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Does Jesus hate the New York Yankees?

Opening day at last! The 2006 baseball season starts this weekend. One thing that I can predict with a high degree of certainty is that, sadly, my old hometown team the Detroit Tigers will continue to suck, getting deeper into their second decade of futility as measured by sub-.500 records. In contrast, my other favorite team, the Cleveland Indians (which I came to root for during the eight years I lived in Cleveland), look strong. Given that they gave the Chicago White Sox a scare in the last couple of months of the season, almost catching them from a huge deficit before falling just short…

With great power comes great responsibility

Google has come up with a solution for comment spam. From now on, if a link contains the "nofollow" attribute (rel="nofollow"), Google will not count it for page rank. All you have to do is configure your blog so that this attribute gets added to links in comments left on your blog and comment spammers get no benefit. Of course, this won't solve the problem immediately, since spammers won't bother checking that you use the attribute, but as more and more people update their software, there will be less and less incentive to leave comment spam. Well…

Fumento follies II

Fumento left a comment on my earlier post. Instead of discussing the Lancet article, he boasted how his column had been published in the on the web site of the Lake Wylie Pilot, which is a free weekly newspaper serving a town of 3,000 people. Hey, my little blog has a greater circulation than that. Eye Doc linked to Fumento's attack on the Lancet, so I left a comment explaining what was wrong. Fumento replied: Tim Lambert is on a personal Jihad to debunk my debunking. I did not say death certificates were not used, they were. But so was alleged personal recall. That…

Mmmm.... #baconblogwars

Of all the crappy things I eat, bacon is probably the crappiest. Thankfully, I eat it only rarely, but if you were to put a pound of cooked bacon in front of me, I would eat a pound of cooked bacon and ask for more. But since I want to live long enough to watch my kid grow up, it's better to wax nostalgic on previous bacon encounters than to accrue new ones. How can something so good be so bad? On Sunday mornings, my dad and I used to drive down to the car wash and then over to the bagel store. We'd pick up fresh bagels, and sometimes smoked fish, and usually, by the time we got home…

From the medical journals

Common osteoporosis drugs do not increase the risk of unusual fractures (probably): Bisphosphonates (such as Fosamax and Actonel), a class of medications used to prevent fractures in osteoporosis, are effective in preventing certain types of common back and hip fractures.  As we've developed more patient-years of experience with the drugs, we've found certain problems, such as damage to the esophagus (which has been reduced by developing less frequent dosing regimens) and rare episodes of destruction of the jaw bone.  Data has now accumulated that we may be able to give these medications…

More examples of how influenza still kills

The flu season continues apace around my part of the country. I wrote about it about a week and a half ago, in particular how people don't get their flu shots because they don't think they need them, because they don't think the flu is a serious disease. Two more stories illustrate this disconnect. For instance, here's a story about three people in their 20s who died of the flu in Michigan. The key heart-wrenching passage is this: Ashley McCormick was 23 years old when she died December 27. "We were like, 'This is the flu. How can this happen? It's just the flu.' I mean, everybody gets the…

? Peace, man ?

There is this woman in Colorado who's being sued for displaying a peace symbol on her home—it's very weird. A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan. Well, it is a peace symbol, you know, so it is rather abstractly against the Iraq war. There was also this long-dead Jewish rabbi that some people call the "Prince of Peace", and I understand he's having a holiday sometime soon…I wonder if the homeowner's association will be…

Two Tree Shrews, One Cup.

New research is ROCKING the notoriously arrogant carnivorous plant scientific community: It appears that the largest carnivorous plant, the giant pitcher plant of Borneo (or the Nepenthes rajah for those in the know), has not evolved into its immense size in order to capture and eat small rodents, but to be a large toilet for furry tree shrews to deposit their nutrient rich feces in. Don't nobody go in there for thirty-five...forty-five minutes! Since their discovery in the early Eighteen...ahem...hmmm...(sorry, we're animal guys), the giant pitcher plants have been rumored to ingest not…

The Greatest Gift of All

As many of you know, I collect zoo and aquarium shot glasses. I have the world's largest and probably only collection and it is my pride and joy. When I die, my children will most likely be left poor in "money" but rich in shot glasses. A legacy we can all be proud of. I have two additions to announce. First and foremost, this beauty sent by Beth F from the awesome Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco. For those of you unfamiliar with this fine institution, you should know that it is the only aquarium with sevengill sharks (I think) and it has the most fancy pants website this side of not-…

DSN Wins An Award...Finally!

Well three years in to this intellectual hurricane we call DSN and I am going have to take down my beloved "We Never Won A Blog Award Blog Award". This is all thanks to Jeremy Bruno Over at Voltage Gate who tagged us with a Thinking Blogger award. While it may not be a Tony or a Koufax it did bring a tear to my eye. Part of the Thinking Blogger Pyramid Scheme is that I tag 5 more blogs that get my intellectual juices flowing and they all pay me $100. Kevin has only been on the scene a month or two but already I am hooked on the Other 95%. I read his blog daily for all that is invertebrate…

Underwater Ticking Timebomb

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army, In 1964, mustard gas canisters are pushed into the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey. Millions of pounds were dumped this way. Following the web frenzy that followed our post on ocean dumping, Brian Ross and the Investigative Team at ABC News post on their blog The Blotter a followup piece. In shameless self promotion (hey I am trying to find a faculty job) a few quotes from myself occur in the piece. The good news... Legislation on the books for this fiscal year requires that the secretary of defense issue a yearly report naming the location and quantity of the…

Cheerios & Alvin

You may be asking yourself how these two fit together. I would like to say something like "every box of Cheerios contains a model Alvin in it." That would be great but totally fictional. The connection is actually more interesting and involves Bud Froehlich. You may have heard of a little submersible called Trieste that set a depth record in 1960.  The mechanical arm on it was built by Harold "Bud" Froehlich an engineer at General Mills who sadly passed away this week.  Bud after the Trieste dive started circulating plans for a replacement, the Seapup.  Meanwhile on the east coast talk…

ARCHIVE: 25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea: #5 Most Species are Undiscovered/New to Science

A team under the Deep Atlantic Stepping Stones project possibly has unofficially discovered a new species of deep-sea eel. According to the explorers, numerous underwater sea mountains were also discovered, separated from each other by deep water and unexpectedly shaped like squares and triangles rather than cones. The highest seamount recorded by the expedition was 14,100 feet, and was 16,400 feet below the surface. The team plans to name the seamounts after science luminaries. The team members also report they have discovered a significant piece of the reproductive puzzle of deep-sea dumbo…

"Earth", Now Equipped with Blow-Out Preventer!

Way back in the day with deep sea drilling they used to just let it all flow out if you know what I mean. Now in the PC world and all, we have to watch what we spill, give rattail's fin about other critters, yadda yadda yadda. The japanese, being the ever inventful gadgeteers they are, have outfitted their newest and top of the line drill ship CHIKYU (japanese for "earth") with a Blow-Out Preventer (BOP) for just those uncomfortable circumstances when the pressure is a little higher than you expected that day. "Further Blow Out Preventer (BOP) makes safe drilling even where there is…

Hall Wins USA Olympic Trials Men's Marathon

25 year-old Ryan Hall won the Olympic Trials Marathon this morning in New York City with a trials record time of 2:09:02. This was a special multi-lap course around Central Park, not the same route as will be taken for Sunday's NYC Marathon. Hall looked fluid and at ease the entire race, breaking away from the lead pack around 18 miles in. Dathan Ritzenhein was second in 2:11:07 and in third, Brian Sell in 2:11:40. Favorite and 2004 silver medalist Meb Keflezighi finished a few places back while heavyweights Alan Culpepper and Abdi Abdirahman both DNFed. While the top three make the 2008…

A Parable

I'm just getting sick of the whole "atheism is a religion" crap that I seem to keep running into lately. Here's a little story for your entertainment. Once upon a time there was a land called Cardia. In Cardia, everyone played cards. Some people played blackjack, some poker, others pitch, and so forth. While many used the same 52 card deck, others opted for different decks (such as the pinochle-ists). Depending on the particular group, some would get together to play cards weekly, some daily, and some played several times per day. The rules varied, but most groups had specific "high…

Thorazine for some and Quaaludes for all your patients!

Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel Pharmboy dissects the deeper meaning of the Rozarem ad which features Abe Lincoln, a beaver and a scuba diver telling an insomniac how much they miss him. The ad is hawking Takeda Pharm's latest little sleeping pill. The Rozarem campaign is a departure from the usual direct-to-consumer drug advertising. It's certainly edgier and more surreal than Mandy Patinkin looking sincerely into the camera and urging you to "ask your doctor about Crestor." I am not a fan (to say the least) of pharma's DTC advertising, but I'll leave my frothing rant on that subject for…

Bill No'Credulity

I just saw a few minutes of Fox's Bill O'Reilly being interviewed by Matt Lauer on The Today Show regarding President Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad along with other issues of the Iraq war. Undoubtedly, there will be some folks who will parse and critique every word that Matt and Bill uttered, some positive, some negative. There will be the Fox minions who hang on O'Reilly's every "non-spun, fair and balanced" word as well as those who agree with Keith Olbermann's ongoing assessment of BO'R as a multi-time candidate for "Worst Person in the World", whether it involves gross distortions of…

The War on…Asgard?

The Council of Conservative Citizens is very angry, and is calling for a boycott of an upcoming movie that offends their values. The CofCC is a paleoconservative organization which has as its first principle the myth that the United States is a Christian country, so you might think that the reason it objects to the Marvel superhero movie Thor is that it promotes a pagan religion. You'd be wrong. They're upset because Marvel Studios has declared war on Norse mythology, which you'd think they'd consider a good thing, except that it violates another of their principles, that America is supposed…

Lying Stinky Oilbags Who Lie

HuffPo summary and link to NBC Today Show lying liar doing his lying here. It "may be down to how you define what a plume is here." Really? Yeah, who can believe those stupid scientists and their stupid librul observations and data. Well, here's an idea, lying oilbag BP CEO Doug Suttles. Why don't you go down to the Gulf, and take a dive. Swim around a good long time through that area where "no massive underwater oil plumes in 'large concentrations' have been detected". Then come up, and try diving repeatedly through the oil pooled on the surface. After all that, you just climb…

Does "English-Only" Make Your Lab A Safer Place?

Prodigal Academic comments over at Isis's place: Everyone speaking English is no guarantee of safety. That is true, but since the lab was in the US, everyone in it is supposed to have a minimal proficiency in English. In practice, the net result was that the standard procedure was to use English first (allowing others to maintain a good awareness of what was going on around them in the lab), then confirm understanding in another language if necessary. As a purely safety consideration, it makes a lot of sense to have a lab language. My group right now has 2 PhD students and 3 undergrads, all…

Objectification Silences Women - Or, They Were Asking For It, And They Like It, And...

Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science has a fascinating post summarizing a recent research paper that shows how objectification silences women. As Saguy [the lead researcher] explains, "When a woman believes that a man is focusing on her body, she narrows her presence... by spending less time talking." There are a few possible reasons for this. Saguy suspects that objectification prompts women to align their behaviour with what's expected of them - silent things devoid of other interesting traits. Treat someone like an object, and they'll behave like one. Alternatively, worries about their…

Statistics in sport?

Chad is bemoaning the increase of "stat-geekery" in sports: I'll admit that I'm somewhat torn about this. I am, after all, a professional nerd, and enjoy working with numbers, so I can see the appeal of quantitative data. And a lot of the regular statistics used in basketball are pretty crude measures, so I can understand trying to develop better statistics. Very, very crude. And that is where my beef comes from. Can you think of a sports' statistic that includes a measure of error? Statistics as a field studies the distribution of random variables, which means considering both a measure of…

We learned nothing from Katrina

I would never compare a snowstorm, even one that dropped feet of snow on Colorado and western Kansas, to the devastation of a city by hurricane Katrina. But there were important lessons in the days preceding and following that destruction which should have been learned, not least about the importance of mobilizing assistance quickly when natural disasters overwhelm private citizens and local governments. Which is why President Bush's disaster aid for Kansas is so disappointing: In Kansas, 44 counties and some nonprofit organizations in the western part of the state will receive aid for…

Protect the Polar Bears

A source tells the Washington Post that Uafter much pressure, the Feds will be listing the Polar Bear as a "threatened" species: The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence. This is a remarkable step, and it is not the least bit surprising that the administration is announcing this between Christmas and New Years, when the minimum number of people read newspapers or the Federal…

Torturers aren't safe in America, unless …

Good news! Anti-Torture Statute Used to Indict Son of Liberia's Ex-Leader: The Justice Department invoked a 12-year-old federal anti-torture statute for the first time yesterday, indicting the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor in connection with the alleged use of a hot iron, scalding water and an electrical device to shock and burn an ally of his father's political opponents. The indictment involves a rare use of a U.S. human rights law against a foreign national or a U.S. citizen over an act committed outside U.S. territory. Taylor's son allegedly committed the torture in the…

Kansas City Star endorses Boyda

Kansas City Star | 11/01/2006 | Boyda would support welcome changes: Kansans in the 2nd U.S. House District who want to see significant changes in Washington have a logical choice: Nancy Boyda, an outspoken advocate for reform at home and wiser policies abroad. In view of Washington’s poor record over the last two years, the case for a determined reformer like Boyda is even stronger than when she first sought the seat in 2004. The Topeka Democrat speaks forcefully against wasteful federal spending and supports tighter rules to ensure greater scrutiny of proposals that will cost tax dollars.…

Elephants, crazy or cunning?

Frontal Cortex, reviewing An Elephant Crackup in the Times, writes about Elephants Gone Wild: This shouldn't be too surprising. The neurobiology of stress is an extremely well conserved biological pathway. Our brain experiences stress in much the same way as a chimp, or an elephant, or a rat. And since Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder is now a well documented phenomenon in humans - up to 40 percent of all soldiers coming home from Iraq experience some of PTSD - we should expect that other animals also display abberant behavior in response to chronic levels of elevated stress. What I find odd…

Muamar Gaddafi: Bad man

It's hardly news that Libya is not the best of places. Sure, they cleaned up their act as far as WMD, so they're back on the Bush administration's holiday Christmas card list. But for over two years, a Palestinian doctor and 5 Bulgarian nurses have been on Libya's death row because of a farce of a trial, accused of intentionally infecting children with HIV. European expert witnesses examined the children and found that most had been infected before their treatment. But the court tossed out the evidence, apparently because of a mistranslation. Nature's report on the case explains: the…

Be safe and live long

Arboreality has allowed for the evolution of increased longevity in mammals: The evolutionary theory of aging predicts that species will experience delayed senescence and increased longevity when rates of extrinsic mortality are reduced. It has long been recognized that birds and bats are characterized by lower rates of extrinsic mortality and greater longevities than nonvolant endotherms, presumably because flight reduces exposure to terrestrial predators, disease, and environmental hazards. Like flight, arboreality may act to reduce extrinsic mortality, delay senescence, and increase…

Book Progress #28

It's funny how editing is such a different process from the construction of a chapter. When I began writing the chapter on whales the more pages I could add, the better. When my wife asked me about my progress I would say "I wrote [x] more pages today." Now that I'm editing I usually reply "I pared it down by another page or two." At present I've gone through the whale chapter twice and it is 29 pages long, but I'm going to go through it one more time. At that point I'm going to give it a rest and work on another chapter, as taking a step back and working on something else might help me come…

Another so-so evolution documentary

Now this is pretty damn cool. Peter McGrath of the Beagle Project Blog liveblogged the airing of the 2nd episode of Richard Dawkins' The Genius of Charles Darwin (I posted a few thoughts last week here). Michael Barton and Richard Carter show up, too, and it's definitely some interesting commentary on the documentary. I still have to liveblog my 2nd viewing of the first episode (and I hope to do the same for the other two parts), but after watching the first half of the 2nd episode last night I have to say that I'm not very impressed by this series. I can see now why many critics of Dawkins…

Jurassic Fight Club

A female Majungasaurus as envisaged by the creators of Jurassic Fight Club. Imagine, just for a moment, standing in the middle of a Cretaceous forest 70 million years ago. The sunlight streaming through the canopy catches dust motes in the hot Madagascar grove, the calls of birds making the scene feel familiar despite being from another time. Suddenly, almost imperceptibly, they cease, the undergrowth just beyond your line of vision creaking and cracking with the footfalls of something monstrous. The predator slowly comes into view through the trees, a male Majungasaurus with a bright red…

So many zoos, so little time

As regular readers of this blog know, many (if not most) of my "Photos of the Day" come from my regular trips to local zoos, primarily the Bronx and Philadelphia parks. I haven't been back to any of them since I got my new camera, but this summer I've got a few trips planned to replace some of my lost photographs. Zeff the Amur tiger, photographed in February 2007 at the Bronx Zoo. Sometime after June 20th I'll be headed back to the WCS-run Bronx zoo, the park finally opening a new exhibit all about Madagascar. There will be lemurs and cave-dwelling crocs, but the creatures I most want…

Book Progress #8

I was able to get a few more pages out yesterday, although (say it with me now) not as many as I would have liked. I'm continuing to hammer away at the human evolution chapter as I feel that it's the most important, although if I'm not careful it could turn into a book by itself. I may hit a wall at some point, however, as I'm far more interested in early human evolution (i.e. australopithecines) than in recent prehistoric humans, and I don't want that bias to hinder the relevance of the chapter. (New sections are in bold). Introduction Huxley's rejoinder to Wilberforce at Oxford - Darrow…

Book Progress #6

I was able to get another five pages done today, although (as always) I'm not entirely satisfied with them. There are so many juicy details and excellent narratives that it's difficult to get them all in, and it is sometimes difficult to discuss a topic that I know something about but also will require the use of my library for. Rather than run to look up everything at once, I decided to just keep writing and put up the basic framework of what I want to say, and I'll go back to fill in the details a bit later (which will also give me an opportunity to trim the fat a bit). At the moment,…

ID gets slammed again and again and again...

Even though they'll never admit it, I imagine the creationists allied with the Disco institute are hurting pretty bad right now. Other bloggers have already covered the carnage so I'll just put up some links rather than write up a summary of what's already been said, but the beating ID has received over the past few days has been nearly painful to watch; Casey Luskin stole the BPR3 icon and is now crying discrimination by evil Darwinistas even though he clearly didn't pay attention to the requirements of using the icon. I smell a bit of a fake-out (Luskin creating a trap for himself by…

Quick gripes about Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs

Yesterday I received my review copy of Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science by Phillip Manning (supposedly all about the hadrosaur mummy "Dakota"), and while I usually try to keep quiet about my thoughts on a book until I've finished it I just can't keep my trap shut this time. I will write a full review very soon (I'm more than halfway through the book), but I am extremely disappointed with this piece. The book contains no index, no bibliography/references, and there are virtually no pictures of the dinosaur the book is supposed to focus on (save for a scan of a segment…

Fossil Jackpot!

According to a new article in The Times, an extremely productive Cretaceous bone bed has been found at Lo Hueco near the city of Cuenca (somewhere between Madrid and Valencia) in Spain, diggers for a rail project stumbling across the site. They're in a bit of a rush, though; they only have until the end of the month excavate the site before the diggers come back in. I guess there's just not stopping "progress," and although I'm sure the researchers will have plenty of time to study the bones in the lab a month is not enough time to give the fossils they attention that they need (or even to do…

Collisions: Kinetic energy or momentum?

In the last episode of MythBusters, they wanted to see if a tornado could make some glass cut off a person's head. The first attempt was just to take some glass and through it at a simulated human neck. Clearly, this wasn't quite the same as a tornado. So, here was their plan. If they want to simulate glass moving at 300 mph, they could get a bigger piece of glass and put it on a truck moving at 80 mph. The result would give a piece of glass with the same kinetic energy as a smaller piece moving at 300 mph. Their calculations look to be correct. However, the question is: would this make…

Tales from SPIN-UP

As I said before, I went a SPIN-UP workshop (you can find tons of info and the SPIN-UP report here). The basic idea of the SPIN-UP program is to first look at schools that are successful in their production of undergraduate physics majors. And with an understanding of what makes them successful, help other institutions become successful. Maybe you couldn't make it to the meeting, so here are some highlights. Oh. I believe that this highlights have very general applications. Although this is aimed at undergraduate physics, it seems it would apply to many other majors and maybe even to…

Moment of Inertia Demo

When I was talking about balancing a stick, I mentioned the moment of inertia. Moment of inertia is different than mass, but I like to call it the "rotational mass". What does mass do? Things with larger mass are more difficult to change their motion (translational motion). A similar thing is true for the "rotational mass". Things with larger rotational mass are more difficult to change rotational motion. Here is the demo. Demo for Moment of Inertia from Rhett Allain on Vimeo. Why do I like this demo? First, it uses ordinary things. I consider juice boxes to be pretty ordinary.…

Intelligent design: "a grave theological error"

Michael Heller, this year's Templeton Prize winner, may be more willing to merge science and religion than many scientists are, but he's no pal of ID. In a statement at the press conference announcing the award, he explained: Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories, that ascribe the great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes, should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They…

In the muck with Phill Kline

Last year, then-attorney general Phill (the extra 'l' is for "lascivious") Kline was sued over his interpretation of a state law. He claimed that a law requiring doctors and other counselors to report sexual abuse required them to inform his office of any sexual contact with a minor child, even if it were just two kids making out. This led to much amusement over his attempts to clarify what, exactly, constituted sex. On the stand, he allowed that french kissing would probably be OK, but had to think very hard about french kissing "while lying on top of each other." He wasn't sure whether…

Glass Flowers

This is glass: If you've never been to the glass flowers exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History then you are missing out on a truly spectacular fusion of art and science. Here's NPR: Back in the late 19th century, botanical teaching models were mostly made of wax or papier maché. Or they were actual plants that had been dried and pressed. But the replicas were inexact, the pressed specimens faded and flat. So professor Goodale asked the Blaschkas [a father-son team of glass blowers from Dresden] to make glass plants. Fifty years later, after Rudolph retired (and after Leopold had…

Are Babies Extra-Conscious?

An intriguing hypothesis: Gopnik argues that babies are not only conscious, they are more conscious than adults. Her argument for this view begins with the idea that people in general -- adults, that is -- have more conscious experience of what they attend to than of what they disregard. We have either no experience, or limited experience, of the hum of the refrigerator in the background or the feeling of the shoes on our feet, until we stop to think about it. In contrast, when we expertly and automatically do something routine (such as driving to work on the usual route) we are often barely…

The Neuroscientific Case for Vegetarianism

Christof Koch makes a compelling argument: My empirical studies into the neurobiology of consciousness have convinced me that many species share the sights and sounds of life with us humans. Why? First, except for size, there are no large-scale, dramatic differences between the brains of most mammals (including humans). Second, when people experience pain and distress, they contour their face, moan, cry, squirm, and try to avoid anything that would trigger a reoccurrence of the pain. Many animals do the same. Likewise for the physiological signals that attend pain--like changes in blood…

Impressionism and Blindness

It's long been noted that the impressionists steadily grew more abstract as the 19th century came to a close. One only has to compare an early Monet from the 1870's to a late Monet landscape to understand the importance of this transition. The pretty pastels and dappling light gave way to thick impasto paints and blank spots on the canvas. In other words, the impressionists had become post-impressionists. This transition is usually explained in terms of culture: the impressionists were simply reacting to the increasing acceptance of painterly abstraction. Modernism was beginning,…

Poetry and Memory

Why do we remember shards of poetry when we can't remember anything else? After Tom Chaffin's brain tumor was removed, he temporarily lost the ability to speak in coherent sentences. (He also lost the ability to move the right side of his body.) And yet, even when he couldn't name more than two kinds of animals, he was able to recite the opening lines of Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road: Then about a day or so later, while working with a speech therapist, I found that I could recall the first dozen or so lines of a favorite poem: "Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, Healthy…

Valentine's Day Reading

It seems wrong to connect this memoir - which is so sincere, honest and lovely - to Valentine's Day, which is little more than a marketing conspiracy put together by Hallmark, the neighborhood florist and Tiffany's. But if you're looking for a little romantic reading, and don't mind a tragic ending, then pick up a copy of Love Is A Mix Tape, by Rob Sheffield. It's the true story of his love affair with Renee, a charismatic Appalachian with a penchant for Pavement and REM. (Rob, on the other hand, was a "shy, skinny, Irish Catholic geek from Boston.") They got married at the tender age of 25.…