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Ask a ScienceBlogger: Time and Money

Weirdly, this week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question may be the hardest one to answer yet: Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why? Most of the responses have taken this as an "If you had it to do over, what sort of scientist would you be?", and that's the source of the problem. It's not that the question itself is all that difficult-- I actually have a stock answer for that. The problem is that I don't really like the premise of the question (he says cryptically, promising to explain…

I Got Your Winning NCAA Bracket Right Here

So RPM thinks he's all clever, with the Double Entendre Fridays-- he's not the only one who can game search engine traffic... If you're one of those philistines who doesn't like basketball go revel in nostalgia ("Cow... yup, yup yup.."), because we're all about the hoops this morning. It's that time of year again, when everybody rushes to fll out their brackets for the NCAA Tournament office pools, and we here at Chateau Steelypips are no exception: Of course, the Subject: line aside, I never win these things, because I always pick the teams I root for to go far-- I figure, why put my…

Top Eleven: Isaac Newton

Third in the Top Eleven is Sir Isaac Newton, who squeaks in with two nominations for two different experiments. Who: Isaac Newton (1642-1727), famous English physicist, mathematician, alchemist, Master of the Mint, and Neal Stephenson character. When: Newton was secretive and reluctant to publish anything, so it's sort of hard to assign dates. I'm going with "About 1700." What: Newton pretty much kicked off modern science, so you could go on for a long time about his various accomplishments, but he was cited for two specific experiments: splitting white light with a prism, and measuring the…

Equality

The question, which is the better man, is determinable only in the estate of government and policy, though it be mistaken for a question of nature, not only by ignorant men, that think one man's blood better than another's by nature; but also by him, whose opinions are at this day, and in these parts of greater authority than any other human writings (Aristotle). For he putteth so much difference between the powers of men by nature, that he doubteth not to set down, as the ground of all his politics, that some men are by nature worthy to govern, and others by nature ought to serve. Which…

What to do with the IPCC

So, I didn't like the IAC prescription for the IPCC. So I need my own. And I forgot that I already had one. PK said it well in the comments: How many IPCC reports does it take to screw in a light bulb? The bureaucratic solution for inefficient bureaucracy always seems to be more bureaucracy. If the purpose of the IPCC is to inform governments on climate change and its possible impacts, the job is pretty much done. If the purpose is to provide a rationale for global taxation and control of CO2, we'll be arguing over the results of AR15. but it bears repeating and expanding. No number of IPCC…

Blogroll Amnesty Day

Both Jon Swift and Skippy are spearheading a regular event, Blogroll Amnesty Day, in which we recognize and acknowledge the breadth and depth of blogtopia (yes, we all know who coined that term!). It's today! You are encouraged to scout out new blogs, get out of old ruts, and explore new or otherwise unfamiliar blogs, add them to your bookmarks, or if you have a blog yourself, add them to your blogroll. It feels strange to admit this, but Pharyngula seems to have somehow become a moderately big fish in the blogosphere — it was, once upon a time, just a little frivolous exercise I was running…

They have a real talent there

Has anyone else noticed that you often only need to read the first sentence of anything written at Uncommon Descent to see them screw up royally? Especially, lately, if the author is Denyse O'Leary. Take this, for example. Textbooks often don't discuss extinction — the death of all members of a species — in any detail. That's news to me. I opened up my intro biology text, which is more a philosophy and history of biology book, and found 23 pages dedicated to discussing extinctions. It's been my experience that most textbooks will mention at least the Permian and K/T extinctions; they'll…

097/366: Long Live the Queen

SteelyKid's taekwondo competition was the most time-consuming event of yesterday, but not the most stressful. Before we went down to Duanesburg for the tournament, Emmy gave us a bit of a scare. Emmy is not by any stretch a young dog-- she was a year old when we got her in 2003, so she's 13-- but she's pretty spry. Over the last few weeks, though, she slowed down very dramatically. Initially, I didn't think much of it-- she was unenthusiastic about eating her kibble, but that happens a lot when we get near the end of a bag, and she kept eating treats. And she was moving slowly and stiffly on…

The Day Apollo 13 Crashed Into The Earth. Or Something.

I once knew a young woman who was in high school and shall remain nameless. One day I picked her up at school to drive her home, and asked how she was doing. "Depressed, actually," she said. "Why, did something go wrong at school?" "Kinda," she replied. "The social studies teacher was out today." "That's terrible, he must be a great teacher and stuff." "No, he's average. But whenever they can't find a substitute the always show the same movie, and we watched it again today." "That's depressing, watching the same movie over and over." "No it's not if it is a good move. The movie itself is…

West Virginia Democratic Primary UPDATED

I'll combine my post predicting the outcome of today's Democratic Primary in West Virginia, and my post giving and discussing the results, here. My prediction is on this table, on the left side of the line, and the actual results on the right side, for the last several primaries. Every state is special, and some are more special than others. West Virginia has 29 pledged delegates, but not all of them were assigned today. I assume they will be assigned later. Thus, the slight difference in numbers between what I predicted and what happened. A key message here is this. Clinton and Sanders…

Weekend Diversion: The Dreams of a Hero

"Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky." -Valentina Tereshkova We all have our heroes. Many of them meet with tragedy, and get eulogized in song. This week, I present to you a wonderful, bluegrass cover by Keller and the Keels of Pink Floyd's classic, Another Brick In The Wall.But some heroes live on, and continue to share their ever-growing and evolving dreams with us. Many of you may recognize this hero as Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman ever in space! (Also, she's the answer to #3 on my human…

An Update on the Arctic Sea Ice

As we pass through Spring on the way to summer, the sea ice in the Arctic is starting to melt. The ice usually peaks by the end of the first week in March or so, then slowly declines for a few weeks, then by about mid-May is heading rapidly towards its likely September minimum. With global warming the ice has been reaching a lower winter maximum, and a much lower summer maximum. This is caused by warm air and water, and it contributes to global warming. The more ice on the sea for longer, during the northern Summer, reflects away a certain amount of sunlight. With less ice, less sunlight is…

Is Turkey Hacking Trump?

Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald (author of Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story, Serpent on the Rock, and a few other books) is reporting an interesting story this morning. Here is the short version, as I understand it. Turkey had a coup. The Turkish government, in particular, President Erdogan, blames naturalized US citizen Fethullah Gülen for that coup, and wants him extradited. The US won't do that. President Erdogan and Presumed President Elect Trump had a conversation soon after the election, in which Trump mentioned a key player in the development of the Turkish version of Trump Towers. We…

Reductionism in Art and Science

In the old days, the words "art" and "science" did not mean the same thing they mean today, at least in academia. Today, unfortunately, they have almost come to mean opposites. You can't be doing both at once. Or, at least, that's what people who haven't thought about it much may think. Art can be used to engage people in science, and science can provide a subject for art, and in various ways, the twain shall meet. But in Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures, Erik Kandel does something both more extreme and more specific than simply joining the two endeavors.…

Let me introduce you to my little friend ...

The ePaper Kindle is back in my life. I started out with one (the original model), then moved on to using tablets and phones and computers and stuff to read ebooks. Then, I got a Kindle Fire (see this discussion), and that was nice. But I wanted an ePaper reading surface for all the reasons people tend to discuss. It is more like paper, perhaps does not have the down sides of constantly staring at a light emitting screen, etc. There is an ePaper kindle that is under $80 (with the non obtrusive special offers on the sleep screen) that has very long battery time, holds a gazillion books,…

Brokeback bigotry

I'm stretched out in my easy chair getting ready to watch the Oscars this evening, when this horrid 'news' profile about Brokeback Mountain and middle America comes on. I found it offensive: they seem to have sought out the most narrow-minded representatives of this part of the country—your stereotypical Christian bigot, a clutch of white-haired geezers—who hadn't seen the movie, who rejected it out of hand, who claimed Hollywood didn't understand farmers, who thought a good movie was that treacly crap, The Sound of Music. If there is anyone who doesn't understand this part of the world, it's…

Looking Inside at Baby Stars!

Before you were conceived I wanted you Before you were born I loved you Before you were here an hour I would die for you This is the miracle of love. -Maureen Hawkins But I'm not talking about human children, I'm talking about the children of the stars. Stars burn their fuel until they no longer can, and then die in one of two impressive ways, depending on how massive they are. If a star is up to around four times as massive as our Sun, it dies by collapsing down to a white dwarf and blowing off its outer layers into a planetary nebula. On the other hand, if your star is very massive -- like…

Are we not good enough for Darwin?

Yesterday, I read something in international news that made me so mad I needed to share it with you: That's right; my home country, the United States, will not distribute this film. There was no problem for the movie Expelled, a poorly argued anti-evolution flop that grossed just $7,598,071 despite appearing on more than 1,000 screens. And this new biopic, Creation, is much more about Darwin's life and personal struggles (which were real, by the way) than it is about evolution. I have no information about the quality of this movie other than that reviews on the internet tell me it's pretty…

Weekend Diversion: Giving until it HURTS!

When I issued my Charity Challenge to you a few weeks ago, I had no right to expect the support that all of you have given me. So listen to Michael Chapman singing Memphis in Winter while I give you what you gave for: We have reached: 101 separate donations, at least $3,260 in new donations pledged, over 80 additional charity hours, and many great additional donations, such as food, clothing, shoes, diapers, medicine, and many other philanthropic offers! And so, as promised, you're getting what you paid for. Here's how I do it (and with all images, just click for the full size): Step 1:…

Can Dark Matter help Make Stars?

The Universe is full of stuff; both normal matter and dark matter are practically everywhere we look. But the Universe looks as interesting as it does because of what gravity does to it. It takes a Universe that starts out with almost the same exact temperature and density everywhere (the initial differences are one part in about 30,000) and turns it into a web of matter littered with galaxies and clusters of galaxies at the densest places. But one of the neatest things about this is that the Universe continues to evolve. We know how stars work, and we can tell when galaxies are forming…

On the Survival of Humanity

This is some very basic biology: when resources are unlimited and there are no pressures on a species, its population grows exponentially. There's also no evolution other than random mutations; without selection pressures (regardless of whether it's natural or artificial), the genetic information content of a species doesn't change appreciably. Biologists make use of this to perform tests on certain cells. If you simply put a population of cells in a petrie dish and left them there, they start out by doing this: They divide. They take over the dish. But then, they run out of room. And when…

Musgrave Stops Blogging

Paul Musgrave has decided to fold up his long-running blog and he is posting a final 15 long essays on subjects he feels strongly about. The first two, one on his hometown of Evansville and the other on the nature of patriotism, have been posted. They are well worth reading, if only to remind ourselves of what a loss it is for the blogging world that he will no longer be a part of it. Paul isn't a good writer, he's an extraordinary writer, as well as an uncommonly clear thinker. He's so good that reading him sometimes makes me feel bad that much of what I write is so pedestrian. Only…

Hey gang! Want to see something depressing?

Here's a representative slice of average Americana: Parade magazine. I don't read it, and I suspect most of you don't either, but we aren't average—we're freaky flaky outliers. If you want to see what ordinary Americans are thinking, though, it's a useful place to look. Right now they have a very short article on the creation museum with a pol that asks, "Do you believe dinosaurs could have existed alongside early humans?" About a third of the respondents currently answer "yes," which is actually quite a bit better than I feared. The real scary part is the comments, though, and there are a…

New Michigan Science Bill

We have a new bill here in Michigan that contains language that sounds very objective and unconnected to ID, but that will obviously pave the way for the introduction of ID (or at least common ID arguments) into science classrooms. HB 5606 apparently replaces HB 5251, which was introduced last year. While the previous bill specifically mentioned evolution and global warming as theories about which "critical thinking" should be required, the new bill does not mention any particular theories. Here is the relevant text: The course content expectations for science shall include using the…

StopTheACLU Daily Crap Report

I really should just start a daily column on the latest nonsense from the StopTheACLU folks. Here's their entry for today. The ACLU is receiving a TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR SETTLEMENT as compensation for suing the government over the way names get on the no fly list after two whiny little journalists were detained at San Francisco while checking in for a flight to boston. For those of you that wonder how the ACLU gets their slimy, traitorous hands on our hard earned tax dollars, here ya go; The government will compensate the ACLU for attorneys' fees, settling a lawsuit initiated by two San…

Judge Jones' Conclusion

The conclusion of the ruling is stunning in its clarity and pointedness: The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents. Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their…

College Basketball Game of the Year?

I know the season just started, but if there's a better game to be played than the one last night between Gonzaga and Michigan State, I can't wait to see it. If you missed it, you missed a triple overtime classic. It wasn't Duke-Kentucky in 92 great, but it was a small step below it. How about two teams playing their third game in 4 days, MSU doing it in what would literally be the middle of the night in their usual time zone, and hitting a combined 49 of 50 free throws in the second half? And serious basketball fans learned a lot from this game. A. This is not your typical Gonzaga team.…

Euthanasia in Katrina's Aftermath

There's been quite a bit of press attention on alleged euthanasia of terminally ill patients stuck in hospitals in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina came through. The Louisiana attorney general's office is investigating several possible instances of this. Crispin Sartwell has a compelling column on the subject that puts things in perspective. Long quote starts below the fold: But before we start prosecuting healers for making what must have been the most difficult decisions of their lives, we had better really try to imagine the circumstances they were in. The staff at Memorial had assumed…

Creationism in Indiana

The battle over creationism in public schools is heading for Indiana, as lawmakers there prepare to submit a bill to mandate the teaching of intelligent design there. And in the process, they're leaving behind all sorts of evidence of the essential equation of ID and creationism. The proposal comes a little more than a month after Bosma and a handful of other House members met privately with Carl Baugh, host of the Trinity Broadcasting Network show "Creationism in the 21st Century," to discuss bringing intelligent design to public schools. Baugh was in town as the guest of Zion Unity…

More on Behe's Testimony

Doug Theobald managed to correct the problems in a couple of the testimony transcripts we've had difficulties with and it showed some previously mangled text that is quite fascinating. There is this fascinating bit from the Day 12 PM transcript of Behe's cross-examination. The plaintiff's attorney questioned Behe about the testability of his claims about irreducibly complex systems. Behe has claimed that his IC claims are testable, all one has to do is show a step-by-step explanation of the development of those systems he deems to be IC. The attorney wondered why, if his ideas are testable,…

Jack Balkin, Stand Up Comic

Ladies and Gentlemen, are you ready for your headliner? You've seen him on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and on the HBO special of his sold out tour with Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds, The Barristers of Comedy. Please welcome, from Yale University, Professor Jack Balkin: Because the Federal Marriage Amendment seems not to have taken off, the Administration is offering this carefully worded substitute, the Protection of Democracy Amendment: Democracy in the United States shall consist only of the union of one Republican candidate and one Presidency. Neither this constitution or the…

Quick Note For The Weekend

"I have never gone out of fashion. And do you know why? Because I never sought it. When you don't seek it, it's always with you." -Bonnie Tyler Well folks, it's summer, and that means a lot of things for a lot of people, including for me! So, some fun announcements: I have an official pre-release poster! Image credit: Quarto Publishing. My new book, Treknology, is coming out soon and I'm big into preparing for that right now! The design is finalized, I should be getting my first preview copy this coming week, and I've just gotten my tickets to attend the official Star Trek convention in…

Comment on the Next Generation Science Standards

From the NCSE: The Next Generation Science Standards represent a tremendous opportunity to strengthen science education in the United States, but also a tremendous risk. Dozens of states have signed up to consider replacing their existing standards with these new ones. NGSS could revolutionize the US science curriculum, doing great good if they live up to their promise: if evolution and climate change are covered accurately, if they are integrated throughout the curriculum and across grade levels, if the nature of science is presented honestly and incorporated throughout the curriculum, and…

How to cook corn on the cob

It has been a while since we've done a recipe. And, it has been a while since we had a huge internet fight over something. Therefore, we will discuss: how to cook corn on the cob! First, you have to get some very fresh corn and do everything you can do to minimize the time from picking the corn to cooking the corn. Or, just go to the grocery store and get Genetically Modified Frankencorn. It will taste fine. Then, decide which basic method you want to use. You can steam it (I have no idea how to do that), you can roast it (which we will not cover here, but it is a great way to cook corn on…

Even Corpse Flowers have blogs nowadays!

Brian O'Brien of Gustavus Adolphus College has sent along an important message for those of you who like big flowers that stink of rotting meat—they've got one. In 1993 I obtained seeds of the plant Amorphophallus titanum (common names: Titan Arum; Corpse Flower) from Dr. James Symon, who had made a trip to Sumatra to collect seeds. The plant is considered to be endangered in the wild, and, at the time, was being dug up on a massive scale for use by a commercial concern for the manufacture of an exotic cosmetic formulation. Amorphophallus titanum is one of the great wonders of the living…

Explaining Republicans

There's been a lot of talk lately about what the Republican party and its members were up to this election year. Racial slurs and lynching chairs, being mean to recent immigrants, and voter suppression directed at minorities could hot have helped to get the non-white vote in line for last Tuesday's elections. A ramped up attack on women in general and their health care in particular could not have helped to get the none-male vote in line for last Tuesday's election. And, importantly, white males in large numbers are annoyed at attacks on women and minority, so the Republican approach could…

The Tijuana Bibles of Jack Chick

Along with that copy of Imprint that I was sent yesterday, someone at the Bell (Scott? Was that you?) slipped in a copy of … oh, it was horrifying … a comic book. Not just any comic book, though, a Crusader Comic, one of Jack Chick's line of full sized comic book style propaganda pamphlets (unlike the usual smaller sized tracts we usually see). This one was called "Primal Man?". Yikes. It's basically a colorized version of "Big Daddy?", only instead of an evilutionist college professor getting outsmarted by a wise Christian student, it's an evilutionist movie producer getting outsmarted by a…

How many cells are there in the human body?

The other day, Amanda, who is currently teaching AP Biology, noted that among the various sources she had at hand, including a couple of textbooks, the number of cells that make up human body seemed to range from about five trillion to fifty trillion with a scattering of numbers in between. It is not clear why this number matters but I suppose if we want to impress students with the smallness of cells and the complexity of life it is worth pointing out, and if it is worth pointing out it might be worth getting it right. So, how many are there? I believe the correct answer is in the upper…

Vesta

This is the picture of Vesta, which is an object in our solar system: That's the picture that Wikipedia uses as of this writing, and it was taken by the Hubble. The key thing to note is that Vesta, which lies in the asteroid belt and has been thought of as a big asteroid, is very globular like a planet. This is unusual for an asteroid. This is a picture of Vesta as conceptualized by NASA scientists. It is a model, not a photograph. Model of Vesta This image shows a model of the protoplanet Vesta, using scientists' best guess to date of what the surface of the protoplanet might look…

The Water is Rising

The amount of water available to produce floods is at a much higher than average level for Minnesota, including the Minnesota, Red, Mississippi and Saint Croix river drainages, not to mention smaller rivers and streams. As I write this personnel at the National Weather Service are dotting the i's and crossing the t's on watches and warnings for this area. The snow pack has been melting for a few days and continues to do so, and is actually doing it at a nice pace. The melting stops over night as it gets cold, and only slowly resumes until the warmest part of the day, then slows down again…

I and the Bird # 144: The Bird Vocalization Edition

Birders in every hemisphere spend this time of year preparing for the Great Migrations. It does not matter where you live, several species of birds are going arrive at your location, pass through, or simply come out of or flee to the woods or marshes as Spring or Fall approaches. This means it is time to brush up on your birdsong and vocalization knowledge because when the birds are en route or newly arrived they tend to hide and your best bet at identifying them is with the sounds they can't stop themselves from making. So, for this edition of the I and the Bird blog carnival, you will…

Sigfrid Steinberg: "Only Teach Such People To Read Who Will Like Good Books"

I've been reading a 1974 edition of Sigfrid Steinberg's 1955 classic Five Hundred Years Of Printing. Overall I've found it interesting and instructive, with a fine touch of sarcastic humour. But I came across a few paragraphs on the value of universal literacy that are so alien to me that I almost had to rub my eyes. Compulsory and free education on the elementary-school level was achieved, at least on paper, in most civilized countries in the course of the nineteenth century … At the same time … there is the basic question of the purpose of educating the masses. What use is the knowledge of…

WHOOOO!!!!! GMO HSV-1 vs Cancer

WHOOOOOOOO!!!! April 7, 2010: Using HSV-1 to cure metastatic melanoma May 26, 2015: Talimogene Laherparepvec Improves Durable Response Rate in Patients With Advanced Melanoma WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! They just published the results of Phase III clinical trials of a herpes simplex-1 genetically modified to kill cancers, specifically, advanced melanoma. The GMO virus has a name now: T-VEC. And instead of looking at 50 patients who all got the virus, this study was a group of 436 patients , randomly assigned 2:1 to a treatment (T-VEC) group, or GM-CSF only group (the immunostimulatory molecule…

Gene therapy for Hemophilia A

So what do you do after you use a genetically modified virus to treat-->functionally cure Hemophilia B? Why, use a genetically modified virus to treat-->hopefully functionally cure Hemophilia A, of course! Generation of an optimized lentiviral vector encoding a high-expression factor VIII transgene for gene therapy of hemophilia A Though they are both 'hemophilia', hemophilia A and B are different creatures.  Likewise, the way virologists are going about treating these two illnesses are different. Hemophilia B is when someone (usually a male) has mutations in their clotting Factor IX…

HERVs and disease and junk DNA

I love junk DNA. Well, thats an understatement-- I mean I love is SO MUCH I created a blog dedicated to a particular form of junk DNA, endogenous retroviruses. I love how we can learn fantastic things about organisms (and their diseases) from, basically, dumpster-diving though millions and millions of years of mistakes and accidents and chance and evolution. So its hard not to take it a touch personally that Creationists HATE junk DNA. They spend a lot of effort trying to make it not exist anymore (seems like a silly waste of time considering the fact epigenetic control of ERVs and…

Thursday Family Blogging 121511

We got a good group photo this week, showing everybody, with Appa for scale, even: Here, SteelyKid is opening a bag of small presents that Aunt Norma and Uncle Dan sent, while the Pip engages in the traditional five-week-old-infant pursuit of sleeping a whole lot. When she's not opening early Christmas gifts, SteelyKid too engages in traditional three-and-a-third-year-old pursuits, such as bouncing balls: And playing with great big cardboard boxes: The photo quality of that last one isn't great, because I was sternly ordered to put down the camera and help her by closing the box. We then…

The Advent Calendar of Physics: Working for a Living

Following the basic pattern established at the start of our seasonal countdown to Newton's birthday, today's equation defines a piece that was left hanging in yesterday's post: This is the technical definition of "work" in physics terms. It's also probably the scariest-looking equation to this point, as it explicitly involves vector calculus-- there's an integral sign, and a dot product. The basic concept is simple enough, though: you look at the force F exerted on an object, multiply it by the distance dr that the object moves under the influence of that force, and then add up the Fdr…

Revenge of the Morning People: What to Do with 8am Classes?

The Dean Dad asks a question on the minds of lots of faculty: how do you handle early-morning classes? Wise and worldly readers, have you had good experiences with 8 a.m. classes? Does anybody know of any useful empirical studies done at the college level of the effects of 8 a.m. classes? Is this basically solvable with caffeine and nagging, or are we shooting ourselves in the collective foot here? As I am emphatically not a morning person myself, I'm no fan of 8am classes either, but as Dean Dad notes, they're a necessary evil given the constraints of limited classroom space. I don't know…

Daniel Abraham and Bizarre Quirks of Publishing

A little while back, I bought The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. Abraham is the author of the highly-regarded but not all that highly sold Long Price Quartet. I've heard nothing but good things about this, but I couldn't get through the first book, for reasons that are entirely personal and no reflection on the quality of the book(*). Since this is the start of a new and unrelated series, I figured it was a good way to give him a shot, so I picked up the ebook. A little more recently, I picked up Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, a new space opera that's gotten some good reviews. "James…

Know When to Do Nothing

There was a lot of great basketball yesterday, but I want to talk quickly about one small thing at the end of the Kentucky-Princeton game, that I think is kind of the basketball equivalent of the oft-debated punt on fourth-and-short in the opponents' end in football. That is, it's the wrong play, but also the play that is dictated by conventional wisdom, so even people who ought to know better slip up. The situation was this: Princeton scored to tie the game with 37 second left. Kentucky couldn't quite hold for the last shot, so the Tigers were guaranteed a last possession with 2 seconds to…