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Twitter Is Kind of Useless

The AAAS annual meeting was last week, which apparently included some sessions on social media use. This, of course, led to the usual flurry of twittering about the awesomeness of Twitter, and how people who don't use Twitter are missing out. I was busy with other stuff, so I mostly let it pass, and of course I can't find representative examples now because Twitter. The truth is, though, Twitter is kind of useless. Or, rather, it's only useful for certain kinds of things-- it's social media, and much more social than media. So it's a great medium for talking to people you're not physically…

What happened to the Blizzard of 2015?

What happened to the Blizzard of 2015? Well, it happened. Despite breathless complaining about how the forecasters got it all wrong, they didn't. As the storm was predicted, there should have been close to about two feet of snow in the New York City metropolitan area, but as it turns out, there was between 8 and 12 inches. That means that New York City experienced a typical winter month's worth of snow in one day. Also, most snow that falls on The City falls a few inches at a time and melts more or less instantly, as few cities can match New York in its heat island effect. So, 8-12 inches…

Science News Update

Jerome Horwitz, the man who invented AZT, died-- Being in the basic virology realm of HIV Research World, I dont always pay as much attention to the clinical side of things as I should.  Thus I didnt know about the really interesting history of Jerome Horowitz and AZT.  Apparently he invented it as an anti-cancer agent, it didnt work, and they forgot about it... until someone tested it as a therapeutic agent for HIV, a moment that changed the course of the HIV epidemic.  Sure it wasnt a perfect drug (drug resistance when used alone, terrible side-effect profile), but it gave everyone hope…

Harriet Miers?

Like everyone else around the country, I'm asking, "Who???", right about now. Bush has chosen another stealth candidate, but this one is about a thousand times more stealthy than the last one. Since I know virtually nothing about her, I will reserve judgement until I've got a lot more information to go on. My initial response is that she's a Bush political crony and that never sits well with me regardless of political party. White House Counsel to Supreme Court Justice is a HUGE leap. I'm sure she's very intelligent and accomplished, but I need to know a lot more about her before I jump on…

Tenure and Drinking Age

When I was an undergraduate, we had more or less annual alcohol crackdowns on campus. My sophomore year, it was a series of "open container" stings, with cops hiding in the bushes outside various dorms, and leaping out to arrest anyone who walked outside with an empty keg cup. My classmates and I were outraged. My junior year, there were a couple of arrests for underage drinking, and a significant tightening of the alcohol policy. My classmates and I were outraged. My senior year, the police got hold of a college-approved party plan for a couple of freshman entires that included kegs of beer…

The clean energy technology gap: An urban legend?

It shouldn't be all that difficult to figure out. Do we have the means at our disposal, now, to replace fossil fuels with clean alternatives that won't bankrupt us all? The only two variables we need consider are the energy conversion efficiency ratios of each candidate technology and the costs, up front or amortized, of same. So why can't we agree on this simple question? Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress, and the blogger responsible for Climate Progress, sums up the disparity in an opinion piece in Nature: Although it has recently been argued that "enormous advances in energy…

Do Social Movements Affect History? Alternative Pathways Part III

Part 1 | 2 | 3 - - - Part III with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry, follows below. All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series are here. - - - TWF: You think all these farmers markets will really do anything? Or do they just make for a more fun middle class weekend? DH: There are actually two or three complicated questions here. Even though one can demonstrate significant growth trends in many localist institutions (such as farmers' markets), does the localist movement really have any long-term economic significance? I'm doing a lot of thinking about…

Carbon capture made easy

There's talk of "a low-cost, safe, and permanent method to capture and store atmospheric CO2." All it would take is some conventional rock drilling and a little energy in the form of warm water. That's what the authors of a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences say is theoretically possible thanks to natural weathering processes at work in the Sultanate of Oman. It's geo-engineering for those who don't much like geo-engineering! "In situ carbonation of peridotite for CO2 storage" appears this week in PNAS. The authors, Peter B. Kelemen and Jurg Matter of Columbia…

A Gas Tax Holiday is a Horrible Idea

(Keeping with our trend towards a week of economics -- see here and here -- I have another post where I attempt to talk above my pay grade.) I am as unhappy as anybody about high oil prices making everything on Earth expensive, but I am getting a little annoyed by the Presidential candidates glib statements about how the intend to make it better. Both Clinton and McCain have come out for a gas tax holiday over the summer. This is a horrible idea for at least two reasons. (1) It will just be a wind fall for oil producers. (2) We need to lower our oil consumption, and high prices are the…

In health care, the needs of the patient usually outweigh the needs of the provider

A frequent commenter on the conscience issue has raised a lot of questions on an recent post. He seems somewhat frustrated that I don't understand his point. What I think he doesn't realize is that I do understand his point all too well---he is just wrong. Here is an example: You also still haven't cleared up that little inconsistency regarding the matter of whether or not there is a professional obligation to provide elective services. Or is it just physicians, but not pharmacists or other healthcare professionals, who have rights of conscience? OK, I'll clarify it for you. It's not that…

$29 billion/year industry thrives despite negative clinical trial outcomes

Frequent commenter, anjou, just sent along a link to a MSNBC article by Robert Bazell entitled, "Ignoring the failures of alternative medicine." The article is subtitled, "The U.S. spends millions testing popular supplements. It's a futile effort." Bazell is chief science and health correspondent for MSNBC. Most striking about Bazell's article is that the mainstream media has generally remained quiet on criticizing the alternative medicine industry. In contrast, the scientific community has long questioned both the legitimacy of NIH's alternative medicine-focused center, NCCAM, and their…

Where to buy dichloroacetate...

...has been the number one Google search term leading people to the blog this week - and that worries me. As I wrote about a week ago, dichloroacetate, or DCA, is the molecule tested recently by a team at University of Alberta for its ability to slow the growth of human lung cancer in immunocompromised rats. Among DCA's action is the ability to prevent cancer cells from producing lactic acid via aerobic glycolysis, a process used by more than half (but not all) tumors. Scientists continue to debate whether this process is a cause of cancer, or just a byproduct of malignant cell…

Stylized Substance

Style and substance. When it comes to communicating, that's what matters. This is the central premise of Randy Olson's new book Don't Be Such a Scientist. It might be the central premise of existence. To understand this book, you have to understand Randy Olson, so the book is part advice, part autobiography--tales from Olson's career as a tenured academic and his unique and therefore bumpy transition to Hollywood. Because he is a bit of an outsider in both worlds, Olson is well positioned to examine the strengths and shortcomings of both science and communicating. For the sake of…

Multi-Author Papers and Ads for Molecular Biology Reagents

Gregg Easterbrook -- good sportswriter, crappy at pretty much everything else he does -- likes to take pot-shots at scientific research in his ESPN column "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" (TMQ). In this week's edition he tells us how he doesn't think scientific papers should have multiple authors and how he doesn't like the advertisements in the journal Science. TMQ dislikes the modern convention of listing multiple people as "authors" of a work written by a single person; this is part of the overall cheapening of the written word. Several previous items have concerned the absurd number of…

Marthe Gautier, another woman scientist trivialized

I had known that Jérôme Lejeune was the fellow who had discovered that Down Syndrome was caused by trisomy of chromosome 21, but it seems there were many other things about him I had not known -- he was just a name. But there were a few things that set me aback. Lejeune became not just a renowned researcher but the darling of the French Catholic right-to-life movement.  You can read long flattering Wikipedia biographies in both French and English. He was showered with awards and given a prestigious Chair of Human Genetics at the Paris School of Medicine, bypassing the usual competition. When…

Shopping, Depression and Dopamine

The Christmas season is conspicuous consumption time. I recently made my annual trip to the mall, and couldn't help but think that, somehow, the consumption gets more conspicuous every year. The antiqued jeans get more expensive, the televisions get higher definition, and the Starbucks in the food court keeps on inventing newfangled flavors to mix into my coffee. I guess that's the genius of capitalism: it keeps on inventing new things for us to want. But as I observed this frenzy of consumption - there was a long, long line for the new Elmo doll - I couldn't help but muse on the neural…

Neuroeconomics and Paternalism

In response to my recent post on governmental regulation and energy conservation, an excellent debate has started in the comments. On the one hand, there is a long list of areas in which governmental regulation has forced corporations into making decisions that are beneficial for society at large: Catalytic converters? Mileage requirents on cars? Unleaded gasoline? Clean water act? Clean air act? Endangered species act? Vaccination requirements for public schools? Building codes? OSHA regulations? Fire codes? Why do we have these things? Were they decided on by consumers? Nope. Nearly every…

More on the Worldnutdaily and Wiccans in the Military

In following up on yesterday's post, I thought it would be fun to go back in time to 1999 to see what the Worldnutdaily was saying about the issue of Wiccans in the military when the big stink over the issue was going on and Christian groups were telling their followers not to join the military as a result of it. It was even more idiotic than I expected. In a "Worldnetdaily exclusive commentary" (which, as previously stated, means that no other outlet would publish anything so monumentally stupid), Jon Dougherty declared that allowing Wiccans to practice their religion the same way that…

Jenny McCarthy plans to ring in 2012 with antivaccine propaganda on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve

Here we go again. In fact, I think I'm starting to see a pattern here among antivaccine organizations. You might remember that in November 2010, the antivaccine group SafeMinds bought ad space in AMC Theaters over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, one of the heaviest moviegoing time periods of the year. This use of pre-movie time to promote antivaccine propaganda resulted in a campaign by skeptics to try to persuade AMC to see the error of its ways, a campaign that was successful. Then, a few months later, the the grande dame of the antivaccine movement, arguably the woman who started the…

I get email invitations

Isn't this sweet? It's a polite invitation from Pastor Dale in Ohio, which was also sent to a lot of other skeptics/atheists. It's so polite and open-minded! Greetings. I want to let you know about an upcoming project, and I invite any of you or your consumers to participate. I realize your viewpoint is drastically different from ours, but I firmly believe that we all stand to gain from honest open discussion with those who see the world differently from us, and that spending all our time with those of like mind creates intellectual inbreeding. We make no demands of participants except that…

Welcome, welcome, please feel at home and look around....

So, the Big Day has finally arrived - the inauguration of the new SEED scienceblogs homepage and the addition of 24 new bloggers to the stable, including me - yeay! So, go check out the brand new front page and all the old and new bloggers there. My new blog, a fusion of all three of my blogs, is a new brand, with a new name - A Blog Around The Clock, reflecting my age and musical taste, my usual blogging frequency and the area of my scientific expertise, all in one title. The Banner was designed by Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen who also runs a delightful science/art blog Rigor Vitae. The…

Et tu, YouTube: Viacom

We frequently use video clips on this site, many, but not all, from YouTube. To say YouTube has revolutionized web video content would be accurate, neither an understatement nor an exaggeration. The amount of material uploaded to YouTube is staggering. It is also the frequent target of specious take-down demands and is now the subject of a lawsuit by Viacom and other media giants alleging YouTube should check every upload for rights ownership. YouTube responds that such a requirement and threat of liability would put it, and most other service providers, out of business and points to explicit…

Open Access Beer!

What is the difference between Free Access Beer and Open Access Beer? You go to a bar to get your Free Access Beer. You sit down. You show your ID. The barista gives you a bottle. You don't need to pay anything for it - it's free, after all. You take your own bottle-opener from your pocket and open the bottle. You drink the beer from the bottle. You return the empty bottle to the barista. You go home. You order you Open Access Beer online or by phone. You pick what kind of beer you want. It gets delivered to your door really fast. The delivery man opens the bottle for you. You are…

Today's Drum: Positive Black News

As of late, I've not been particularly good at responding to those of you who've been so nice to comment on the blog. So, I spent a little bit of this morning going through your comments and looking at your blogs and websites, especially those of you with whom I was not previously familiar. Among these was commenter Keith, co-founder and editor of an online zine called Today's Drum. Keith was kind enough to write a couple of notes on both our Diversity in Science carnival submission on NIGMS's Dr Geraldine Pittman Woods and the 65th anniversary of the first interracial college basketball…

Methadone for cancer (no) and cancer pain (yes)

Most people know of methadone as a long-term substitution therapy for people addicted to heroin, morphine, or other similar drugs called opiates or opioids. A good, free full-text description of methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) can be found in the 15 June 2001 issue of American Family Physician. Now, in the 1 August 2008 issue of Cancer Research, Claudia Friesen and colleagues at the University of Ulm report that methadone can kill leukemia cells in culture and reverse acquired resistance to other drugs like doxorubicin (Adriamycin). Press reports to this effect appeared at the beginning…

That's a Wrap (Or Is It?) + THANK YOU!

Well, another World Science Festival is in the books. And what a trip it’s been. One attendee at this year’s festival suggested that, as if conjuring the gravity of a supermassive black hole, we must have slowed down the passing of time in order “to do so much in 5 days.” Accusations of timespace manipulation aside, there were plenty of magic moments during the 40+ events throughout the run of the Festival. From Professor Stephen Hawking’s poignant speech in front of a packed house at Lincoln Center during the Opening Night Gala to the all-day celebration of science in the heart of New York…

Books I'd Like to Read

For your reading and collection development pleasure. It's been so long since I last did one of these listings, I actually have another one coming up in a day or so. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. (ISBN-13: 978-0262014472) Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is built by a community--a community of Wikipedians who are expected to "assume good faith" when interacting with one another. In Good Faith Collaboration, Joseph Reagle examines this unique collaborative culture. Wikipedia, says Reagle, is not the first effort to create a freely shared,…

“Socialized science”

The chemists among the readers here have probably already all heard this, but there is a bit of a flap in the American Chemical Society over Open Access publishing. It seems some within the ACS have been protesting Open Access; unsurprisingly, it seems that many of them have connections to the scientific publishing industry. I was deeply amused by the fellow who scorned open access because is it is "socialized science," as if government support of science were bad, and as if we weren't all dependent on the largesse of state and federal government support. Oh, if only we could return to the…

More hilariously off-base genetics denialism

Things have been a bit too serious around here lately. After all, yesterday I wrote about obesity and chemotherapy, while the day before that I did an even lengthier than usual deconstruction of some claims by anti-Obamacare activists, which seemed particularly appropriate to me given that a group of wingnuts has just succeeded in mostly shutting down our government because they are opposed to Obamacare. Come to think of it, given the nastiness that's going on in Washington right now, I could use something light, an easy target even. And who better to serve that role than everyone's favorite…

Social networks and degrees of evilness

Sometimes two posts just collide in my brain. I thought I'd share a recent case of this phenomenon. First up, marketing/PR/social media Rock Star Mitch Joel on taking the best advantage of the inherent evilness of social networks like Twitter in The New Media Pecking Order. Newsflash: the world is one big pecking order. My friend - the rock star - travels infrequently by plane. I'm a loyal customer of the airline. It doesn't seem fair and it doesn't make sense. C'est la vie. Klout, PeerIndex, Twitter Grader and others simply bring to light something we've all known for a very long time: it's…

Math by Mail: Going Strong at 30

Sometime around junior high, this Weizmann science writer stumbled upon Mathematical Games, the late Martin Gardner's monthly math puzzle at the back of my mom's Scientific American, and I became a devotee. The best ones, of course, were those that required a little sideways thinking, and these yielded the pleasure of that "Aha" moment when the answer became clear. (For more on the neurobiology of the Aha moment, look at our site.) So it is no surprise (to me at least) that of the hundreds of science education programs offered through the Davidson Institute of Science Education (the…

Green 2.0

One of the pleasures of reading Stewart Brand's new book, "Whole Earth Discipline", is that when it comes to managing the Earth's ecosystem, he is unconstrained by conventional wisdom. In a break with many old-school environmentalists, Brand argues that the established Green agenda is outdated, too negative, too tradition bound, too specialized, too politically one-sided to address the scale of environmental problems that we face today. Who better to challenge the rigidity of the long-respected environmental movement than the distinguished writer, lecturer and author of the classic Whole…

Help science by celebrating with the USA Science and Engineering Festival and COPUS

Thanks COPUS for helping us get the word out about the Science festival! Read the full article here. Help science by celebrating with the USA Science and Engineering Festival and COPUS Four easy options to help bring science to center stage this October!! 1. Connect your local activities to the festival -- no matter how big or small The impact of many organizations working together is much greater than an individual effort... and easier! COPUS encourages organizations and individuals to coordinate activities in their community with the USASEF -- no matter how big or small. IT IS NOT TOO…

Data mining for fool's gold by fools

The US government response to the bogus war on terrorism is a mixture of the stupid, the super stupid and the evil. Taking off our shoes at the airport isn't evil but it is probably super stupid. So is the 3 oz. liquid ban. On reflection, maybe there are only two categories: super stupid and evil. In the evil category are the pseudoscientific "datamining" and "behavior detection" scams. Data mining is my favorite, since I use one of its techniques in my research work (Association Rule Mining) and I'm familiar with a number of other techniques. Familiar enough to not be surprised that when the…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Sleep Deprivation Can Threaten Competent Decision-making: Gambling is a risky activity that can potentially result in the loss of a significant amount of money. A study published in the journal SLEEP finds that sleep deprivation can adversely affect a person's decision-making at a gambling table by elevating the expectation of gains and making light of one's losses following risky decisions. Coral Reef Fish Make Their Way Home: Coral reef fish hatchlings dispersed by ocean currents are able to make their way back to their home reefs again to spawn, says a groundbreaking study recently…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Why Doesn't The Immune System Attack The Small Intestine? New Study Provides Unexpected Answer: Answering one of the oldest questions in human physiology, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have discovered why the body's immune system - perpetually on guard against foreign microbes like bacteria -- doesn't attack tissues in the small intestine that harbor millions of bacteria cells. In a study in the February issue of Nature Immunology, and which is currently available on the journal's Web site as an advanced online publication, investigators led by Shannon Turley, PhD, of Dana-…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Two Studies On Bee Evolution Reveal Surprises: The discovery of a 100-million-year old bee embedded in amber -- perhaps the oldest bee ever found -- "pushes the bee fossil record back about 35 million years," according to Bryan Danforth, Cornell associate professor of entomology. Tiny Bones Rewrite Textbooks: First New Zealand Land Mammal Fossil: Small but remarkable fossils found in New Zealand will prompt a major rewrite of prehistory textbooks, showing for the first time that the so-called "land of birds" was once home to mammals as well. The tiny fossilised bones - part of a jaw and hip…

More news on 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective'

As I've mentioned previously, 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective' happens on May 6th and 7th: pretty soon! This two-day conference will be held at the Geological Society's Burlington House in Piccadilly (London), and we now have all the required information available online: if you're thinking of attending it is mandatory that you check out the circular, look at the programme, and then deal with your booking. Read on for more details... Events kick off on May 5th when we have a visit to Crystal Palace in Sydenham (trip costs £10). I've seen the Crystal Palace animals several times, but if…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Fossil Of 'Giant' Shrew Nearly One Million Years Old Found In Spain: Morphometric and phylogenetic analyses of the fossilised remains of the jaws and teeth of a shrew discovered in a deposit in Gran Dolina de Atapuerca, in Burgos, have shown this to be a new species (Dolinasorex glyphodon) that has not previously been described. The extinct animal had red teeth, was large in size compared with mammals of the same family, and was more closely related to Asian than European shrews. Komodo Dragons Even More Deadly Than Thought: Combined Tooth-venom Arsenal Key To Hunting Strategy: A new study…

New Journalistic Workflow

Jay Rosen tweets: New method: slow blogging at PressThink, daily mindcasting at Twitter, work room at FriendFeed. Example: post in gestation http://is.gd/okca This is how I understand that: Step 1 is mindcasting on Twitter (often misunderstood for time-wasting lifecasting, e.g., this), Step 2 is aggregation of a number of imported tweets and digestion of them on FriendFeed, Step 3 is aggregation of several FF threads into a more coherent blog post. The next step, Step 4, could potentially be to aggregate the ideas and knowledge from several blog posts and publish as an article in the…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Month Of Conception Linked To Birth Defects In United States: A study published in the April 2009 issue of the medical journal Acta Pædiatrica is the first to report that birth defect rates in the United States were highest for women conceiving in the spring and summer. Action Video Games Improve Vision, New Research Shows: Video games that involve high levels of action, such as first-person-shooter games, increase a player's real-world vision, according to research in Nature Neuroscience March 29. In The Age Of Facebook, Researcher Plumbs Shifting Online Relationships: A University of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

New Sperm Shaker Set To Improve IVF Success Rates: Scientists have developed a ground-breaking method for testing the quality of a sperm before it is used in IVF and increase the chances of conception. Racial Bias Can Be Reduced By Teaching People To Differentiate Facial Features Better In Individuals Of A Different Race: There may be a simple way to address racial bias: Help people improve their ability to distinguish between faces of individuals of a different race. Brown University and University of Victoria researchers learned this through a new measurement system and protocol they…

ScienceOnline'09 - introducing the participants 6

Let's highlight some more of the participants of this year's ScienceOnline09 conference: April L. MacKellar is a doctoral student in the Department of Biochemistry at Duke. Rick MacPherson works for the Coral Reef Alliance and blogs on Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets. He will be on the panel Blogging adventure: how to post from strange locations and will co-moderate the session Hey, You Can't Say That! Robin Mackar is the News Director at the National Institute of Environemental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Kelly Malcom is the Editor for Internal Communications at Duke University Health…

My picks from ScienceDaily

'Beauty Machine' Makes Average Face A Knockout With A Single Click: Our mothers told us that true beauty is more than skin deep -- but researchers from Tel Aviv University are now challenging Mom. They've built a beauty machine that, with the press of a button, turns a picture of your own ordinary face into that of a cover model. While its output is currently limited to digitized images, the software may be able to guide plastic surgeons, aid magazine cover editors, and even become a feature incorporated into all digital cameras. Bullies May Enjoy Seeing Others In Pain: Unusually aggressive…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

College Student Sleep Patterns Could Be Detrimental: A Central Michigan University study has determined that many college students have sleep patterns that could have detrimental effects on their daily performance. When Following The Leader Can Lead Into The Jaws Of Death: For animals that live in social groups, and that includes humans, blindly following a leader could place them in danger. To avoid this, animals have developed simple but effective behaviour to follow where at least a few of them dare to tread -- rather than follow a single group member. This pattern of behaviour reduces the…

My picks from ScienceDaily

New Hope For Sleep Disorders: Genetic Switch For Circadian Rhythms Discovered: University of California, Irvine researchers have identified the chemical switch that triggers the genetic mechanism regulating our internal body clock. The finding, which uncovers the most specific information about the body's circadian rhythms to date, identifies a precise target for new pharmaceuticals that can treat sleep disorders and a host of related ailments. Paolo Sassone-Corsi, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Pharmacology, found that a single amino acid activates the genes that regulate circadian…

KISS: observing during cruise and after prime

The KISS is running a mini-workshop at KITP on doing Exoplanet Science Measurements from Solar System probes. There are a bunch of spacecraft up there, with a lot of instruments. Many of them, especially the solar system probes, spend a fair amount of time in a quiet cruise phase, where instruments are powered down or in passive mode. Some missions also have a finite time prime mission, but the spacecraft continues to function and may take more observations. There is considerable interest to make use of this capability, to use the spacecraft more efficiently, and to use the people more…

Why the library should affect students' choice of university

When we think of outreach and recruitment, we don't usually think of using the library as a tool to attract students to our institutions. Here at York I do occasionally take part in Faculty of Science & Engineering outreach activities -- mostly when the library is included in high school science class tours of the institution. Rather than do something really boring like a "here's the reference desk" tour, I like to take smaller groups down into our teaching lab and do (hopefully) fun and amusing interactive sessions on the current state of the information universe. You can get an idea…

Delaware Horseshoe Crab Harvest Moratorium Reversed

tags: horseshoe crab, Limutus polyphemus, red knot, Delaware Bay Horseshoe Crab, Limutus polyphemus, a living fossil. Image: Pier Aquarium, Florida [larger]. In a controversial ruling, a Delaware Superior Court judge partially rolled back the two-year ban on the horseshoe crab harvest by limiting it to males only. The decision was a reaction against John Hughes, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, who was actually doing his job. However, according to the judge, Hughes had already decided to enact a complete moratorium on horseshoe crab harvests…

Tales of Beedle The Bard Buyer Uncloaked

tags: Harry Potter, Tales of Beedle the Bard, books, JK Rowling, auction, Sotheby's, Amazon.com [larger view] A Mystery Buyer purchased the only publically-available copy of JK Rowling's latest Harry Potter book, Tales of Beedle the Bard for £1,950,000 (US$3.98 million)! This is far more than the £50,000 ( $100,000) sale price that had been estimated by Sotheby's. The leather-bound and hand-written book was bought by a representative from London fine art dealers, Hazlitt Gooden & Fox. The proceeds generated by the sale of this book will benefit Rowling's new charity, The Children's…