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September Pieces Of My Mind #2

I'm a closeted boardgamer. Is the gents' loo in the new Stonehenge visitors' centre fitted with Aubrey holes? Heh. Here's a nice piece of home-made Scandy English: "the people living in the castles would spend their days doing chores, quarrelling, sleeping and eating". The author probably means that castle dwellers would often "quarrel" with attacking troops. The Kings of Leon have a very odd singer. I can't decide if he's interesting or just bad. Borrowed one of the more recent Pratchetts that I haven't read yet. Realised that it's about a quarter-century old. Twitter just suggested that…

How to Protest a ‘Psychic’

How to do things, from someone who actually does things: How to Protest a ‘Psychic’-- Dr. Caleb Lack There is a big difference between writing and talking about doing something, and actually doing something in the Real World.  Confuse the two at your own risk. For instance, while it is fine and dandy to demand on your blog that all skeptic/atheist meetings have child care provided, it is another thing entirely to secure the necessary insurance for child care, find the money to pay for that insurance, find volunteers trained in child care/CPR/basic medicine, train all the volunteers in a…

World Series of Poker, Day 4

This has the makings of a truly incredible story in the poker world. As play began today, the chip leader was none other than last year's winner, Greg (Fossilman) Raymer with just over a million chips. Should Raymer win again this year, that would almost certainly rank as the greatest achievement in poker history. Three players in history have won back to back WSOP main event championships: Johnny Moss in 1970 and 1971, Doyle Brunson in 1976 and 1977, and Johnny Chan in 1987 and 1988 (and finished second in 1989). But when Johnny Moss won it the first time, the title was voted on by the…

Physics News Round-Up

I've been collecting a bunch of little news squibs from the IoP and the APS over the last week or so, and I keep saying that I'm going to do a nice long post explaining each of the experiments. And my actual job keeps eating my life, what with candidate interviews, committee meetings, class prep, and lab set-up. And, of course, those news items are becoming less current with every passing day... In lieu of a lengthy and detailed explanation of each, then, here's a short list of physics stories that have caught my eye. If there's a great clamor for a more detailed explanation of any of these,…

Paul Volcker: More Science, Less Finance

The main speaker at yesterday's Commencement was Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman (the guy before Alan Greenspan) and current chair of President Obama's economic advisory council. As you would expect from somebody of his background, the bulk of the speech was about the current economic crisis. The full speech is online, but the relevant-to-ScienceBlogs bit is this: The past couple of decades have been seen as a triumph of finance - new and more complex financial instruments, a huge growth of financial institutions, enormous compensation for traders, speculators, and finance…

Speaking of simulations and projections - PART I: Real life SimCity rocks!

Well, Ben has beaten me to the punch on showing some of the marvelous pictures presented here at Paleo Future. But I've actually been interested in these images for the past two weeks (with a nod to BoingBoing), having had the chance to look at some current projects that aim to use future simulations to aid in things like urban planning or policy authoring (particularly if it can be aimed at either mitigating or adapting to the possible consequences of climate change). So what's this about? Why is a geneticist looking into the academia of such things? Well, there's actually a pragmatic…

#2: The Current Literature on Science: Author-meets-Blogger Series in Review

(Ten Best of the Decade from Half of the World's Fair) This series began with the kindness of a friend who agreed to let me ask him about his book about Barry Commoner, science, and modern environmentalism. It then spawned a series of 17 interviews with authors of books in science studies, environmental history, the history of science, and all combinations in between. Every one of them was enjoyable to do; every author was generous and insightful. I've been able to use some of these as thumbnail sketches of readings I use in class. In that, they stand as the best example of blogging as a…

Librarians & Scientists: YMMV

Dorothea Salo reports that the scientists she spoke with at Science Online 2010 did not get why she was there or even why librarians would be interested in science communication. For some reason, I didn't get that so much, if at all, this year at this venue. Not that I haven't gotten that in the past. What happens now is a bit more interesting. Someone who doesn't know me either personally or through my blog will start down that direction, and someone else will say something along the lines: Oh, that's Christina, she's ok. This happens at work quite a bit, too. Huh. This isn't exactly what I…

PZ, You've Seriously Disappointed Me

PZ Myers is a really nice person and I love Pharyngula - I just spent a nice half hour reading it, and among other good stuff I encountered there was a link in this post to Robert Hooke's notebooks online. Very cool indeed, and totally geekalicious. But I'm also aware of this recent distasteful post wherein PZ offers up an apologia for Jim Watson. You know, he just has these repellent personal opinions; he's an asshole; but we all have to learn to tolerate this because he's such a fucking hero. A healthy dose of puke for your shoes, PZ. If Watson suddenly announces that design theory…

The Nerd-Off

I'm bowing to peer-pressure and joining the throng of SciBlings who have admitted to taking the nerd test. Orac's been trying real hard to claim dominance in this category, and having met the man I am reluctant to argue with him, but it would seem like quite a few of us are giving him a run for his money. For the record, I scored just as highly as he did on the nerd test, which means that we are equally nerdy, or that we are not actually equally nerdy but one of us knows how to game the test, or that neither of us is all that nerdy but both of us can game the test. (And I should get bonus…

Quantum decay through the looking glass

Imagine looking in the mirror and finding your familiar face reflected back as you've always known it. But as you look more closely, as you precisely examine that mirror image, subtle distortions emerge. The glass itself remains flawless, but real and fundamental differences exist between you and the face that lives on the other side of the looking glass. Something similar happens in the quantum world when matter is examined against its exotic reflection: antimatter. The analogy is admittedly fanciful, but it's no more dramatic than the dynamics of these almost-twins, which annihilate one…

Redefining the Role of Presidential Science Adviser

A propos of the ScienceDebate2008 project, my latest Seed column has just gone online. It's about how we must reinvent the role of the presidential science adviser for the modern media and political era. An excerpt: Because formal US science advising was born during the Cold War, the emphasis often lay upon finding someone who intimately grasped nuclear security issues. The tradition lingers up to the present: The past four science advisers, including Marburger, have all been physicists. Yet while nuclear security issues remain vital, the science policy portfolio has dramatically diversified…

A subtle change can affect your ability to count

Here's a really interesting experiment that we may be able to replicate online. Take a look at this very short video. You'll be shown a set of 12 arcs. Some of the arcs will be upturned and some of them will be turned downward, as in the example below. You'll have about 2.5 seconds to count the DOWNTURNED arcs -- just watch the video once! How many did you see? Record your answer below. How many downturned arcs did you see (second try) ( polls) After you've answered the poll, read on for an explanation of what this all means. Just to make sure your answer isn't spoiled, I'm going…

Mommy, why is that man covered with penises?

Have fun and go visit the Missing Universe Museum online. You will feel as if you are finally getting close to the bottom of human stupidity. Every page promotes this argument: If you don't believe God created all living things, male and female, in 6 days.... How many millions of years was it between the first male and the first female? It's idiotic when Ray Comfort says it, and it's just as inane when whoever put this website together says it. I had to stop and close the web page at the sight of this, their argument against vestigial organs. You see, if evolution were actually true, and…

Gene Variant Increases Obesity Risk

This is from Medpage Today, which often carries the same things as Medscape, but does not require registration (hint, hint). They report on the finding of a genetic variant that increases the risk of obesity.  the more copies of the allele, the greater the risk.  The association was found when researchers at were looking for a genetic basis for type II diabetes mellitus.  They thought they found one, but when they controlled for body mass, the association disappeared.  So the allele is not a direct cause of diabetes, but does increase the risk by increasing the risk of obesity. The article…

Awesome part-time opportunity for cell/microbiologists

For all my microbiology/cell biology peeps, this could be a neat opportunity. ASCB has obtained a two-year stimulus grant from NIH to assemble an image library of the cell. According to Caroline Kane, project PI and professor emerita at UC-Berkeley (and a wonderful person/mentor), "By visualizing the structure and dynamic behavior of a broad range of cells, scientists and clinicians will be better able to understand the nature of specific cells and cellular processes normal and abnormal. This will likely lead to new discoveries about diseases and drug targets in the future," Kane added. "I'm…

Mendel's Garden #15 - Summer Reading Edition

Welcome to the 15th edition of Mendel's Garden. This month Gregor wanted to compile a summer reading list for all those going to the beach. But watch out, a sandy keyboard is never good! So here we go: First off, Gregor would like to point out this very interestin peice on what exactly caused wrinkling in his peas, you remeber don't you - the wrinkled versus smooth phenotype. Well Larry Moran at Sandwalk informs us that the wrinkling phenotype was cause by a defect in a gene that encodes a starch branching enzyme. How very interesting. For some great summer reading, Gregor suggests that you…

Do You Despise Adware?

Who doesn't? Well, for one, all the people who have sipped the Kool-Ade of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is adware. Or at least, this is the arugment made by OpenOffice.orgNinja, and by the way, something I've been saying for years. Is Microsoft Office adware? Wikipedia defines adware as "any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertising material to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used." Ninja then goes on to demonstrate that this is true. It goes beyond that, to the level of malware, in that malware…

UK Animal Rights Extremist Mel Broughton Gets Ten-Year Sentence for Arson

Today, a court in Oxford found animal rights extremist Mel Broughton guilty of conspiracy to commit arson and sentenced him to ten years in prison for his crime. Broughton was arrested in 2007, after being linked to a failed arson attempt at Oxford's Templeton College (which followed a successful attack of Queen's College the previous year). I have written at length about the animal rightists' campaign of fear and intimidation against Oxford University (check out previous entries for more)--a campaign that escalated in 2005, when the ALF declared that nothing owned by the university is off…

Genetic ancestry testing: people who don't want to know

Dan Vorhaus pointed me to this review of the recent PBS series Faces of America. I haven't seen the series myself, but I found this segment of the review hilarious: The element of the last PBS episode I found most intriguing was Gates' interview with novelist Louise Erdrich, who declined to have her DNA tested because her identity as a descendant of the Chippewa Native American tribe is so important to her. She said that she felt her tribe and family were what made her who she was. And, as she explained to Gates, she "didn't want to add any confusion to it." Erdrich, in other words, didn't…

In which Orac, amazingly, publishes an article on integrative oncology in Nature Reviews Cancer

Over the years, my goals in doing this blog have evolved. Now, I want to do more than just blog about the issues of science and pseudoscience in medicine that are this blog’s primary raison d'être (along with the occasional post on more generalized areas of skepticism or the even more occasional political rant). I also want to publish my science-based critiques in the peer-reviewed medical literature. My first crack at came in the form of an article by Steve Novella and myself published last month in Trends In Molecular Medicine entitled Clinical trials of integrative medicine: testing…

Circus of the Spineless #18

The last time I hosted the Circus of the Spineless, I just did a series of photos—invertebrates are wonderfully photogenic. Here we go again, with another collection of gorgeous images of crunchy, squishy, slimy, tentacled, multi-legged, no-legged creatures. Arthropods SEF sent me this nice image of an Adalia imago, but no link—and also says there is a whole life history in photos. I'll update this if they're put online! Here's a photoessay on the Black Swallowtail butterfly. Dragonflies in March? This photo is from last summer. This is a nest of Jewel bugs, with a closeup here. How do…

Privacy vs knowledge

Wired reports a great new opportunity to make money online by suing internet companies for revealing the data: An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system. I'm not sure whether the litigators have read this particular section of the Netflix prize rules: To prevent certain inferences being drawn about the Netflix customer base, some…

Update on Pepsipocalypse

The crack SEED management team has made some significant changes on the new Pepsi nutrition blog. They have placed a small, grey band on the banner that says "Advertorial" (a word I abhor, but whatever). They have also placed the Pepsi logo everywhere and made it fairly clear that it is Pepsi content. This is a move in the right direction as far as transparency and ethics are concerned. As I read the extensive comments being left across the blogosphere I see some that show a misunderstanding of the problem here. The problem is not that Pepsi is "corporate" or "commercial". This is not…

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Pre-Order NOW!!!

You may have been hearing some of the buzz about Rebecca Skloot's forthcoming book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million…

The Churchlands on Consciousness

Here's Pat Churchland, from a recent New Yorker profile (not online): Paul and Pat believe that the mind-body problem will be solved not by philosophers but by neuroscientists, and that our present knowledge is so paltry that we would not understand the solution even if it were suddently to present itself. "Suppose you're a medieval physicist wondering about the burning of wood," Pat likes to say in her classes. "You're Albertus Magnus, let's say. One night, a Martian comes down and whispers, 'Hey, Albertus, the burning of wood is really rapid oxidation!' What could he do? He knows no…

Coffee Talk

Dave at the World's Fair asks: Can you show us your coffee cup? Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality? Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary? Can you try to get others to comment on it? I'm a day late and a dollar short, as my dad used to say, in answering this, but I'll give it a try anyway. Most of my sciblings have already given it a go, with lots of nifty pictures of fab coffee mugs. Check out Dr. Free-Ride, Sandra Porter. Dr. Joan Bushwell, CR McClain, Chad Orzel, and Tara's lack-of-coffee lament. When all this…

Friday Random 10, Sept 12

My apologies for how slow the blog has been lately. I've been sick with a horrible sinus infection for the last month. I saw an ENT on wednesday, and with massive doses of antibiotics and steroids, I'm finally on the mend, so hopefully things will get back to normal soon. Marillion, "Thunder Fly": For those of us who pre-ordered Marillion's upcoming album, they just made mediocre-quality prerelease copies available for download. Overall, I'm very happy with it. It's quite good; I can't wait to listen to it in its high-quality CD form. This is a fun track; it's got a nice bounce to it, but…

A Dual-Purpose Observatory

The service tower attached to the iconic floating egg atop the Institute's Koffler accelerator (the "spaceship" in the photo, left) has recently been graced with a charming, shiny silver skullcap - an observatory dome. Formally known as the Martin Kraar Observatory, it houses two telescopes, and it figured in two of our recent press items. We spoke with observatory director Ilan Manulis of the Davidson Institute of Science Education: WSW: Tell us about the telescopes. IM: The larger one is a 41 cm. (16 in.) telescope. Due to special optical properties, it has the power of a much longer…

Dinosaurs Life Size, the book

I just received my copies of Dinosaurs Life Size, a children's book published by Barron's Educational in the USA and by New Burlington Books in the UK (Naish 2010). You can get it from amazon here (here from amazon.co.uk). You might wonder why I'm advertising a children's book when I could be publishing articles on gekkotans, amebelodontid proboscideans or solitaire hands (all of which are due to appear here very soon). Well, hey, it's my blog right? Dinosaurs Life Size is large-format and includes spreads on a diversity of dinosaurs as well as pterosaurs and Mesozoic marine reptiles. Some…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Basking Sharks: Disappearing Act Of World's Second Largest Fish Explained: Researchers have discovered where basking sharks - the world's second largest fish - hide out for half of every year, according to a report published online on May 7th in Current Biology. The discovery revises scientists' understanding of the iconic species and highlights just how little we still know about even the largest of marine animals, the researchers said. How Bees Hold Onto Flowers: 'Velcro'-like Structures On Flower Petals Help Bees Stick: When bees collect nectar, how do they hold onto the flower? Cambridge…

Science Journalism must-reads of the day

An article in Christian Science Monitor, reporting from the AAAS meeting last month, quotes me in a couple of places: As Climate Change debate wages on, scientists turn to Hollywood for help - read the whole thing (it may not be obvious at first, but there are two pages there). The must-read of the day is Ed Yong's The value of 'this is cool' science stories: But for now, as newspapers decline and shrink, the worry is that the internet will only cater for established interests. As Colin asks, "All of my interviews have pointed out that strong story and strong characters can get someone to…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Last month, workers from warehouses run by Walmart contractors NFI and Warestaff walked off the job and marched from Ontario, CA to Los Angeles to draw attention to unsafe working conditions. Now, employees of Walmart itself have walked off the job in several cities. On October 4, Josh Eidelson reported in Salon: Today, for the first time in Wal-Mart’s 50-year history, workers at multiple stores are out on strike. Minutes ago, dozens of workers at Southern California stores launched a one-day work stoppage in protest of alleged retaliation against their attempts to organize. In a few hours,…

A "Crisis in American Walking" -- in some places, anyway

Slate has just started a new series by Tom Vanderbilt called "The Crisis in American Walking: How we got off the pedestrian path." Vanderbilt observes that it's odd to see things like "Campaign to Get America Walking" when ambulation is one of the most natural activities for our species. Reliance on cars seems to be the main culprit in the United States' sad distinction as being the industrialized country where people walk the least. And that's a shame, Vanderbilt explains, because walking has many health benefits: Here are just some of the benefits, physical, cognitive and otherwise, that it…

Hitler the Creationist

Well I watched about half of the abominable D. James Kennedy special about Darwin and Hitler last night, about as much as I could stomach. It was every bit as bad as I imagined, perhaps even worse. The dishonesty absolutely leapt off the screen. At one point they present noted paleontological scholar Ann Coulter claiming that "all animal phyla" appeared in the Cambrian "in the blink of an eye" - yes, she actually said that. Apparently in Coulter's world, 70 or 80 million years is "the blink of an eye". Most galling, I thought, was that they invoked Hitler's book Mein Kampf as being laced with…

Back to the Bronze Age Again

Yesterday I began my return to the Bronze Age. For most of my career I've mainly worked with the Late Iron Age, a period that dominates the landscape of agrarian Sweden completely through its cemeteries and place names. But my first published piece of research, indeed the first research I ever did, concerned the Late Bronze Age. And now I'm thinking of going back there once my current book project in Östergötland is done. My old Bronze Age studies, I'm ashamed to admit, involved no field trips and hardly any artefact studies, but lots of archive work. I had no driver's license, hardly any…

American Science In Decline?

Inside Higher Ed reports on two new NSF studies showing a decline in American scientific publishing. Sort of. What the studies found, however, was that besides the well-known decrease in the relative share of journal articles originating from the United States, there was a slowdown in absolute numbers as well. This "plateau," as the reports call it, began in the early 1990s and stands in marked contrast to at least the two previous decades' worth of American research. The flattening of growth in science and engineering publishing -- it has "essentially remained constant since 1992,"…

Correction to James Ray Sedona sweat lodge post

Our post on drugs and documents found in the Sedona resort room occupied by self-help guru James Ray requires a correction and a clarification related to the Michigan doctor of osteopathy who, according to publicly-available records, prescribed some of the drugs as detailed in these publicly-available documents. 1. Correction: Dr. John Crisler was referred to as an "Internet physician from Michigan." To be clear, he is a physician with an office in Lansing, Michigan, with an internet presence at allthingsmale.com. On his website, he lists an "Office Visit Fee - Office or Virtual" for $60.00…

Psychics on the ascendancy

Here's a depressing way to start your week, courtesy of The New Statesman: .."psychic schools have never been so busy, and it's not the Doris Stokes brigade who want to learn, but the young, the prosperous and the educated. Stephen Armstrong uncovers a paranormal boom." If you don't know who Doris Stokes is, that's probably a good thing; those familiar with the name are more likely to have enrolled in the aforementioned schools. Plus, The New Statesman piece deals with the situation in England. But things aren't much better this side of the pond. Earlier this year came the results of a…

The bigger the ego, the harder the fall - how self-awareness buffers against social rejection

We all know them - supremely confident, arrogant people with inflated views of themselves. They strut and swagger, seemingly impervious to critical opinions, threats of failure or the glare of self-awareness. You may be able to tell that I don't like such people very much, which is why new research from Sander Thomaes from Utrecht University makes me smirk. Thomaes found that people with unrealistically inflated opinions of themselves, far from proving more resilient in the face of social rebuffs, actually suffer more because of it. Some psychologists hold that "positive illusions" provide…

Hyper Intelligent Spiders Work Together to Lure, Trap and Eat Human Prey

So that title may be a little sensationalistic... but the web is alive this morning (no pun intended) with stories about an enormous series of interconnected webs spread out over a 200 yard area in North Texas. Researchers and visitors alike have been drawn to the sprawling web, but were uncertain whether it was created by social spiders or one terrifying giant spider with unlimited silk production capabilities and a strong work ethic. Kind of a cross between the queen in Aliens and the giant spider, Shelob, that Frodo fights on his way to Mordor. Turns out the social spider theory was…

(Dead) lions and bees and syrup, oh my!

How difficult life must be for expatriates. Moving from the West coast to the East coast has made it difficult for me to find certain brands of food, and foreign foods are doubly difficult to come by. This week, anticipating a recipe created by the fabulous Nigella Lawson, I ran out to the store to get Lyle's Golden Syrup. They didn't have it, which is weird, because they had it three months ago. I drove to another store. Same problem! In the end I had to use King Golden Syrup, which doesn't compare at all. If I'd had time for shipping, I'd have ordered Lyle's online - it would totally be…

Humans Love Rare Things; Albinos Safe, Endangered Species Screwed

Two new experiments from French scientists show that humans love rare things. Not rarities, as in oddities, as in albinos. But rare things as in: not many of them left. That is bad news for many animals and conservation efforts. Hypothesis: Humans love rare things. Even if they are not really rare. Experiment 1 (online last year in Nature Precedings): A team of French scientists and social went into Parisian luxury hotels that were hosting upper class events and asked 316 people if they would prefer eggs (caviar) from a 'rare species' of sturgeon or a 'common species' of sturgeon, or if…

DSHEA: a travesty of a mockery of a sham

In 1994, Congress enacted the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). This act allows for the marketing and sales of "dietary supplements" with little or no regulation. This act is the work of folks like Tom Harkin (who took large contributions from Herbalife) and Orrin Hatch, whose state of Utah is home to many supplement companies. DSHEA has a couple of very important consequences (aside from filling the pockets of supplement makers). What does the FDA require of "supplements"? Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), the dietary supplement…

More shark sensationalism from the popular press

Whenever there's a documentary about shark attacks on the Discovery Channel or a popular press article involving the supposed "alarming rise" in shark attacks, the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) is usually mentioned. This project is primarily concerned with data-gathering and statistics, and this focus has led to some amount of criticism from other researchers concerned with shark attacks. The director of this project is George Burgess, who was quoted as saying the following in a LiveScience article likely spurred by the recent death of an Australian tourist who was bitten while…

A Universe of Black Holes: V

We are back to "Massive Black Holes" Happy Birthday Alberto! Alberto Sesana (AEI) leads off with "Probing massive black holes with space-based interferometry and pulsar timing" starts with overview of gravitational radiation - characteristic frequencies, amplitudes, timescales Baby Black Holes - up for adoption, get collectible adoption certificates with a picture of your very own baby black hole, or one much like it - this is eLISA's plan for fundraising... Ed - ok it is real it is an etsy thing and they are ***adorable*** quick pitch for eLISA/NGO Ed: New improved eLISA web page - see…

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

This post is perhaps not my best post, but is, by far, my most popular ever. Sick and tired of politics after the 2004 election I decided to start a science-only blog - Circadiana. After a couple of days of fiddling with the templae, on January 8, 2005, I posted the very first post, this one, at 2:53 AM and went to bed. When I woke up I was astonished as the Sitemeter was going wild! This post was linked by BoingBoing and later that day, by Andrew Sullivan. It has been linked by people ever since, as recently as a couple of days ago, although the post is a year and a half old.…

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

This post is perhaps not my best post, but is, by far, my most popular ever. Sick and tired of politics after the 2004 election I decided to start a science-only blog - Circadiana. After a couple of days of fiddling with the templae, on January 8, 2005, I posted the very first post, this one, at 2:53 AM and went to bed. When I woke up I was astonished as the Sitemeter was going wild! This post was linked by BoingBoing and later that day, by Andrew Sullivan. It has been linked by people ever since, as recently as a couple of days ago, although the post is a year and a half old.…

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

This post is perhaps not my best post, but is, by far, my most popular ever. Sick and tired of politics after the 2004 election I decided to start a science-only blog - Circadiana. After a couple of days of fiddling with the templae, on January 8, 2005, I posted the very first post, this one, at 2:53 AM and went to bed. When I woke up I was astonished as the Sitemeter was going wild! This post was linked by BoingBoing and later that day, by Andrew Sullivan. It has been linked by people ever since, as recently as a couple of days ago, although the post is a year and a half old.…

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask)

This post is perhaps not my best post, but is, by far, my most popular ever. Sick and tired of politics after the 2004 election I decided to start a science-only blog - Circadiana. After a couple of days of fiddling with the templae, on January 8, 2005, I posted the very first post, this one, at 2:53 AM and went to bed. When I woke up I was astonished as the Sitemeter was going wild! This post was linked by BoingBoing and later that day, by Andrew Sullivan. It has been linked by people ever since, as recently as a couple of days ago, although the post is a year and a half old.…