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SciBlings at AAAS10

Four Sciblings (and three ex-Sciblings - Sheril Kirshenbaum, Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer - but once a Scibling always a Scibling rule applies, so we hung together some...) went to the AAAS meeting last week in San Diego. There is a lot of coverage in the MSM (and a little bit on blogs - it's hard to blog when you are not given tools, access and respect and thus AAAS will get much less, and much less positive coverage than they would have otherwise) - but here I just want to link to what my SciBlings have posted so far (I will post some more myself later - just watch the AAAS10 category here…

Bright Blue Tits Make Better Mothers

tags: researchblogging.org, blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus, Parus caeruleus, sexual selection, mate choice, ornithology, female coloration, reproduction, maternal quality, evolution, birds, ornithology In many bird species, the females are brightly colored, just as the males are, but the evolutionary reasons for brightly colored females is unclear. According to one hypothesis, because males and females share the same genome, their traits are similar. However, according to another hypothesis, there may also be selective pressures on females, just as there are on males, to develop brightly…

Suggestive correlations between the brightness of Neptune, solar variability, and Earth's temperature?

There is a fairly weird paper entitled Suggestive correlations between the brightness of Neptune, solar variability, and Earth's temperature by Hammel and Lockwood. Why is it weird? Various reasons, which I'll try to explain here as best I can, but it really needs someone who knows more about it. These are more notes in case anyone out there feels interested to look. First off, none of their correlations are significant, a fact which does rather disappoint them: Although correlations between Neptune's brightness and Earth's temperature anomaly--and between Neptune and two models of solar…

The String Theory Wars

Have a look at this article from the current New Yorker. It focuses on the recent anti-string theory books from Lee Smolin and Peter Woit. The article provides a decent summary of Smolin's and Woit's views, but it is seriously marred by the lack of any contrary views of the matter. The views expressed by Smolin and Woit appear to be in the minority among physicists generally. From reading this article you would have no idea why that is. For example, the article includes paragraphs like this: The usual excuse offered for sticking with what increasingly looks like a failed program is that…

Derbyshire States it Plain

Writing in National Review Online, John Derbyshire provides a nice characterization of what it's like to argue with creationists: I'll also say that I write the following with some reluctance. It's a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can't be bothered with Creationism at all, even for the fun of it. It isn't actually any fun. Creationists just chase…

The Advent Calendar of Physics: Torque

Today's advent calendar post was delayed by severe online retail issues last night and child care today, but I didn't want to let the day pass completely without physics, so here's the next equation in our countdown to Newton's birthday: This is the final piece of the story of angular momentum, the undefined symbol from the right-hand side of the angular momentum principle: torque is defined as the cross-product between the radius vector pointing out from the axis of rotation to the point where the force is applied, and the vector force that acts at that point. As with the definition of…

Science Blogger Panel in Duke's "Science in the Media" Class

I had the happy pleasure of visiting on Friday with Sheril Kirshenbaum and Bora Zivkovic for a panel discussion in a course at Duke University's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. Directed by Dr Misha Angrist, PubPol 196S "Science in the Media" is described in the course catalog as follows: Those who write about science, health and related policy matters for a general audience face a formidable challenge: to make complex, nuanced ideas understandable to the nonscientist in a limited amount of space and in ways that are engaging and entertaining, even if the topic is far outside the…

DIY Bio will not end the world

People are doing biology in their kitchen now, or in rented labs with cheaper equipment: In Cambridge, Mass., a group called DIYbio is setting up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a used freezer, scored for free off Craigslist, that drops to 80 degrees below zero, the temperature needed to keep many kinds of bacteria alive. Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use…

Jonah Goldberg Likes My Blog. Please Shoot Me Now.

     Goldberg shown here (right) "gangbanging"    with a guy who enjoys making fun of the dead.I must have done something very, very wrong. Jonah Goldberg, that noxious, infected man-tit of a human being, has just praised my work at the National Review. Referring to my series on Deconstructing Social Darwinism Goldberg writes: This is a very comprehensive assault on the prevailing understanding of "social Darwinism." Eric Michael Johnson's essay is a bit too rambling at times, but it is very welcome and good reading nonetheless. Readers of my book might remember that I have nothing but…

Why Terra Sigillata?

If you Google, "Terra Sigillata," you'll get a number of hits for various clay pottery recipes. Very complicated stuff, requiring the use of a deflocculant to separate out large clay particles from the small ones. Terra sig, as it is known among pottery hipsters, is then used to coat finished pieces to produce a very smooth, high luster and waterproof finish. What does this have to do with pharmacology and natural products? Terra Sigillata literally means "sealed earth." In the common potter's vernacular, "seal" probably relates to the waterproof character of the product. But, in ancient…

Holocaust denial and hate

One of the common topics I discuss on this blog is Holocaust denial. Indeed, I've been opposing Holocaust denial on various online forums for ten years now. I've castigated David Irving, mocked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his worldwide Holocaust denial conference, and made frequent comments about how Holocaust denial is inextricably linked with anti-Semitism and racism, often directly due to the white nationalist movement (or, as I like to refer to white supremacists, mighty white power rangers). That's why I was very saddened to learn about what happened at the Holocaust Museum earlier today:…

Responding to a FAQ: What is Tranching?

I've received an amazing number of requests in the short period of time since my last post to explain "Tranching". I mentioned it off-handedly, but a lot of people have heard about its role in the whole sub-prime mess, and wanted to know just what it means. I don't particularly like writing about economics; it's just not my bag. But enough people are asking that I feel like I need to answer the question. But this is it folks - no more of this nonsense after today! There are plenty of other people writing about this, who know more about it, and who are more interested in it, than I am. It's…

When Large Healthcare Deductibles Could Be Costly: A Personal Tale

Let's just say that throwing up between 1am and 5am the week you have to prepare for a scientific conference (ASM) is, well, suboptimal. Anyway, I'm fine (thanks for asking), but Tuesday I had plenty of time to think about this NY Times article about the increase in healthcare deductibles (the amount of money you have to pay out of pocket before your healthcare kicks in): But Dr. King said patients were also being more thoughtful about their needs. Fewer are asking for an MRI as soon as they have a bad headache. "People are realizing that this is my money, even if I'm not writing a check,"…

Moving Overseas, Part 12

Today is far more stressful than it deserves to be. I spent a good part of today either bleeding all over my apartment (one of my lories bit me) or on the telephone, talking with the police department, trying to determine if my "good citizen certificate" is ready to pick up. Even though I saw at least two police officers with desks that had functioning telephones on them while I was there, I was told there are no telephones into that office. WTF? After being bounced a dozen times between operator 2231 and operator 174 (or whatever their names were), my throbbing finger wrapped in half a roll…

My new project launching today: The Quisling Qourner: A group blog on the library/publisher relationship

Reader Beware: Please note the date of publication of this post. It's been really gratifying over the last year to see how my DSCaM scholarly communications empire has grown. From it's small beginnings, Dupuis Science Computing & Medicine has craved out a small but important niche in the discount APC publishing community. And I really appreciate how the scholarly communications community has encouraged my career progression from publisher of a journal at Elsevier to Chief Advisor on Science Libraries for the Government of Canada to last year's huge launch of DSCaM. And the DSCaM empire…

IOM Warns of Worsening Insurance Situation

Yesterday, the Institute of Medicine warned that employment-based health insurance coverage is eroding, and that the safety net (clinics and emergency rooms that provide charity and uncompensated care) wonât be able to handle the demand from the uninsured. IOMâs new report, Americaâs Uninsured Crisis: Consequences for Health and Health Care, notes that the decline in health insurance coverage â with 45.7 million uninsured at last count â is likely to continue. Hereâs how they describe the situation in the accompanying policy brief: A number of ominous signs point to a continuing decline in…

The god mob

Speak the name "Templeton" and the prim, dutiful servants of the foundation will appear. If you look at the recent articles from Coyne, Dawkins, and me, you'll discover the same comment, shown below, from a representative of the Templeton Foundation. I've seen these guys in action before. They are very serious, somber fellows in their nice suits, with the dignitas of boodles of cash behind them, who will calmly state their position with an air of dispassionate certitude. They remind me of Mafia lawyers. A.C. Grayling and Daniel Dennett have refused to talk to a serious journalist (Edwin…

My Job in 10 Years: Are A & I Services in a Death Spiral?

As I mentioned the other day, the most recent issue of ISTL is full of very fine articles. The one that really caught my eye is the Viewpoints article Are A & I Services in a Death Spiral? by Valerie Tucci. It echoes a lot of the themes that I first wrote about way back in December 2006 -- that the traditional A&I services will have a lot of problems competing with services such as Google Scholar which are free to the user. Here's some of what Tucci has to say: Given all the changes what will the future bring for these services and how will it affect libraries, librarians, and users…

On World Health Day, Confronting the Menace of Antimicrobial Resistance

Today is World Health Day, and the World Health Organization is using the occasion to draw attention to a serious global health problem: the rapid spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The development and widespread use of antibiotics counts as a public health triumph, as infections that once routinely killed large numbers of people became much easier to treat. That triumph can be undone, though. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warns, "In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will…

Stephen Carter on the ACLU

I came across this interesting article in Christianity Today by Stephen Carter. Carter is a professor at the Yale Law School and a devout Christian who generally opposes the ACLU's establishment clause position. But he writes in Christianity Today against the unprincipled demonization of the ACLU by so many of his fellow Christians. He begins by pointing out that while he disagrees with the ACLU on many establishment clause issues, when it comes to free exercise issues they are generally correct: I would like to say a word in defense of the American Civil Liberties Union. Christians--…

Amy Sullivan's bad advice

Amy Sullivan is not one of the people I want advising the Democratic party…unless, that is I suddenly decided I wanted to be a Republican, and was feeling too lazy to change my voter registration. She's got one note that she plays loudly over and over again: Democrats need to be more religious. Why? So we can get more religious people to vote for our candidates, and so we can steal the Republicans' identification as the party of faith. Nationally, and in states like Alabama, the GOP cannot afford to allow Democrats a victory on anything that might be perceived as benefiting people of faith.…

Electronics for Kids: Great new book for kids and their adults

The simplest project in the new book Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity! by Øyvind Nydal Dahl is the one where you lean a small light bulb against the two terminals of a nine volt battery in order to make the light bulb turn on. The first several projects in the book involve making electricity, or using it to make light bulbs shine or to run an electromagnet. The most complicated projects are the ones where you make interactive games using LED lights and buzzers. Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity!…

Is String Theory an Unphysical Pile of Garbage?

Before you ask yourself, "what kind of incendiary title is that," let me put this in perspective. In 2001, I started graduate school at the University of Florida, and in 2002, I took one of the most difficult year-long courses a physics student can take: Quantum Field Theory. This was both the best and worst course I've ever taken. I worked harder for it than I ever have for any other course, I learned more for doing it than I had at any other time, it was the most difficult time I've ever had in a course, and it was superbly taught by one Richard Woodard. Quantum field theory is possibly the…

Hurricane Maria

As you already know, Hurricane Maria is a Category 5 storm menacing the Leewards, and heading, likely, for Puerto Rico. Please avoid making the mistakes that were made in talking about Irma. There will probably be no Category 5 storm hitting Puerto Rico. The storm will probably be a Category 4 before it hits. So, reporters will sloppily declare that "a category 5 storm is heading for Puerto Rico" then later Rush Limberger will say "Look there was never no such storm, see?" and so on. But, a Category 4 storm is still nothing to sneeze into, and Puerto Rico and the other island in this storm's…

HIV-2 Vpx vs Behe (everyone wants in on the action)

Hey, do you all remember Michael Behe? Dude was for real 'famous' a while back (not just 'Christian famous'). He went on talk shows and news programs (including the Colbert Report) to talk about his personal brand of Creationism, Intelligent Design. Unfortunately, things 'didnt go as planned' with Intelligent Design. The courts didnt buy ID, in no small part thanks to the asshatty defense of it given by Michael Behe. Even The Arguments Regarding Design 'think tank', the Discovery Institute, has abandoned ID in favor of pushing 'academic freedom' bills in state legislatures. Behe also helped…

Experiment vs. Theory: The Eternal Debate

Melissa at Confused at a Higher Level offers some thoughts on the relative status of experimental vs. theoretical science, spinning off a comprehensive discussion of the issues at Academic Jungle. I flagged this to comment on over the weekend, but then was too busy with SteelyKid and football to get to it. since I'm late to the party, I'll offer some slightly flippant arguments in favor of experiment or theory: Argument 1: Experimentalists are better homeowners. At least in my world of low-energy experimental physics, many of the skills you are expected to have as an experimental physicist…

The Cost of Not Framing

In the comments to yesterday's post about framing, Damian offers a long comment that doesn't actually contradict anything I said, but re-frames it in terms more complimentary to the Dawkins/ Myers side of things. I may deal with some of what he says over there (probably not today, though, as I have a class to teach), but I wanted to single out one particular part of his comment for response: Nisbet has claimed repeatedly, and without much evidence I might add, that PZ and Dawkins are poor advocates for science. For a start, neither PZ or Dawkins has ever claimed to be an advocate (at least,…

Another nail in the Superfreakonomics coffin

By now, I'd expect the authors of Superfreakonomics are having mixed feelings about their new book. On the one hand, they're making good money as the book enjoys healthy sales. On the other, just about every actual expert in the field to which Chapter 5 is devoted -- climate change -- has savaged their take on the subject. This week comes perhaps the most devastating criticism, from four statisticians whose analysis of global temperature trends demonstrates just how wrong Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner got the numbers. And an AP story on the statisticians' analysis raises some serious…

Gun Control, The Military, and Nidal Hasan

ScienceBloggers Greg Laden and Matt Springer have both weighed in on the weapons used by Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Matt disagrees with the basic gun control argument that Greg initially raised, but focused primarily on correcting some factual errors that Greg made in a later post. Unfortunately, Matt seems to have some incorrect assumptions about firearm availability on military installations. He also seems to have missed at least one important factual point about the firearms that were used in the shooting. Matt starts off quite badly, at least from the perspective of the facts on…

Best of the Abyss 2007

The long awaited results... Best New Discovery/Research (Heights of the Abyss Award): When it's the deep sea its all new. 2007 was no different with more big discoveries and novel research than you can shake a stick at. The Judges! were more indecisive than the Democratic party on what to do about Iraq. The result is a wishy-washy, utopian, happy unicorns and rainbows, "we're all winners" pile of links. Humboldts Are Here and They Are Hungry Jackelopterus rehnaniae Corals In Acid Sound Generated By Mid-Ocean Ridge Black Smoker Lost Years For Sea Turtles Revealed Best Conservation News:…

Personal integrity and professsional integrity.

On Abel's post on conscience clauses, Bob Koepp left this comment: It's a pretty warped understanding of professionalism that would require professionals to violate their own sincere ethical beliefs. After all, someone lacking personal integrity probably isn't going to be much concerned with professional integrity. "You can trust me because I lack the strength of my convictions." I think the connection between personal integrity and professional integrity is an important one, so here are some preliminary thoughts on it. Joining a profession requires some buy-in to the shared values of that…

Despite the Slowdowns and Breakdowns

Well, two weeks of hell has receded for me. This past Friday we finished moving all of our stuff out of Frostburg, waving a not-so-tearful goodbye to the old apartment and its coal furnace (not just for heat either; our water was warmed by the furnace as well, which I didn't know until this past year... they used to use gas). To be frank, Friday was one of the worst days of my life. We still had the essentials in the apartment - food, a few dishes, coffee, computers, mattress, etc. - so they needed to be packed in both cars to haul up to our new place. But before we could load her car, it…

Becoming My Mother...

I've been taking care of my mother's finances for well over two years now, since she moved from the house she lived in all her life to an assisted living home. It still astonishes me, sometimes, that managing her paperwork requires more time and effort than managing my own. I wrote here about the sense of sadness and loss involved with something seemingly as straightforward as establishing a new bank account to make it easier for me to manage mom's finances. Loss accumulates and accelerates in one's lifetime. Last January [2008], we moved Mom to assisted living...today I wrote to the…

Health Insurance

Why do people buy insurance? On the one hand, the act of purchasing insurance is an utterly rational act, dependent on the uniquely human ability to ponder counterfactuals in the distant future. What if my a fire destroyed my house? What if my new car got totaled? What if I get cancer and require expensive medical treatments? We take this cognitive skill for granted, but it's actually profoundly rare. And yet, the desire to purchase insurance is also influenced by deeply irrational forces, and the peculiar ways in which our emotions help us assess risks. The passionate nature of risk - and…

How Expensive is Food, Really?

This is a lightly revised and updated version of a piece that ran at ye olde blogge and at Grist, but it seems just as pertinent now as it did in 2007 when I wrote it. At the time, some people doubted that the boom we were seeing in biofuel production, which was pushing up grain prices, would be followed by any kind of a bust. Farmers were predicting many, many good years - but we all know what happened. Farm incomes dropped by more than 20% during the recession. Just another reminder that busts are part of the boom and bust cycle, no matter how little we like to admit it. There is no…

Dear Dad, With Love

Today marks 12 years since you died. Well, it might have been today, possibly yesterday, I hope not too many days ago. You see, you died alone in your apartment you rented from your sister downstairs. Yet no one checked on you as your mail accumulated Monday and Tuesday. One of your drinking buddies from the Disabled American Veterans post told me proudly at your funeral that he probably had with you your last beer that Saturday night. So, maybe it was the 8th or 9th? When I think back, though, I believe you died some eight years earlier, just after your 50th birthday party. For your…

Can we coexist?

With religious wars around the world erupting almost constantly, you might be feeling grateful that you live in a country where there is separation of church and state. But dont rest too easy, another conflict is brewing- this time in agriculture. Twenty years ago organic farmers in our area began growing specialty sunflowers to sell for cut flowers. Although most of the pollen from organic sunflowers does not travel further than 3 meters, some of it can travel up to distances of 1000 meters, which can cause problems for growers of certified sunflower seed. If stray organic pollen should…

The PepsiBlog Fracas

Yesterday afternoon I checked my e-mail and found something from the ScienceBlogs management. Apparently there was to be a new blog around here sponsored by PepsiCo. that was to focus on nutrition and other food related issues. I only skimmed the e-mail and did not really think much about it. I am still on blog vacation, after all, and I wanted to get back to my other work. Later in the day I decided it was time for a break. Figured I'd check in with my favorite Science Blogs and see if anything was happening. Turns out, something was. Apparently a lot of my fellow bloggers were up in…

Sage advice?: NC to join 13 states in outlawing Salvia divinorum

Salvia divinorum (Salvia, Magic Mint) is a plant used for entheogenic purposes by the Mazatec people of Mexico. A relative of the common garden plant "scarlet sage" (Salvia splendens), S. divinorum contains several hallucinogens that include salvinorin A, the first non-nitrogenous agonist known for kappa opioid receptors (KOR). I had known of salvinorin A since a highly-cited 2002 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper by Bryan Roth, Richard Rothman and colleagues (full text here). At that time, I had read several anecdotal reports (that I cannot locate now) that the…

Book Review: A Cosmic Samizdat

In our increasingly worldaround world, it is a rare, if not obsolete, occurrence for two wildly disparate and equally sophisticated cultures to meet for the first time. That's probably for the best, of course, because when it did happen in spades, during the centuries on Earth before instantaneous global communication, all bets were off, and what went down was almost always marked with catastrophe (as with the indigenous people of North America) or powderkeg-and-a-match mutual distrust (as with the first United States naval expeditions to Japan in the 1850s, a cultural collision that is…

I want a spinach salad.

I can't remember a time I have had a more severe jones for a spinach salad than the last few days. The perfect balance of crisp and earthy and creamy, whose eating would be not merely a mechanical refueling of my body, but a transcendant experience -- is that too much to ask? Well, during a spinach-borne outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 it is. But, while I dream of spinach (and grade papers), I'm thinking of how information (or lack of information) about our foods plays a role in our ability to make choices about what to eat. I was already hungry for spinach when I caught an update on the…

How To Use Linux ~ 01 Introduction

This is the first of a series of posts written for non-geeks just starting out with Linux. The idea is to provide the gist, a few important facts, and some fun suggestions. Slowly and easily. Some of the posts in this series may end up being useful references, so consider bookmarking those. At some level all operating systems are the same, but in some ways that will matter to you, Linux is very different from the others. The most important difference, which causes both the really good things and the annoying things to be true, is that Linux and most of the software that you will run on…

Musical Predictions, Redux

In response to my recent post on the neuroscience of musical predictions, Alex Rehding, the Fanny Peabody Professor of Music at Harvard, wrote in to offer a musical theorist perspective. He makes several excellent points, and complicates the neuroscience in useful ways, so I thought I'd reproduce the relevant parts of his email below: The point you raise in your latest posting -- about expectation and prediction -- is one that has fascinated music theorists pretty much for the last 200 years. I realize that yours is a science blog, and I'll try my best to resist the urge to add too many…

Charging a cell phone with sound - possible?

This comes from Buzz Out Loud Episode 865 which got the story from Slashdot regarding a possible new technology that would use piezoelectric devices to charge cell phones while you talk. The original article the slashdot story pointed to talked mostly about the advances in piezoelectric devices, but I want to look at the possibility that sound could charge a phone. First for the basic physics. How do you make sound and what is it? Sound is a compression wave in the air. To make a sound you need something to push the air (yes, I simplified this quite a bit). When that something pushes the…

The Friday Fermentable: Syrahs from Europe and the US, by Erleichda

Another Wine Experience - Syrahs from Europe and the US By Erleichda We've been having so many of our wine dinners the past two years that the group has had to return to its favorite haunts. Such was the case one Friday evening as we set about to taste Syrahs from the US and Europe. I have generally preferred my Syrahs blended, which is to say accompanied by other grape varieties such as one finds in the Rhone wines from the south of France. But tonight it was to be a tasting of just Syrah. Getting a head start before any appetizers arrived, we passed around the first bottle of the evening…

How did we do at dialogue?

In a recent post, I issued an invitation: I am always up for a dialogue on the issue of our moral relation to animals and on the ethical use of animals in scientific research. If folks inclined towards the animal rights stance want to engage in a dialogue right here, in the comments on this post, I am happy to host it. (I will not, however, be hosting a debate. A dialogue is different from a debate, and a dialogue is what I'm prepared to host.) That post has received upward of 250 comments, so there was certainly some sort of exchange going on. But, did we manage to have something…

The Irrationality of the Health Insurance Market

One of the arguments for keeping private insurers in the healthcare system is that they will incentives to control costs. In Massachusetts, erm, not so much. First, some background: Call it the best-kept secret in Massachusetts medicine: Health insurance companies pay a handful of hospitals far more for the same work even when there is no evidence that the higher-priced care produces healthier patients. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true: Massachusetts General Hospital, for example, earns 15 percent more than Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for treating heart-failure patients even…

Thoughts on Beinart's "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment"

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't usually something I discuss here, but Peter Beinart's surprisingly on-target NY Review of Books essay, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" is an incredibly accurate description of the self-appointed American Jewish 'leadership' and their supposed followers. Beinart on non-Orthodox Jewish college students: Most of the students, in other words, were liberals, broadly defined. They had imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish political culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human…

Medical devices are safe (from lawsuits)

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that if the FDA approves a drug, it doesn't mean you don't have to keep the labeling up to date if you should warn people. So that settles one question about FDA approval. The FDA put its stamp of approval on the drug Vioxx, too, but approved or not, Vioxx was not OK. Some unfortunate people traded their arthritis pain for a heart attack. Not a good trade. So the maker of Vioxx got sued. When the regulatory agencies don't do their job, that's about the only remedy left. More important, it is the only way to change the behavior of companies whose negligence…

What's With the No-Knead Bread Thing?

Just about every sustainability magazine on the planet, much less the food ones seems obsessed with no-knead breads. No-knead is trumpeted by everyone on the planet as the easy, awesome way to make bread, the thing that will convert non-bread makers into converts. Now don't get me wrong - I don't really have a dog in this hunt - I'm certainly not opposed to no-knead, but I don't see it as the miracle that some do. I've had some utterly delicious no-knead breads. I don't think they are bad - Kate at Living the Frugal Life demonstrated a lovely recipe that I've enjoyed a number of times. I…