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HIV Organ Policy Equity Act

When someone is dying, you treat what is killing them first. This might seem obvious, but its not-- People wondered 'If we can cure people of HIV with bone marrow transplants, then why dont we give everyone bone marrow transplants??' We can only give HIV+ people with blood cancers that are killing them bone marrow transplants, because of the risks involved in the procedure. Bone marrow transplants are non-trivial. They can kill someone. So unless a cancer is killing an HIV+ person, it isnt worth the risk. Furthermore, when someone got a bone marrow transplant, traditionally, they were taken…

GMO viruses vs Pancreatic Cancer: RELEASE THE PUMAS!

NICE! Gene therapy of pancreatic cancer targeting the K-Ras oncogene Cancer sucks, but some kinds of cancers suck worse than others.  One that really sucks is pancreatic cancer.  From the intro of this paper: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer death among men and women, comprising 6% of all cancer-related death. The disease is usually diagnosed at advanced stage as it causes no specific symptoms in the early stages. Thus, the prognosis is very poor and the overall 5-year survival rate is <5%. And then there is this: There are several standard approaches to treat…

HIV-cure-woo alive and well in Africa

There are some HIV-woo ideas that I cannot believe we are still dealing with in 2012. 1. 'Condoms dont stop HIV' - Actually, they do.  Really, really well.  Better than any 'prophylactic antiretroviral' (with no side-effects).  Virus cant evolve resistance to condoms.  Virus cant swim through the tiny holes in the structure of latex.  Condoms work, whether the Pope or abstinence-only educators or that guy who REALLY wants to bare-back-it wants to believe it or not. 2. 'Magic potions cure HIV!' - Really?  Literally the best minds of three decades worth of scientists have been actively working…

GMO plants and plant viruses vs people diseases

I mentioned this in my interview with Karl, and its a topic Im going to be speaking about at FreeOK2 this year-- hell, its something Ive mentioned over and over and over and over on this blog: We arent Cave Men dancing around a fire chanting 'OOGA BOOGA VIRUS BAD!' We are modern humans who can bend viruses to do our bidding, to *save* our lives. Viruses (and bacteria) are not something to be universally 'feared' anymore. We can domesticate and reprogram viruses to whatever we need them to do-- they are *tools*. This isnt maybe-one-day science, we are actually doing this in the lab and in…

The Pill for HIV: A bad idea, actually

Conceptually, having something like The Pill anyone could take every day to prevent HIV-1 infections would be a good idea. Take some kind of preventative antretrovirals when you are sexually active and feel you are 'at risk', maybe prevent some new HIV-1 infections. We had hopes that an antiretroviral drug Tenofovir would work in precisely that manner. It kinda worked as a microbicide for women. And then it kinda worked as a pill in homosexual men. And then it turned out that in other larger clinical trials, Tenofovir didnt work well at all, in pill or microbicide form. Tenofovirs failures…

Links for 2011-12-03

AMNH | Master of Arts in Teaching Program Learn to teach Earth and Space science in New York City through the Master of Arts in Teaching Urban Residency Program at the American Museum of Natural History; the first urban teacher residency program offered by a museum. *Full-time 15 month program with benefits and stipend *Small class sizes and one-on-one mentoring *Science coursework at a world-class museum *Learn to teach in a supportive nurturing environment *Work alongside scientists and urban teachers *Graduate with real-world teaching experience *Ongoing professional support following…

Frickin' Lasers: "Laser Advances in Nuclear Fuel Stir Terror Fear"

A physics story makes the front page of the New York Times today. Sadly, it's with the headline Laser Advances in Nuclear Fuel Stir Terror Fear. Sigh. The key technological development, here, is that General Electric has been playing around with a laser-based isotope separation technique. This is an idea that's been around for a long time, with lots of different people working on it. GE's technology is based on an idea from some Australians back in the 1990's, and they appear to think they can scale it up to industrial scale. Predictably enough, there's a stark difference of opinion about the…

Alternatives to Lab Reports?

An academic email list that I'm on has started a discussion of lab writing, pointing out that students in some lab classes spend more time on writing lab reports in a quasi-journal-article format format than they do taking and analyzing data. This "feels " wrong in many ways, and the person who kicked off the discussion did so by asking for alternatives to the journal-article style lab report. This is a recurring discussion in physics education, because everybody who teaches lab courses struggles with this issue (guess what I'm procrastinating from grading right now...). It's made much worse…

Ask the Internet: DSL Service Question

Our home Internet has been out since Friday, which is, as you might imagine, somewhat vexing. The most likely cause is that our DSL modem is dying (it's nine years old), which raises a technical problem. A few years ago, when we last had a problem requiring a service call, the tech who came out told us that the only reason our service has worked as well as it has is that we had an older modem. The nominal speed for the service is 1.5 Mbps (I believe), and we're actually getting something like 1.1 Mbps. This was attributed to our distance from the central office. He said that the older modem…

What to Tell Your Dog About Einstein

Regular blogging has been interrupted this week not only because I jetted off to southern MD but because this week was the due date for the manuscript of the book-in-progress. It's now been sent off to my editor, and thus begins my favorite part of the process, the waiting-to-see-what-other-people-think part. I'm pretty happy with it, though it's a bit longer than it was originally supposed to be. This is no doubt partly due to the fact that I'm too close to the thing at the moment, and can't see the obvious places where I could cut material, but that's why professional editors get the big…

Tech Note: Ubuntu Linux 8.04 Hardy Heron Running Fine

I just installed Hardy, the brand new version of Ubuntu Linux, on the household's two Dell PCs. They're a Dimension 4550 mini-tower and an Inspiron 6000 laptop, and I'm happy to say that everything's running fine so far. (Almost.) The release is so new that Google hasn't even had time to update their toolbar for the new version of Firefox. The irritating wake-up bug in Gutsy has been taken care of. Used to be, every time my laptop went into suspension or hibernation mode, it would have to wake up, immediately and spontaneously go back to sleep and wake up a second time before I could resume…

Tap Water is Not a Naturally Occurring Substance

A couple of recent Skepticality interviews (with environmental engineer Kelly Comstock and environmental toxicologist Shane Snyder) taught me something that may seem obvious, but which was radical news to me. Tap water is an industrial product. It occurs nowhere in nature. Water suppliers use natural water to make tap water according to current scientific understanding of what's healthy for humans to drink. To make tap water, you need to remove a lot of stuff, such as micro-organisms, industrial pollutants, organic residues and mineral particles, perhaps also salt and lime. Then you need to…

Book review: Prothero, Evolution

I read Donald Prothero's Evolution for the palaeontology and general evolutionary zoology, and I was not disappointed. The book is up-to-date, well-argued, well-illustrated and aimed at the educated lay reader. Stylistically, it's not bad, though poorly copy-edited, and I did find the author's use of exclamation marks and italics a little overdone. Nevertheless: this is good solid pop-sci, very enjoyable. But it's not just a book about evolutionary zoology. It's also a salvo in a war that's being fought on that far-off continent, Northern America. In this respect it reminded me of another…

La Vice Anglais

When I was twelve I bought my first LP, a synth-pop creation by a British band popular with middle-class teens at the time. Here are snippets of Martin Gore's lyrics to two of the songs. You're feeling the boredom too I'd gladly go with you I'd put your leather boots on I'd put your pretty dress on ... You treat me like a dog Get me down on my knees We call it master and servant I'm not sure at what age I became aware of kinky sex, but I think at the time I didn't quite understand what "playing Master and Servant" really meant. Other themes on Depeche Mode's 1984 album Some Great Reward are…

Sea ice: wossup?

Sea ice, having been rather dull this summer - though it was also briefly interesting in April / May - has suddenly become really quite interesting. Which is odd; the minimum is usually the only time anyone pays attention. Tamino has a nice post as does Mark Brandon and so does every man and his rabbit. What does that leave me to say? I have to fill in quite a few lines before I get to the bottom of my inset image, after all. While NH ice is clearly low - indeed, a record for the time of year - it will look much less exciting if it recovers (duh!); just as in summer the April / May excursion…

She Said Songs

In which I list some pop song lyrics for you to guess, because it's Friday and I'm tired. ------------ The other night, on Twitter, Patrick Nielsen Hayden posted a snippet of song lyrics with the hashtag "#greatestalbumsofalltime." I was bored and looking to kill time, so I followed up with a couple of my own, both of which happened to start with "She said..." And I said to myself, "Ooh! There's an idea for a themed guess-the-lyrics blog post." Thus, this. The following list is a set of phrases that immediately follow "She said..." (or "she says") in a pop song (or, in two cases, have "she…

European Science Foundation Grades Journals

The European Science Foundation has a project called the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH). ... there are specifities [!] of Humanities research, that can make it difficult to assess and compare with other sciences. Also, it is not possible to accurately apply to the Humanities assessment tools used to evaluate other types of research. As the transnational mobility of researchers continues to increase, so too does the transdisciplinarity of contemporary science. Humanities researchers must position themselves in changing international contexts and need a tool that offers…

Another Career Whine

Here's another whine about academic employment in Scandy archaeology. Yesterday my PhD diploma turned five years old. This means that I have now, at age 36, ascended to heights where I am automatically considered over-qualified (or simply failed) for a forskarassistent entry-level assistant professor's position at Swedish universities. Having done research full-time for the past 14 years and published about 120 pieces of archaeological work, I allow myself to believe that I am not an entirely failed scholar. It's an over-populated labour market. In the past five years I have applied for…

The Iraqi government really is rubbish, isn't it?

As recent events demonstrate all too clearly, the Iraqi government is rubbish. Though from what I read The West had a heavy hand in installing Nouri al-Maliki so I'm by no means complaining that their troubles are all home-grown; more despairing at our ability to prop up corrupt incompetents who don't like us (vide Afghanistan). I found this in the National Post: In a reflection of the bitter divide, thousands of heavily armed Shiite militiamen – eager to take on the Sunni insurgents – march through Iraqi cities in military-style parades on streets where many of them battled U.S. forces a…

Their own private reality

Over at Scottish"Sceptic" there's an attempt at a report of what not-Prof Salby said at a lecture recently. The talk sounds to have been not too dissimilar to the Hamburg one I commented on and if you read the comments a variety of people make a variety of the obvious points as to why its all a pile of dingoes kidneys. Not terribly surprisingly it all bounces off, because if SS were the kind of person to listen to reason, he wouldn't have written the post in the first place. And really, although you can play around with fancy ideas, if you can't answer "so where did all the human-emitted CO2…

Where West Nile Meets Influenza!

Last Saturday evening I went to a friends house to let Arnie play in their backyard, and today Im scratching a dozen mosquito bites. Arg. But what does a virologist think when they get mosquito bites? West Nile! WHOOOO!!! And what does a girl who studies HIV-1 env think of when she thinks of West Nile? Convergent evolution! WHOOOWHOOO!!! WN was all over the news a few years ago because it can kill people. But there is no reason to be a spaz about it. Im under the impression that lots of us have been infected with WN, got a minor fever, and recovered without even noticing anything was…

DENIER FIGHT!!!!

OMG YOU GUYS. OMG. IM SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS! Sometime, tomorrow, they say at '11' in the morning (Central Time? Mountain Time? Moon Man Time?), there is going to be a Denier fight between my HIV boyfriend Lenny Horowitz, and creepy Uncle Duesburg. O.M.G. Im still unclear about all the details that lead up to this epic battle, but heres the deal-- Peter Barry Chowka, investigatory journalist, aka HIV Denier, was all excited over the Rev Wright-Horowitz thing giving HIV Deniers free PR again. ... But he was only half excited. You see, there has always been a schism within the Denier community:…

Yes, it was a remarkable cold snap, but in what way?

[Update: it seems clear that records were broken after all as has been pointed out in the comments. So we are only left with Fox's reaction and youtube fog-pee videos. And let's face it, Fox's reaction was pretty predictable...] The recent cold snap was indeed remarkable and the media was buzzing about it for days.  But it was not remarkable for the extreme cold, which in fact set no records, it was remarkable because it has become so unusual. Unlike the recent heat waves in the US, Australia, Russia and Europe, this cold snap did not, repeat did not set any all time monthly or daily minimum…

Another Schiavo Case?

The right wing media has been awash in the story of Mae Magouirk, an 81 year old woman who was checked into a hospice by her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, who claimed she had power of attorney and requested for her not to receive any nourishment or treatment. This followed a recent heart problem which had Magouirk in intensive care. Other family members intervened and went to court to insure that the woman would receive nourishment and treatment, arguing that she was not terminally ill, not in a coma, and that her own living will specified that nourishment was only to be withheld if she was…

I'm feeling left out

The New York Times is reporting that Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya, the Turkish creationist, has sent a mass mailing of his fancy, glossy, Atlas of Creation to scientists all over the country. It's an 800-page, professional piece of work, even if the contents are garbage. These Islamic creationists must have access to bucketloads of money. While they said they were unimpressed with the book's content, recipients marveled at its apparent cost. "If you went into a bookstore and saw a book like this, it would be at least $100," said Dr. Miller, an author of conventional biology texts. "The…

Liars for Jesus

Here's an interesting aspect of the Dover, PA intelligent design lawsuit. In sworn depositions, three school board members and the school superintendant have either denied or said they don't recall any discussion of creationism or Christianity during the school board meetings at which the ID policy was debated. But those comments were reported by two different newspapers, and one of the school board members repeated those sentiments in a television interview after one of those school board meetings. At issue is whether the board was motivated by a desire to get creationism or Christianity…

Anti-Evolution Activity in Michigan

As the NCSE reports, we have a new battle that has just begun over evolution here in Michigan. House Bill 5251 has just been introduced. It would revise the current scence standards to ensure that students will be able to: "(a) use the scientific method to critically evaluate scientific theories including, but not limited to, the theories of global warming and evolution [and] (b) Use relevant scientific data to assess the validity of those theories and to formulate arguments for or against those theories." Sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn't it? Who could be against critical thinking and…

More DI Lies about "Free Speech"

The Discovery Institute clearly recognizes that its purpose is not science but public relations. It is incredibly obvious that their strategy at the moment is to sell the ridiculous spin that the Dover lawsuit will oppress scientists and forbid them from discussing or researching ID. Here's the latest example: The ACLU is also trying to get the federal judge to decide by court order the very nature of science, essentially telling scientists what ideas they may or may not research and discuss as a part of legitimate scientific inquiry. Efforts to get the government to shut down free inquiry…

Picketers Protest Higher Wage Workers at Walmart

If you ever need a good working definition of irony, look no further. This one almost reads like a parody from The Onion. The Las Vegas Weekly, by way of Walter Olson, by way of Josh Claybourn, reports that the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has hired part time temp workers making $6 an hour with no benefits to picket outside a Walmart store to protest low wages and poor working conditions. Meanwhile, the Walmart store starts employees at $6.75 an hour and doesn't make them stand for hours at a time in the sun in 104 degree weather. And of course, irony sharpens irony: But standing…

The Absurdity of "Judicial Activism"

Jim Anderson has a textbook example of why the phrase "judicial activism" should be forever struck from all political discourse. It is a meaningless phrase that, despite the pretensions of those who use it 27 times per paragraph, really just means "a judge did something I don't like." Alberto Gonzales is Bush's new nominee for Attorney General. He's strongly, almost maniacally, pro-death penalty (to the point where they almost needed to put a drive-thru into the Texas prison system to accomodate all the executions); he thinks torturing prisoners is okay; but once, when he was on the Texas…

Sandefur Catches Me Oversimplifying

Timothy Sandefur links to a rebuttal of the "fuck the south" rant that I linked to. He is of course correct that many of the founding fathers were from the south, including some of my favorites and his. And it is true that much of that rant was entirely filled with non sequiturs and ad hominems, as I noted when I linked to it. But it still cracked me up. And I was actually hoping that the Neal Pollack response that he linked to would be just as funny in hammering the other side. Alas, it's more of a sober minded critique of the sillier arguments made in the rant. Still, worth reading of…

Scolded for Poker Tournament Spoilers

Rick Dakan, while praising my blog in general, takes me to task here and here for occasionally revealing the winners of a poker tournament before they've aired on TV. I do apologize for diminishing his ability to enjoy the suspense of those tournaments on television, but I should also say that I'm not likely to stop doing that, and perhaps I should explain why. It never even occurs to me that it's a spoiler, primarily because I have never watched a poker tournament on TV without knowing in advance who won the tournament. That's because I read the poker newsgroup, which has constant updates on…

New Catchphrase: Neo-Paganism

In the 80s, the standard name for the enemies of the religious right was "secular humanist." The secular humanists were on the march everywhere. Roving gangs of literature professors and philosophers were alleged to be at the very gate of civilization and, like the Jews previously, they were said to be in control of virtually every institution. Somewhere along the line, the preferred term changed from "secular humanist" to "pagan". Now, the dictionary definition of pagan is simply anyone not a Christian, Jew or Muslim. But they like to use it to mean "non-religious" as well. I've noticed that…

Evolution and Human Nature

Came across this on Will Wilkinson's blog (another blog you really should be reading regularly; Will is a top notch thinker) and it gave me one of those wonderful moments that only those who love ideas can relate to. The greatest joy for an intellectual is that moment when you come across an idea that hadn't occured to you before and you had never encountered in someone else's writings either, especially when that idea involves something you have given a lot of thought to. This is a perfect example of such a moment. I've thought and read about evolution a lot, obviously. I've also thought and…

Poor Neal

Neal gets no respect. He's been trying and trying to comment over at the Panda's Thumb, and his rants keep getting shut down. Well, I'm going to let one of his comments through right here — as far as I'm concerned, they're a kind of twisted, insane poetry. You can almost picture his brain arcing and shorting and fizzing away, and you can virtually see the instant the circuit breaker blows. It is just very difficult for me to follow the socially "hotpoint" controversies that tend to "crop up" in this forum in a genuine discussion of life system "origins" and what some might refer to as "…

God on trial

First it was me, now it's God. God is being sued by State Senator Ernie Chambers of Nebraska. Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats. The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is "Omnipresent". In the lawsuit Chambers says he's tried to contact God numerous times, "Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant ("Come out,…

Impossible Guess-the-Lyrics Game

Until I get around to making an iTunes run, I'm listening to the four-and-five-star playlist, which is much better fodder for the "Random Ten" thing than a bunch of filler tracks off really recent albums. We'll do this in guess-the-lyrics fashion because, well, because I can. Despite the title, there are some absolute meatball songs on this list, that ought to be pretty easy to guess (1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 19, 20). There are also some things that are really damn near impossible-- I'll be absolutely stunned if anybody recognizes #16, and Google didn't turn up lyrics for #3 or #6.. Here's the list…

The Final Word on Framing

Orac is struggling to understand the problem with "framing," and thinks he has the answer: I've concluded that a lot of issues underlying this kerfuffle may be the difference between the "pure" scientists and science teachers (like PZ and Larry Moran, for example), who are not dependent upon selling their science for the continued livelihood of their careers, and scientists like me, who are, not to mention nonscientist journalists and communications faculty (like Mooney and Nisbet), for whom communication is their career. That's a thought, but I think the answer is much simpler: PZ and Larry…

That's easy to say in San Francisco

Mark Morford has an exceptionally optimistic — dare I say, "triumphal" — article on the collapse of the religious right today. People are reacting (in the right way, so far) to the tremendous damage the Bush presidency has done to our prestige, our security, our economy, our rights, and the legacy we'll leave to our children, and every reasonable person that Morford knows is reveling in the growing political morbidity of the Republican party. And it was all so inevitable. But when you come right down to it, the Great Truism has been validated once again: Righteous fundamentalism, be it…

You know, authorities are only as good as their arguments

Paul Kurtz is an intelligent and interesting fellow who has done commendable work in advancing the cause of skepticism and freethought. He can be rightly considered one of the heroes of the atheist movement, and he's one of the reasons that the sobriquet "New Atheist" grates — Kurtz has been writing this stuff for decades. Now, suddenly, he's being trumpeted as an advocate of "silencing the New Atheist Noise Machine." This is weird on so many levels. For one, if he were to announce something like that, I'd be disappointed — Kurtz deserves to be listened to carefully — but ultimately, it…

Hey to Uganda

One of our 2008 Physics majors is currently in Uganda, working at a clinic/ school in a place called Ddegaya (Google doesn't recognize it, but it's somewhere around here). He's there as part of a program started by the college last year, which sent eight students abroad to work in impoverished areas, and then come back to campus next spring and talk about their experiences. As part of this, he's keeping a blog, because it's all about blogs these days. Steve's a great guy, and from all reports appears to be doing well and doing good. His most recent post calls me out, though: I love the…

Spherical Cows

Two new recent posts take up the question of "spherical cows," the old joke term for absurd-sounding approximations that physicists make to turn intractable problems into easy ones. First, The First Excited State explains when N=N+1: Everybody who's taken any sort of math class knows that a statement like N+1 = N is simply ridiculous. Everyone, that is, except for the physicist. Let's say that N is a really huge number, like if someone dumped an entire truckload of M&M's in your driveway. If you turned your back on me to watch the truck drive away, and I threw another M&M in the…

Spencer Crew, The Underground Railroad in the Ohio River Valley

I had to do a couple of tests yesterday that required me to start something in the lab and then leave it alone for an hour, so I wandered over to a talk sponsored by the History department. Spencer Crew, the former director of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, OH was in the area to speak at a conference being held in Albany, and came to campus to tell us that we're all Philistines. Well, OK, that was just his half-serious opening. His main point was to talk about the Underground Railroad (you can get an outline from Wikipedia, of course), and particularly the…

Physics Contains Multitudes

It's not often that I find myself agreeing with the Incoherent Ponderer, but he's exactly right regarding Scientific American's "The Future of Physics" issue (via PhysMath Central): [T]his month's issue of Scientific American has a special titled "The Future of Physics". I was quickly disappointed when I realized that the article covers only "terascale" physics, primarily focusing on LHC. I guess I am tired of arrogant statements like "physics" = "high energy physics", which is how a lot of popular media characterizes it. The irony, however, is that with ILC construction in serious peril,…

The Clinton Conundrum

I've seen a lot of people linking to this exhaustive recounting of Chris Matthews's unhealthy fixation on Hillary Clinton, which leads off with a great quote from this firedoglake post: I do not care which person is your candidate. I don't care what you think of Hillary Clinton as a potential president. What is being done in the press is akin to a pack of rabid 7th graders trying to haze the nerdy girl in school simply because they can. It has nothing to do with her qualifications -- it has to do with gender, and these lemming pundits think that it's perfectly acceptable because everyone…

Santa Claus is a Physicist

Dave Ng over at the World's Fair is at it again, asking what sort of science background Santa Claus has: So the premise is that Santa is at least several hundred years old, and you've got to assume that somewhere along the line, he spent some time in academia and probably got a degree or two. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that he is a man of science, but I guess the question to ask is in what way specifically? Now, you might think that there are lots of ways to go with this. You could note the flying reindeer, and say that they're clearly the product of either genetic…

Links for 2010-07-24

Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 040504 (2010): Room-Temperature Implementation of the Deutsch-Jozsa Algorithm with a Single Electronic Spin in Diamond "The nitrogen-vacancy defect center (N-V center) is a promising candidate for quantum information processing due to the possibility of coherent manipulation of individual spins in the absence of the cryogenic requirement. We report a room-temperature implementation of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm by encoding both a qubit and an auxiliary state in the electron spin of a single N-V center. By thus exploiting the specific S=1 character of the spin system,…

Links for 2010-06-22

slacktivist: Big shoes "But what I think people meant about [Manute] Bol's "killer instinct" was that he never seemed to take the game of basketball quite seriously enough. He hadn't chosen this game, it had chosen him. It discovered him in that Sudanese village and plucked him out of it, whisking him halfway around the world. All for the sake of a game. ManuteNancy Bol always seemed bewildered and slightly amused by that. Eugene McCarthy said that politics was like being a football coach, "You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important." Manute…

Links for 2010-05-13

Cocktail Party Physics: oily hair is not a problem - its a solution for the gulf coast "One of the more interesting solutions proposed (aside from dropping trash in the pipe to block the oil) also involves using fibers; however, the fibers in question are human hair. Chicken feathers, straw, and wool have all been used to collect oil in the past, but human hair seems to work particularly well. A big advantage is that the oil is adsorbed rather than absorbed. Adsorbed oil forms a very thin layer - a molecule or two thick - at the surface of the hair. Because the molecules are only weakly…

Links for 2010-05-10

Against a Definition of Science Fiction -- Paul Kincaid "When I called my collection of essays and reviews What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, I was struggling toward something I could not fully articulate. I don't know what is involved in reading science fiction, because I don't know what science fiction is. There was a time, not so long ago, when I was quite clear what science fiction is. I could pick up a book from the shelf and know, with no real doubt or confusion, that it was science fiction. That certainty is with me no more, not because science fiction has changed (it has…