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Signs of spring [All of My Faults Are Stress Related]

I know it doesn't feel like spring on the East Coast of the US, what with the big snow day yesterday. But it's been in the 60's here for the past three days, and in the 50's before that. At my elevation (6800 feet), the snow is gone except in the shade and on north-facing slopes. It's nice, but worrisome: my mountains are the headwaters of the Rio Grande and part of the Colorado, and our snow is the water supply for cities and farms from Texas to California. March is supposed to be the big snow month here. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm watching spring arrive. And this year, I'm going to try…

It may not look like much but it's family [Stranger Fruit]

So what do you see? A groove and some lines? Truth be told, this is possibly the oldest recorded chordate fossil (or, should I say, one of a number of seventeen specimens of same). It dates from the pre-Cambrian - i.e. before 543 million years ago - during a period known as the Ediacarian. Found by Ross Faraghar seven years ago in the Flinders Range of Australia, the specimens represent our earliest view of chordate evolution, that is, the evolution of the group that we belong to (along with a few squishy things, and the more familiar fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals). Unfortunately,…

Zuska of Thus Spake Zuska Says... [The Rightful Place Project]

Perhaps you have noticed our newly redesigned front page, and on that page, a link to the Rightful Place Project. In his inaugural address, President Obama promised to restore science to its "rightful place". Seed Media Group is starting a dialog in response, asking the question "What is science's rightful place?", through Seed Magazine and ScienceBlogs. Our benevolent overlordz have asked us to offer our thoughts in response to this question. You'll see at the Rightful Place page that you can submit your own thoughts on this question, and there is a link to the Rightful Place blog to…

Flying in all directions

When we navigate through our environment, do we track mostly in two dimensions or in three? Clearly, we can move in all three dimensions, but does our internal map relate to the vertical direction in the same way as it does to the horizontal axes on the ground? That question has not yet been definitively answered, but recent research on flying bats shows us what three-dimensional navigation looks like in the brain. It turns out that fruit bats also mostly navigate in two dimensions, since quite a bit of their flying time involves getting from their caves straight to their favorite fruit…

Friday Fun: 30 things to tell a book snob

I'll admit, I'm a bit of a book snob, a strange thing to say for a lifetime comics/science fiction/fantasy/horror/mystery fan, but there you go. Perhaps more precisely, I'm a snob about books versus other media. But in my defense I'll maintain that I'm getting better as I get older -- more tolerant and accepting and less snobby. Perhaps not coincidentally, I think my takes in reading material are getting more diverse too. In any case, let's all enjoy 30 things to tell a book snob. 1. People should never be made to feel bad about what they are reading. People who feel bad about reading will…

Preliminary thoughts on McMastergate, or, Why so touchy?

Yeah, and I'm touchy and upset and discomfited by this whole thing as much as anyone. This is about my touchiness, not yours. Although please feel free to add your own feelings in the comments. Thinking about it over the last few days I've come to glimpse the sources of my own unease. And I've come to think that they are related to the various threads that are becoming tangled up in this controversy. It's almost like there's a Cartesian diagram with four or more quadrants of issues and all the various responses are each focusing on one drawn through one or two or three of those quadrants…

Yes, the interviews are back

Way back when, I used to post fairly frequent interviews with publishers, bloggers, librarians and scientists who I thought were interesting people to hear from. Mostly I wanted to hear about what they thought about changes in the scholarly publishing environment. I've got links to a bunch of them below, mostly to the old blog. (I'll start moving the rest over here when I'm done with the book reviews.) The last significant interview I did was with Dorothea Salo, way back in October 2008. What happened? Well, I decided I wanted my next interview to be with someone involved with publishing at…

VP Debate thread

Got your popcorn and jujubes? Ready for the clown show? The debate begins shortly, and this is the place to leave your comments. Half an hour in, and I'm seeing Biden being good and specific with facts at his fingertips, and doing a good job of answering questions with substance. Palin is an airhead who's spouting more fluff and ignoring the questions — she keeps going back to energy and pretending she's an expert. It's very annoying, but she's not descending into fumbling babble-babble, so I'm sure the audience is going right along with it. Come on, Biden, slam her back on the futility of…

Pack of Strays

Y'all may have noticed that there are a bunch of us blogging on Stochastic. That's because there are a bunch of us working at Seed. Here's my (and a little bit of our) story: My name is Christopher. I was hired as a writer. Now I'm an editor, managing editor, web producer, writer, project manager, graphic designer, human/systems interface designer, information architect and general layabout. On the masthead I'm listed as a web editor. But everyone wears more than a few hats here at Seed, according to our respective abilities. For instance our Science Blogs editor also coordinates podcast…

Reading Diary: The Story of Life in 25: Fossils Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution by Donald R. Prothero

Donald R. Prothero's The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution has a bit of something for everyone. It's a great introduction to the history of life on the planet Earth, it's a solid primer on why evolution is true. It's a fun read with lots of tales of paleontological adventure and derring do. One of my favourite parts is the list of "must visit" natural history museums both in the US and around the world (I've been to seven of them, but I hope to visit more of them!). Tips on where you can actually see the fossils under discussion for…

Best Science Books 2015: Science Friday

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. And here we are in 2015! As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion. Today's list is Science Friday: The Best Science Books of 2015…

Best Science Books 2015: The Telegraph Best Science Books 2015

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. And here we are in 2015! As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion. Today's list is The Telegraph Best Science Books 2015.…

Friday Fun: Ten Simple Rules to Win a Nobel Prize

Being a librarian and not really being eligible for any Nobel Prizes, this probably isn't the most practical advice I've ever highlighted here on the blog. But some of you readers out there are scientists, though, right? Right? On the other hand, I see no reason why librarians can't be eligible for the Ig Nobel Prizes, a prize I aspire to winning one day for the team. In that case, this fine article, Ten Simple Rules to Win a Nobel Prize by Nobel laureate Richard J. Roberts probably does contain a few valuable lessons towards that particular goal. Here's a taste, but please do read the…

Clinton and Trump on Western Water Policy

Donald Trump speaking in Fresno, California, May 2016 Clinton on Western Water Trump on Western Water “Recognizes that the current long-term drought across much of the West poses a dire risk to the health and prosperity of Western communities and believes the federal government can and should be a better partner in supporting state and locally-led efforts to improve water security.” “There is no drought. They turn the water out into the ocean.” Explicit policy proposals: Increase federal investment in water conservation through a coordinated, multi-agency Western Water Partnership…

Where roses are mauve and zebrafish glow

The day your son asks for a genetically engineered glow-in-the dark zebra fish and your wife desires a mauve rose may be the day that public acceptance of plant and animal genetic engineering has finally arrived. Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded that a new variety of rose, genetically engineered to be an unusual shade of blue, does not pose a risk to the economy or ecosystems. This decision paves the way for the company, Florigene, to sell cut roses in the US. The mauve creation is based on the discovery by Davis-based biotech pioneer Calgene Inc, which isolated the "…

Let 'em starve

When I give lectures about the global food supply and the environment, often someone in the audience will comment that the best way to solve the problem is to quit producing so much food. I find this type of "Let 'em starve" approach quite horrific from a humanitarian view. It also makes no sense scientifically. First of all, it is well established that increases in economic and social development (think: enough food to eat) coincide with substantial declines in human fertility and population growth rates. According to this recent article in Nature, "As a result of this close connection…

Role Models in Science & Engineering: X-STEM & Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Kathryn Thornton

The USA Science & Engineering Festival is thrilled to introduce our elite group of X-STEM and Nifty Fifty Speakers for the 3rd Festival! In today's blog we feature Physicist and former NASA Astronaut Dr. Kathryn Thornton! We are excited to announce that Dr. Kathryn Thornton will serve as both an X-STEM and Nifty Fifty Speaker for the Festival! Selected in 1984 by NASA as an astronaut candidate, Kathryn Thornton would go on to serve 12 notable years with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston -- a career which would see her become the second American woman to walk in space, in addition to…

Come the Festival to Hear Featured Author Theodore Gray!

"The periodic table is the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot" --Theodore Gray You have the amazing opportunity to hear from best-selling author Theodore Gray at this year's USA Science and Engineering Festival Book Fair! Gray will be speaking at the Teen Non-Fiction Festival Stage at 11:50 am on Saturday, April 28th. His newest book is Theodore Gray's Elements Vault: Treasures of the Periodic Table with Removable Archival Documents and Real Element Samples - Including Pure Gold! Gray's other books, The Elements and Mad Science, are international bestsellers, as is…

You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube Contest

Join the fun! All schools, after school, and other "Not for Profit" community youth organizations in the Greater Washington DC area (including Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia) serving ages K-12 can participate. We currently have 37 teams registered for the competition and we have registrants in all 3 divisions - Elementary, Middle and High Schools. Our goal is to have 100+ teams! The Tournament will consist of teams of eight students in grades K-12 plus a teacher/coach, divided into 3 divisions as follows: Div 1 - Elementary Grades K-5; Div 2 - Middle School Grades 6-8; Div 3…

The IPCC Report in Plain Language

Surfing the wave of coverage of this morning's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? This Q & A piece in the Guardian UK is short, sharp, and to the point—a great starting place for neophytes (and big-picture types). The heart of the matter: What does [the IPCC report] say? Emissions of greenhouse gases are expected to further change the climate over the next 100 years, it says. As a result, sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre, snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains, deserts will spread, oceans will become acidic, leading to the…

Lunch with a Laureate

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.~Marie Curie Unfortunately sometimes in communicating the excitement of science to those that are not in science fields we somehow lose... well the excitement. To me, a new idea births a childlike curiosity and EXCITEMENT as it takes up residence in my brain and dances around. When I have a day like that, it is exhilarating.Today was one of those days where an observation turned into an idea…

Satellite Event--New Jersey Science and Engineering Festival

Hi. This is Mike Paitchell. I founded the New Jersey Science and Engineering Festival and the parent organization which is staging it, the New Jersey Applied Science and Technology Council. The USA has a crisis brewing. Many of us believe that the USA needs to get more young people interested in science and technology, choosing technical careers, becoming assets to industry, and developing new industries if we are to continue to function and grow as a viable country. It appears that the general population is less interested in science than ever before, and they have a minimal understanding…

Development and Role of the Human Reference Sequence in Personal Genomics

A few weeks back, we published a review about the development and role of the human reference genome. A key point of the reference genome is that it is not a single sequence. Instead it is an assembly of consensus sequences that are designed to deal with variation in the human population and uncertainty in the data. The reference is a map and like a geographical maps evolves though increased understanding over time. From the Wiley On Line site: Abstract Genome maps, like geographical maps, need to be interpreted carefully. Although maps are essential to exploration and navigation they…

Every Structure has a Story

Modified from the original post. Playing around with molecular structures is one of the more entertaining activities that you can do with digital biology. I've become totally entranced with molecular structures, both because they're a fascinating art form and because every structure has its own story. I learned this because I ended up writing 69 different structure stories for the "Exploring DNA Structure" instructor guide. This was never in my original plan but my friend Charlotte Mulvihill wrote to ask me about the functions of different structures. I blithely replied that sometimes the…

Cryptic Observations: Photographs and Illusionary Animals

"Photographic evidence" is sometimes taken as shorthand for cold, hard proof. Seeing, after all, is believing, and if we have a permanent record of an image that anyone can examine, what more verification can be necessary? Of course, we can't really trust our eyes or memories, something that has been exacerbated by how trivial manipulating photographs have become. But even before Photoshop, photographs fooled people. Beyond crude hoaxes, there remains the fact that such images are not simple slices of reality. Intentionally or unintentionally, photographers determine what information from a…

Mapping new autism gene(s) to chromosome 16

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study yesterday showing that small changes in the DNA in the long arm of chromosome 16 are associated with autism. I met a teenager with autism last summer, when I attended family night at the Seattle Park and Rec summer camp program for kids with special needs. It's a fantastic program. The kids spend a week or more at summer camp and the parents get some much needed time off. I sat down on a log and my daughter (one of the counselors) introduced to me a boy in her cabin and told me that he's interested in trains. Since I rode a train for…

If you can't stand the heat, get infected!

Are viral and fungal infections always a bad thing? Maybe not if you're a plant. In fact, if you're a plant trying to grow in the hot (65°; C) soils of Yellowstone National Park, you're going to need all the help you can get. A new study by Márquez, et.al. (1) found that a type of grass (Dichanthelium lanuginosum) is able to grow in the hot soils of Yellowstone National Park because it gets help from some friends. A fungal friend. And that fungal friend is infected with a virus. If you're not used to thinking in degrees centigrade, it's hard to grasp immediately, just how hot 65°; C is…

Bioweapons proliferation policy: stupid is as stupid does

While you busy being scared by the Bush administration about phantom weapons of mass destruction, there are real WMDs and have been for many decades. We even know where they are (no, not north, west and south of Tikrit, as claimed by the cowardly Donald Rumsfeld). They are in the former Soviet Union. They made bioweapons. They had stockpiles. They even had a well-studied accident with anthrax from a weapons research facility that killed dozens of community residents when a fairly small amount was inadvertently vented in Sverdlovsk. But Putin's Russia is not a target in George Bush's "Global"…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: mainstreaming atheism

Nebraska is a pretty red state (meaning Republican and conservative, not lefty as it did in my youth). All the statewide office holders are Republicans except for junior Senator Ben Nelson who might as well be a Republican. The state went two to one for Bush in 2004. Two to one. This is God's country. Well, not quite. At least not in the religion section of the Lincoln Journal Star this weekend which carried a long story about freethinker and Lincoln, Nebraska citizen Rob McEntarffer, 38 years old, and working in the Lincoln Public Schools District Office. He describes the first time, in…

Signing a check for Iraq's signature wound

We've know for some years now that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the "signature wound" of the Iraq War (see here, here). We know it's true but we don't know its full extent. Nor has the Department of Defense bothered to find out how bad it is, despite the fact that they designed a screening test for TBI "years ago" according to USA Today: The Pentagon must use computers to screen troops before and after they go to Iraq or Afghanistan to better determine whether they suffered traumatic brain damage in combat, according to a plan by a congressional brain-injury task force. The Defense…

Farm to farm spread of bird flu: hard to stop

When we consider the spread of bird flu, we often focus on the basic reproductive number, R0, the average number of new cases that a single infected individual would produce in a completely susceptible population. But individuals are not the only possible unit of analysis. One could consider infected farms, too. That's what researchers at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine did in their analysis of the spread of the H7 subtype (H7N3, H7N7, H7N1) of avian influenza virus in Italy, the Netherlands and Canada. The results of several years of data showed…

Guns, cars and potent toxins

In another post we pointed out that the number one cause of death in people aged 1 to 44 is unintentional injury. But some injuries are intentional, about half directed to other people and half self directed. Among people aged 15 to 44 intentional injury represents the second leading cause of death, about half homicides and half suicides (CDC). Guns figure prominently in both. A recent study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers published in the Journal of Trauma shows that in states with higher rates of guns in households there is a significantly higher rate of suicide: In the 15…

Pictures from Northern Israel, part I

I refuse to write blog posts about the Middle East for a variety of reasons. No matter what I say, there will be a flame war in the comments - if you think that flame-wars in comments are bad when dealing with creationists, animal rightists or Wingnuts, just try tackling Israel! I'll be acused of being a self-hating Jew and anti-semite and Zionist and anti-Zionist, perhaps simultaneously all of those by the same person in a single sentence. I do not know enough history of the region and the conflict. I do not know the specialized terminology - a minefield of seemingly normal English language…

Hot Peppers

I had lunch with Anton yesterday. We talked about the upcoming busy blogging Fall and he showed me his new book. We ate in my neck of the woods, at Town Hall Grill in Southern Village in Chapel Hill. Anton brought his laptop - the wi-fi signal is strong, so, after Brian and Ruby get married tomorrow (OK, they already are), Brian can add this restaurant to the Chapel Hill Wireless map. Being very hungry, and knowing that the food there is delicious, I came prepared. While Anton had their lightly-battered fish and chips, I ordered a NY strip. When the food arrived I reached down into my…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: what I have against religion

There is a misconception that because I am an atheist and poke fun at religion in this space every Sunday that I must have contempt for religion for its own sake. It's true I find many of the pious contemptible, but not because they are pious. You can be stupid in all sorts of ways and that's just one of them. Nor do I go after religion and the religious because they believe in one of the many gods people have made up. There are a lot of ways to be irrational. Look at Wall Street. No, I go after religion because it represents a particularly nasty form of tribalism, a set of beliefs that…

Infecting pigs with human-adapted swine flu virus

An interesting piece on an infection trial of novel H1N1 in pigs appeared on ProMed over a week ago, but with dealing with swine flu up close and personal and all, I am only just getting to comment on it. This was a study done in the EU (VLA-Weybridge, Mammalian Influenza Group) to see how easy it was to infect pigs with the human-adapted swine flu, what kinds of symptoms and pathology it produced, and how transmissible it was. The answer seems to be easy, mild and very, in that order. 11 pigs were inoculated intranasally and when they began to shed virus a naive pair of pigs placed in…

The zero acorn problem

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, but not this year. At least in a lot of places. Because for reasons no one seems to understand many places in North America are reporting no acorns at all. I'm not talking reduced numbers of acorns or few acorns. I'm talking about zero acorns: The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head. Then calls started coming in…

Annals of McCain - Palin, XXXIII: endorsed by terrorists

If an al-Qaeda website had endorsed Barack Obama I think we know what the McCain campaign would do with it. It would be absolutely ridiculous, but we know they'd be trumpeting it from small town to small town in "the real America." Now that the shoe is on the other foot, with an al-Qaeda website saying a McCain presidency would be just the ticket for them, it will be interesting to see how they spin it. It is quite obvious that McCain is not an al-Qaeda sympathizer, no matter what he might feel free to say about his opponent. Dishonorable and incompetent, perhaps. Which gets us closer to the…

Presidential candidate medical records?

The New York Times has a very long article by Lawrence Altman, a physician and medical reporter for the newspaper, about the uncertainties regarding the medical histories of the four major party candidates for President and Vice-President. John McCain, a cancer survivor and the candidate who would become the oldest President were he elected, has intensified the interest by his choice of running mate, the inexperienced and probably unqualified Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Joe Biden also has a major medical issue in his background (two berry aneurysms). There are sufficient unknowns about…

Safe haven for teens

Both of our children and all three of our grandchildren were with us yesterday afternoon, which set me thinking about the Nebraska "safe haven" law. If you haven't heard about it, Nebraska has just joined the other 49 states by enacting LB 157, a law that allows a parent to abandon an unwanted child at a hospital, no questions asked. These kinds of laws are promoted by child welfare advocates as safeguards for newborns who might otherwise be left to die of exposure or deposited in the trash somewhere. It happens. But Nebraska went all the way. Instead of a law like California's, which limits…

FARS, WISQARS and other online sources of violent death, mayhem and misadventure

Boingboing had a short notice about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System ("FARS"), plugging it as an all purpose dicing and slicing source for information on motor vehicle related deaths in the US. You can make your own custom queries to find out about auto fatalities in your own county. FARS is a great resource. But there is another one, hosted at CDC, that is even better: WISQARS (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, "whiskers"). WISQARS reports injury statistics for each state over time. You can also compare your…

Gorging ourselves on diet drinks?

Researchers at Purdue University's Ingestive Behavior Research Center fed two groups of otherwise similar rats yogurt with Sweet 'N Low (an artificial sweetener containing saccharin) or yogurt sweetened with glucose ( "A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation by Rats," Susan E. Swithers, PhD and Terry L. Davidson, PhD, Purdue University; Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 122, No. 1): Three different experiments explored whether saccharin changed lab animals' ability to regulate their intake, using different assessments --the most obvious being caloric intake,…

Bird flu and arsenic

Bird flu is all over the Indian state of West Bengal and the country that borders it on the east, Bangladesh. The Ganges River flows through West Bengal, dividing in two, with one branch headed into Bangladesh. The Gangetic alluvium and delta region also has another unhappy claim to fame: it is the site of an enormous chronic poisoning from groundwater containing naturally occurring arsenic. The mass poisoning that is occurring in West Bengal and Bangladesh is another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Drinking water is one of the most important resources for any community and the…

Selling old meat and stale bread

There's a world out there I hardly know, although apparently I am part of it. The sandwich world: High saturation in the US sandwich market will force manufacturers to focus on niche age and ethnic markets in order to boost market share, predicts a new Mintel report. According to estimations made by Mintel at the end of 2007, the US sandwich industry is now worth more than $121bn - a massive market for product historically created to use up old meat and stale bread. However, Mintel predicts that the market will experience slow growth of 13 per cent over the 2007 to 2009 period - only half of…

New prostate test. No thanks.

Another story about a "new" screening test, this one for prostate cancer, the most common cancer in the US. This one looks for a particular combination of variations in five genes. If a man has all five and a family history of prostate cancer then his risk of is increased by a factor of nine. The researchers who have devised the test have also patented it and plan to sell it for $300 bucks a pop. I, for one, am not buying it (literally or figuratively). First some of the details as given by a press report: Almost half of prostate cancer patients carry five genetic variations and a family…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: maybe the worst is over

With the Kentucky general election a day away, the administration of Governor Ernie Fletcher wasted not time getting the Ten Commandments posted on state property in the wake of a judge's ruling allowing it as part of a display of donated "historical documents" that included the Magna Carta and the Kentucky Constitution. To the Governor the ruling must have truly seemed Heaven Sent. He was in a hard fought battle for re-election and in his State of the Commonwealth address in 2006, Fletcher contended that: . . . under Kentucky law, teachers already have the freedom to teach "intelligent…

Experimental health tests in an emergency without informed consent

I am a strong supporter of privacy and civil liberties. But I confess I don't get the opposition to this rule, just promulgated by FDA on an expedited basis, without going through public comment: In a public health emergency, suspected victims would no longer have to give permission before experimental tests could be run to determine why they're sick, under a federal rule published Wednesday. Privacy experts called the exception unnecessary, ripe for abuse and an override of state informed-consent laws. Health care workers will be free to run experimental tests on blood and other samples…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Game Day. Don't pester God.

Game Day. Don't pester God with petty Life and Death stuff. He's ready for some football!. And why not? Players on both sides pray to Him, credit Him with their touchdowns, sacks, interceptions. None ever blame Him for their Mistakes. It's all good stuff. What's not to like? Football's Biggest Fan. And his favorite team? Your team. The team from your local area. That's not all. God is an Awesome Team Physician: Detroit quarterback Jon Kitna expected people to snicker and laugh when they heard his explanation for his comeback against Minnesota after getting knocked out of the game with a…

Being a journalist means never having to say you were wrong

I try not to make mistakes on this blog but sometimes I do. When I find out about them, I correct them. But what do I know. I'm only a blogger, not a journalist. I thought you were supposed to correct your mistakes: Almost half of the articles published by daily newspapers in the US contain one or more factual errors, and less than two per cent end up being corrected. The findings are from a forthcoming research paper by Scott R Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. The findings challenge how well journalism's "corrections box"…

Trying to put bird fu on the "no fly" list?

There are a lot of industries that will suffer mightily if there were an influenza pandemic so it's hard to single out any one that will be hit harder. But among the most vulnerable certainly must be the travel industry. At the height of a pandemic the problem is probably moot. By that time even the people in the travel industry will have other things to think about. But a pandemic doesn't start in an instant. It starts somewhere and depending upon surveillance systems we will have more or less time to react depending upon where we are. There will also likely be a period of uncertainty when…