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We spot faces looking at us faster than we see the parts of those faces

We can quickly spot a face staring at us in a crowd. We can do this much quicker, for example, than we can determine that no one is staring at us, as this movie demonstrates. A grid of 100 pictures of Greta will be flashed for about 1/3 of a second. Can you spot the photos where she's looking at you? You'll see two different grids. Most people are able to detect the staring faces much faster than those looking to the side. But we can also sometimes be fooled by faces, something we discussed on one of the first-ever CogDaily posts: In this picture, the eyes for each face are exactly the…

Do our feet deceive us more than our eyes do?

Researchers have known for some time that people are surprisingly accurate at visually judging distances to objects as far as 25 meters away. If you're allowed to briefly look at an object up to that distance away, then blindfolded, you'll walk right up to it with great precision. If you walk halfway, you can throw a ball the remaining distance, again, quite accurately. But in 2000 Marla Bigel and Colin Ellard attempted a simple replication of the study: instead of viewing the object, volunteers were led blindfolded to the object and back, and asked to walk back to the object again. Now,…

Re-reading The Relic

There were a lot of books I had intended to read that I didn't get to this summer. Between work, a summer class, and my own writing projects, I didn't have the time to sit down and hastily devour books like I did last year or the year before. Many of the books on my list were technical volumes, like Fins Into Limbs and Gaining Ground: The Origin and Early Evolution of Tetrapods, but there were a few fiction titles, too. One of them was The Relic by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and I decided to pick it up again even though the traditional season for it is long gone. I first picked up…

Poststroke Laughing and Crying

The Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience (Canadian, bilingual), an open-access publication, has a regular column entitled Psychopharmacology for the Clinician (Psychopharmacologie pratique).   Typically the column contains a case report and a brief discussion of practical issues in treatment. The most recent (September 2007) issue describes a case of poststroke pathological laughing and crying (PLC).  PLC is a mysterious condition, something that is impossible to explain using behavioral or psychodynamic theory.   After a stroke, 7 to 48 percent of patients experience disinhibition of…

Army: More Mental Health Professionals Wanted

I suppose this is good, although it is too little too late.  It would be a lot better to prevent these casualties in the first place. href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070615/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_mental_health;_ylt=AkK1R.ayIAt68x7AdfLqKR.s0NUE">Army plans to hire more psychiatrists PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Overwhelmed by the number of soldiers returning from war with mental problems, the Army is planning to hire at least 25 percent more psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. A contract finalized this week but not yet announced calls…

Three generations of imbeciles are enough

I should have discussed the image that I included in yesterday's post about eugenics. Believe it or not, the scale that is illustrated in that image - with "moron" at the top and "idiot" at the bottom - was used by physicians to aid their diagnoses. Whether one was a moron, an imbecile (of high-, medium- or low-grade!) or an idiot depended upon one's intelligence quotient (IQ), which was determined using the standardized test that was administered widely in the U.S. following its introduction in the early 20th century. Anyone who scored an IQ of 70 or lower was considered to be "feeble-minded…

The hidden protractable jaw of the moray eel

Scanning electron micrograph of the moray eel's secondary jaw, with highly recurved teeth. Scale bar= 500 micrometres. (Rita Mehta/ Nature)  In today's issue of Nature, evolutionary biologists from the University of California, Davis report that the moray eel (Muraena retifera) has a protractable jaw that it uses to grasp and swallow prey, in a manner that is reminiscent of the creatures in the Alien films.  Most bony fish feed by a suction mechanism. The suction-feeding abilities of morays are limited, so until now it was not known how they could swallow the large fish and…

Gaily frolicking squid

Some species of cephalopods are incapable of concealing their sexual history. The males produce packets of sperm called spermatangia that they grasp with a specialized arm that they then reach out and splat, poke into their mate. In Octopoteuthis deletron, a deep-sea squid, these spermatangia are large, pale, and distinctive, so every time a squid is mated it's left with a little white dangling flag marking it — so sex is like a combination of tag and paintball. The males are loaded with ammo — 1646 were counted in the reproductive tract of one male — and the spermatangia can be counted…

Medieval gadget freaks of Britain rejoice!

It looks like the British Museum has a good chance of keeping this medieval brass astrolabe quadrant on public display in the UK. The export license for the device has been delayed until June, giving the BM a chance to raise its 350,000-pound selling price - which should please retrotechnophiles and Chaucerians alike. The astrolabe originated with the Greeks, but was popularized by Islamic astronomers and became widely used across Europe. The British Museum already has several, like this pretty one I saw last summer: Brass astrolabe with silver inlay, 1712 British Museum So why do they need…

AAAS Update: Drunks with Lamp-Posts

Well, the 2008 AAAS Annual Meeting here in Boston was fun! I didn't expect that. I'm not a huge fan of scientific conferences because I have an extremely short attention span. And I haven't been blogging a lot - I'd rather just enjoy the frenzy. I've been averaging 4.5 hours of sleep a night, to the dismay of my roomies! But Discover has been blogging regularly, as have some of the Sciblings. Saturday's highlight should have been the appearance by representatives of the Obama and Clinton campaigns, who spoke on the candidates' scientific policy positions. Sheril already summarized (update:…

The NIH Finds an Unlikely Ally: Newt Gingrich

A little while ago I was "tagged" by Orac of Respectful Insolence in the "How to Fix the NIH" meme. The rules to the meme were a bit laborious, and I'm not going to be so mean as to tag more innocent bloggers with the ponderous task of thinking about grants and funding institutions when it isn't expressly necessary. So, I guess technically I cheating, but oh well. As how to fix the NIH, well, I really don't know. I've blogged about the NIH before (specifically as to the abysmal funding situation for new scientists) but I think that song and dance has gotten a little tired. And there's the…

Coulter: Open Mouth, Insert Foot

That vile woman just doesn't know when to quit. A lot of mudslinging is tolerated in political banter, but you really have to have some god-awful dirty mud when even your own party denounces you as the bigoted banshee you are. For those of you who aren't familiar with her most recent foray into stupidity, here's what she said about Democratic candidate John Edwards during a speech at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference. "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards," Coulter said, "but it turns out you have to go into rehab…

Juxtaposition: Red line crashes in DC

Red Line crash, June 22, 2009, between Takoma Park and Fort Totten stations Photo from Fox5 News, via DCist As many of you already know, DC's Red Line suffered a fatal crash this evening during rush hour. One train had stopped. A second train behind it failed to stop, overtook the first train, and ran up on top of it, shearing off the front end of the first car and crushing the last car of the first train underneath. It is still totally unclear how or why this happened. The second train's driver is deceased, as are at least five others (the situation is being updated as I write this). About…

Henry Miller about FDA Over-regulation

Dr. Henry Miller, writing in TCS, argues that the FDA has over-reacted to problems with drug safety by excessive regulation: In spite of increasingly more powerful and precise technologies for drug discovery, purification and production, during the past twenty years development costs have skyrocketed. The trends are ominous: The length of clinical testing for the average drug is increasing, fewer drugs are being approved, and the number of applications to FDA by industry for marketing approval has been decreasing for more than a decade. In January, the FDA announced new initiatives directed…

Presynaptic Vesicles are Hemifused

There has always been a bit of a debate as to whether the vesicles in the presynaptic nerve terminal that contain transmitter are just near the presynaptic membrane or are in fact hemifused with it. At the presynapse, vesicles containing neurotransmitter are prepared and aligned by the presynaptic membrane -- the process of synaptic release needs to be very rapid. When an action potential travels down the axon, calcium flows into the presynaptic terminal. This calcium activates SNARE proteins that are involved both in docking the vesicles near the membrane and fusing them with the membrane…

Richard Tol takes issue with the Stern Report

I know this is kind of old news, but some people have taken issue with the Stern Report -- a report about the economic consequences of global warming. Some of the people taking issue are those who are still skeptical that global warming is real. But some who are taking issue question the validity of Mr. Stern's numbers -- that they may be overestimating the economic impact. One of the second group is economist Richard Tol who issued a critique of the report (available via Prometheus): The Stern Review does not, in fact, present a formal cost-benefit analysis. Instead, it compares the…

Mutating meme

Finally, I've been tagged by Pharyngula's mutating genres meme. I haven't done a meme since moving to scienceblogs, and now I've been tagged with a sciencey one (sort of). I don't know why I am so excited, but I am! Thanks Addy N. If you want to read the latest mutation, go below the fold. First, the rules: There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations: * You can leave them exactly as is…

What can artists learn from scientists about public communication?

Christopher Reiger has a great post at Hungry Hyaena about public communication strategies used by scientific advocacy groups, and where artists should adopt similar strategies: Most Americans see science as extraneous esoterica crafted by white-coated wonks. Similarly, contemporary art is seen as the province of effete Onanists devoid of "family values." But the respective responses of the two realms to these ugly public perceptions is critically different. The scientific community has confronted the issue head-on, spilling ink, hosting panel discussions, and building programs. Whether or…

Thanks for the Tip Mr. Google

Google co-founder Larry Page has some pearls of wisdom for scientists: get off your lazy bums and do something. Scientists need more entrepreneurial drive and could benefit by doing more to promote solutions to big human problems, Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page told a meeting of academic researchers. "There are lots of people who specialize in marketing, but as far as I can tell, none of them work for you," Page told researchers at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science late on Friday. "Let's talk about solving some worldwide problems. Let's get…

3D Medical Records

Usually when we think of href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_medical_record">electronic medical records (EMR) as being three-dimensional, we think of the relational aspect of databases.  Researchers at IBM, however, are testing a different concept. The idea is to have a rendered 3D representation of the anatomy of the patient, and to use that as a basis for the record.  This is reported in IEEE Spectrum. href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/jan08/5854">Visualizing Electronic Health Records With "Google-Earth for the Body" By  Robert N. Charette January 2008 href="http…

Another Caution About Natural Product

Regular readers know I am not globally opposed to the use of various natural products.  Even so, I do, from time to time, point out why we need to be cautious about some herbal or alternative medicine products.  A good case in point was reported recently, pertaining to breast enlargement in young boys.  (Not Self-Portrait) href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/356/5/479">Prepubertal Gynecomastia Linked to Lavender and Tea Tree Oils Derek V. Henley, Ph.D., Natasha Lipson, M.D., Kenneth S. Korach, Ph.D., and Clifford A. Bloch, M.D. NEJM 356:479-485 February 1, 2007 SUMMARY…

General's Advice: US Needs Sexual Literacy

Two former US Surgeons General have announced that the United States has unacceptable levels of title="sexually transmitted diseases">STDs and that abstinence-only education has not helped. Note that the Presidents " href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/achievement/chap14.html">Record of Achievement" boasts: A new abstinence initiative will double the funding for abstinence-only education; develop model abstinence-only education curricula; review all Federal programming for youth addressing teen pregnancy prevention, family planning, and STD and HIV/AIDS prevention, to ensure…

The Stimulus & the NIH - what not to do

If you have happened to browse DrugMonkey, you'll have noticed a discussion about how the NIH should spend its share of the stimulus package (~$10 billion). (For more info click here.) Unfortunately the plan, according to the NIH statement is the same usual BS - all quick fixes and no forethought about how to use this opportunity to repair some endemic problems with how we train our academic scientists. But within the cloudy depths of the comment section of DrugMonkey's PhysioProf's post, fellow Scibling Abel Pharmboy raises a key point: In general, I'm very concerned that the pressure to…

What I taught yesterday: master genes and maps

My students are also blogging here: My undergrad encounters Developmental Biology Miles' Devo Blog Tavis Grorud’s Blog for Developmental Biology Thang’s Blog Heidi’s blog for Developmental Biology Chelsae blog Stacy’s Strange World of Developmental Biology Thoughts of Developmental Biology Biology~ On Wednesdays, I try to break away from the lecture format and prompt the students to talk about the science of development. We're working our way through Sean Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and yesterday we talked about chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 has an overview…

Foreign Postdocs and Wages

(disclaimer: I am a foreign postdoc) Did any of you read this from the latest issue of Science: Huddled Masses on foreign postdocs? A recent paper by Harvard economist George J. Borjas shows, however, that even for doctorate-level researchers, "the supply-demand textbook model is correct after all." Unlike most economic analysts, Borjas focused not on what foreign-born scientists add to the scientific enterprise or society as a whole but on what their presence costs individual American scientists. For postdocs and other early-career Ph.D.s in a number of fields, unfortunately, the picture he…

Elbow Deep in Whale Poop!

Researchers at the New England Aquarium have stepped into a totally new method of studying Atlantic's threatened population of right whales - collecting and analyzing floating feces to test the population's health! I didn't know whales ate corn! Right whales got their name because they were the "right" whale to catch during whaling's hey day, when exterminating an entire species was jolly good form. Despite rigorous efforts to protect them against whaling interests, including Japanese "research" vessels, right whale populations have not increased noticeably in the last 65 years. In…

The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World

We don't like posts that simply link to other sites because we want you to hang out here. We picture you sitting at home in a bathrobe, drinking coffee, wearing bunny slippers and chortling with an English accent as you peruse Zooillogix. Sometimes we have to make exceptions though... This article in Cracked is crude, profanity laced, unscientific and utterly hilarious. Check it out here. For those of you too lazy to click your mouse on the link, we have reposted one of the five below. There are about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects on earth at any given moment. Seriously, that's a real…

Argumentation: FAIL.

One of the big things philosopher-types like to do with their students is work on extracting arguments from a piece of text and reconstructing them. This can be useful in locating sources of disagreement, whether they be specific premises or inferences. But some chunks of text that seem like they ought to have arguments that can be extracted and reconstructed end up being ... opaque. For example, this question and answer between Katie Couric and Sarah Palin (transcript by way of Shakesville): Couric [on tape]: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class…

Friday Sprog Blogging: the mind-body-self question.

A bath-time conversation: Younger offspring: The water is pretty warm. Dr. Free-Ride: Is it too hot? I could add some more cold water. Younger offspring: No, it's good. I'm just going to ooze in, like a snail oozing into its shell. Dr. Free-Ride: Because easing in would be too conventional. Five minutes later, the younger Free-Ride offspring had still not quite achieved submersion in the bath. Dr. Free-Ride: You know, if you're going to finish getting bathed tonight -- in time for bedtime stories -- you're going to have to move it along. Either "ooze" all the way in now, or let me add some…

Random bullets of "AAAAARGH!!"

I would like to rejoice that it is Friday. And yet, as the end of the semester draws nigh, the press of Tasks That Cannot Be Deferred Any Longer is sucking a good bit of the Friday-ness out of this Friday. So, I suppose this post is the cyber-equivalent of an itemized primal scream: When the review sheet for a final exam has, at the bottom, in letters that are bolded, a clear statement of the day, date, and time of the final exam, what should I make of the fact that students have been emailing me to ask for the day, date, and time of the final exam? (By the way, this same information is…

Reeling from today's news.

Today was fully scheduled for me. Prepping for class, participating in a phone interview, teaching, midday meeting with my department chair and a dean to discuss developing an ethics module for an intro class in another department, more teaching, power-photocopying for this week's Socrates Cafe, then a dash to the car to get the sprogs in time for elder offspring's soccer practice. It wasn't until about 20 minutes into my drive home that I heard the news about the shootings at Virginia Tech. I'm still having trouble getting words to really wrap themselves around the immediate feeling of…

The Chopra Delusion

Can I possibly bear another bucket of gobbledygook from Deepak Chopra? One must soldier on, I suppose, even as Chopra becomes even more vague. I'm going to keep it short, though. Dawkins, along with other arch materialists, dismiss such a search [for "god"]. Are information fields real, as some theorists believe? Such a field might preserve information the way energy fields preserve energy; in fact, the entire universe may be based upon the evolution of information. (there's not the slightest doubt that the universe has an invisible source outside space and time.) A field that can create…

Lobster vs. Sea Hare

Ah, Aplysia. Also known as the sea hare, Aplysia is a common preparation used in neurobiology labs; it's a good sized beastie with the interesting defense mechanism of spewing out clouds of mucusy slime and purple ink when agitated. I well remember coming into the physiology lab in the morning to find a big bucket full of squirming muscular slugs in a pool of vivid purple goo. And then I'd reach in to grab one, and they were all velvety soft and undulating and engulfing my whole arm in this thick, slick, wet, slippery knot of rippling smooth muscle… Ahem. Well. Let me compose myself for a…

Thrust Fault

The law of superimposition says that stuff found on top is younger than stuff found lower down, in a geological or archaeological column. This is generally true, but there are exceptions, mostly trivial and easily understood. If a cave forms in a rock formation, the stuff that later ends up in that cave is younger in depositional age than the rock underneath which it rests (the rock in the roof of the cave, and above). One of the coolest examples of what seems to be (but really is not) a violation of this Law of Geology is a thrust fault. A thrust fault is essentially a horizontal fault (…

Resolution of the Tripoli Six story

I've been a bit remiss about reporting an update on the Tripoli Six, six foreign health care workers who were falsely accused of intentionally infecting children at a hospital in Libya with HIV, leading to their being convicted and sentenced to death. The evidence against them was crap, and scientific analyses showed that the strain of HIV in question had been in the hospital before the arrival of the Tripoli Six. After a lot of international wrangling between Bulgaria, the EU, and Libya involving diplomacy and more than a bit of money, the Tripoli Six are free. The arrangement involved the…

Paul Offit responds to denialism.com

As a result of my e-mailing the link to a mailing list I belong to asking members whether they thought it was outside the pale, Dr. Offit became aware of Mark's blog post about denialism in the Wall Street Journal editorial page that I castigated for its casually lumping Paul Offit's editorial on the Michael Moore movie Sicko in as an example of how the WSJ editorial page was a "clearinghouse for denialism." Moreover, Dr. Offit actually responded. I suggested that he post his response to Mark's blog as a comment, but instead he gave me his permission to post his e-mailed response on my blog,…

Maybe there's hope for common sense about free speech in Europe after all

Back in October, I wrote about an appalling case in Germany, in which a German anti-Nazi activist named Juergen Kamm was fined â¬3,600 for selling left-wing garb adorned with modified Swastikas designed to mock neo-Nazis because he ran afoul of a law in Germany that forbids the use of Nazi symbols, regardless of context. It turns out that the appeal recently went to trial, and the ruling demonstrated a degree of common sense that we seldom see coming from the European Union lately, as reported in the Telegraph: Anti-nazi groups in Germany yesterday won the right to display the swastika after…

Killing comic book characters for Jesus

The pop culture hysteria is getting ridiculous. The movie 300, based on a graphic novel treatment of the sacrifice of the Spartans in the battle of Thermopylae, has become a political palimpsest with everyone trying to find support for their agenda in it—but get serious, it's a comic book on the big screen. Similarly, a few have tried to see omens in the death of comic book hero Captain America recently. Again, it's a comic book — superheroes die all the time, and they bounce back like Jesus or get replaced by someone else willing to look ridiculous in public wearing garish Spandex. For the…

X + Y = WHAT???

That depends ... on what X and Y are! And if that does not come naturally to you, perhaps you should read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pre-Algebra by Amy Szczepanski and Andrew Kositsky. The CIG to PA is built just like the other books in the Idiot's series, using familiar conventions to keep the flow of the book smooth while providing additional ancillary information, and in the case of this text, practice problems (answers provided in the back). This book reminds me of a tired old reference I've got on my shelf called Technical Mathematics. Sometimes you just need a place to look up…

Plant Taxonomists, Statisticians, Reform Jews give Thumbs Up to Evolution.

The chorus of support for the teaching of evolution continues, with three statements from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the American Statistical Association, and the Union for Reform Judaism. In its statement, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists endorses "the use of evolution in the scholarship of its members and supports teaching this theory in schools, colleges and universities," adding, "As educators, we believe that evolution is an essential component of science education. In the absence of an evolutionary context, our understanding of the origin and complexity of the…

Creationist College Prof Will Not Return to Classroom

An adjunct community college professor had a bit of a problem when it came time to teach evolution, according to certain sources: Student Bryan Jaden Walker wrote on his blog, ... that the professor "glossed over the scientific explanation very quickly (less than 20 seconds), then explained Creationism for about five minutes (5,000-year-old Earth, no evolution, etc)." ... "Evolution was not taught at all in his class," Weis said. "When he hit that unit, instead of discussing it himself he had a single slide that had both creationism and evolution. When I spoke up and asked him about it, he…

Anti-vaccination foolishness in Minnesota

I got a request to spread the word around Minnesota—the anti-vaxers are gearing up again to push a silly bill in the Minnesota congress. I've put the letter below. If any of these people are your representatives, contact them and tell them they are being very, very silly. There's supposed to be a hearing next week on a bill that would limit the use of vaccines containing thimerosal, because of the belief that they may cause autism. This is the third year that this bill has been presented, and it keeps failing, but they keep bringing it back up, even though it's clearer now than ever that…

Outbreaks of H5N1 Bird Virus Infection in Wild Birds in time and space: Temperature matters (with cool video)

It has long been thought that there are linkages between certain viruses and the weather. The flu season is winter (in whichever hemisphere it happens to be winter in) for reasons having to do with the seasons. One early theory posited that the practices of East Asian farmers, as they tended their animals, caused waterfowl and swine and humans to share space closely enough that nasty new influenzas would emerge and spread around the world. Although that explanation for the annual seasonal flu has been dropped (if it ever really had wings... or hooves, or whatever) it is still possible…

Giardia: Protozoan of never ending wonders

... well, OK, maybe that is a slight exaggeration. You know about giardia. Giardia intestinalis. It causes a nasty gut infection, and you get it by drinking water pretty much anywhere in the US (potentially). It is very hard to get rid of. Giardia adapt to immune system attacks (of their host) in a way that passes that adaptation down to their offspring without genes. It is a Lamarkian process. Giardia have no mitochondria, yet many of the genes known to be in mitochondria in eukaryotes are found in the giardian nucleus. So, ancestral giardia probably had mitochondria, but all those…

Madagascar Reptiles In Trouble

From the Wildlife Conservation Society: Unless major conservation measure are enacted, Madagascar's turtles and tortoises will continue to crawl steadily toward extinction, according to a recent assessment by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups. With their habitat shrinking and illegal hunting worsening, these reptiles now rank among the most endangered on Earth. The groups, which met for four days in Madagascar's capital city Antananarivo, said there is still hope to save these ancient animals, but time is running out. Five of the nine assessed species have been…

Fun with a clueless Daylight Saving Time rant

Today is the Monday after Daylight Saving Time started. I always hate this day. Getting to work on time is always that much more difficult, and I always feel a bit run down for the few days afterward until my body adjusts. This time of year also predictably produces idiotic screeds about Daylight Saving Time, for instance, this one by someone named Chip Wood entitled Who's The Idiot Who Foisted Daylight Saving Time On Us? While I can sympathize with the sentiment, the actual rant is a heapin' helpin' of burning stupid: It all began back in the dark days of the Great Depression, I'm told. The…

I may be late to this party, but I want my big Monsanto check anyway

I was going to join PZ Myers, ERV, and Pamela Ronald in helping out an old blogging friend and former host of the Skeptics' Circle, Karl Mogel of The Inoculated Mind by pimping his other science-based blog Biofortified, which seeks to provide a science- and evidence-based discussion of plant genetics and genetic engineering. Unfortunately, as seems to be the case lately, other things have distracted me, and I'm late to the party. Better late than never, though. Basically, Biofortified is in the Ashoka Changemakers contest, GMO Risk or Rescue. First prize is a $1500 grant and a conversation…

Lott's response on the Federalist Society Debate

Lott has a response to my post about his libel of John Donohue. He writes: 2) Unfortunately, the second planned debate was also cancelled. The debate was rescheduled for April 13th this year, and I made sure to reconfirm it because of the previous cancelation. The student at Chicago who set up the debate said that even though he had confirmed the debate with me multiple times and even though we had taken a date that I was told that Donohue wanted, the claim is that the debate somehow hadn't been completely confirmed with Donohue. Compare that with what the student told Lott: If there is…

Iain Murray paints himself into a corner

Via Chris Brook and Anthony Cox, I find that Melanie Philips took the same combination of ignorance of science and utter certainty that the scientists are wrong that she used to "prove" that global warming was a scam and conducted a grossly irresponsible scare campaign against vaccination. On this issue, for once, Tech Central Station is on the side of the angels, with several articles debunking the scare.\* My favourite one is by Iain Murray, who writes: [A Cardiff University report] examined the public's understanding of the issues surrounding the MMR vaccine, which has been…

David Irving to be released

It's about time: An Austrian appeals court has ruled that UK historian David Irving - jailed for denying the Holocaust - should be released on probation. Irving is now being held in police detention and will be deported to the UK on Thursday, officials said. Irving was convicted in February in a case that sparked international debate about the limits of freedom of speech. In 1989 he spoke in Austria denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, though he later said he was "mistaken". The appeals court in Vienna had heard calls for both a reduction and increase in his sentence. Irving on…