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Maxwell's Equations #3

So far we've seen that electric charges create electric fields. We've also seen that magnetic charges would create magnetic fields if there were any such things, but there aren't. If you're in the business of creating electric fields, as the entire electric power industry is, one way of doing so is to pile up a bunch of charge. This is a massive pain and is usually impractical to provide the EMF necessary to shove those electrons through our home electrical outlets. But since there is in fact current flowing through those wires, there must be another way to get electric fields. There is…

Technology & Middle Earth

Chad Orzel's got a great post up about the physics of Lord of the Rings. It's about Legolas the elf and his excellent eyesight. His eyes are so good that in fact they're probably operating well beyond the physical diffraction limits of any optical device with a human-sized pupil. Some speculation was discussed about how his eyes might plausibly be so good without magic: maybe he can see in the short-wavelength UV, maybe he can do interferometry(!), maybe elf pupils are bigger than we think, maybe the Middle Earth "league" is shorter than our identically-named unit of distance, along with a…

All-Nighter Ho! -- Policy and Politics: Pay for publish

Will Jake be doing all these posts from this issue of Nature? Perhaps... This issue of Nature also has an editorial related to some Asian countries' recent decision to pay researchers for publishing papers: South Korea has become the latest country to offer scientists cash prizes for publications in top-level international journals (see page 792). Other nations, including China and Pakistan, already have such programmes in place. The thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars on offer can be a fat prize for researchers in countries with lean science budgets. ... Proponents can point to…

The Discovery Institute is winding up their persecution complex again

It has the potential to be fun or a fizzle. The Discovery Institute is leaping to the defense of David Coppedge, a computer technician (don't be fooled, the DI is desperately straining to enhance his credentials) who was demoted and then fired at the JPL. Coppedge claims to be the victim of discrimination against his views on Intelligent Design creationism; the JPL has argued that he was out of line to be harassing scientists with nonsense, passing out DVDs of ID BS, pushing his silly creationist website, and basically wasting his time and not doing his job. They warned him, he persisted.…

Happenings in the Quantum World: February 21, 2008

QCMC 2008 in Calgary call for abstracts, Quantum Information and Control in Cairns, Australia call for abstracts, Covaqial, Brassard nominated for Herzberg Medal, and the limits of quantum computers. QCMC 2008, to be held in Calgary (why do I want to say "yippee ki yay" whenever I hear the word "Calgary?") is asking for abstract submissions: This is a call for abstract submission to the Ninth International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computing (QCMC), which will be held at the University of Calgary, Canada, on August 19 to 24, 2008. A one-page abstract of your…

The Purpose of This Blog

Oftentimes I've been asked what the purpose of this blog is. As if everything in life must have a purpose:pfft, I say! But because an answer is required, what I usually answer is that the purpose of my blog is to slow down my fellow researchers. I mean sheesh, the people in quantum computing are the modern polyglots of science, speaking physics, computer science, and mathematics with ease. And they're universally a brainy crowd. So what better purpose can this blog serve that to slow these readers down by offering them great opportunities to surf the intertubes and procrastinate. Along…

Proposed Diagnostic Criteria Revisions

The American Psychiatric Association has href="http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx">gone public with the details of their proposed revisions to their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.  As expected, most of this is bland and not worthy of attention from the general public.  Unfortunately, as href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/health/10psych.html?hp">Benedict Carey points out, the book often is used for purposes other than those for which it is intended, which can lead to unintended consequences.  It remains to be seen what these will be. I'm just going to make some quick,…

Critical Infrastructure and Jobs

I wrote about this before, a couple of times, most thoroughly href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/06/national_infrastructure_protec.php">here.  I was reminded of this topic when I saw that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) have updated their href="http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/">Report Card on America's Infrastructure.  In 2008, I compared the positions of the two Presidential candidates, regarding advocacy for infrastructure improvements.  Obama was better.  So I was somewhat hopeful that we would see some pretty big changes, after he won the…

Andrew Wakefield lashes out

Poor Andy. Once upon a time, he had the power to kill children just by doing some very bad science and writing a few very bad papers, and now he's reduced to living in Texas and being supported by mobs of New Age cranks. He's powerless and bored, but his ego is still being inflated by sycophants…so what does he do? He decides to sue the British Medical Journal and journalist Brian Deer for defamation. He has no medical career left. His entire life is now tied to his anti-vaccine crusade, and he's got nothing to contribute, other than his status as a martyr to the cause, so what he's done now…

Fatigue

I haven't been a good blog-citizen lately.  And no, it is not because of fatigue.  Anyway, I've going to try to get back to looking at other people's blogs more, and not just here at ScienceBlogs.  Dr. Serani kindly href="http://drdeborahserani.blogspot.com/2009/08/5-reasons-you-may-be-tired.html">pointed out an href="http://www.parade.com/health/2008/10/5-reasons-you-may-be-tired">article on common causes of fatigue.  Sleep disorders, thyroid problems, diabetes, depression, and anemia.  My comment of this has to do with how these problems are screened for in general medical…

Slate: More Science Won't Solve Climate Change Gridlock

Daniel Sarewitz, professor of science policy at Arizona State University, has an important op-ed at Slate today explaining why if we continue to frame the climate change debate in terms of science, we may never achieve meaningful policy action. Drawing on the conclusions of much of the scholarship in the area of science studies, Sarewitz writes: When people hold strongly conflicting values, interests, and beliefs, there is not much that science can do to compel action. Indeed, more research and more facts often make a conflict worse by providing support to competing sides in the debate, and…

Discovery Channel: The Biggest Science Audience?

In today's fragmented media environment, how do we actually reach "mass" audiences with science-related content? Or similarly, if you are a company or organization trying to promote your science credentials to a diverse audience, what is the best outlet for doing so? Well it appears that the Discovery Channel and its affiliated sister channels might be an optimal choice. Consider the findings from a recent analysis I ran on data collected by Pew in 2006. Roughly half of Americans say they regularly watch either the Discovery or Learning Channels. In comparison, roughly 10% say they regularly…

Is James Inhofe Laying Low on Climate Change?

As I've argued before, conservatives often have the advantage in elections and policy battles because of their tendency to enforce greater message discipline and coordination. The latest example is James Inhofe who for a decade has been perhaps the most visible and loudest voice of climate denial. But now as his party's presidential nominee John McCain uses action on climate change as a way to appeal to moderates, Inhofe may very well be "laying low," letting his party leader do the talking on the issue, and refraining from what would otherwise be confusing messages about where the…

At AAAS, a Focus on the "New Atheist Confessional"

There's a definite buzz about Sunday's panel at the AAAS meetings in Boston. With a focus on the theme of "Communicating Science in a Religious America," there is sure to be a large crowd and a healthy discussion. The panel will be held on Sunday afternoon from 1:45 to 4:45 p.m, Hynes Convention Center, Third Level, RM 309. For a preview of one paper, see this press release detailing William and Mary anthropologist Barbara J. King's presentation In her AAAS presentation, King will address what she sees as a trend among scientists toward bumper-sticker declarations of faith (or lack thereof…

This is brilliant: celebrating the new campus drug culture (aka using the university system to ensure the poor have access to medicines)

(Earlier the video had server issues, so just reposting - this video is really worth checking out) If you haven't heard of the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (or UAEM), then put it on your to do list right now. Better yet, sit yourself down and watch Mike Gretes in this video for 20 minutes. Making medicines for people, not for profit: Mike Gretes from terrytalks on Vimeo. - - - Basically, this is one of many great student talks, I've got going up on our Terry talks site, but this one in particular I think is particularly relevant for those within the ScienceBlog readership,…

The Best Thing on the Net Right Now

I know Carter has interesting things to say about race relations in America, but how can you concentrate on them when they're surrounded by silly prose:"Julia was kicking herself, and not only because she and Mary might both be dead in five minutes." Don't you just hate it when you're about to be dead in five minutes? J.F. Kane, on New England White Last year at this time the claimant to that title, best on the net, was obviously The 2007 Science Spring Showdown (eventually won by Darwin). But lurking behind that, in a very close second, was The Morning News's 2007 Tournament of Books (…

New Game: Historical Fill in the _____!

Taking a cue from Dave's recent meme-games and my own reading of the weekend book review section of the paper, I'm inspired to wonder how many answers can fit the following blanks: "The period between the end of _______ and the end of ______ is one of the most important in American history and, these days, one of the most neglected." This sentence was part of a review of Daniel Walker Howe's What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. The review was by Jonathan Yardley; recently, Jill Lepore had a fascinating essay centering on the same book in The New Yorker. Popular…

If you blog you will die, news at 11

Methinks this article from the NYTimes is a tad hysterical: They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece -- not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home. A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment. Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the…

French Teenagers Cannot Agree on the Gender of Nouns

Language Log details the results of this fascinating experiment. The researcher was looking at second language acquisition, and in order to have a control she tested the native-speakers on the gender of particular words in French. The assumption would be the native-speakers would all agree on the gender of the words, but she found that among the native-speaking teenagers native speakers -- and to a greater degree among teenagers -- there was widespread disagreement: Ayoun was investigating second-language learning of grammatical gender in French -- a major difficulty for learners from non-…

More on Demography and Having Fewer Children

It has been a big month for talking about the demographic transition here at Pure Pedantry. (See here and here.) Ronald Bailey at Reason had this interesting article speculating why people choose to have less children: children don't make you happy. If economic security no longer requires having children and they don't make you happy, why have them? To wit: "Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact," reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher…

Adam Gopnik on Phillip K. Dick

The New Yorker has an exquisite article by Adam Gopnik on science fiction writer, Phillip K. Dick. Gopnik doesn't pull punches; Dick was in many ways bat-shit crazy. He also had a genius for understanding that the future would likely be just as wrong -- in the way that people in 60s tended to define wrong -- as the present. This sense of stability in human nature made his books ironic and deeply satirical. Money quote: Dick's admirers identify his subjects as..."reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvation." Later, as he became crazier, he did see questions in vast cosmological…

Delaware theocrats vs. the Dobrich family

The NY Times has a decent summary of the Dobrich case—the families in the Indian River school district of Delaware who are suing to end the state sponsorship of sectarian religion that is running amuck there. Most of the residents there don't seem to get it—I wish people would stop calling this a school prayer issue, because it plays right into their hands. It isn't and never has been about restricting people's ability to say prayers or practice whatever consensual superstitious nonsense in which they want to indulge. It's about preventing the power of state authorities being used to compel…

Books, Books, Books.

Since PZ got it from Wilkins, I might as well chime in. I bold those I’ve read and italicize those I’ve partially read. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Anna Karenina Crime and Punishment Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude Wuthering Heights The Silmarillion Life of Pi : a novel The Name of the Rose (Multiple times - great book) Don Quixote Moby Dick Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey Pride and Prejudice Jane Eyre The Tale of Two Cities The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler’s Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind…

Einstein was a dunce

Bob Henderson is an 80 year old retired electrical engineer who thinks "Albert Einstein was a dunce." So convinced is he of this that he has written a third book on the subject: Einstein and The-Emperor's-New-Clothes Syndrome: The Exposé of a Charlatan. Notes the AZ Republic: Henderson was, and is, qualified to be asking these questions because his work was science. He says he graduated second in his class from the University of Arizona in 1950 with a degree in electrical engineering. He then worked for RCA in New Jersey before returning home to work at Motorola. Some of his work was in the…

Saturday Football

It is Saturday and that can only mean college football. It should mean grading as I got papers yesterday, but I like to prioritize. Obviously everyone is looking forward to the Michigan v Ohio State game. I have only one thing to say .... GO BLUE! Apart from my connections to Michigan, I developed an intense dislike for the Buckeyes when they snuck past ASU in the 1997 Rose Bowl. Joe Germaine quaterbacked a 12 play, 65-yard drive in the final 1:40 for the winning touchdown. It is thus with some satisfaction that I note that Germaine's NFL career went nowhere and that he's now playing arena…

The Synapse Issue #5

Welcome to the 5th edition of The Synapse, ScienceBlog's home-grown carnival on all things Neuro! Glad to see this carnival, much like a precocious child or bad hair day, is growing up and gaining a life of its own. Thanks to all that submitted, we've got a smorgasbord of neural delights for your reading pleasure. Come on people, engage in long term potentiation in the brain, for the brain, about (you guessed it) the brain! First, Jake at Pure Pedantry tackles a controversial topic, debunking the myth of a significant gender disparity in science, and in cognition. OmniBrain provides a…

Dennis Overbye on Science and Democracy

Dennis Overbye at the NYTimes somewhat unintentionally answers the "what is science's rightful place?" question in his column. He emphasizes the similarity and symbiosis between science and democracy: And indeed there is no leader, no grand plan, for this hive. It is in many ways utopian anarchy, a virtual community that lives as much on the Internet and in airport coffee shops as in any one place or time. Or at least it is as utopian as any community largely dependent on government and corporate financing can be. Arguably science is the most successful human activity of all time. Which is…

Sanjay Gupta is a possible Surgeon General

Obama's transition team has approached CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta for the position of Surgeon General: The Obama transition team approached Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, about becoming U.S. surgeon general, according to sources inside the transition and at CNN. Gupta was in Chicago, Illinois, in November to meet with President-elect Barack Obama on the matter, sources said. Gupta has declined comment. The transition team is impressed with the combination of Gupta's past government experience, as a White House fellow in 1997 and a special adviser to then-first lady Hillary…

Explaining the Market Meltdown

As we witness the self-destruction of portions of our financial institutions, many of us have been ask ourselves: what the hell is going on? University of Chicago economists, Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap, have a Q&A at the Freakonomics blog to answer some questions. One important question is why the Fed chose to bail out Bear Stearns but not Lehman Brother: When Bear was rescued, the Fed created a new lending facility to help provide bridge financing to other investment banks. The new lending arrangement was proposed precisely because there were concerns that Lehman and other banks…

George Carlin RIP

George Carlin died yesterday. I always loved his comedy, but more important to me Carlin affirmed my atheism at a time in my life when I didn't really know anyone else who felt that way. He poked fun at religion, and listening to his comedy made me feel like I wasn't weird to note the considerable irregularities. Anyway, here is his best jab at religion: When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit…

3% of Doctors Aren't Frustrated

Well that is not good: In a survey last year of nearly 2,400 physicians conducted by a physician recruiting firm, locumtenens.com, 3 percent said they were not frustrated by nonclinical aspects of medicine. The level of frustration has increased with nearly every survey. ... In surveys, increasing numbers of doctors attest to diminishing enthusiasm for medicine and say they would discourage a friend or family member from going into the profession. The dissatisfaction would probably not have reached such a fever pitch if reimbursement had kept pace with doctors' expectations. But it has not.…

Why Grad Students Should Teach

Grad student Joel Corbo has a guest post at Cosmic Variance where he laments the lack of emphasis on teaching in physics PhD programs: My relatively rosy view of physics education was shaken up not long after starting grad school at UC Berkeley (By the way, I don't want to single out Berkeley as particularly flawed, as I'm sure its problems are shared by virtually every physics department in the US to one extent or another. However, I can only write about what I know and this is where I am). Back in the cocoon of the MIT undergrad experience, I came to believe that physics was awesome for two…

Can We Regrow Dying Coral Reefs?

Coral growing at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida or the inside of my refrigerator in college? 25% of the world's coral reefs has died in the past 25 years, and 25% more is expected to die in the next two decades. With a lot of luck and a lot of hard work, however, a Floridian named Ken Nedimyer might be able to grow it back. Nedimyer has teamed up with the Nature Conservancy, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study the feasibility of regrowing staghorn and elkhorn coral in the Florida Keys. Still, no one said it would…

AAAS Panel: Communicating Science in a Religious America

For scienceblogs.com readers who have never been to an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, you are missing out on the world's greatest discussion of research and new ideas. In particular, I find that the meetings feature a one-of-a-kind forum for discussion of science and society issues, ranging from policy matters to public engagement. This year's meetings are in Boston, February 14-18. If the registration seems a bit pricey, believe me, it is well worth it to attend, plus you can build into the cost a year subscription to Science magazine. At this…

Some Context to the Scientist-Journalist Debate

I'm obviously a bit late in commenting on the scientist-journalist debate that went on through last week, so I'm not going to weigh in at this point. (Round up of posts. The entry that started it all.) But for the motivated reader, below the fold are listed several studies and book chapters that I assign in my course on Science, Media, and the Public or that I recommend to graduate students doing research on the topic. All of the sources are available at your university library and provide useful context for understanding the interactions between scientists and journalists. Moreover, at…

The Genome As Word Puzzle: Who's Ready to Play?

I'm always learning something from the readers of the Loom. Yesterday, I wrote about how scientists had inserted their names into a synthetic genome, and how such signatures would erode away like graffiti inside real organisms. But how about the opposite case--what if evolution has produced sequences of DNA that happen to form words? In the comment thread, Peter Ellis asked, What actually is the longest word (in any language) encoded by the reference human genome? If I had the time and computer power I'd have a look... Guesstimate - it'll be somewhere in the 4-5 letter range, depending on…

Do PBDEs cause thyroid disorders in pets?

I'm on a environmental tox kick lately. The latest foray into endocrine disruption in the news is polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. PBDEs are used as flame retardant compounds, and like my earlier ruminations on bisphenol A, they're in everything. Unfortunately, there's evidence that they don't just sit there, but rather, as the LA Times reports, they like to impersonate thyroid hormone and may lead to hyperthyroidism. An epidemic of thyroid disease among pet cats could be caused by toxic flame retardants that are widely found in household dust and some pet food, government…

In Which Razib Displays Incredible Irony and Completely Misses The Point.

I was going to comment on the whole Women/Scifi/Brown people argument going on in other areas of this blog, but since the culprit said it better than I ever could have, I'll just let his words speak for me. (Emphasis mine). Now, does this surprise many of the readers of this weblog??? Ed was implying that only whites are the elite, but the reality is that Indian Americans might not be absolutely represented in the elite (being fewer than 1% of the population), but any given brown American is likely to be quite well off. There is at least one other regular brown frequenter of the wine bar,…

Encephalon #13

Welcome to Encephalon # 13!!!! Unlucky though it may be, we're up and running (and better late than never). I have to apologize to Encephalon readers, I've been trying to deal with my position being on the chopping block out of the blue. Yes, Virginia, the government doesn't offer job security either. The next edition will be on 15th January at Mixing Memory, and not on New Year's Day as previously scheduled. So let's get down to bidness! We'll kick off with a post on FAK and Control of Axon Guidance, where Migrations comments on a relatively recent paper in Nature Neuroscience by Robles…

Inhibition INCREASES the BOLD Response ('nuff said)

In the early days of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers were eager to point out that the hemodynamic response measured by fMRI may correspond rather directly to neural firing. Recently, a number of researchers have attempted to remind the larger neuroimaging community that the hemodynamic response reflects metabolic/energetic demands, and this might very well more strongly reflect the firing of inhibitory interneurons that oppose the action of the excitatory pyramidal neurons we more commonly think about. This kind of confusion has consequences: many have argued that…

Does Self-Selection Affect Meditation's Influence on Attention?

Self-selection refers to the fact that certain kinds of people may be drawn to certain kinds of lifestyles or practices (including participation in human research). When the effects of those lifestyles/practices are observed scientifically, they are confounded with myriad other factors which also characterize that group. For example, in the context of meditation studies, it is possible that meditation in the realm of 10-50,000 hours has beneficial effects, but is also difficult to prove the important factor is not all other characteristics of such avid meditators (for example, their…

Time Distortion Due to Visual Flicker

Time pervades our understanding of the world - we use it to coordinate our movements, to perceive motion, to plan our behaviors, and perhaps even to understand causality. But it is an under-appreciated factor in cognition. Even in the domain of the well-understood visual system, few realize that neurons in visual cortex are tuned not only for sensitivity to visual input of particular orientations, but also tuned also to time - in terms of temporal contrast. Johnston, Arnold and Nishida were able to manipulate this temporal tuning with a relatively simple method. The authors presented a…

Review: "Prospective Memory" by McDaniel & Einstein

Prospective memory is "remembering to remember." Despite the pervasiveness of this requirement in real-life, we know surprisingly little about the topic. In their new book, McDaniel & Einstein provide a direly needed review of this fascinating new field, providing important information for researchers, clinicians, and laypeople alike on how basic cognitive science is coming to a "big picture" understanding of prospective memory. In some ways, it's not so much a single topic as an amalgam of many different cognitive processes already studied in other domains. For example, prospective…

Change Control: Cognitive Mechanisms in Response Adjustment

Imagine that you are about to pass to a teammate when he suddenly darts in another direction, in an attempt to get clear. With some difficulty, you will be able to modify your pass and correctly throw the ball to your teammate's new location. How is this process implemented in the brain? This scenario relies on quick processing of relevant perceptual information in order to modify or interrupt the ongoing motor commands, which itself requires a tight linkage between perception and action - yet another unsolved "binding problem" in cognitive neuroscience (as covered yesterday). One form of…

University of Illinois Graduate Students Vote to Strike

In an overwhelming majority members of the Graduate Employee's Organization (GEO) at the University of Illinois at at Urbana-Champaign authorized their union to to go on strike if the university doesn't change direction in their current negotiations. According to a GEO Press Release sent out Monday: Over the course of a three day vote, an overwhelming 92% of participating GEO members chose to authorize a strike against the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. With the vote, GEO members have given the strike committee of the GEO a clear mandate to call a strike at any time. The…

Christopher Hitchens in Collision with Religion

It's been an unusually busy week, so I apologize for the lack of original posts, but I just came upon Christopher Hitchens' latest piece in Slate reflecting on the many debates he's had with religious proponents in the last few years. His new film, Collision, looks fascinating and I look forward to reviewing it. What struck me in Hitchens' article, and what I've found when discussing religion with theists as well, is how few of them hold literally to the doctrine that they espouse. It is one of the curious aspects of religion today that people will join movements insisting that religion be…

Carolina dreamin'

The locals say it's cold, but North Carolina rocks. It's warm (meaning greater than 20 degrees F), hilly, piney. And people here are friendly. Here at ScienceOnline09 there is so much to do, both intellectually and socially, that I'm overwhelmed. In fact, even my computer is overwhelmed and is officially useless. The ScienceBlogs intern (who may in fact not be an intern and whose youth and vivacity is surpassed only by her briliance) did a little trouble-shooting with my tablet and found the problem, which will hopefully be solvable back up north. One thing I've learned here: there are…

Ask The Experts: Epilepsy medication used to treat Alzheimer's

I recently received the following question from a reader based on a prior blog entry on how a medication used to treat epilepsy also helps reverse memory loss with Alzheimer's disease. You can see the original blog here Question: "I find it a little confusing as to how it is possible that this medication can improve brain and memory function but at the same time cause cognitive impairment? Is that not contradictory that the meds are suppose o help the brain but the side effects are related to the brain? Did the research account the facts that humans do not share all the same proteins as mice…

Things I've been pondering lately

It's been quiet around here lately, I realize. As you can tell from the last few posts, life has been busy and angsty and not a lot of fun lately. But a very large burden has been lifted (which I may blog about at some point, once I figure out how to do so without compromising my pseudonymity), and life is looking better and more manageable, so hopefully I'll get back into the swing of blogging Real Soon Now. In the meantime, here's a random sampling of things that I've been pondering lately. 1. Mr. Jane, who has followed me all over creation and put my career first and has rarely…

Is Jesus Making You Overeat?

Well, in fairness, Jesus' twelve Apostles should also share in the blame. An incredibly quirky and yet fascinating study was just published in the International Journal of Obesity which investigated the size of the food and plates that have been depicted in paintings of Jesus' Last Supper over the last 1000 years. The trend of gradually increasing portion sizes is well documented; just go to your local McDonalds and order a large drink and fries and drive yourself directly to the nearby hospital for a bypass. Thus, Wansink & Wansink (maybe a married couple) decided to directly compare…