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#scio10 aftermath: my tweets from "Getting the Science Right: The importance of fact checking mainstream science publications -- an underappreciated and essential art -- and the role scientists can and should (but often don't) play in it."

Session description: Much of the science that goes out to the general public through books, newspapers, blogs and many other sources is not professionally fact checked. As a result, much of the public's understanding of science is based on factual errors. This discussion will focus on what scientists and journalists can do to fix that problem, and the importance of playing a pro-active role in the process. The session was led by Rebecca Skloot (@RebeccaSkloot), Sheril Kirshenbaum (@Sheril_), and David Dobbs (@David_Dobbs). Here's the session's wiki page. Getting the Science Right: Importance…

Friday Sprog Blogging: fish fry.

This Friday marks the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Accordingly, in SprogCast #5, the elder Free-Ride offspring marks the change of season by describing a local release of trout-fry. You can download the sound file and pretend that the bathtub sounds are the gentle tides of the lake. The discussion is transcribed below. Dr. Free-Ride: So, can you tell me what you did on Saturday? Elder offspring: Well, I went to the lake and I released fry. Dr. Free-Ride: Fry? Elder offspring: Yeah, Rainbow Trout-fry. Dr. Free-Ride: I see. How old is a Rainbow Trout-fry? Like, how do I…

Friday Sprog Blogging: what's shaking?

Dr. Free-Ride: What have you been learning about in science this school year? Younger offspring: Lots of stuff. Dr. Free-Ride: Like what? Younger offspring: We learned about rocks and minerals. Rocks are made out of minerals, and some rocks have more than one kind of mineral in them. Dr. Free-Ride: So, what's a mineral? Younger offspring: Umm ... I think quartz is a mineral. They can cut it in the shape of jewels. And also marble. But I think granite has more than one mineral in it. And we talked about how different rocks are formed. Dr. Free-Ride: Oh? Younger offspring: There are some…

Greg's Bloggy Newsletter

This is an experiment. To reduce complexity in my own life and enhance the quality of communication between me and you, I'm going to try this "newsletter" thingie. It will probably be weekly, roughly timed for the middle of the week, and will include links to the blog posts I personally wish that you would not miss, information about other stuff happening on the blogosphere, a little section on activism to remind both you and me to do that, and a listing of ways in which you can reach out and touch me. Without actually, you now, touching me. For now, I will probably cross-post this on my…

Day of the locust. Yum!

Continuing with the theme of eating insects ... The people of the eastern Congo plant African rice around June so that it will grow through the wettest part of the wet season, and then they harvest it in the "dry season" which starts about mid or late November. That is around the same time that a "locust" (actually a katydid of some sort) emerges in the grasslands to the north, in the Central African Republican and the Sudan, to spread across the region. And eat rice. It is rather annoying to have locust descend on your crops. Some years it is not too bad, some years it is bad enough to…

Disagreeing with Wilkins

Wilkins is not happy that I jumped down Pagels' throat for a stupid comment in an interview. He thinks I ought to take Pagels more seriously (as did some of the commenters here), and, unfortunately, also goes on to mischaracterize the uppity atheist arguments, like so: This is what I reject about the Dawkins/Moran/PZ aggressive atheism - it takes the most stupid version of religion, argues against it, and then claims to have given reasons for not being religious. At best (and here I concur) they have given reasons not to be stupid theists. But a good argument takes on the best of the…

The 2011 Summer Reading Recommendation List

It is Memorial Day Weekend, which can only mean one thing. It's time for this year's Summer Reading Recommendations List! Unlike the Summer Readings Suggestions: Science list, these books are primarily (but not entirely) fiction. Since I've not read very much fiction over the last year, I polled my facebook friends and assembled their advice here. You may be thinking "Who cares about Laden's facebook friends, what do they know?" and you'd probably be right about that for a lot of topics, but not reading. These people can read! In fact, two or three of them are published authors.…

How Society Will Accept Rational Science: The Best Way to Frame Global Warming and Evolution

There is a point that I've been trying to make for the last few weeks now, off and on, and it is not working. So I'm going to try something new. Please bear with me, and consider the following three scenarios regarding the idea that the Earth is Round (or, possibly, flat): Please ask yourself: Which of these scenarios is best? Which is least desirable? Scenario A: Divided Opinion Maureen: "I think the world is round." John: "I think the world is flat." A public opinion poll indicates that fifty percent of those polled believe the world is round, the other fifty percent believe the world…

Ask Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins some questions at the AAI Conference this weekend!

I promised last week in a post in which I described Bill Maher's latest pro-quackery remarks (this time, supporting cancer quackery), today is the day that I'm going to ask you, my readers, for some help. As I complained a while back, Bill Maher, who is anything but a rationalist or a booster of science (at least when it comes to medicine) is being awarded the Richard Dawkins Award by the Atheist Alliance International at its convention this weekend in Los Angeles. As I said before, given that (1) the award lists "advocates increased scientific knowledge" as one of its criteria; (2) that…

Thanks, Dr. Oppel, we need to see a lot more of this

If there's been a theme running through this blog, it's been the importance of science and critical thinking. The main focus of this emphasis on skepticism, of course, has been medicine, which makes sense, given that I'm a doctor and a cancer researcher, but I don't limit myself to just medicine. However, as part of my emphasis on science-based medicine (SBM) as being the best methodology to provide the best patient care that we can, besides the random quackery deconstructions, I've tended to harp on two topics over the years. First, there's the subject of what Dr. R. W. has called "…

Sedalia, Missouri, you should be ashamed of your schools, or: The dumbest anti-evolution victory I've ever seen...

It was just a high school marching band, like so many other high school bands in this country, a band that no one outside of the area of Sedalia, Missouri would be likely to have heard of, were it not for a breathtakingly stupid action by its school superintendent. You see, the band had an idea for a clever and amusing way to illustrate their theme for the year of the "Brass Evolutions." It was this T-shirt, to be worn by band members and reported by the Sedalia Democrat: When I saw it by way of ERV, I thought it was kind of cute and a rather clever way of illustrating the theme. As the…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The perfect last minute gift for Christmas--woo!

As hard as it is to believe, yet another Christmas is fast approaching. I can feel it in the blogosphere. Heck, I can feel it here on the ol' blog. Once garrulous commenters here have gone strangely silent for the most part (at least in comparison to their usual prodigious output), and traffic has already begun to plummet in anticipation of the even bigger plunge that it usually takes during that dead week between Christmas and New Years. It's almost enough to make me wonder whether I should just put the blog on hiatus until after the 1st. Almost. I might slow down a bit and throw a few…

Reader mailbag: What is woo?

I don't often do reader mailbag sorts of posts, but this question was so good that I thought it would be worth answering on the blog. Indeed, I almost thought of making this whole question another in my Friday Woo series, but decided that I wanted to answer it now. Reader TB writes: I've been following your blog for a few months now and love being both educated and entertained. The Friday Dose of Woo is great. While I have an idea of what you mean by woo it would be helpful to me and others visiting the page if you included a definition and perhaps the etymology. My first temptation was to…

Court finds Andrew Bolt "disingenuous" and not to be trusted

Andrew Bolt has been held liable of violating the Racial Discrimination Act for writing two columns intended to offend and humiliate several people because they were Aboriginal. Bolt lost because his writing was not done reasonably and in good faith, which we know is characteristic of his work in other areas as well. The judgement makes interesting reading. The judge found that Bolt's evidence was not to be trusted: I am firmly of the view that a safer and more reliable source for discerning Mr Bolt's true motivation is to be found in the contents of the Newspaper Articles themselves rather…

Who perpetrated the "Holohoax"? Tell us!

Holocaust deniers sometimes refer to the Holocaust as the "Holohoax," as if the whole thing were one huge hoax perpetrated on the world by Jews. Indeed, if you have the stomach to dive into the deepest, darkest, most disgusting parts of the Internet, where Holocaust deniers freely spew their lies, you will even find explicit assertions that the Holocaust is nothing but a hoax that the Jews used to justify the formation of the State of Israel and to collect reparation money. Indeed, do a Google search for the term "Holohoax" and you will find well over 43,000 entries. That the Holocaust was a…

Congress passed FDARA. What the heck does that mean?

I've been AWOL this week on SB; life, apparently, is not concerned with what is convienent for you. Anywho... The House on thursday passed the FDA reform bill (H.R. 3580) by a huge margin (405-7) and the Senate passed it last night by a voice vote. As an aside, Sen Burr (R-NC) placed a hold on it but obiviously that didn't end up stopping the passage. Pres. Bush will probably sign it today. And it's a good thing, too. The FDA said it would have to send permanent layoff notices to about 20% of it's workforce if the legislation didn't pass by today. So, you might ask, what does any of this mean…

Non-Science Fridays: Fie on my fat friends edition

Meatheads of the Week (or so) Michael Vick, Tim Donaghy, Michael Rasmussen, and Barry Bonds for good measure. For Dogs, Gambling, Lying, and Doping. The Wonderful World of Sports! Genius of the Week Kyle Smith. For his brilliant review of The Simpsons movie as a Simpsons script. You must go read it. Fat people are very politically correct. (Shouldn't we start calling it socially correct since politicians routinely say the worst things?) Anyways as I'm sure you're all aware, there was a study in NEJM that showed that you were more likely to be fat if your friends were fat. It's findings lead…

Lott on his tax returns

From: John Lott Sent: 1/26/03 1:44 PM Subject: Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments" Response to Lindgren's "Lott's Tax Arguments" My wife, who took care of our taxes, has a discussion below about how the forms were completed. The main point is that all payments to research assistants if documented by check went into the professional services category. This also includes other expenses that they might have incurred in their work such as their telephone expenses, xeroxing and the like. On the business form, we list out expenses that we directly make ourselves. As to claims that…

Finding Hope in Vegas

A number of bloggers have been posting about YearlyKos, including many who were there, and even some who were not. I wrote on Friday evening about some of the science discussions, but didn't really get into my impressions of the political atmosphere. This shouldn't surprise any of my old readers--I typically avoid the subject like the plague. Something about this weekend changed that, whether it was being encouraged by speakers such as Howard Dean or Harry "Give 'em Hell" Reid, or just encountering hundreds of intelligent individuals willing to discuss politics AND think for themselves. Since…

Burning Bushes

In the Fishlake Mountains of Utah, several fires are steadily burning. As the American West enters yet another dry season, there will almost certainly be more. Folks around these parts have been whispering about the increasing fire danger, dreading another year like 2002. We reffered to that period of time as "the summer of fire", when the Hayman fire, started by a disgruntled forest service worker, burned over 7 million acres of land and destroyed over 100 homes. This year is shaping up to be disturbingly worse. Why? The Bush administration thinks that the bulk of our firefighting helicopter…

Deep sea carbon cycling: microbial action, and mystery

I mentioned this study a while ago, and promised a more detailed explanation. I apologize for how long it has taken, but here it is. How excited was I to learn that the most recent issue of Nature Geoscience had a special focus on deep sea carbon cycling? I admit it, pretty excited. I was even more excited to learn that one of the 3 papers making up this special focus was about the microbial component of deep sea carbon cycling. This may not be something that you think about every day, but I do... well most days at least. The first two sentences of this paper explain why I find this…

Bio-Documentary

My semester in MIT's course on Documenting Science Through Video and New Media has drawn to a close. I've had a wonderful time and learned a lot about how films and science are constructed by different people in different times for different reasons. Most of all I've learned about how challenging it can be to put together an interesting narrative and present a point of view while at the same time ensuring that the science being explained is honest and clear to everyone. I've recently gotten the chance to watch two great recent science documentaries outside of class, Naturally Obsessed and…

We Want a Presidential Debate on Science!

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of The Intersection (along with Derek Araujo, Matthew Chapman, Austin Dacey, Lawrence Krauss, Shawn Lawrence Otto, and John Rennie) are spearheading a grassroots movement called Sciencedebate 2008 to try to convince the powers that be of the need for a presidential debate on science in 2008. For a comprehensive list of the reasons why this is a good idea, I would have to rehash almost everything I've written on this blog... and then some. The point is that science is playing a growing role in society and politics, affecting in some way almost every issue…

On the Front Lines with BT

Lines were drawn in the sand, artillery stood armed and ready, and tensions ran high. Neither side was willing to budge, and despite the seemingly endless conflict having already tested the resolve of both sides, it looked like things were only just beginning to get rough. The whole scenario was regrettable--war always is--but it felt inevitable at the time. Besides, how else was I going to get internet access in my house? Wars are fought for a variety of reasons: for power or territory, for religions or ideologies, for oil, and so on. I had never counted the internet among those, but in…

Polygamous Males Have Larger...Hippocampi!

It should not come as a surprise to the regular reader of this blog that a lot can be learned about animal cognition by simply observing animal behavior. But can observing animal behavior lead the observer to make inferences about brain anatomy? Can observing animal behavior tell us something about the evolution of the brain? Figure 1: Like the raccoon says. Let's say you have two very very closely related species. You might even call them congeneric, because they are from the same taxonomic genus. In most ways, these two species are very similar, but they differ behaviorally in some very…

Whales, Dolphins, and Human Rights

The perspective that whales, dolphins, and other such marine mammals should be afforded "human rights" has surfaced again. I thought I'd revisit a post I wrote about this several months ago, from the archives, when this first hit the news after the AAAS conference in San Diego. So here's a modified, updated version of the original post. The blogosphere is all a-twitter with talk of the recent commentary in Science that dolphins should be considered people. Well, sort of people. Non-human people. On the heels of the incident at SeaWorld in Florida in which a trainer was killed by one of the…

A Cup for your Pup: Friday Weird Science Companion Post

Once upon a Thursday night, blog bff Scicurious asked a particular blogger named Jason if he had access to a paper titled, Contraceptive efficacy of polyester-induced azoospermia in normal men. "I certainly hope so," he said. And so he logged in to his university's library proxy website, and searched for the paper. She said, "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me you have access to this article" and then "it's about ball sacks I MUST HAVE IT." As it happens, he did have institutional access. So Jason downloaded it. It was a rather large file, so it took a little while for him to upload it to his Gmail…

The British Chiropractic Association throws in the towel in the Simon Singh case

Today is a great day. Today, British science writer Simon Singh accomplished something I would never have believed possible, given British libel laws and a very bad ruling by Sir David Eady, the presiding judge, a ruling characterized as astonishingly illiberal. Despite the long odds, Singh appealed the ruling and actually won. As a result, the British Chiropractic Association has thrown in the towel on its bogus libel action against Singh: Having carefully considered its position in the light of the judgment of the Court of Appeal (1st April 2010), the British Chiropractic Association (BCA)…

Countdown to Y2K38

The Year 2038 problem could begin today. Similar to the Y2K problem, certain operating systems cannot handle dates after about 3 AM Universal Time on January 19th, 2038. If your bank is handling a 30 year mortgage starting today, funny things could happen starting now. The Y2K problem occurred because the amount of space allocated in computer hardware and software to store the date was insufficient to handle a year greater than 1999. A huge amount of effort and funds were spent in preparation for Y2K. Arguments have been made that the problem was overblown (including the fact that across…

Lamarckian Mechanism in Ciliates

A group of scientists ... has uncovered a new biological mechanism that could provide a clearer window into a cell's inner workings.....What's more, this mechanism could represent an "epigenetic" pathway -- a route that bypasses an organism's normal DNA genetic program -- for so-called Lamarckian evolution, enabling an organism to pass on to its offspring characteristics acquired during its lifetime to improve their chances for survival. Giardia surfaces are known to adapt to a host's immune response, and pass this on to daughter cells during cell division. That would be a system of…

John West can Play the Violin But Not the Fiddle

The 1920s. It was a sad, sad time in America. All the biologists got together and, inspired by Darwinian writings, embarked on a campaign to sterilize those they perceived as unfit, the campaign known to us as Eugenics. From Eugenics grew other evils, such as Planned Parenthood, Modern Evolutionary Biology, and The Nazis. Or so intoned John West of the Creationist Discovery Institute, in a talk ending just moments ago at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus. The talk itself was rather sad, not just the apocryphal topic. It was executed with a modicum, but only a modicum, of…

Linux Calendar, Larry Craig, and Moving On

I just love my Linux "calendar" command. It's an old Unix trick. *nix (Linux, Unix) systems have these special files on them where dated information is stored, for the user, the system, or just because it's there. If you have a Linux computer, you have several such files already installed. If you go to a command prompt and type "calendar" (and hit enter) you get, typically, today and tomorrow's entries by default, which include a bunch of historical entries. To wit: A Repost Oct 06 First GPSS manual published, 1961 Oct 06 Antioch College is the first public school to admit men and…

Weekend mailbag: Orac is a bad, bad man

After yesterday's lovefest that really did go to my head. Really, when I wrote it I wasn't trolling for praise, although in retrospect it now does kind of look that way to me. I was simply expressing amazement that anyone would listen to a pseudonymous (although not really anonymous anymore) blogger. Fortunately for my ego, which threatens to expand until it pops like an overinflated balloon, there are are readers who aren't all that impressed by me. Heck, there's even a whole blog, every blogger of which really, really detests me. (I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess to which…

It's that day once again!

Oh, glorious day! As hard as it is to believe, it's here once again, and freedom lovers everywhere should rejoice! Yes, indeed, it's the day that everyone who detests fascism should celebrate: Fuehrerstodestag! (Otherwise known as "Dead Hitler Day.") Sixty-three years ago today, Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Reich, finally cornered in his rathole, his nation and glorious capital of what he thought would be a "thousand year Reich" in ruins, rather than face his enemies, decided instead to blow his brains out in his bunker as the Red Army was relentlessly advancing on him. After over 12 years…

PalMD of White Coat Underground Says...

Make no little plans; they have no power to stir men's blood. ---Daniel Burnham The last eight years have seen subtle and not-so subtle predations on the practice of medicine. Will the new administration be able to promote the kind of change we need? Let's review some of the challenges facing the Obama administration. Ethical apocalypse Bush's evisceration of the Constitution of the United States has affected health care professionals. For example, the military has likely always used psychologists to assist with interrogations, but the last eight years has seen a huge increase in the…

The Death of the Republican Brain

Perhaps this is redundant, since Jon Swift has already taken care of it, but how could I possibly resist an article titled "The Death of Science," posted on a "Blogs for Bush" site? It's got wingnuts, it's got irony, it's got dizzyingly inane interpretations of science. It's like everything that's wrong with the Bush approach to science, all in one short article. What reasons could a blinkered Bush supporter with a petrified brain and no background in science possibly advance to support the claim that science is dead? A lot of different factors - but the main thing was that science could…

Time to rally the troops against the antivaccine movement

Every so often, I think it's worthwhile to try to use my powers (such as they are) for good. Actually, I like to think that I'm using my powers for good each and every day, but obviously there are some who disagree. In general, these people are cranks. We're talking quacks, pseudoscientists, antivaccinationists, and various antiscience types. But I repeat myself. Right now, I see two things going on right now that could use some help from pro-science, pro-skepticism types. First up, I found out a couple of days ago that Brian Deer will be in the U.S. next week. Specifically, he'll be at the…

Cloning brains with Science

While we've been waiting and waiting for the physicists to get their act together and deliver on Mr Fusion home energy sources and flying cars, the biologists have been making great progress on the kinds of things that turn biologists on. The latest development: growing tiny little human brains in a bucket. Only let's not call them brains…they are cerebral organoids. Hugo Gernsback would be so proud. Here's the latest development. Start with embryonic human stem cells, or induced pluripotent stem cells (cells which you've reset to a kind of embryonic state by using a virus to transfect them…

NYRI: A Good Example of Poor Energy Policy

The 2005 Energy Policy Act is known by some as being written by the energy lobby and by others as containing things down right goofy. One provision creates what are known as energy transmission corridors. Supposedly, the idea is to lower energy costs and increase security (is there anything that's done by the government these days that doesn't have the word security thrown in?) Here is a map of the draft Mid-Atlantic corridor. You will note that most of New York State is within the corridor with the exception of the southwestern portion and a chunk of the Adirondack Mountains. Now I'm all…

Gearing up for '08

While Presidential gamesmanship is all the rage, with even Kansas trying to move its primaries earlier to get a bite of that apple, major moves are under way lower down on the ballot. Perhaps most significantly for Scienceblogs readers, Bill Wagnon, current chairman of the Kansas Board of Education and the representative for most of the Lawrence area, has announced that he will not be running again. A successor to this moderate seat shouldn't be hard to find in the Lawrence area, but we need to start early. Moderates Carol Rupe and Sue Gamble will also be up for re-election if they choose…

Interracial divorce, the matrix of sex & race

It has been known for years that interracial marriages have higher than expected divorce rates. But I did not know that the rates varied quite a bit contingent on the combination of race & sex. Gori Girl* has a post up, Interracial Divorce in the U.S. - Statistics and How Much They Matter: - Marriages that do not cross a race barrier, but do have different ethnicities (i.e. white/Hispanic white) have a rate of divorce just a little higher than white/white marriages. - Interracial marriages that have one white person and one person of another race mostly only show higher divorce rates when…

Brief Thoughts on The Jesuit and the Skull

When the topic of persecution of scientists by religious authorities comes up, Galileo is typically mentioned most often, Giordano Bruno every once in a while, and Hypatia of Alexandria not at all. A longer list of figures who entered "warfare... with theology in Christendom" could be conjured up as well, even Linnaeus raising the hackles of the Vatican for grouping Homo sapiens in with primates. A more modern, though no less tragic, story involves the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the main focus of Amir Aczel's new book The Jesuit and the Skull. As my wife…

Lessons learned from Breitbart and Sherrod

So there I was on strike, and this appalling news story flew by and I had to choke on my tongue. I'm late, but I have to say something. The story, as you probably all know, is that Shirley Sherrod gave a talk on her work assisting poor farmers hang on to their land, in which she confessed to being less enthusiastic about helping poor white farmers early on. Andrew Breitbart, professional pseudojournalist and teabaggin' hack, ran just that excerpt of her talk and made it sound as if she and her audience at the NAACP were flaming racist hatemongers who were chuckling over making Whitey pay. He…

Is it a lie if you ought to know better, but don't?

Making Light addresses Ben Stein's descent into hackery, and other such cinematic chicanery. Stein is the star of a new movie the Disco Inst. is touting. To gather interviews, the producers of the film misled various folks about the name and nature of the film, and have produced a gross misrepresentation about the way science works. Teresa Neilsen Hayden explains: It’s not possible to produce such programs honestly. Chopping logic and falsifying arguments like that can only be done by someone who knows that he or she is doing it. To put it another way: if you know enough about the Book of…

Gay adoption

Last year, we spent a lot of time mocking the self-righteous bigotry of Martin Cothran. Cothran, who works for the Kentucky affiliate of Focus on the Family and blogs for the Disco. Inst., objects to gays having an equal right to marriage, and thinks it's hateful to call him a bigot for his anti-gay bigotry. Ah, well. I mention all of this as preface to his latest round of bigotry. Today, he's complaining about gays having equal access to adoption, and especially to a discussion on a local newspaper's blog, in which he feel's it's been misunderstood: that I was somehow referring to…

Telling versus showing

Brad surveys the nation (at least the flying public), and writes: If anything, my point is that it’s sad that we, as a nation, seem to have lost our sense of patriotism — and there could possibly be an inverse relationship of the degree that one is vocal about it and one’s IQ. I think this sentence is revealing. I agree with the second half, and disagree with the first. I would argue that patriotism is not fundamentally about wearing shirts or pins with flags. It isn't about that frayed flag limply drooping on your porch during a rainstorm, or the magnetic yellow ribbon on your SUV.…

The duties that come with knowledge and uncertainty.

While I hope this hurricane season is a lot less eventful than the last one, it's always good to be ready. To that end, I'm brushing off (and bringing together here) two "classic" posts from the 2005 hurricane season. As we look to the scientists to tell us what nature may have in store for us, we need to remember how scientists think about uncertainties -- and especially, how important it is to a scientist to avoid going with predictions that have a decent chance of being false. Being wrong may seem almost as bad to the scientist as being under 10 feet of water. Meanwhile, the scientists…

Regalia retrofit.

I have a soft spot for commencements. And, as I get on in years, that spot gets even softer. Part of it, undoubtedly, is because recognizing the hard work and accomplishments of the new graduates is so much more fun than the grading that immediately precedes it. But for me, part of what grabs me is the feeling that what I'm doing -- the notion of education and its larger value that I'm trying to impart -- connects me to a tradition that is hundreds of years old. One visible sign of that connection is the academic regalia that graduates and faculty alike wear to commencement ceremonies. In…

Uninvited nest update.

Yesterday I asked for advice about how to deal with a nest of eggs that presents itself in an inopportune place (a tree slated to meet a gruesome end in a whisper-chipper) at an inopportune time (mere days ahead of when we finally launch our backyard overhaul). The consensus among commenters who professed knowledge of or experience with birds in the wild seems to be that there is no promising way to relocate the nest without scaring the mama bird away and leaving the eggs cold and orphaned. Given that the whole point of moving the nest would be not to throw out the baby birds with the…

Asian American Republicans-it's a Christian thing

Obviously the most prominent Indian American politician today is Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana. But Jindal is not very representative of Indian Americans: ...Additionally, there are also industry-wide Indian American groupings including the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin. Despite being heavily religious and having the highest average household income among all ancestry groups in the United States, Indian Americans tend to be more liberal and tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Polls before the 2004 U.S.…