Search Content

Displaying results 80551 - 80600 of 87950

'Rent' at Duke

The other night I went to the opening night of RENT at Duke, the latest production of the Hoof 'n' Horn ensemble, the 'South's oldest student-run musical theater organization' (find them on Facebook and Twitter). Here's the promo video, released before the opening night: I always have difficulty judging plays by amateur ensembles - at exactly which standard should I hold them? I have seen amazing high-school plays and horrible professional ones (I mentioned both in this post), as well as, of course, amazing professional ones. The Duke group is a mix of people with some stage experience and…

Bangladesh Accord extended three years – worker protections strengthened, proponents promote an “alternative to standard CSR programs”

Two global unions, four labor rights organizations and 23 apparel brands and retailers agreed in late June to amend and extend the ground-breaking Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety that has led to safer working conditions for 4 million garment workers in the world’s #2 apparel producer.  The legally-binding agreement, initiated in 2013 following the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed 1,138 workers in Dhaka, is a success story that could improve working conditions in other countries and global supply chains. The new Accord agreement, which goes into effect in May 2018 when…

A Q&A with public health leaders on emergency preparedness: ‘It should be approached as a permanent and consistent part of what public health does, not a quick fix'

“All response is local” is a commonly heard phrase among public health practitioners who serve on the front lines of disease outbreaks, emergencies and disasters. Whether it’s a measles outbreak, a terrorist attack or a hurricane, public health agencies are at the ready to deploy an emergency response infrastructure designed for one overriding purpose: to protect their communities against preventable disease and injury. That kind of preparedness takes an enormous amount of planning, training, practice and collaboration. It also requires sustained funding support — something that’s all too…

Analysis of a recent interview with Seth Borenstein about Doubt cf Denial

There is no doubt that Associated Press’s Seth Borenstein is a top notch science reporter. However, he is a professional journalist, and for this reason I expect him to be part of, and to be guided by, the culture of journalism. The culture of journalism involves a critical feature that makes journalism work: When researching and reporting a story, seek the other perspectives, those that for one reason or another come to a different conclusion than the perspective that may have initially gotten one’s attention. The Pope speaks to the Joint Session of Congress, and the most obvious thing we…

How the IPCC becomes a climate change denial tool

About once a day, someone tells me that human caused climate change is not real because this or that thing in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contradicts something I, or some other scientists or science writer, has said. I've noticed an uptick in references to the IPCC report by those intent on denying the reality of climate change. This even happened at recent congressional hearings, where "expert witnesses" made similar claims. How can that be? How can the flagship scientific report on climate change, the objective source of information about the…

Evolution of the cichlid mandible

When we look at the face of another person, we can recognize specific features that have familial resemblances. In my family, for instance, I can recognize a "Myers nose" that my grandmother and my father and some of my siblings and kids have, and it's different than my wife's or my mother's nose. These are subtle differences in shape—a bit of a curve, a knob, a seam—and their inheritance suggests that these differences are specified somehow in the DNA. If you think about it, though…how can whether the profile of a nose is straight or curved be encoded in a linear stretch of nucleotides? The…

Minnesota Science Standards: Shifting Controversies

There are several areas of controversy emerging in the discussion of Minnesota Science standards, but almost none of this controversy has to do with Evolution and Creationism. Amanda and I attended a public meeting on the issue last night, and I felt at the end that a kind of victory had been achieved. But this is complicated. I'd like to give you an overview of what this process is about, describe what appears to be new in these standards, outline the apparent areas of controversy (very briefly) and finally make specific suggestions for changes in the standards that have to do with…

The Tuesday Birthday Problem

Writing in 1866, John Venn (of Venn diagram fame) wrote: To many persons the mention of Probability suggests little else than the notion of a set of rules, very ingenious and profound rules no doubt, with which mathematicians amuse themselves by setting and solving puzzles. A classic example is the Tuesday Birthday Problem (TBP), which a reader has asked me to comment on. Let's dive right in by stating the problem: You meet a man on the street and he says, “I have two children and one is a son born on a Tuesday.” What is the probability that the other child is also a son? Seems innocent…

Blogging Les Miserables

And now for something completely different. As a high school freshman I was assigned to read a heavily abridged version of Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables. I loved it immediately. Later I resolved to procure a copy of the full, unabridged version, complete in all of its 1200+ page glory. I finally got around to doing that in college. Despite its immense bulk, I found it almost impossible to put down. It was readable on many levels: As a ripping good yarn filled with suspense and plot twists, as a meditation on social justice, or as a study of some of the most interesting and memorable…

Tissue Organization Field Theory

It's been a while since I brought everyone up to date on the progress of my Ecological Development course, because I've been busy. So have the students. After our spring break I subjected them to the dreaded oral exam, which actually isn't so bad. I tried to engage them less in an adversarial role and more as a quiet conversation between two people on science. Some students took to it easily -- the more outgoing ones -- others were noticeably nervous, which was OK, and I hope they learned that it isn't that terrifying to have a discussion with a mentor. Then the next few weeks were a mad…

The rise & fall of the prefrontal lobotomy

LOBOTOMY (from the Greek lobos, meaning lobes of the brain, and tomos, meaning cut) is a psychosurgical procedure in which the connections the prefrontal cortex and underlying structures are severed, or the frontal cortical tissue is destroyed, the theory being that this leads to the uncoupling of the brain's emotional centres and the seat of intellect (in the subcortical structures and the frontal cortex, respectively). The lobotomy was first performed on humans in the 1890s. About half a century later, it was being touted by some as a miracle cure for mental illness, and its use became…

Angier's The Canon and New Atheism at Prosthesis

I've been out of town since Saturday, with no internet access. Thank goodness for tiny islands on the gulf coast of Florida. Unfortunately, I'm still sick, and I'm exhausted, so I'm going to have to hold off on posts that actually require work. Just to give you some previews, I'm working on some posts related to the negation stuff I talked about a while back, a post on conspiracy theories, some stuff on implicit and benevolent sexism, and, if I ever get around to actually putting the argument together, a fairly technical one in which I claim that metaphors don't exist (well, not quite, just…

Framing and ethics (part 2).

In my last post, I looked at a set of ethical principles Matt Nisbet asserts should be guiding the framing of science. In this post, I consider the examples Matt provides as the "DO" and "DON'T" pictures for the application of these guiding ethical principles. First, Matt examines an example of framing done well: In January 2008, the National Academies issued a revised edition of Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a report intentionally framed in a manner that would more effectively engage audiences who remain uncertain about evolution and its place in the public school curriculum. To…

The complexity of cancer, part II: Enter the quacks

A couple of days ago, I couldn't resist discussing a recent article in the New York Times about recent discoveries in cancer research. I considered the article to be a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. While the article did a pretty good job of describing recent discoveries about how noncoding RNA, the tumor microenvironment, and even microbes are involved in the pathogenesis of cancer, it had an annoying spin that portrayed some of these discoveries as being much shinier and newer than they actually are. At the time, I noted that quacks would certainly use this article as a jumping-off…

The ultimate in "integrative medicine," updated

Orac note: This is an updated post that appeared a few months ago. Events occurred that led me to think it would be a good idea simply to expand and update it. It's been a recurring theme on this blog to discuss and dissect the infiltration of quackademic medicine into our medical schools. Whether it be called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" (IM), its infiltration into various academic medical centers has been one of the more alarming developments I've noted over the last several years. The reason is that "integrative" medicine is all too often in…

Prayer, surgery, and separating doctoring from dogma

Over the years, I've learned that a lot of surgeons are very religious. Actually, a lot of doctors are quite religious. Indeed, long ago in the history of this blog, back when I used to write about evolution a lot more than I do these days, I've pointed out that at least as many physicians as the general public accept "intelligent design" creationism as a valid description of the origin of life. Indeed, 15% of physicians believe that states should be required to teach ID and 50% believe that states should be permitted to teach it. In other words, approximately 65% of physicians are in favor…

What do Mike Adams, Todd Starnes, and William Proxmire have in common?

Readers of this blog of a certain age and above are likely to remember a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin named William Proxmire. Sen. Proxmire made a name for himself in the late 1970s and throughout much of the 1980s by issuing what he dubbed "The Golden Fleece Award," which was meant to "honor" public officials who, in Proxmire's view, egregiously wasted taxpayer money. It was a popular and often headline-grabbing device to highlight wasteful spending. There was one big problem with the award, though, that I increasingly appreciated as time went on, to the point where I've referred to the…

A homeopathic "debate" in BMJ?

Homeopathy is quackery. There, I've said it for the hundredth or even thousandth time, but I don't care if it's repetitive because it can't be emphasized enough times that homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All, with the possible exception of reiki and other "energy therapies." I also find it useful to make it clear right where I'm coming from right off the bat. If you're a homeopath and are offended, quite frankly, I don't care. Any "medicine" whose very precepts break multiple laws of physics and chemistry, laws that wouuld have to be proven not just wrong but spectacularly wrong…

Andrew Wakefield: The Galileo Gambit writ large in The Observer

I just don't understand it. I just don't understand how anyone can take discredited antivaccination loon Andrew Wakefield seriously anymore. In particular, I don't understand how any reputable newspaper can actually take him seriously anymore, given how thoroughly he and his "work" have been discredited. First came the news in late December that at the time he did his "research" that purported to show a link between the MMR triple vaccination and autism and bowel problems, Dr. Wakefield was in the pay of lawyers looking to sue for "vaccination injury" and failed to disclose his clear conflict…

I am Bonnie Offit!

I hadn't planned on beating on that wretched hive of anti-vaccine scum and quackery, Age of Autism, again today so soon after having done so not just once but twice yesterday. I really hadn't. After all, AoA is the crank gift that keeps on giving (and has kept on giving for three years now), and there is such a thing as going to the well too many times; i.e., too much of a "good" thing. I say this even though I had been planning on posting a blog post "rerun" today because last night I went out to dinner with a job candidate for our institution and didn't get back until late. By the time I…

On the magical prevention of pancreatic cancer

I don't know how I missed this article. I really don't. It's over a week old, and it's exactly the sort of irritating cancer quackery that normally draws me irresistibly to it to slather it in a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence. After all, being a cancer surgeon and all, I really, really hate cancer quackery, even more so than I detest other forms of quackery. I hate it even more when it comes from Mike Adams, creator of NaturalNews.com, that one-stop shop for all things quackery, anti-vaccine, and conspiracy. Basically, it's an example of Mike Adams discovering something about…

Religion and end-of-life care

Given that I'm the proverbial lapsed Catholic cum agnostic, religion just doesn't play that large a role in my life and hasn't since around six years ago. I don't know if I'll ever discuss or explain on this blog what the last straw resulting in that transformation was (it's too personal), but a couple of years ago I did go through a period where I became hostile to religion, perhaps spurred on by PZ and the whole anti-religion gestalt of the ScienceBlogs Collective here. That lasted maybe a year or two, during which time I did what every new disillusioned ex-religious person seems to do (…

Regarding Dr. Mehmet Oz: Whoops. Maybe I spoke too soon about vaccines

Yesterday, I expressed dismay at how Dr. Mehmet Oz, the protege of Oprah Winfrey who now has his own popular syndicated daily show, recently named the quackery known as reiki as number one in his list of "Dr. Oz's ulimate alternatie medicine secrets," leading me to characterize him as having "gone completely over to the Dark Side." You, my readers, kindly provided me with a YouTube video of actual segments from the show in which Dr. Oz has a reiki master demonstrate reiki on an audience member: Ugh. Get aload of this introduction: Now you're about to see things that are going to challenge…

One last update (for now) on the youth who "cured himself" of melanoma, Chad Jessop

I hadn't intended to write about this again, at least not for a while, but curiosity got the better of me. About a month and a half ago, I discussed a highly dubious story that was going around by e-mail about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whose mother supposedly "cured" him with "natural" treatments. As you might imagine, the story was riddled with incorrect-sounding medical information and inconsistencies. Earlier this week, through a highly credulous blogger going by the 'nym the Angry Scientist, I became aware of an update to the story, in which the names of the mother and child (Laurie…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: In which I am given a woo-ducation in neuroscience

As I usually do on Thursday nights, I was perusing my legendary Folder of Woo looking for just the thing to be interesting and entertaining to both me as the blogger and you as the reader. As happens occasionally, nothing was really doing it for me. Nothing was getting me fired up to launch into yet another installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo. I thought about going back to the well of Life Technology (believe it or not, there is still some woo there to which I have not yet applied my special brand of Respectful Insolenceâ¢), but somehow I just wasn't in the mood. Let's face it, after…

What is science's rightful place?

If you've browsed the redesigned front page of ScienceBlogs, you'll see that our benevolent ScienceBlogs Overlords at Seed Magazine have started a project that they have so humbly termed The Rightful Place Project: Reviving Science in America, which is described thusly: In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of "a world connected by our own science and imagination." He recently stated, "promoting science isn't just about providing Resources--it's about protecting free and open inquiry... It's about listening to what our scientists have…

Pathways to sex

I was talking about sex and nothing but sex all last week in genetics, which is far less titillating than it sounds. My focus was entirely on operational genetics, that is, how autosomal inheritance vs inheritance of factors on sex chromosomes differ, and I only hinted at how sex is not inherited as a simple mendelian trait, as we're always tempted to assume, but is actually the product of a whole elaborate chain of epistatic interactions. I'm always tempted in this class to go full-blown rabid developmental geneticist on them and do nothing but talk about interactions between genes, but I…

"Integrative medicine": The lure of the shaman healer

Quite to my surprise, apparently I've become fairly well known as a critic of so-called "integrative medicine," that which used to be called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) but whose name was changed because its practitioners didn't want to be "complementary" to anything. Rather they wanted their woo to be co-equal with science-based medicine (SBM). Before that, what is now "integrative medicine" after having been CAM was known as "alternative medicine." (The wag in me can't resist further pointing out that before that it was mostly known as quackery.) As I like to say, the…

The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 13: Nobody wants to admit to being "antivaccine"

Sometimes, in order to understand advocates of pseudoscience, such as antivaccinationists, it's a useful exercise to look at their most extreme elements. Admittedly, in focusing on such loons, one does take the risk of generalizing the nuts to everyone a bit much, but on the other hand I've often found that the extremists are basically like the less loony versions on steroids. The advantage, to me, is that they are unconcerned (for the most part) with hiding the craziness at the root of their beliefs. While, for instance, SafeMinds of the merry band of antivaccinationists at Age of Autism (…

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer: Who's to blame?

I figured that yesterday’s post about the First Nations girl in Ontario with lymphoblastic leukemia whose parents stopped her chemotherapy in favor of “traditional” medicine would stir up a bit of controversy, and so it did, albeit much more at my not-so-super-secret other blog, which featured an expanded version of this post. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything. It was expanded in order to have a more in-depth discussion of the quack in Florida who’s treating this girl, something I’ve already discussed here and could just link to. Efficiency! Before I launch into this, let me make one…

When false hope leads well-meaning people astray

One of the frequent topics on this blog is, unsurprisingly, cancer quackery. Be it the Gerson therapy and its propensity for encouraging patients to take hundreds of supplements and to shoot copious amounts of coffee where it really doesn't belong (where the sun don't shine), the Gonzalez protocol, homeopathy, naturopathy, or various other nonsensical and dangerous cancer therapies with no scientific basis, I take them on because, as a cancer surgeon, I can't stand seeing cancer patients abused this way. If they're curable, I hate seeing them seduced into throwing away their chance for cure,…

Deepak Chopra woo-fully whines about those nasty skeptics on Wikipedia

It occurs to me that things have been perhaps overly serious here at the ol' blog for the last couple of weeks. Don't get me wrong. I think I done good lately, if I do say so myself. However, the constant drumbeat of quackery and depressing stories takes its toll after a while. I need a break. And our old buddy, Deepak Chopra, was kind enough to give it to me. So what is it this time? Chopra's been a frequent topic of this blog for a long time, albeit nos so much lately. Indeed, longtime readers know that I was the one who coined a term—Choprawoo—for the pseudoprofound metaphysical mystical…

"Believe in facts"? You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A little more than a week ago, I took note of Dr. Paul Offit's new book, Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine and a story in which he was featured in USA Today about the nonsense that is alternative medicine. The news story coincided with the release of Paul Offit's book, which of course led me to express my admiration for not only Offit's ability to write good books about topics that interest me but to garner the publicity of a major story in a national newspaper published the same day his book was released. No wonder he drives the antivaccine lunatic…

The quack view of preventing breast cancer versus reality and Angelina Jolie

I should have known it. I should have known that the reaction wouldn't take very long. I should have known it based on prior history. The news story to which I am referring is, of course, the revelation yesterday in the New York Times editorial page by Angelina Jolie that she had decided to undergo prophylactic bilateral mastectomies (removal of both breasts) because she had learned that she was a BRCA gene mutation carrier, and the particular mutation that she apparently carried portended an 85% lifetime risk of breast cancer. The reaction to which I am referring is, of course, the same sort…

Dr. Burzynski and the cult of personality of the "brave maverick cancer doctor"

I thought I'd be leaving the topic of Dr. Stanislaw Burzysnki and his combination of Personalized Cancer Therapy for Dummies-level "personalized, gene-targeted cancer therapy" coupled with his "cancer-curing" antineoplastons, which have morphed into an orphan HDAC inhibitor used off-label as part of his pricey everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" combination of targeted therapies and old-fashioned chemotherapy. After all I figured that there would probably be nothing new to say before sometime in January, when he is schedule to appear before the Texas Medical Board to answer for his dubious…

Quackademic medicine now reigns supreme at UC-Irvine

It's not infrequently that, whenever I complain about the increasing infiltration of quackery and pseudoscience into medicine, I sometimes lament that skeptics and supporters of science-based medicine are massively outgunned, because we are. Thus, we have the continued growth of what I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," the infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia in the form of whole divisions, departments, and institutes dedicated to studying fairy dust like acupuncture, naturopathy, and other "unconventional" treatments that are then "integrated" into medicine. It's not…

Applying systems biology to validate prescientific quackery is tooth fairy science

Although I did not coin it, I frequently use the term “quackademic medicine” because, unfortunately, there’s a lot of quackademic medicine around. Although regular readers know what the term means, i always feel obligated to briefly explain what quackademic medicine is, for the benefit of any newbie who might happen upon this blog. Basically, it is a term used to describe an increasingly common and alarming phenomenon, the infiltration of rank quackery and pseudoscience into medical academia. You might think it impossible or unbelievable, but it’s anything but. Beginning around a quarter of a…

What's in a word? "Integrative" versus "alternative" medicine, again

I’ve written a lot about the language issue with respect to alternative medicine. As I like to put it (at least in shortened form), first there was quackery. Quacks did not like that name at all, and thus was born alternative medicine. And the quacks did think it good—for a while. There was a problem, however. “Alternative” medicine implied (correctly, of course) that what was being discussed was not real medicine, and the quacks could not abide that. Thus was born “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM). And the quacks thought this very good indeed. Unfortunately, it was not long…

Conservatives against tradition

Martin Cothran â proponent of patriarchy, hyper of the heteronormative, crusader for creationists, water-carrier for women-haters, doyen of defenders of Holocaust deniers, troubadour of traitors â thinks I should insult him more classily. If he's serious about that, he needs to do different sorts of offensive things. How many ways are there to call him out for defending â at length! â Pat Buchanan's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial? How many ways are there to say that he's a doctrinaire conservative who (therefore) wants to drag Kentucky back to the 18th century, where men were men,…

A "scientific worldview" and the definition of "science"

John Pieret â who is to blame for the recent kerfuffles here â surveys the trouble he started: As usual, there is much talking past each other. I think Russell Blackford has, perhaps unintentionally, hit on the problem that we "accommodationists" see with the "incompatibleists." In defending Coyne, Russell says: the "anti-accommodationist camp ... see a genuine and serious difficulty in reconciling a worldview based on science and reason with worldviews based on religion." I agree! But the question really is whether "a worldview based on science and reason" is the same thing as "science." I…

"Patient-centered care" vs. CAM in the New England Journal of Medicine

"Patient-centered care." It's the new buzzword in patient care. Personally, I find the term mor ethan a little Orwellian in that it can mean so many things. Basically, it's a lot like Humpty Dumpty when he says to Alice, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." So it is with "patient-centered care." It's such a wonderfully--shall we say?--flexible term. That's why I took more than a little interest a week and a half ago when I picked up the New England Journal of Medicine and saw in the Perspective section three articles about "patient-centered"…

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory blogging, chapter 8

Chapters read:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. It's been a while since I blogged Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I haven't forgotten it, but once I finished the historical preamble, nearly 600 pages, I was in the mood for a breather. My hunch was that despite Gould's emphasis on contingency in his theory in terms of his narrative there would be only a broad contextual relationship between Part I and Part II, the intellectual history of evolution by Stephen Jay Gould, and the scientific theory of evolution by Stephen Jay Gould. I've finished the 8th chapter, which is…

Beauty

On a warm and lazy holiday afternoon, determined to avoid any exertion and relax in my easy chair, I was contemplating something easy on the brain: beauty. I have no idea what makes something beautiful, but I could at least approach the subject empirically and catalog those things and experiences the I have found beautiful…so I put together a list. It's nothing definitive, it's merely personal, a set of memories of moments where I have been awestruck with beauty. The zebrafish embryo. These tiny little embryos encapsulate everything that's lovely about development and biology. They are…

UV, You See? Black Light Reveals Secrets in Fossils

tags: evolution, evolutionary biology, UV light, flight, dinosaur, dromaeosaur, theropods, Microraptor gui, paleontology, fossils, birds, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper, journal club Figure 1. The holotype of Microraptor gui, IVPP V 13352 under normal light. This shows the preserved feathers (white arrow) and the 'halo' around the specimen where they appear to be absent (black arrows). Scale bar at 5 cm. [larger view] DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009223 It has long been known that when exposed to ultraviolent light, fossilized bones and shells -- and even…

Influenza virus, science background, II

[This is the second installment from the archives of a series of posts giving some scientific background on the influenza virus, in this case the terminology basics on viral receptors. Technical but not beyond the range of most well educated readers. Links to all four posts: part I, part II, part III, part IV] In the last post we discussed the dense canopy of sugars linked to cell surface proteins that covers most cells. This outer fur-like sugar surface is called the glycocalyx and plays an important biological role, including cell-cell recognition and communication, interacting with and…

A Year of Books: 2010

I've been doing this for a few years now, last year, 2008 and 2007 and it seems like an interesting and maybe even useful thing to continue this year. I really enjoy seeing other people's reading lists (like here, here and here) and enjoy adding my own to the mix. So, below you'll find a list of all the books I started in 2010. In other words, it'll include a few books I'm still reading as well as a few that I've abandoned. I've been recording every book I've read since 1983 and on my other (mostly lapsed) blog I've been occasionally transcribing the list on a year by year basis. I've…

How the flu pandemic looks to us at this point

It's not Labor Day yet, but I guess the Reveres have to consider their vacation over. We're all back at our respective home stations. We admit that not watching flu evolve daily was a relief, although we did sneak peeks when we weren't supposed to. But it also proved to be like the stock market. The daily ups and downs sometimes obscure the bigger picture. So what does it look like now? We have two contradictory impressions. One is that the pandemic has continued to develop in a very robust fashion. So it's a dynamic picture of change. The second is that it looks like a normal pandemic, just…

50 Years After Silent Spring

It is the nature of popular books to inspire people to wildly overstate their importance.  The most stunning example is Abraham Lincoln's statement upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 “So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war.”   While _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was an incredibly important book, one that moved many people to shift their sympathies on the subject of slavery, this was, of course, the wildest hyperbole.  So too are claims that _Diet For a Small Planet_ invented modern vegetarianism, that _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ started the local foods movement.  …

Is Your Love Enough? Loving Your Neighbors and Working With Them Whether You Like Them Or Not

Variations on the obligation to love one's neighbor show up across both the religious and secular spectrum. They tend to provoke a range of responses - from those who attempt to sort out what loving people who are not part of your immediate tribe would mean, to those who reject the necessity. This is not an easy idea - and even if you can sort out what it means to love people who you may not know well, or like much, or even trust, or know how to get to knowing, liking and trusting - it is a damned hard thing to put into practice. I want to talk a bit more about why even use the word love,…

Process and Content Concerns in BPA Review

By Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen As described in earlier posts (here and here), the NIHâs National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has contracted the work of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) out to the consulting company Sciences International. This issue received public attention just as CERHRâs scheduled review of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) was taking place. We submitted comments to CERHR detailing concerns about the content and the process of the BPA review. Our concerns include: The NIEHS NTP Center for the Evaluation of Risks…