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AVPR1A correlated with fidelity?

Over the years I've blogged a fair amount on the AVPR1A gene. Variation on this locus has been associated with differences altruism in humans and mating preferences in voles. Now a new paper is out in PNAS, at some point in the near future (not online, but will be here), which shows differences in martial behavior based on AVPR1A. From Study Links Gene Variant in Men to Marital Discord: About 40 percent of men have one or two copies of the allele. Walum, a PhD student, said that men with two copies of the allele had a greater risk of marital discord than men with one copy, and that men with…

Some More Thoughts About Unscientific America: What Are We Trying to Communicate?

One of the parts I liked about Unscientific America was the recognition that many scientists need to be trained in communication--and as importantly, this training requires funding, so universities have a financial incentive to reward scientific communication and outreach. Mooney and Kirshenbaum also think that non-profit organizations should and will play a critical role in communicating science: not only do we have to train people, we need to actually pay them to communicate. So that's all good (TEH RELIGIONISMZ!! AAAIIEEE!!!). One example of the non-profit model is Rick Weiss, who is an…

Why I Moved (Some of) My Money to a Community Bank

One of the infuriating things about the collapse of Big Shitpile is that there hasn't seemed to be much you or I can do about it (and that wanker Bernanke is useless). Until now. Move Your Money has developed a nice online tool to find local banks and credit unions. Recently, after using their tool, I moved much of my money to a local bank, Wainwright Bank. When I told them that I wanted to open a savings account, they started to tell me about ten dollar minimum deposits, as part of Wainwright's mission is to serve who often don't have access to banking services. Maybe it just was the…

Organized Crime and the Case for the Legalization of Pot

I've been meaning to get to this topic after it came up in Obama's 'online' press conference. For me, the argument in favor of legalization is that it would weaken organized crime and that legalization of other popular activities has done so in the past (more on that in a moment). Of course, for some reason, one can't discuss this without describing one's drug using history and beliefs, so here they are: I don't smoke pot. I have no interest in doing so--I don't have any interest in smoking cigarettes either. Because I have a very good sense of smell (sadly, this is the sense that has…

My exciting new job at Elsevier: Inaugural editor-in-chief of The Journal of Applied Publishing Experiments

Hi everybody, It is with great pride and excitement that I'm finally able to announce something that's been in the works for a few months now. I will be accepting the role of inaugural editor-in-chief of an exciting new journal to be published by Elsevier: The Journal of Applied Publishing Experiments. This amazing opportunity arose a few months ago, initiated by a blog post of mine that congratulated Elsevier on their wise marketing and publishing moves and this one a bit later, where I declare my undying loyalty to the Elsevier brand. The publisher of Elsevier immediately contacted me…

ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap

8.20.07 to 8.26.07 Announcements Welcome Zooillogix! Please welcome the newest addition to ScienceBlogs, Zooillogix. Brothers Andrew and Benny Bleiman author Zooillogix, "a hobby and a secret outlet of forbidden passion" that showcases their shared obsession with zoology. Check out the Bleimans' recent Gallery d'Bug Arte post, and their Video of the Week, where a male jumping spider dances for a foxy spider babe. Homepage Buzzes 8/21: Gender Benders Are young boys more likely to get rowdy in the classroom? Do girls really prefer pink? Yes, say a couple of recent scientific studies done by…

Science News in brief

Researchers Identify Very First Neurons In The 'Thinking' Brain: Researchers at Yale School of Medicine and the University of Oxford have identified the very first neurons in what develops into the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that makes humans human. The findings published in Nature Neuroscience show that the first neurons, or "predecessors," as the researchers called them, are in place 31 days after fertilization. This is much earlier than previously thought and well before development of arms, legs or eyes. "Thinking brain" and "what makes human human" are journalistic phrases…

Food Storage and Preservation Class Starting Next Week!

It seemed up here in the north that spring would never come - and now we're headed rapidly into that time of year when everything is ripe and abundant in our gardens and at local farms, and learning to put food up can make it possible for you to enjoy summer in winter, and continue eating locally as long as possible. It can be overwhelming when you start preserving, so if you'd like a friendly voice to walk you through it, please join us, starting next Tuesday! The class is on-line and asynchronous, and you can participate at your own pace. Every week we'll have projects involving what's…

What is "health" ?

I know many of the HIV threads here get very tedious and repetitive, but occasionally interesting things come out of them. Believe it or not, I've learned a lot about HIV denial over the past year and a half or so. I've long been familiar with Duesberg's objections, but it wasn't until more recently that I realized there still were active denial groups around, and even wholesale germ theory deniers. So to me, the threads aren't all wasted. Anyway, in one of the ongoing threads, there was discussion of one commenter's "natural" remedies, and her claim that "Germs cannot get a strong-hold in…

Keeping President Bushâs Anti-Regulation Campaign in the Spotlight

By David Michaels The handcuffs President Bush recently imposed on regulatory agencies continue to be the focus of public attention. (Weâve compiled a listing of posts on the Executive Order and its nefarious implications). Members of Congress, along with public health and environmental advocates, are now considering legislative approaches to overturning these new requirements. Media attention is criticial for building political will to address this issue. Robert Pear's New York Times piece (subscription-only access) drew attention to the Executive Order's implications, and a now we're…

Electrifying Speciation

Although these fish look similar and have the same genetic makeup, they produce very different electrical signals (right) and will only mate with fish that produce the same signals. Cornell researchers believe that these different electrical signals are the fishes' first step in diverging into separate species. [Image: Carl Hopkins.] The fishes depicted in the picture above are several types of mormyrids that are endemic to some tributaries of the Ivindo River in Gabon, Africa. These fishes produce weak electrical signals from a battery-like organ at the base of the tail to communicate…

Sustainable Garden Planning Class

First of all, in my first post I accidently wrote the class was starting tomorrow, April 4.  In fact, we're starting the following Thursday, April 11 and running to the first Thursday in May (apparently I can't read a calendar correctly). I still have spots available, but sign up soon, because I'd like to make sure I have plenty of time for individual attention. Here's the syllabus and class information: Sharon has been running her small family farm in rural upstate NY  for 12 years and before that, was gardening on urban balconies and in city lots in the Boston area for years before that. …

Kudos to open government groups for new FOIA law

Advocates for government transparency, including journalists and watchdog groups, were pleased to witness President Obama signed the FOIA Improvement Act. He did so on June 30 without fanfare. After it was signed into law, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) commented: “The signing marked the culmination of open government advocates' battle to reform part of FOIA ahead of the law's 50th anniversary on July 4th.” And Open the Government.org called it: “...a herculean effort on the part of Congressional leaders, staff members, and open government advocates who have been…

Upscale Night Clubbers, Wherefore Art Thou?

I've never understood the point of bars or night life. Most people seem to go to bars and night clubs to meet their friends, get drunk and possibly get laid. I don't drink, from a very early age I've been in steady relationships with vigorous women, I see my friends on-line or at our respective kitchen tables, and I get really sleepy around midnight. So night life has nothing to offer me. I was once single for eight months, which meant that I did have to do something to get laid. But what took care of that certainly wasn't my exploration of clubs: I hooked up with women everywhere except in…

Eliminating Majors

Inside Higher Ed reports that Indiana State is eliminating physics and philosophy, among other majors, in a move to streamline their programs. These programs have very few majors relative to the number of faculty (physics has five faculty and nine majors, philosophy four faculty and 19 majors), so they're on the block due to an accreditor's comment that they have too many programs. The discussion in the article centers on the question of whether you can really call a university a university if it doesn't teach physics or philosophy. Several people in comments object that they're only…

Links for 2010-08-10

Why Public Employees Are The New Welfare Queens | The New Republic "To what extent is the problem that the retirement benefits for unionized public sector workers have become too generous? And to what extent is the problem that retirement benefits for everybody else have become too stingy? I would suggest it's more the latter than the former. The promise of stable retirement--one not overly dependent on the ups and downs of the stock market--used to be part of the social contract. If you got an education and worked a steady job, then you got to live out the rest of your life comfortably.…

Generalists, Specialists, and the Slappable

There are at least as many ways to write really interesting essays as there are people writing really interesting essays, but for the most part, they break down into two broad types. There are the ones that completely change the way you look at some subject you thought you knew about, forcing you to change your opinion of it; and there are the ones that explain some subject in such a clear and compelling way that they change the way you think about it (even if you don't change your opinion of the subject). Those two types account for most of the interesting essays out there, but don't cover…

Fun you can have with your three year old and protein crystallography/NMR coordinate data.

So basically, I've been hearing stuff about some new game show that pits adults against the sort of knowledge that a child in Grade 5 should know. It sounds like a pretty interesting concept, and has gotten me thinking about kids and science information generally. Anyway with this in mind, today, I thought we could play around with a piece of free software that enables folks to look at three dimensional structures of a varety of biologically relevant molecules. Because kids like video games right? And what could be more challenging to young inquiring hands than navigating the structure…

Dembski Delights in Domesticated Dogs.

This story in the Times of London (breathlessly titled "How man's best friend overcame laws of natural evolution"*) has been linked to by Dembski over at his blog and by a number of other creationists around the web. I guess they think it somehow disproves evolution or problematizes natural selection. It discusses an article in Genome Research which used mtDNA analysis to examine selection in dogs and wolves and notes (according to the article) that natural selction was relaxed when dogs became domesticated. Living with people allowed harmful genetic variations to flourish that would never…

Blogs to Books: My First Session!

This might sound narcissistic, but ever since some time early in high school, I've believed that someday, somehow, I will write a book. What kind of book keeps shifting as I grow up and my outlook on life changes, but the overall theory that I will eventually be an author has persisted. So of course, when I saw that there was a session about how to create "a popular science book: using the Web from the initial idea to pitching to writing to selling," I simply had to attend. The session was moderated by blogging, book-writing superstars Brian Switek (Written in Stone), Sheril Kirshenbaum (The…

The loss of Dr Anita Roberts

[A regular reader, SciMom at Doubleloop, thanked me for putting up this post on my old blog this past Wednesday. As I don't believe that any of my new SiBlings here covered the passing of this amazing scientist, I am reprinting it here for our new and more diverse audience.] Cancer research and the cause of women in science and medicine lost a true leader and shining example last week with the passing of Dr Anita Roberts to gastric cancer. She was only 64. From her Washington Post obituary: Dr. Roberts, the 49th most-cited scientist in the world and the third most-cited female scientist,…

Sheril is a First Author in Science

So this is the first bit of news that we've been promising.... In the latest issue of Science, we--the ScienceDebate2008 crew--have a policy forum article that lays out how this all got started, its implications, and where it's going. Doing the article was Sheril's idea, and she did a great deal of the work, as a consequence of which she is now a twentysomething first author in Science...not bad, huh? I am not sure yet whether we can link to the article in a non-password protected way. There will also soon be some press releases; we'll throw those links up shortly. But in the meantime, let me…

Christopher Reiger

Between meaning and material (h.H.R.) Watercolor, gouache, graphite and marker on Arches paper 32 x 32 inches Christopher Reiger, 2007 My friend Christopher Reiger is appearing in several group shows this summer, so I thought it was a good time to spotlight his work. Above is one of my favorite pieces, between meaning and material (h.H.R.). I actually got to know Christopher online through his writing - he maintains a blog, Hungry Hyaena. He's written a number of provocative essays on the changing relationship between humans and nature, drawing on his extensive personal experience as an…

Googling for Diseases

I noticed this a few days ago and meant to comment on it.  Then, I noticed href="http://scienceblogs.com/drcharles/2006/11/attention_paging_dr_google_1.php#more">Dr. Charles beat me to it.  He even gave some examples in actual use.  If you've already read his, skip the excerpt and go directly to the few thoughts I've added at the end. href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547620">Web-Based Search Engines Help Diagnose Difficult Cases NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Nov 10 - Using Google to conduct web-based searches on the internet can assist in the diagnosis of difficult cases,…

Swim with Whale Sharks... at the Aquarium?

A novel approach to connecting people and animals while generating new revenue or exploitation and poor judgment from those who should know better? The Georgia Aquarium announced this morning a new program that allows regular Joe Public to swim with their famed whale sharks, among other critters, in their largest tank. For the low price of $199 a swim or $290 for a SCUBA dive (actually quite a deal compared with traveling to the Philippines or one of the other exotic locales where you might get a chance to dive with them), you get a guaranteed swim with these biggest of all fishes. It looks…

I get email

Just for something completely different, here's an email I just got that isn't threatening me with death or causing me to choke while laughing because of its absurdity. Dr. Myers, Over the last several years I have been "converting" from a once very strong evangelical faith to atheism. It was a long road and involved many different facets, one of which was a steady tide of atheist reason and thought I received online. And my main source, well none other then you, Dr. Myers. My first movement towards rationality came when I started researching evolution and what do you know, it was true…

About that Arctic sea ice ...

The Register, an occasionally accurate online IT newspaper, has been running a series of warming denial pieces, by one Steven Goddard. Goddard has been trying to cast on temperature and ice data. Unfortunately, he does a whole lot of cherry picking. For example: A second important issue with NASA's presentation is that they use the time period of 1951-1980 as their choice of baseline. This was a well known cold spell, as can be seen in the 1999 version of the NASA US temperature graph below. Why use a graph of US temperatures instead of world temperatures? The "cold spell" is more…

Why not bail out the porn industry?

As much of a completely disgusting sleazebag as I think he is, at some level I grudgingly have to admire Larry Flynt. He never misses an opportunity for self-promotion and annoying the hell out of politicians, and he's back now, promoting himself and annoying the hell out of politicians. This time, he's asking for a $5 billion bailout for the porn industry: Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a…

The Return of "Ethically Sound" Stem Cells

Back in August, I and several others in the scientific community expressed skepticism over Nature paper (subscription required) describing a new technique billed by the media as generating "ethically sound" stem cells. The technique involved removing a single cell from an eight-cell blastula and using this cell to derive a line of stem cells while allowing the remaining cells to grow and develop normally, without any apparent damage to the embryo. This "watered down" approach to generating stem cells didn't seem to convince other scientists, and it apparently (although not surprisingly)…

Ant Colonies & Metabolic Scaling, Part 2

In a recent post, Dr. Dolittle reviewed some of our recent findings about the metabolic rate of ant colonies. We focused on the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex californicus, a species with wide geographic distribution across the southwestern United States: If you are interested, there is a large collection of Pogonomyrmex resources available online thanks to Bob Johnson and the Social Insect Research Group at Arizona State University. From this website, you can find out about how to identify seed harvester ants, find detailed range maps, and also learn how to culture colonies in the lab.…

Models, photons, and more

Quantum mechanics is not my area of expertise. Really, I have no area of expertise. However, I think it is time to bring the whole photon thing back up. Yes, I know I was a little harsh before. Maybe I should start over. First, models. Yes models. I think science is all about models. Scientists build models that attempt to agree with observations. These models could be mathematical, physical, conceptual or numerical (like a computer program). For example, take Newton's Law of gravity (which isn't really a law). It says that the gravitational force between two objects has the…

Scientific Prose

There's an interesting review on prediction errors and temporal difference learning theory in the latest Trends in Cognitive Sciences. (Really, it's fascinating stuff.) But I don't want to talk today about the content of the article. Instead, I want to discuss its form. The vast, vast majority of science articles follow the same basic pattern: abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion. (Update: As bsci points out in the comments, review articles obey a slightly less strict pattern, but they're still pretty predictable.) There are no stories, no narrative, no amusing anecdotes. (…

Drug Shortages Reveal the Free Market is Failing Our Sickest Patients

**Update, the NYT has an editorial in their Sunday edition recommending the passage of two bills in congress requiring advanced notice from drug manufacturers in event of likely shortage. Health affairs discusses the increasingly frequent shortages of critical, life-saving, generic drugs. This is a serious problem that seems mostly limited to the U.S. healthcare system, and may adversely affect you or someone you know. Many of the same drugs are not in such short and unpredictable supply in Europe, where in some cases they carry higher prices. This provides one major clue to the root cause…

Recipes for GE eggplant

Eggplants are found in many colors: green, white, purple, yellow, even striped. They are shaped like cucumbers or apples. They are eaten in Italy as melanzane alla parmigiana, in France as ratatouille, and in the Middle East as baba ghanoush. My husband Raoul usually grows Imperial Black Beauty, Rosa Bianca, and the hybrids Beatrice and Nadia. We cook them shortly after harvest: Spicy Eggplant 2 Eggplants, diced into 1/2" cubes 3 tbsp Olive oil 1 Clove of garlic, smashed and chopped 1/2 tsp Chile flakes 1. Sauté smashed and chopped clove of garlic in the olive oil. 2. Add the chile flakes…

The Anti-Consumerist Gift Files: Righteous Giving

The second night of Chanukah, my sons got clothes from their great aunt, which they received politely but unenthusiastically. As we were heading to bed that night, after a late night at our synagogue's annual Chanukah party, six year old Isaiah asked me "Mommy, will tomorrow night be another clothes present night?" When I told him I suspected not, since the next night's gift would come from Grandma, who likes to give toys, he sighed and said "It is ok if there's clothes, but I just needed to be ready for them." It can be tough to have good manners when you are little. We expect the kids…

A historical perspective on Ebola response and prevention

Yambuku, Zaire, 1976. A new disease was spreading through the population. Patients were overcome by headaches and bloody diarrhea. The disease was spreading through entire families and wiping them out. Eight hundred and twenty-five kilometers to the northeast, a similar epidemic was reportedly raging across the border in Maridi, Sudan. Were these outbreaks connected? Despite enormous challenges trying to navigate both the logistics of crossing a landscape of unpaved and unmarked roads, as well as the political difficulties of an attempt to enter and collect samples in an area marked by recent…

Two decades after welfare reform, more deep poverty and fewer college degrees (rerun)

The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on August 29, is one of our favorite posts from 2016. by Liz Borkowski, MPH Two decades ago, President Bill Clinton signed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act” (PRWORA) and heralded the end of “welfare as we know it.” The law lived up to that promise, but the outcomes for families who depend on it have been problematic. "If the goal of welfare reform was to get rid of welfare, we succeeded," the University of Wisconsin’s Timothy Smeeding told Vox’s Dylan Matthews. "If the goal…

Life During Wartime

There are two main reasons why I don't write a great deal about politics here. The first, and most important, is that I tend not to like the way that I end up sounding when I go off on political topics. The second, only slightly less important, is that I rarely feel like I have anything worthwhile to add to the discussion that a hundred other homebrew pundits won't also say. This is one of the exceptions. A good friend of mine from college-- the best man at my wedding-- is a journalist working for the French wire services in Baghdad. He sends occasional email updates about what's going on…

On a Mission from God

Lately I've been reading the 19th and early 20th century traveler's accounts of what is now known as the Western Rift Valley and the Ituri Forest, Congo. Some are written by the famous 'explorers' such as H.M. Stanley, others written by scientists on expeditions in the area, and still others by missionaries. Reading these accounts puts me in mind of my own experiences, as a scientist working in that same area, with the missionaries that live and work, or sometimes just visit, there. So, a few missionary stories are in order. There were several different 'kinds' of missionaries working on…

IP: Real or Bogus?

There's been some talk among the sciencebloggers about the idea of intellectual property, and href="http://www.scienceblogs.com/clock/">Bora over at "A Blog Around the Clock" asked me to convert my thoughts into a post. It's a serious topic, which is worth giving some deep consideration, and it's something that I've given a lot of thought to. Back when I was at IBM, I worked on some projects that were internal and confidential, and also spent several years working on open-source. I've got two software patents to my name. I didn't do any of that lightly; I spent a lot of time thinking…

The importance of big ideas

One of the things that impressed me about Obama when I met him in 2006 was his nearly palpable intellect. In a situation like that interview, a five-minute session with a little blogger in Kansas, wedged between a private chat with Governor Sebelius and an address to the state's Democratic powerbrokers, it'd be easy for him to have gone on autopilot, giving canned answers with his mind elsewhere. Nonetheless, I got the genuine feeling of the gears whizzing, working through my questions, turning them around in his head and genuinely engaging me and them as he answered. It's possible that…

The Macroeconomic Effects of Scientific Research

One of the points about science funding I've tried to make over the years (we have been blogging a long time, haven't we?) is that the overheads and indirect costs associated with federal grants drive a lot of university decisions--there's a lot of money there. But this funding also has significant macroeconomic effects, especially in research-heavy states like Massachusetts. A local paper, The Boston Courant, describes the effects of the coming NIH cuts, due to the ending of the ARRA and the coming budget cuts, to the Boston economy. I'm quoting extensively from the August 12, 2001…

Who Will Be the Next Academy Award Winners? Who Was the Best Basketball Player of All Time? The Answers Can Be Found in Mathematics, Says Tim Chartier

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Tim Chartier As a mathematician and researcher par excellence specializing in numerical linear algebra, Tim Chartier, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Davidson College, is known for pushing the boundaries of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Female Antarctic Seals Give Cold Shoulder To Local Males: Female Antarctic fur seals will travel across a colony to actively seek males which are genetically diverse and unrelated, rather than mate with local dominant males. These findings, published in this week's Nature, suggest that female choice may be more widespread in nature than previously believed and that such strategies enable species to maintain genetic diversity. How Badger Culling Creates Conditions For Spread Of Bovine Tuberculosis: A stable social structure may help control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (TB) among badgers…

The Prez, the Press, and Solis' MSHA

One trait of a good reporter is providing facts---facts that may make us uncomfortable, but ultimately force us to ask "is this really true?"   That's what happened to me on Friday when I read the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward's piece Solis plays fast and loose on MSHA budget, in which he accused the new Labor Secretary of spinning the data on mine safety enforcement spending---reminiscent of  Chao and Stickler.  He wrote: "...what should I make of the way Labor Secretary Hild Solis tried to spin the Obama administrationâs proposal to â when adjusted for inflation â pretty much…

A Mathematical Meme from Janet

Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science has tagged all of us newbies with a Pi meme. As the new math-geek-in-residence here, I'm obligated to take on anything dealing with Pi. 3 reasons you blog about science Because I genuinely enjoy teaching, and the one thing that I regret about being in industry instead of academia is that I don't get to teach. Blogging gives me an opportunity to do something sort-of like teaching, but on my own terms and my own schedule. Because I'm obsessed with this stuff, and I love it, and I want to try to show other people why…

My picks from ScienceDaily

No Sponge In Human Family Tree: Sponges Descended From Unique Ancestor: Since the days of Charles Darwin, researchers are interested in reconstructing the "Tree of Life", and in understanding the development of animal and plant species during their evolutionary history. In the case of vertebrates, this research has already come quite a long way. But there is still much debate about the relationships between the animal groups that made their apparation very early in evolutionary history, probably in the late Precambrian, some 650 to 540 million years ago. Beverage Consumption A Bigger Factor…

Very young people blogging about science

Mason Posner is a professor of Biology at Ashland University in Ohio. He also blogs on A Fish Eye View (though I notice he did not update it in a while). About a year ago, and inspired by some discussions emanating from ScienceOnline'09, he decided to try using blogs in his teaching. He did it last spring. And he is doing it again this spring. You can check out his Marine Biology Course class blog, where he and the students are all posting in one place. But also check out his Senior Capstone course in Biology and its class blog - he is the only one blogging there - the students are required…

links for 2009-04-28

Acephalous: Concerning the inherent superiority of printed text to irresponsible online drivel. "Is it absolutely necessary for the image gracing the cover of the most recent issue of the official mouthpiece of my professional organization to depict something that, when seen on my desk by a colleague from another department, compelled her to ask where a viper fish would even get a detachable penis to whack off against a shrimp-wielding toucan? Do other departments not laugh at us enough already?" (tags: blogs academia silly art humanities acephalous) Intimate Homicide | Mother Jones "I'll…

The Pseudonymity Laboratory: The Home Stretch - Blogging About the Research Grant Process

Well, PalMD and I have been working tirelessly on putting together a plan of discussion for the upcoming ScienceOnline'09 session on Anonymity and Pseudonymity - Building Reputation Online. Over the last several months, we have had a tremendous outpouring of comments on our own blogs and numerous other blogs that gives us far more fodder than could be discussed in a 75 minute unconference session. (Pal, I foresee a palcast on pseudonymity.). I still contend in all seriousness that the following 18 October 2008 quote from PhysioProf (cross-posted on his solo site) deserves to be the opening…