that cheaper generics and over the counter medicines were available. In the story, she describes being…

Trauma II

I've been absent, I apologize, but my last rotation in medical school has been a sub-internship in Trauma surgery. Aside from work, sleep, eating, and buying a house in Baltimore, blogging has necessarily suffered. I will say a few things though that should be a public service message on the TV. People need to wear helmets when driving ATVs. I'm sorry I know I'm repeating myself. As before, I'd say any time your going faster than 10-15mph and not enclosed and belted in steel cage you should be wearing a helmet. That includes on bikes, on motorcycles, scooters, go-carts, ATVs, skis…

George Will Controversy Now Over - Mooney Cleans His Clock

Congrats to Chris Mooney for getting his rebuttal to George Will published in the Washington Post. And kudos to the post for allowing his serious factual answer to an article composed entirely of crank arguments and lies (they also published a rebuttal from WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud dealing with the lies in Will's article) Mooney does an excellent job, and points out the frank dishonesty not just regarding the sea ice data (the only point the obtuse Ombudsman would even talk about), but also how every other argument in the entire article represents flawed rhetoric. In particular…

Denialism Humor

Brought to us by The Onion San Francisco Historians Condemn 1906 Earthquake Deniers: The 1906 Earthquake Deniers, a group reviled by Californians and scholars alike, held three days of lectures and roundtable discussions over what they call a "century-long hoax" of exaggerated seismic activity in the Bay area, and part of a conspiracy to bring the World's Fair to San Francisco in 1915. Historians protested the conference, saying the organization's statements denying any major seismic activity in 1906 are reprehensible and out of line with all available geologic data from the time. ... "If an…

How will the candidates fix American health care?

I don't know. There was a pretty good piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, but it's really not clear enough for most readers (including myself). The McCain and Obama websites give fairly comprehensive looks at their health plans, but nothing useful for a lay reader. The good news is that both campaigns have a plan. The bad news is that it is virtually impossible for anyone who cares to make heads or tails of the two and compare them effectively. Well, gentle reader, I'm going to do you a favor. As an educated and knowledgeable professional, I am not going to try to parse through…

PZ vs. the cracker

I was trying to avoid weighing in on this one, but blogorrhea always wins. I won't bother rehashing the details of the imbroglio---if you don't know, well, you've been sleeping. Go on...google "pharyngula cracker"...I can wait. OK, now that you've caught up, here's my two cents. I'm conflicted about this. It's not usually a good thing to offend people's deeply held beliefs unless those beliefs are deeply offensive. A free society requires a great deal of tolerance. This of course cuts both ways--if Catholics can expect reasonable peace, so can those who criticize their beliefs. As I…

Do you want to play a game?

Yeesh — I don't think this game is going to take the world by storm. It's calledCrevoScope, and it's a "text-based massively multiplayer game", which somehow is supposed to simulate the evolution-creationism debate, without actually requiring players to learn or know anything. It's got some weird mechanics which I haven't puzzled out in any detail at all, but apparently you can acquire "knowledge" by clicking on a "library" link — you don't actually learn anything, a number for your character goes up — and then you get to go "debate" someone, and somehow the various scores help determine…

That gay religion

Sometimes, I am extremely annoyed with the principle of separation of church and state — it leads to absurdities, like this recent court decision that a gay student support group was was using unconstitutional tactics — it was using materials that mentioned that some religions are more tolerant of homosexuality than others. This is, apparently, an endorsement of particular religions and therefore violates church-state separation. Well, yeah, it is — for specific subjects, like gay rights, science education, and pacifism, some religions clearly are better than others — yet because we have to…

Another victim of cult medicine

This is another one migrated from my old blog. It is the first in a series that generated an unusually large number of comments. Thanks, PalMD This particular woo-encounter was non-fatal. A patient came to see me. He's middle-aged, generally quite healthy, and physically active. After a recent return to physical activity, his elbow began to hurt, so rather than call his internist, he visited a chiropractor. Not surprisingly, the back-cracker was unable to effect a cure. What did he do next? Asked his friend for the name of a "better chiropractor" (which is a bit like trying to find a…