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More Nonsense about Neo-Nazis in the Military

Someone named Greg Scott, writing at the famously misnamed Intellectual Conservative site, is up in arms about a New York Times report about the increasing number of neo-nazis and skinhead racists in the US military. That article was based on a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which cited Defense Department officials on the record about their ongoing investigations. Scott's critique of the Times' article is riddled with factual errors, distortions and exaggerations. Predictably, he's making the "they're insulting the whole military" argument, which is the standard reply from the…

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road.

With this post, I say goodbye to ScienceBlogs. Am I leaving because of the fiasco with the PepsiCo blog? Not directly. That's not to say that there weren't serious issues raised by the whole incident. Many of these lie in the realm of journalistic ethics, at least as understood by people you might regard as affiliated with old school journalistic outlets (notwithstanding the fact that many such outlets currently have a significant online presence). The analyses by Paul Raeburn, Curtis Brainard, and John Rennie all do a nice job setting out the central issues in case, so do click through to…

Tracking flu through online search queries.

This morning, I was made aware (by my better half) of the existence of Google Flu Trends. This is a project by Google to use search terms to create a model of flu activity across the United States. Indeed, the results have been good enough that they were reported in a Letter in Nature [1] back in November 2008 (but with a correction published online 19 February 2009). From that letter: Seasonal influenza epidemics are a major public health concern, causing tens of millions of respiratory illnesses and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths worldwide each year. In addition to seasonal influenza, a new…

The E-Book Experience

A bit more than a month ago, I got a Sony Reader as a birthday present, upgrading my electronic book-reading platform from an old Palm Pilot. this is, obviously, not as sexy as a Kindle or a Nook, but then again, it doesn't involve me paying fees to use wireless services and further stoke my Internet addiction, so that's more or less a wash. Anyway, since I've been using this extensively for a month, now, I thought I'd post a few impressions: -- First and foremost, the e-ink display is very nice. The one crippling flaw of the Palm Pilot method was that I couldn't read outdoors or in bright…

Dangerous flu misinformation from HuffPo----again

We already know about the Huffington Post's war on science and its shameless publication of snake oil ads disguised as journalism. Now, Mark Hyman, an evangelist for the cult known as "functional medicine", is giving even more bad flu advice (and shilling for his books). He begins his blathering, misleading sales pitch with this bit of mendacious drivel: The main question my patients have been asking is whether they should get vaccinated against H1N1 or against the regular flu. This is not a simple yes or no answer. The guiding principle of functional medicine is personalized care, not the…

Three uneaten ears of corn

Prelude: Sunday, June 22, 2008 Only three weeks ago. All seems well. Prelude II: Thursday, July 3, 2008 We learn that all is not well. Saturday, July 12, 2008, 6:30 AM He spoke through tears of 15 years how his dog and him traveled about The dog up and died, he up and died And after 20 years he still grieves. (From Mr. Bojangles by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 1970) It is early Saturday morning, and I can no longer sleep. Preternaturally quiet, a shroud of silence blankets the house, oppressive, dark, and hateful. There aren't even any birds chirping, and puzzlingly I have yet to hear the…

Cool linky stuff for science undergrads (15): What it's like to understand advanced mathematics, How to write your first math paper and more

I have a son who will be finishing up his undergrad in physics this coming school year with an eye towards possible graduate work in math. As you can imagine, I occasionally see a link or two on the web that I think he might particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps a) this kind of post might be more efficient and b) other undergrad students might find those links interesting or useful as well. Hence, this series of posts here on the blog. What is it like to understand advanced mathematics? How to Write Your First Paper How to write proofs: a quick…

CIA blogger fired for coloring outside lines

Top secret blogger for CIA fired, shut down: Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually see it. Only people with top secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community's classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications, CC for short, she opined in her online journal on such national security conundrums as stagflation, the war of ideas in the Middle East and -- in her most popular post -- bad food in the CIA cafeteria. But the hundreds of…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Trevor Owens is the community lead for the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. He blogs at the eponimous blog and tweets. At the conference, Trevor will do an Ignite-style talk "Data mining the literature with Zotero" and will participate in the session about "…

Future Science Cyberstructure

Earlier today I went to UNC to talk about Science On The Web in Javed Mostafa's graduate course on Enabling Usability of Cyberinfrastructures for Learning, Inquiry, and Discovery. I showed and talked about the following sites: The rapidly growing List of Open Access journals and how the recent NIH law and Harvard vote are pushing publishing inexorably towards the OA model. PLoS, Open Access, the TOPAZ platform for a new breed of journals like PLoS ONE (and a couple of examples of user activity on ONE papers), as an example of the leader of OA publishing (and also the story of how I got to…

A DNA metacode?

About ten years ago I heard Fred Hoyle give a talk where he argues that "junk" DNA segments in fact must code for something else - his particular conjecture was that they coded for structural instructions (the example he used was the shape of leaves). It was intriguing, there is a lot of junk DNA in some genomes, but on the other hand we understand how it comes about as a result of transcription errors and mutations - genes are truncated or erroneously partly duplicated, or skipped over, leaving randomly mutating junk which is both added to and deleted under weak secondary selection. Further…

KITP: formation and evolution

I am currently at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, hanging out at the "Formation and Evolution of Globular Clusters" workshop. Apparently I am, for now, also the official "program blogger" program rapporteur... cause you know everything sounds fancier in french Who knew. When David suggests something is a good idea, it becomes a good idea. So, right now I am kinda busy trying to keep up with the workshop - there are some interesting new things, which I'll get to in due time. Real Soon Now. Y'all can participate through the multimedia online presence, including video (live and…

Not an “accident”: Agrey Emile Coudakpo, 32, suffers fatal work-related injury in Jessup, MD

Agrey Emile Coudakpo, 32, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, May 27 while working at Hanson Concrete Products.  WBFF reports: Howard County (Maryland) police say the victim “died after becoming trapped in a piece of heavy machinery.” Police and fire units were dispatched at about 5:20 a.m.” to the worksite. WBFF’s and other news sources indicate the incident occurred at Hanson Concrete Products on Dorsey Run Road. A the same address is another business named Concrete Pipe & Precast (CP&P) which is the joint venture company formed by Hanson Pipe & Precast LLC and…

Not an “accident”: Kevin Purpura, 39, suffers fatal work-related injury in Wheeling, WV

Kevin Purpura, 39, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, January 15 while working at major renovation project in Wheeling, WV. His employer was Sandow Development. The (Wheeling) Investigator reports: Mr. Purpura “fell several stories while working inside the former Boury Warehouse." Wheeling police said he was “inspecting metal studding surrounding an elevator shaft” when he fell. The worksite is a “six-story, 120-year-old former warehouse…[which] is being converted into roughly 70 loft-style apartments by the Woda Group of Westerville, Ohio." The “Boury Lofts” project is valued at $…

A weird experience

So there I was, happily settled in Heffers with a nice large cup of coffee, looking forward to reliving the Newton-Leibnitz controversy via "the system of the world" when I thought I'd have a quick browse of "The Cult of the Amateur" by Andrew Keen, since it was on a nearby rack. It's the std.rant about how the internet is killing our kulture, which drowns its few good points in hyperbole. And indeed, in gross error. So naturally I waded through till I got to the wikipedia bit, and lo and behold, there is my name! (I'm sure I've heard this before, but only online, which isn't quite the same…

Amanda's Wayzata High School Science Bowl Team And Their Amazing Captain.

One of our local news stations, WCCO (Channel 4) CBS, has this story. Blindness Isn’t Stopping This 15-Year-old H.S. Senior’s Quest For Knowledge WAYZATA, Minn. (WCCO) – When the Wayzata Science Bowl team practices, they mean business. They just won the state championship, and they are now getting ready for nationals in Washington, D.C. They’re all smart kids, that’s obvious, but one of them stands out — team captain Nathan Stocking. “The other team gets intimidated,” said teammate Jayant Chaudhary, “because he doesn’t even need paper for pretty complex complications.” Stocking is a high…

What kind of country messes with Internet Freedoms?

Iran is cracking down on Internet Freedom: In the most sweeping move, Iran issued regulations giving Internet cafes 15 days to install security cameras, start collecting detailed personal information on customers and document users' online footprints. Spain passes new Internet "Piracy Law" United States Ambassador Alan Solomont put pressure on Spain's outgoing president, José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero, to pass a tough new internet piracy law, according to the Guardian. In a letter obtained by the Spanish newspaper El Pais and quoted by the Guardian, Solomont threatened "retaliation action" if…

Textbooks, again

Everyone in academia knows it: textbook publishers abuse the system. Jim Fiore decries the high cost of college textbooks, and I have to agree completely. Basic textbooks at the lower undergraduate levels do not need a new edition every year or two, not even in rapidly changing fields like biology. Churning editions is just a way for the publisher to suck more money out of a captive audience. It makes it difficult for students to sell off their used textbooks, it gives faculty the headache of having to constantly update their assignments, and if you allow your students to use older editions…

Bart Ehrman: God's Problem. Athests Talk #0072, Sunday May 31, 2009

Bart Ehrman is a scholar of The Bible and has published popular works at a rapid clip on the subjects of theodicy and the literary history of the books some refer to as "Scripture." He was an evangelical who believed that The Episcopalian Church in which he was raised was too tame on the teachings of Jesus' Word of Salvation. Dedicating himself to the study of the original Greek versions of the Gospels and New Testaments in order to better understand the word of God, he made the discovery that (Whoops!) the Bible couldn't be an inerrant instruaction manual. There were too many…

...As Long As They Spell Your Name Right

As previously noted, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is selling very well via the Guardian's online bookshop, among other UK venues. It's doing well enough that I might need to start referring to the original text as the American edition of How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog... There's a nice ironic twist to the Guardian aspect of it, though, in the form of a review by that paper that I hadn't previously noticed until this book business summary brought it to my attention. It's a blisteringly bad review, basically dumping hate all over the talking-dog conceit. Which,…

The Inevitable Hiatus

So, I'm looking at the couple-dozen tabs I have open in Chrome for stuff that I think would be worth blogging about, and the slides for this afternoon's lecture that need revising, and the student poster that needs to be completed before tomorrow, and the committee stuff that I ought to be doing, and the laundry that needs dealing with, and it occurs to me that there's one thing I haven't had time for, which is the book I'm writing. Thus, effective immediately, I'm putting social media on quasi-hiatus. There may still be some links dump posts here, as I will occasionally be reading stuff…

The big list of history of science blogs

Following last week's discussion of blogging within the history of science community, I've stumbled on a few more resources. In no particular order, here's everything I have so far. Group or Organizational Blogs History of Science in America HSS Graduate and Early Career Caucus Society for the History of Technology News (SHOTnews) HSTM at Minnesota (University of Minnesota graduate students) Logan Lounge (University of Pennsylvania graduate students) In Retrospect (University of Utrecht graduate students) Individual Blogs by Historians of Science John M. Lynch - yours truly, faculty at…

Let This Quantum Computing Bastardization Pass?

In an article on stopping a large spectrum of light with metamaterials in The Telegraph (research which is very cool, but isn't available online, yet, as far as I can tell), I find some lines that would make the Optimizer go bonkers: By contrast, the switches in a quantum computer can be both "on" and "off" at the same time. A "qubit" could do two calculations at once, two qubits would do four and so on. Thus, it was theoretically possible to use quantum computers to explore vast numbers of potential solutions to a problem simultaneously. Ouch, my brain hurts. Okay, so I'm fine with, if a bit…

My Blogging Year

Bora and Janet have done it, so why not. Basic idea is to reproduce the first sentence of the first post over the past year. I've noted before that a significant number of lawyers not only to deny evolution but also appear to think that their training as a lawyer enables them to adjudicate scientific "controversies" (real or percieved). Some quick blasts as it's mid-week, I'm busy, and probably wont do much blogging until the weekend. Still busy here. I seem to have annoyed someone by the moniker of 'dlamming', apparently a graduate student who is interested in yeast. This more or less…

The Rise and Fall of Bird Flu in News Coverage and the Impact on Public Perceptions

Bird flu is suddenly back in the news as officials in Indonesia report new cases this week. In a spring 2006 Skeptical Inquirer Online column, after evaluating trends in reporting and opinion polling, I offered this outlook on the nature of news coverage and its impact on public perceptions: Though experts are often quick to criticize the media, so far, there is little evidence that news coverage of Avian flu has promoted undue alarm among the American public. Public attention to the topic remains relatively low, while few Americans express worry that they or their family might contract the…

The Toronto Charter for Physical Activity: A Global Call for Action

Most weekends on Obesity Panacea we post our favourite obesity and fitness related news, stories and videos. This week I am only linking to one thing, because it is incredibly important and I'd really like everyone to check it out.  The final version of Toronto Charter for Physical Activity is now online.  I discussed the Charter in detail a few weeks ago, and it has also been discussed by Speaking of Medicine. Essentially, the Charter aims to convince world leaders of the important role that physical activity plays in physical, mental, social, environmental, and economic well-being, and…

ScienceBlogs Pie Making Contest!

Image by Pauladamsmith. So it appears that ScienceBlogs are once again celebrating Pi Day (March 14) by throwing a pie making contest called the Pi Day Pie Off.  ScienceBloggers can take part, but fortunately for us, so can their readers (this is where you come in).  I know that a lot of our friends and readers are foodies (I'm looking at you Summer Tomato), so I wanted to let everyone know about it while there is still time to enter.  It can be any kind of pie (dessert, meat, pizza, or otherwise), so be creative.  Details on contest entry are below the fold.  To enter, just send us an…

Skloot Launches FAQ Blog Series Answering Reader Questions About The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

As some of you may have noticed, things have been a weeeeeeee bit quiet here at Culture Dish.  This is what happens when a person embarks on a totally insane book tour.  I've been on the road for two months straight since the publication of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, giving talks, signing books, meeting readers, and doing lots and lots and lots of interviews for TV and radio (talking to folks like Stephen Colbert, Jim Axelrod of CBS Sunday Morning, Terry Gross, and many others).  This has been a wonderful experience, which I will be posting about soon (complete with videos and…

Blogging isn't the path to riches, I guess

I'm getting a lot of sad stories about bloggers struggling financially, and I just thought I'd mention a few of them. There's the perennially struggling Gary Farber, of course. He's a blogger emeritus, having been around for several years longer than I have. Check out his left sidebar for options to help him out. Gary has mentioned that the fierce and acerbic Roy Edroso of Alicublog is having a rough go of it, too. Now I learn that Lance Mannion is deep in a hole and scrabbling to escape. He's writing a book on raising a child with Asperger's — somebody ought to snap it up, he's a wonderful…

Gods for everyone!

Thank you for the concern about my spiritual well-being, Craig Clarke! Usually I just get promises to pray for me and bible quotes and suggestions to bring a big bottle of aloe vera with me when I go to hell, but Craig gave me choices. He sent me a link to the Godchecker, an online searchable database of deities. It currently contains 2,850 gods in its listings (which are not complete—there is no Echidne, for instance), all of which have been worshipped by people at some time in history. Craig sent me a few recommendations, and I searched for a few of my own. There is one squid god, Kanaloa.…

Scientists of America, Unite!

My piece in the latest issue of Seed--not yet online, but will be soon I hope--is about the scientist activism group that just announced its existence, Scientists and Engineers for America. As I argue in Seed, this could be the organization that finally brings the national scientific community out of its political torpor by targeting races and trying to actually unseat politicians who egregiously misuse and abuse science. So far, though, the particular races that Scientists and Engineers for America will invest in don't seem to have been picked: The group is looking at the Senate race in…

Nifty Online Housing Info Apps (Detroit In Trouble)

If you live in the Detroit area, likely this info will just serve to depress you more than you likely already are. Why might that be? Well the housing market in the big D had been notoriously crappy lately with the downturn of the auto industry and subsequent factory closings. Seems like everyone is leaving Michigan these days. But according to the USA Today "infogram" (whatever that means), San Francisco has also taken a big hit lately. Perhaps the recent surge in anti-chorale violence plays a role? Anyway, a few fun and useful ways to waste time or find a roof over your head: HousingMaps…

A Call for More Animal Sounds in Music

I think animal sounds are sorely underutilized in music. I have thought that ever since first hearing the lovely introductory sounds in Lemon Jelly's A Tune for Jack (2001): I wondered: why don't more bands do this? The sounds of animals are good for the soul and, as animals become less and less a part of our daily lives due to urbanization and population declines, it is deeply pleasing to get a supplement of their sounds... In their song Furr (2008), Blitzen Trapper emulates the call of a loon with a small toy water pipe: Luckily, there is an even better source than a water pipe. The…

TIME Magazine's Person of the Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg

Photo: Flickr Scott Beale / Laughing Squid This morning, TIME magazine announced their choice for Person of the Year: Founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg. I am one amongst more than 500 million users worldwide that have used the power of online social networking to not only connect with others but to use this technology as a tool for research and teaching and learning. I am just beginning to see its potential. On a personal level, I have been able to connect with old friends using Facebook; reaching out using the now quaint technology email never seemed to work. I invite you to share…

Leaving a Class for a discussion

I saw this some time ago, probably in The Teaching Professor online magazine thingy. The basic idea is to leave your class alone when they are having a discussion. I have done this a couple of times. Yesterday was the first time this semester. Here is the deal. In this class (Physics for Elementary Education Majors), they collect evidence and build models. For that day, the experiments were giving students evidence about what happens to a fan cart when the strength of the fan changes and what happens when the mass of the cart changes. When it came time to discuss the ideas, I made sure…

My comment for Barbara Boxer

Left at her online comment form: I fly regularly, both for work and to visit my family in New Jersey. I have probably taken at least one round trip flight every year of my life, and lately I fly several times a year. I am not a threat to aviation. Why does the TSA treat me and every other traveler as if we were criminal suspects, then? The new x-ray scanners are profoundly invasive, and potentially threaten travelers' health. They would also be easy for terrorists to evade. The alternative to this dangerous and invasive x-ray is an invasive search that I would consider sexual harassment…

Google dark cloud

Why Gmail Failed Today: Gmail, which recently passed AOL to become the third largest Web mail service in the U.S., is obviously having some growing pains. A few hours of downtime is not the end of the world, although it might seem like it at the time. It just better not make this a new habit. The main issue is that Google obviously has to go down less often. But it's never going to be perfect, that's reserved for God. So the question is how often can it go down without people getting angry? It isn't as if not-cloud applications don't fail, we all know of many instances when computers won't…

Vulture Capitalists and Rudi Giuliani

If you thought Bernie Kerik was bad, wait until you hear about Republican presidential hopeful Rudi Giuliani's new best friend: Paul Singer, a long time Republican campaign contributor who has pledged to raise $15 million for Giuliani. The phrase "vulture capitalist" might sound trite, but when you hear how Singer made (and still makes) his fortune, you'll agree there's no other way to describe it. Singer was the inventor of what are known as "vulture funds." A vulture fund buys discounted international loans from developing countries and then sues the country and forces it to repay the…

Should DC Tax Soda?

Earlier this month, the DC City Council passed the Healthy Schools Act, which will raise nutritional standards for school meals, increase the amount of physical and health education students receive, create school gardens, and do all kinds of other commendable things. The difficult part is that it'll cost $6.5 million annually, and we're in the middle of a budget crunch. Councilmember Mary Cheh has proposed a funding mechanism that has the potential to not only raise money but to fight obesity at the same time: a one-cent-per-ounce excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. (The beverages are…

Expanding Insurance Coverage: Two Key Questions

Itâs Cover the Uninsured Week, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is working to âhighlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and demand solutions from our nationâs leaders.â Concern about uninsurance is growing as more people lose jobs that provided them with health insurance. But most of the factors behind our countryâs high uninsurance rates preceded the current economic downturn. According to Cover the Uninsured, average costs paid by an employee for an individual health insurance premium have risen nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes…

Illinois's Subsidy to Coal's Bob Murray, Wilbur Ross and Exxon

The demand for coal is going through the roof.  Do giant U.S. energy companies really need a handout? Apparently, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opporunity thinks so. Yesterday, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich announced the awarding of millions of dollars in economic development aid to some of the biggest coal mining companies in the country.  Illinois is subsidizing the coal mining activities of Murray Energy (owner of the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah), Peabody Energy (self-proclaimed "world's largest private-sector coal company"),  Wilbur Ross' International Coal…

A global warming conspiracy theorist has won 4 states, should we be worried?

The states in Green have gone for Rick Santorum, who besides having a a Google problem also believes in one of the wackiest conspiracy theories there is - the climate change hoax. That is, the belief that there is a shady group of Illuminati that have power over thousands of climate scientists from all over the world, and in their greed for sweet sweet grant money scientists uniformly falsify all their data to serve this power-hungry cabal. Is that an exaggeration? Nope, that's what people who believe in the "hoax" ascribe to (see skeptical science's thorough debunking of Evans here).…

Is this for real? Racist attacks on Obama from all sides

I hate having to repost this but there's a reason. If you watch the GOP rally's lately, they are becoming filled with hate, with near-violence, with hyperbole calling Obama as terrorist. McCain isn't my candidate, but that's it---I may not agree with him, but I know he's no terrorist; I know he's not evil. But the GOP is now explicitly calling up it's more violent, racist base in its desperate attempt to claw its way back to the top. A lot of folks around here like primates. In fact, all of the bloggers around here are primates. So a number of us are pretty riled up about a recent story…

World Water Week: What's in Your Tap?

By Liz Borkowski Aman at Technology, Health & Development reminds us that itâs World Water Week, and provides a great collection of water-related links for the occasion. Several of the articles are about a backlash against bottled water â apparently, a critical mass of people has just discovered that a) tap water is often as clean, if not cleaner, than bottled water and b) that buying bottled water is wasteful. Now that weâre all quenching our thirst with tap water again, this might be a good time to look at a few concerns that have been arising about municipal water supplies. Angry…

GOPcare passes House, threatens healthcare of millions

Last week, 217 Republican members of the House of Representatives passed a bill that, if it becomes law, will leave millions of people without health insurance. We don’t have a good grasp of how many millions will be harmed, because they were in too much of a hurry to wait for an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — or, in some cases, to read the bill they were voting on. My guess is that most of those members know it’s a terrible bill that will harm many of their constituents, and they’re hoping the Senate will fix the mess they’ve made. Like the original American…

A Phabulous Phablet from Lenovo

Lenovo makes two Phablets that are similar, the 4G and the 4G plus. The latter is not bigger (in fact, it is a little smaller) but rather, has higher specs all around, making it a fairly expensive device. But the Lenovo PHAB 4G Phablet (regular) is practically free and is actually rather Phabulous. OK, well, not fee, but about 170 bucks or so, except now closer to $130 from Gearbest. (As far as I know this is the only place to get it. Gearbest has a very large selection of Lenovo phones and phablets, as well as a high diversity of generally very affordable tablets.) So, I tried out the…

Why do you think they call it "dope"?

I had mentioned earlier the discovery of Morris the Jewish hardware store owner and Mr. Bryne the Jewish department store owner. There are two ways in which Jewish people seemed to play a disproportionate role in the retail world when I was growing up. In fact, there was an overarching ethnicity to much of the business community; Diners tended to have been owned by Greeks, sit down restaurants tended to be Italian; and clothing and textile stores Jewish. In those days, much of the clothing worn by my mother and sisters was made by my mother on her sewing machine using patterns she'd buy at…

Coulter fan flaunts foolishness

Scarcely do I mention Ann Coulter and my challenge to her fans, than one such fan shows up in the comments. You will not be surprised that this person didn't even try to meet the challenge, which is to cite some specific paragraph in Coulter's drecky book, Godless, that they considered to be making a solid scientific point. Here's all he could cough up. For all of you that buy into the evolution answer for where we come from, I have the following question; How is it that science cannot demonstrate or replicate species change yet we have so many species. Please dont mention finches either.…

Silence is the Enemy: Focusing on reducing sexual violence

For the past few years, I have been horrified by Nicholas Kristof's posts about violence against children in various crisis zones around the globe - and I have been captivated by his stories of choosing to engage as a human being with such distress and pain rather than a so-called "impartial" or "objective" journalist. In particular, I think of his reporting in 2004 from Cambodia about children forced into sex slavery and his decision to try to buy two girls to free them from traffickers, and his decision with his family to open a school east of Phnom Penh to educate girls to help prevent…

Doug Fieger of The Knack dies at 57 of metastatic lung cancer

I was an angry 14- or 15-year-old in late 1978 or early 1979 - can't recall which year, but definitely angry - walking home on a Sunday night after a dishwasher shift at Grandma's Saucy Apron, a now-defunct Italian restaurant in my hometown where I was working to make money for a Spanish National Honor Society trip to Spain over the upcoming Spring Break. I turned on 99X (New York City's WXLO-FM) at 9 pm for a new radio show I enjoyed from KXOA in Sacramento, CA, called The Great American Radio Show with Mike Harrison. It was the near-end of the disco era and this album-oriented rock (AOR)…