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Freak ocean wave across the Pacific

You may have learned in Oceanography that wind driven surface effects are limited to the first 70m of the ocean, in what's commonly known as the Ekman layer. However, climate oscillations, even small ones, have a deeper impact on the oceans. They can influence oceanic conditions a mile below. The Telegraph UK calls one newly revealed mechanism a "freak" ocean wave because it travels underwater, with little or no surface expression. This was such a good spin I had to promote it to main title. In reality, these are periodic Kelvin waves travelling eastward along the equator at the submerged…

Deep coral happenings on Capitol Hill

We have a new state in this country! Welcome number 53. It's called "The State of Deep Coral Ecosystems of the United States" Of course, it's not a state, really, in the Nunavut sense of the word. This is a federal deep-sea coral report prepared by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program to address the status of our knowledge about deep corals and the capacity of our federal government to manage deep coral habitat. The "State of Deep Coral Ecosystems..." report was commissioned, in effect, by the President's Ocean Action Plan, so we take it seriously here at DSN. Seriously. It's a…

Chikyu Vs. The Earthquake

Behemoth is the only word that comes to mind as I discuss, with mouth agape, about the deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu. JAMSTEC, the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, launched a venture in 2005 to take the deepest cores into the earth's crust following the route of Nautilus in Jules Verne's novel. The deepest core into the crust was currently 2111m but during the Center for Deep Earth Exploration (CDEX) the goal was 7000m. To accomplish this...the Japanese unleash Chikyu which translates into "earth", a fitting name given the size of the ship. Yes it is really that big…

Puny Whales and The Clams That Love Them

Whale-fall communities are one of the most unique habitats in the deep oceans. When a whale dies and sinks to the ocean floor, it represents a carbon-rich parcel that contrasts sharply to the food-poor desert around. Whale carcasses attract both opportunistic, and typically scavenging, species who feed on anything. In addition, there are a suite of species that are specially adapted to whale carcasses like the bone-eating worms. Whale falls were first discovered in 1989 by Craig Smith and team and just two short years after a fossil whale fall was found. These fossil whale-fall…

What Do You Think? Kin Selection: Fact or Fiction?

Why do some creatures forgo their own reproduction to help their relatives survive and reproduce? While we all might like to believe that naked mole rats really do care and are thus willing to sacrifice their creepy little lives for the good of the colony, the true answer probably has more to do with gene frequency across generations and evolution. A scene from the 2003 ant remake of "Saving Private Ryan". Needless to say, it did not fare well at the box office. Since the late 1950's, the idea of 'kin selection' has been the most widely accepted explanation for such bizarre behavior in…

Friday Sprog Blogging: pond water.

The elder Free-Ride offspring got to go on a field trip this week to an area lagoon. The high points of the visit included seeing a Steller's Jay (we more frequently encounter scrub jays), looking at a possum skull, and being pointed in the direction of the turkey vultures who were eating the rest of that particular possum. But the favorite part of the field trip was the visit to the laboratory (which I'm guessing might have been air conditioned) to look under the microscope at some pond water. Elder offspring: There were a bunch of little critters that kind of looked like tadpoles of…

Friday Sprog Blogging: eyes and empiricism.

Dr. Free-Ride: C'mon and get out of bed. We have to leave soon. Younger offspring: My eyes are watery. Dr. Free-Ride: Eyes will do that sometimes. Younger offspring: Are my eyeballs always wet? Dr. Free-Ride: Pretty much, yeah. Younger offspring: Are my eyeballs always squishy? Dr. Free-Ride: Uh, I guess they are, but I'd rather not check if it's all the same to you. Younger offspring: But if I close my eye and press on my eyelid with my finger, my eyeball feels kind of squishy. Dr. Free-Ride: Sure, but you wouldn't want to press so hard that you actually squished your eyeball. Younger…

InaDWriMo: help me get writing!

Via ScienceWoman, I learn that there's a month for those of us who aren't ready to write a novel, namely, International acaDemic Writing Month. I am so there. Back when I was disserting (the second time) a bunch of us who were at the stage of our studies where it felt like we ought to be getting serious writing done formed a kick-in-the-butt club. We met roughly twice a month (possibly weekly for certain stretches, if I'm remembering correctly), talked about what we had accomplished since the last meeting, brainstormed ways to face down writer's block, and most importantly, we set goals for…

Welcome NYTimes readers! (Plus a few words on my linkage luck.)

If you got here by following the link from Dennis Overbye's story about the movie Dark Matter, you may want to read the post he quotes about Theodore Streleski and the dangers of extreme power imbalance between graduate students and their advisors. (It's also possible that this time next year I can post a follow-up about the less extreme but still real power imbalances between the tenured and the untenured.) And now, let me indulge in a tiny bit of grumbling about linkage: Regular readers of this weblog may have guessed by now that my blogging is not aimed at getting huge traffic. I'm…

Tuesday evening check-in.

There will be a real post again within a day or so. I've been doing stuff in the three-dimensional world. So you don't feel left out: I started coaching U6 soccer again for the Spring season. It's been 4.5 months since the end of the Fall season. They still have microscopic attention spans. Apropos of nothing at all on the interwebs: One of my favorite activities in the whole world is engaging in real dialogue with people who hold different views than mine, where everyone in the dialogue takes each other seriously and no one starts by presuming that the other views are prima facie stupid…

Non-Hallmark sponsored Valentine's Day bullets of pure love.

Yes, Valentine's Day is in the top three Hallmark holidays of the year. No, it is not a holiday actually created by Hallmark, despite what half a dozen people have independently asserted to me in the last 48 hours. I am appalled that the commercialization of this holiday has people keeping score on who loves the most (and who is most loved) on the basis of overpriced flowers, jewelry, and chocolate.* The rampant commercialism of the day notwithstanding, this seems like as good a time as any to share some love: Love of science: Although Zuska's Joy of Science course has already kicked off,…

Scientists and non-scientists need to talk.

In a guest-post at Asymptotia, Sabine Hossenfelder suggests some really good reasons for scientists to communicate with non-scientists -- and not just to say, "Give us more research funding and we'll give you an even smaller iPod." She really gets to the heart of what's at stake: I find it kind of ironic that during the last decades this ancient desire of men to just understand had to be more and more justified by the prospect of material output. Nowadays, governmental funding goes primarily into applied sciences, ideally into military applications, many of which fulfill the only purpose to…

Holiday meme the second: Christmas.

On the heels of the Hanukah meme, here's the Christmas meme, as seen at Musings of a Distractable Mind: 1. Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog? If I must choose, nog with whipped cream (but no bourbon). I also like coffee with a slug of chocolate syrup and a shot of Peppermint Torani's. 2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Unless it's something big and unwieldy, Santa (or his minions) wraps them, usually in paper with pictures of Santa. 3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Colored lights on the tree, white outside if we get to it. 4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. A long…

Last push to help the Tripoli Six.

You may remember the plight of the Tripoli Six (also known as the Benghazi Six), the physician and five nurses on trial in Libya for infecting 400 children in the hospital where they were working with HIV even though there is overwhelming evidence that the most likely route of infection was poor hospital hygeine, probably before any of these six health care workers even set foot in Libya. (Nature provides details of the scientific analysis of the evidence in this PDF.) While the public outcry from the scientific community in support of the Tripoli Six has been great, those watching the trial…

Friday Sprog Blogging: recent images from elder offspring.

A conversation this morning: Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, do you have any pictures you'd like me to scan in for today's sprog blog? Younger offspring: No. Dr. Free-Ride: You mean to tell me you haven't made any drawings at all this week? Younger offspring: I've made drawings, but I don't want to scan any of them for your blog. Dr. Free-Ride: You're not in negotiations with another blogger, are you? Younger offspring: Not yet. * * * * * I've always been a candy sorter. Given a handful of M&Ms (or Skittles, or SweetTarts, or Spree), I cannot help but sort them by color before eating any of them…

Friday Sprog Blogging: difficulty with definitions.

At school, the Free-Ride offspring have been celebrating Red Ribbon Week. For the lower grades, this mostly amounts to wearing sunglasses or crazy socks or whatever that day's Red Ribbon "theme" calls for. But there is also a wee bit of discussion in the classroom about drugs. The Free-Ride parents decided to see what the sprogs had learned: Dr. Free-Ride's better half: So what did you guys learn from Red Ribbon Week? Younger offspring: We shouldn't take drugs. Dr. Free-Ride's better half: What's a drug? Elder offspring: Tobacco's a drug. Younger offspring: Yeah, tobacco can hurt your…

Religion, Mystery and Quantum Physics

I've always wondered why evangelicals obsess over evolution and not quantum physics. If their intent is to undermine materialist science, the surreal conclusions of modern physicists - multiple universes, 11 stringy dimensions, the invisible weight of dark matter - strike me as far more vulnerable to religious interpretation than natural selection. After all, physicists cheerfully admit that their theories have a big gaping hole in the center. Well, it seems that evangelicals have finally started to read Stephen Hawking: "When you get to the subatomic level, everything we know about the…

Comment of the Day

This comment was in response to my earlier post which argued that researchers should try to discover the genetic causes of mental illness instead of trying to decipher intelligence. The commenter makes some excellent points, although I still believe that untangling the (incredibly) complicated genetic underpinnings of mental illness has far more social value than connecting the dots between IQ and race. It's far from clear that schizophrenia is a less complex phenomenon than intelligence. In fact, the opposite may be true. In the first instance, schizophrenia isn't an 'unambiguous…

There are animal rights supporters who take a public stand against violence and intimidation.

We don't have to agree about whether animal research is ethical or scientifically valuable to agree that some tactics for pursuing your view are harmful to civil society. Bruins for Animals, the student organization at UCLA that was instrumental in organizing the recent dialogue about the science and ethics of animal based research, understands this, and they are not afraid to call out the people "on their side" who opt for threats and intimidation: Joint Statement by Bruins for Animals and Pro-Test for Science In an effort to establish a dialogue between those holding different opinions on…

Friday Sprog Blogging: swordfish.

The younger Free-Ride offspring's third grade class is involved in some independent research about animals. Each student chose an animal (with no duplicates, as far as I can tell) and set off to find a nonfiction book about that animal to gather information for a written report and an oral report. The students also need to make a "stuffed animal" version of their chosen animal. Here's the younger Free-Ride offspring's: The younger Free-Ride offspring, being a very independent-minded child, executed this stuffed swordfish with no help whatsoever. Which, you know, would be great ... except…

An observation about the student papers I'm grading.

Because, as it happens, I tend to notice patterns in student papers, then end up musing on them rather than, you know, buckling down and just working through the stack of papers that needs grading. In my philosophy of science class, I have my students write short essays (approximately 400 words) about central ideas in some of the readings I've assigned. Basically, it's a mechanism to ensure that they grapple with an author's view (and its consequences) before they hear me lecture about it. (It's also a way to get students writing as many words as they are required to write in an upper…

A modest proposal.

Dr. Isis offers advice to a reader who gets ogled by a professor. Numerous commenters chime in with their own experiences of being ogled, groped, and otherwise harassed by professors, classmates, bosses, colleagues, and random guys. Some of the men among Isis's commentariat say, are you kidding? You have to put up with this crap regularly? (I'm inclined to view this as a positive effect of this blog post: people have the opportunity to hear about something other people experience on a regular basis, something that they hadn't, for whatever reason, noticed themselves. More data give you a…

Twenty years ago today.

Twenty years ago this spring, after finishing my last round of final exams as a college student, I was enjoying a civilized custom called "senior week," a break of approximately seven days in length between finals and commencement. The campus had largely cleared of students who were not seniors, and suddenly we had time to relax and enjoy our beautiful campus before it was time to move on and become adults (or some close approximation). One of those afternoons during senior week, I was out on the deck on the roof of my dorm, sunbathing (because 21-year-olds care not about incremental…

Friday Sprog Blogging: making faces.

As I turned on the lights this morning, the younger Free-Ride offspring graced me with some faces. Younger offspring: This one (eyes squinted and teeth wide in a gappy second grader smile) and this one (eyes bugged out and mouth in an O of horror) creep people out. My mad look (eyebrows lowered and eyes rolled upward in a glare) doesn't creep people out. Dr. Free-Ride: Maybe that's because people see it so often. Younger offspring: Anyway, it's my look. Dr. Free-Ride: Kiddo, I was giving people that look long before you were born, and your grandfather was giving it to people long before I…

Friday Sprog Blogging: thoughts about life and death.

During a recent bath, the younger Free-Ride offspring shared some deep thoughts: Younger offspring: There's always life, even though every living thing dies. Dr. Free-Ride: Oh? Younger offspring: But life still continues because the Earth never explodes. Elder offspring: (from the hallway) Not so far. Dr. Free-Ride: So what has you thinking about life this way? Younger offspring: When I have children and grandchildren, when I die they'll still have life. Dr. Free-Ride: I see. And that's important to you? Younger offspring: Uh huh. Dr. Free-Ride: And can you explain why that's important to…

Congress Wastes Funds Investigating Funds Not Being Wasted!!11!!

Congress is in charge of the federal budget. That is a constitutional reality. However, since members of Congress are elected and elections are, well, political, the federal budget is a political artifact. And this is often bad news for science. It all started with William Proxmire. I still run into people now and then who extol Proxmire's virtues when it comes to making government more responsible, but they are not remembering correctly. What Proxmire did was this: His staff would comb through federally funded science project grants looking for names of projects that could be made to…

Bachmann Betrays Tea Party, Lays Out Policy of Personal Interest

If elected president, Michele Bachmann promises to take care of herself; In surprise move, Bachmann backs off tea-party stance on Obama. The Tea Party, which was essentially founded by Michele Bachmann, has a distinctly anti-Obama stance. The far right wing poorly educated and angry group of fair-weather activists is widely believed to have come into existence primarily because Obama is black, and was voted for by blacks. Even as progressive liberals have observed, head scratching, as Tea Party activists scream about Obama's (non-existent) ultra-liberal policies, the real explanation for…

The Birds of New Jersey

I've recently reviewed bird or nature books for some fairly exotic places (see this for all the reviews) including the Antarctic and the West Indies. Now, I have a book on the birds of one of the most exotic places ever: New Jersey! OK, if you are from New York like I am, you know that was a joke. In all seriousness, New Jersey is an excellent place to go to see wildlife and I'm not talking about Atlantic City. New Jersey has some of the largest swamps and marshes around, an extensive shoreline, and extensive pine barrens. Why, there are even mountains. The state, small and flattish…

"Monkeys on our backs" by Richard Tokumei will not even make good toilet paper

Richard Tokumei has written a book that is so bad he is ashamed to put his own name on it. "Richard Tokumei" is the pen name of a 'writer/editor in Southern California [with] degrees in Humanities and Phychology from the University of California Berkeley" and he has produced a book designed to anger everyone who hears of it in order to create needless sensation and thus, sell copies. Which, once people get their hands on, will make rather low quality toilet paper. Monkeys On Our Backs: Why Conservatives and Liberals Are Both Wrong About Evolution includes an inexplicable mix of "correct"…

PZ and archy just ruined my day

Thanks, archy and PZ. You just ruined my day. Really. If you thought that Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church was bad, you really ain't seen nothin' yet until you've checked out Paul Hill Days. The Phelpses may be evil in the way that they torment people in their moment of grief with their "God hates fags" hatred, but these people are violent killers in the name of God. No matter what side of the abortion debate that you happen to come down on, surely you must find this paeon to the murderer Paul Hill as vile as I do. Here's just a taste: On July 29th, 1994, Paul Hill boldly defended…

The 60th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: Reality in danger

It's that time again! Has it really been a fortnight since the last time the skeptics of the blogosphere met to apply desperately-needed critical thinking skills to the woo, credulity, and general lack of critical thinking in which the blogosphere is continually awash? I guess so. This time up, we have a rather unusual presentation of the Circle for the 60th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle over at Infophilia. This time around, the threat is real: "So, here's the situation. Woos have struck at the foundation of reality, and it's now determined by the popularity of ideas. Simply put, the…

Home again

I'm back! Well, sorta. I spent 22 hours traveling from London to Morris yesterday, and didn't get home until 1am. I got about 3 hours sleep before the circadian rhythms kicked in, and my suprachiasmatic nucleus started kicking the reticular formation into high alert, trying to convince it I was dawdling in bed far too long. I tried fighting it until 6am, when there was no more hope—the SCN was now telling my whole body it was lunch time. So I'm awake and physiologically confused, a state that will probably worsen over the day. I have noticed that while I was off frolicking in the UK, traffic…

Danielle Shoots for the Great White North; Earl Will Bring some Problems.

Earl may threaten the US Virgin Islands and Pueto Rico with hurricane force winds. These areas will be affected by tropical storm force winds. Antigua, Barbuda, Monserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla, Saint Martin and Satin Barthelemy, St. Marten, Saba and St. Eustatius are under hurricane warnings, and a hurricane watch is in effect for the British and US Virgin Islands, Peurto Rico, Culebra and Vieques. This is all going to happen right away: Today, tomorrow, the next day. Earl is only a tropical storm, Earl was upgraded to hurricane status as I was writing this post. Earl seems to…

Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Policy = Wider Rich/Poor Gap in Health

The question is being asked, Will Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Widen Health Inequalities? in a Policy Forum essay in the OpenAccess Journal PLoS Medicine. Here is the executive summary from the article: The primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is dependent on the effective reduction of the major risk factors for CVD, particularly tobacco control and a healthier diet. The high-risk approach to prevent CVD typically involves population screening. Those exceeding a risk threshold are then given lifestyle advice and/or tablets to reduce blood cholesterol and blood pressure.…

The Tea Party is a Racist Organization

It spawned the Mark Williams letter that praised slavery. Then, under pressure from the outside, expelled Williams. But that is not enough. Following is the Williams letter, in case you missed it. Dear Mr. Lincoln We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop! In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a…

Finney vs. Seivers

Raymond Finney, MD of Tennessee wants to ask a bunch of pompous questions of his state board of education ("Is the Universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator?" etc., etc., etc.). Although I'm getting my fill of arrogant doctors lately, I really don't have any problem with a stuffed shirt in the state senate asking questions, and now we learn that neither will the Tennessee courts—it's not unconstitutional. As long as there is no penalty if the education commissioner doesn't answer, or answers…

Uh-oh…this is going to backfire

One of the lesser diaries on Daily Kos is calling for a boycott of Scienceblogs and is asking readers to email the gang at Seedmedia and tell them to spank one of our colleagues here. All this because Dr Charles thinks John Edwards is a piss-poor presidential candidate. Now I happen to disagree on Edwards worth as a candidate, but I do agree with some of the criticisms: Edwards sure is awfully rich, and good lawyerly arguments are often very, very bad scientific arguments. But anyone who had actually read much of Charles' site would know that he's a liberal humanist who actually wants Barack…

It is OK to be an atheist, as long as you don't ... well, actually, it is NOT OK to be an atheist. In Illinois.

Following up on our discussion of how it is OK to be an Atheist as long as you know your place, we find a classic example of the kind of thinking that rationalist non-believers encounter all the time, even if it is not spoken out loud. This time it is spoken out loud: This is a conversation between atheist Rob Sherman, presenting testimony before the House State Government Administration Committee in Illinois, and Democratic Representative Monique Davis, last Wednesday: Davis: I don't know what you have against God, but some of us don't have much against him. We look forward to him and his…

You can learn to be nice

According to a study just out in PLoS, you can learn to be nice. This study, using functional MRI brain imaging, assessed brain activity while meditation experts produced a meditative state called a "loving-kindness-compassion state" (and here I was thinking that the "loving-kindness-compassion state" was Vermont... ). From the paper: meditators have more than 10,000 hours of practice in Buddhist meditation and are perceived in their communities as embodying qualities of compassion (see Methods). Experts were compared with age-and gender-matched "novices" who were interested in learning to…

Wild Gorillas Gone Wild

This is a photograph of wild western lowland gorillas copulating in, sort of, the missionary position. This shot was taken in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo. The female gorilla in the photograph, nicknamed "Leah" by researchers, has twice made history. In 2005 Breuer and others observed her using tools--another never-before-seen behavior for her kind in the wild. Leah tested the depth of a pool of water with a stick before wading into it in Mbeli Bai, where researchers have been monitoring the gorilla population since 1995. "Understanding the behavior of our…

Birthers on parade, revisited: Happy Birther Day, Mr. President!

Wow. After I wrote a post last week about the "birthers," cranks who believe that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii, and therefore is not a natural born U.S. citizen, and therefore is not eligible to be President of the United States. Like all good conspiracy theorist cranks, they trot out all sorts of reasons why all the evidence showing that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii 48 years ago today is invalid or how there is a huge coverup. (Isn't there always in any good conspiracy theory?) Meanwhile, they constantly demand that they be "shown the birth certificate." As if that would shut them…

Patrick co-founder of Greenpeace

About a hundred Internet years ago in 1988 I posted this comment on Usenet: Waste heat does not contribute significantly to global warming. It is all (if it's really happening - we probably won't be sure until it's too late) caused by the greenhouse effect. I agree with Brad - burning fossil fuels could well be more harmful to the environment than nuclear power. An op-ed by Patrick co-founder of Greenpeace (his middle name is "Moore") has ignited more discussion on global warming and nuclear power. Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman agree with Mr co-founder of Greenpeace, while David Roberts…

"IBC is run by amateurs"

One of the features of the generally shoddy reporting of Iraqi casualties in the media is the way that if reporters mention the Lancet study they will mention the bogus controversy about it, while the Iraq Body Count number is never given any qualifications, even though it is guaranteed to be too low. The IBC people are at least partly responsible for this presenting a maximum number for deaths, even though the actual number is certainly more than their maximum. Media Lens has more criticism, including these interesting comments: One of the world's leading professional epidemiologists, who…

Tech Central Station hits new low

Long time readers will be aware of what I think of the appalling quality of the writing about science in Tech Central Station. (Examples: Statistics, Fumento, epidemiology physics, economics, more statistics, and more epidemiology. ) Well, they've destroyed any remaining credibility they might have had with an article arguing for Intelligent Design Creationism. And it's a twofer because it was written by global warming skeptic Roy Spencer of Spencer and Christy fame. Spencer starts with Twenty years ago, as a PhD scientist, I intensely studied the evolution versus intelligent design…

David Horowitz spams me

I got some spam from David Horowitz asking for donations to fund his lifestyle or something. Brad R. at Sadly, No, got the same spam. (Except that where his had "Brad" mine had "Tim".) So who is this Horowitz fellow? Via Ralph Luker I found a discussion he had with Tim Burke. Burke began with: On DiscoverTheNetwork, some of my objections have already been ably described by my colleagues. Let me mention a few of my greatest concerns. First, I think the entire project has an almost non-existent sense of what represents a "linkage" between two separate individuals. This is the bread and…

An astroturf scientific journal

I wrote earlier about how tobacco company documents, released as apart of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement proved that Philip Morris created junkscience.com to argue that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) was harmless. Those documents also tell the story of how they set up a scientific journal controlled by tobacco-friendly editors so that research finding that ETS was harmless could be published. In 1987 Philip Morris cam up with a plan (details in this document) to: Establish a genuine scientific journal on indoor air quality. The journal could be…

The 69th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: The Skeptics' Circle Saloon

Howdy, thar, pardners! The Skeptics' Circle Saloon is open for business, and, after bein' away for more than two ears, Brent's done gone and set up a hum-dinger of a meeting: We rode up to the front of the Skeptic's Circle Saloon and dismounted. Where once there were only two hitching posts, seven stood in their place. "Old Doc Orac must be doing something right," I said with a smile. I had heard that Doc had taken over running the Saloon from St. Nate a while back. I also heard that he had moved out of his office in town and had put up his surgery right in the Saloon. I adjusted the weight…

Random observations from an American in London: Why is service in restaurants so crappy here?

Here's another random observation that hit us quite rapidly upon our arrival in London and is reinforced almost every time we decide to dine out: Why is restaurant service here so crappy? We've been to several restaurants now, and only one of them (ThaiSquare near Trafalgar Square) had reasonably good service by American standards. I have to wonder if it had something to do with the fact that we were out with a former postdoc of mine and her husband, both of whom are natives, her having moved back to London after finishing up in my lab. A second restaurant, Bertorelli on St. Martin's Lane had…

I had questions, you wanted answers...

Last week, in the commentary after taking yet another silly Internet test, one that happened to reveal that the supervillain that I'm best suited to be is Doctor Doom, there were others who also tested as Doctor Doom. In order to separate the real Doom from the Doombots, I asked a few simple questions to which Doom would know the answer: 1. Can any of these Doom impostors, without reference to the Internet or other references, tell us the name of Victor von Doom's father and what it was he did for a living? 2. Who was von Doom's faithful retainer back in the early days? 3. What is the vow…

Yawn. Yet more evidence that homeopathy is bunk

Apparently, while I've been at this meeting, Mayo Clinics Proceedings has published this systematic review of the scientific literature on the "efficacy" of homeopathy. Its conclusion: The evidence from rigorous clinical trials of any type of therapeutic or preventive intervention testing homeopathy for childhood and adolescence ailments is not convincing enough for recommendations in any condition. Actually, it would have been more accurate to say "not convincing at all." It's inevitably smaller, more poorly designed or non-randomized studies that purport to show treatment effects, which…