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iPad, therefore iKludge

  Don DeLillo's Players, as marked up by David Foster Wallace.Courtesy Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. I just sat down to air a complaint about reading on the iPad when I discovered that Sue Halpern had done much of my work for me: For all its supposed interactivity, the iPad is a surprisingly static machine, especially for reading. ... One of the guilty pleasures of an actual, ink-on-paper book is the possibility of marking it upâunderlining salient passages, making notes in the margins, dog-earing a page. While itâs true that some electronic book platforms for…

Encouraging Results with Stem Cell Treatment of MS

This needs to be replicated before any conclusions can be drawn, but it is encouraging.  21 patients with relapsing-remitting href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/multiple-sclerosis/overview.html?scp=1-spot&sq=multiple%20sclerosis&st=cse">multiple sclerosis, in whom conventional treatment failed, were given a stem cell treatment.  17 patients improved; 16 had no relapse at all; none got worse.  They were studied over a period of two to four years.  The study was published in The Lancet Neurology, ( Early Online Publication, 30 January 2009) $ for full access:…

A Note on Centrioles, Basal Bodies & Cilia

CCP asks What is the phylogenetic distribution of centrioles? Does it match that of cilia / flagella? Just to summarize what all these cellular structures are, centrioles are distinct structures found in most eukaryotic cells. They are composed of nine microtubule triplets and two of these centrioles come together to form a centrosome, a structure which often sits at the microtubule organizing center (MTOC). Microtubules radiate out of the MTOC to form an aster (see images in this post). Remarkably, in most tissue culture cells, the MTOC sits near the cell centroid where as the nucleus lies…

Wakefield's "monkey business" hepatitis B vaccine study withdrawn?

Kim Wombles over at Countering Age of Autism pointed this out: Why, you ask, is this whole 13 monkeys, 14 monkeys irrelevant? Well, see, here's where it gets really interesting. If you want to read this study, you go here: the 14 studies site by Handley. Thoughtful House has a press release on how it was published online in Septermber 2009. I went to the journal itself, though, straight to Neurotoxicology to look for the article since it's getting all this attention from the anti-vaxers as proof that it is proof of mercury causing autism. Guess what? It isn't there! Don't believe me? It's…

The Exxon funded swift boating of James Hansen

James Hansen replies to the deceitful IBD editorial: The latest swift-boating (unless there is a new one among seven unanswered calls on my cell) is the whacko claim that I received $720,000.00 from George Soros. Here is the real deal, with the order of things as well as I can remember without wasting even more time digging into papers and records. Sometime after giving a potentially provocative interview to Sixty Minutes, but before it aired, I tried to get legal advice on my rights of free speech. I made two or three attempts to contact people at Freedom Forum, who I had given permission to…

Can't find your disease gene? Just sequence them all...

A paper just published online in Nature Genetics describes a brute force approach to finding the genes underlying serious diseases in cases where traditional methods fall flat. While somewhat successful, the study also illustrates the paradoxical challenge of working with large-scale sequencing data: there are often too many possible disease variants, and it can be extremely difficult to work out which are actually causing the disease in question. The authors looked at 208 families where multiple members suffered from mental retardation and where the family history was consistent with the…

Arrogance, thy name is JAMA (I'd toss in stupidity for good measure)

The current insanity at JAMA has been well reported elsewhere (also see these links: here, here, here, and here). I'll give you a thumbnail sketch. A professor from a small university wrote to JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) to let them know that an author of an antidepressant study appeared to have an undisclosed conflict of interest (COI). When he didn't hear back from JAMA he wrote to a more prestigious journal, the British Journal of Medicine (BMJ) who published his letter. This caused the editors at JAMA to completely lose their shit, threatening the letter…

Just Science #5: Sediment Transfer To The Deep

[For the 5th installment of Just Science, I asked Brian Romans a PhD candidate in the Department of Geological & Environmental Sciences at Stanford University to post on his research. You can catch his blog at http://bromans.blogspot.com/] As we all know, the deep sea contains fantastic records of ancient oceanic conditions. The deep sea also holds clues about the continents. In this case, we can use deep sea sediments to better understand how Earth surface systems respond to climatic fluctuations. The inherent relief between continental and ocean plates drives the transfer of sediment…

Tribes, Classes, and Networking

Via Jessa Crispin on Twitter, there's a really excellent article in the Paris Review about Harvard and Class: When I applied, I thought it would be great because I would get to meet lots of smart people. Those were the kinds of people I liked to be friends with, and I thought there would be more of them there. That was the main reason I thought it would be a fun place to be. I don't think I was super ambitious or professional minded or even a very good student. The thing I figured out soon after I applied was that, on Gilligan's Island, it wasn't the Professor who went to Harvard, it was Mr.…

What's A Gene For?

There was a time not that long ago when sequencing a single gene would be hailed as a scientific milestone. But then came a series of breakthroughs that sped up the process: clever ideas for how to cut up genes and rapidly identify the fragments, the design of robots that could do this work twenty-four hours a day, and powerful computers programmed to make sense of the results. Instead of single genes, entire genomes began to be sequenced. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of the first complete draft of the entire genome of a free-living species (a nasty little microbe…

Hemlines Don't Rape People, Rapists Do

While one might think that would be pretty obvious, this article suggests otherwise. Whenever when there are discussions online about rape, particularly 'date rape', there is usually someone who implicitly or explicitly blames the victim. What has always puzzled me is the emphasis on the rape victim, instead of the rapist. No rapist that I've ever heard of ever slipped on a banana peel and 'accidentally' raped someone: the decision to rape is a conscious, deliberate act by the rapist. Here's the thing: I've lived long enough to accumulate some gray hair, and I've successfully managed…

Spotlight on X-STEM Speaker Kevin Kinsella

X-STEM - presented by Northrop Grumman Foundation and MedImmune - is an Extreme STEM symposium for elementary through high school students featuring interactive presentations by an exclusive group of visionaries who aim to empower and inspire kids about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These top STEM role models and industry leaders are sure to ignite your students’ curiosity through storytelling and live demonstrations. Our spotlight on our X-STEM Speakers continues with Venture Capitalist and Broadway Producer, Mr. Kevin J.Kinsella. He's sometimes called…

How To Read ScienceBlogs

ScienceBlogs is, without question, the largest online conversation about science. We have 71 blogs, almost 70,000 posts and 850,000 comments. How does one reader keep up?! One of the easiest ways is to subscribe to the ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap, a fun email newsletter that summarizes the previous week's happenings. Find out more ways to read—with and without RSS feeds—below the fold. If RSS feeds aren't your thing, then I'd suggest starting on the ScienceBlogs homepage and checking out: the Buzz (the topic that's featured at the very top of the page); and a bit further down the page, the "…

New study on evolution of vision

For easy-to-understand quick look at the evolution of vision I have to refer you to these two posts by PZ Myers, this post of mine, and these two posts by Carl Zimmer. Now, armed with all that knowledge, you will curely appreciate the importance of this new study: Compound Eyes, Evolutionary Ties: Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the presence of a key protein in the compound eyes of the fruit fly (which glow at center due to a fluorescent protein) allows the formation of distinct light gathering units in each of its 800 unit eyes, an evolutionary…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

I have to say I am myself enjoying doing these introductory posts. I get to Google people, see who they are and what they've been up to lately, discover stuff about friends' past careers I did not know, find them (and follow/subscribe/friend) on Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook, and generally get all starry-eyed about the amazing group of people who registered for the conference and who I can't wait to see. So, without further ado, here are a few more of them: Beth Beck is the Outreach Program Manager for Space Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. And no, she is not a rocket…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Anyone? Anyone?

Let's face it. The US education system sucks. The public school system was a great historical achievement, producing high literacy rates, but in the 21st century the US is increasingly at a competitive disadvantage compared to other industrial nations. Instead of investing more we are investing less while promoting privatization, a recipe for mediocrity. This is seen most clearly in . . . anyone? what kind of eduction? . . . science education, where false ideas like . . . anyone? anyone? . . . evolution are rammed down the throats of helpless students, producing . . . anyone? faithless what…

ConvergeSouth05 - first impressions

ConvergeSouth06 is on October 14th. So, in anticipation of the event, I will repost, in rapid succession, my coverage of the last year's ConvergeSouth (October 7-8, 2005). Perhaps this will whet your appetite and you'll decide to register (for free) and show up this year. Here is the first of eleven posts... Taking a little break between the end of the ConvergeSouth conference and dinner, enjoying Dave's hospitality, here's just a quick post on the conference - apparently there is something wrong with my online access back at home, so I may not be able to blog tonight once I get there. My…

Update on "I Want This Job!"

Blogs! A new world! Breaking new frontiers all the time! A few days ago, PLoS ONE posted a few job ads, including this one. A friend of mine saw it and thought the job-description was pretty much a Bora-description (another friend wrote in an e-mail that all it is missing is a clause "must be a Red-State Serbian Jewish atheist liberal PhD student"), so he sent me the link. Some people like to keep secrets, but I like to air my thoughts in public (why have a blog otherwise?) so I posted my thoughts about it late on Friday night and decided to sleep on it, think about it over the weekend,…

Still more reports and books on the future of academic libraries

For those of you new to Confessions of a Science Librarian, I've been publishing various lists of books and reports/white papers for the last little while. The reports and books explore various ideas, issues and trends that I think will be important in the development of academic libraries over the next several years and range pretty far and wide in terms of subject matter. I've done four lists so far, mentioning a rather frightening number of different items: Sixteen books Twenty-nine reports Thirty-four books and eight reports Nine reports and sixteen books Reports Online Catalogs: What…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In 2003, FRONTLINE, The New York Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation teamed up to investigate nine deaths and thousands of injuries at facilities owned by McWane, Inc., a major iron pipe foundry company â and âa portrait emerged of McWane as the most dangerous company in an inherently dangerous business.â The resulting program caught the attention of the Environmental Crimes section of the Department of Justice, which guided a nationwide investigation that led to prosecutions. McWane and eight of its executives and managers were convicted of 125 environmental, health, and safety…

Elsevier Blinks, Will No Longer Support Research Works Act

In a victory for science, and those who favor open access for the easy dissemination of scientific results to the public and scientists around the world, Elsevier has withdrawn support for the Research Works Act. I think credit has to go to Tim Gowers calling for and Michael Eisen spreading the word on the boycott and getting Elsevier's attention. Eisen initially brought our attention to the bill which would have allowed Elsevier to break with the growing tendency towards putting science payed for with tax dollars into open access databases. The Research Works Act would allow them to erect…

Say No to EHP Changes

One of the best ways that mothers, fathers, grandparents, and caregivers can find out about hazardous agents in their homes, communities, and workplaces is by reading the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).  EHP is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), an agency created in 1966 by the Surgeon General as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  EHP is published monthly and can be accessed on-line at no cost.  Some of the scientific articles published in EHP may be too technical for some readers, but the journal's  Environews…

Extreme math: 1 + 1 = 2

Finally, I have found online, a copy of the magnificent culmination of the 20th century's most ambitious work of mathematics. The last page of Russel and Whitehead's proof that 1+1=2. On page 378 (yes, three hundred and seventy eight!) of the Principia Mathematica.. Yes, it's there. The whole thing: the entire Principia, in all of its hideous glory, scanned and made available for all of us to utterly fail to comprehend. For those who are fortunate enough not to know about this, the Principia was, basically, an attempt to create the perfect mathematics: a complete formalization of all things…

The exciting history of history of science. And mammoths!

Scientific facts are fun. But probably to a limited number of people. It's more fun to know how scientists got those facts - their thoughts, motivations and methods. How they did it. Why they did it. Where did they get the idea to do it in the first place. It's even more fun, for a broader number of people, if that finding is placed in a historical context - how work of previous generations of scientists, meandering around various age-specific ideas, led to the work of this particular group. But it is even more fun watching the historians of science at work. Most recent science is pretty easy…

Science crowdsourcing - ecology

Help scientists track plant and animal cycles: The USA-National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) -- a University of Arizona, Tucson-based group of scientists and citizens that monitors the seasonal cycles of plants and animals -- is calling for volunteers to help track the effect of climate change on the environment. The group is launching a national program encouraging citizen volunteers to observe seasonal changes among plants and animals, like flowering, migration and egg-laying. They can then log in and record their observations online at the USA-NPN website. "The program is designed for…

2008 Edublog Awards - time to start nominations

This is what you need to do: 2008 Nominations Contact Form In order to nominate blogs for the 2008 Edublog Awards you have to link to them first! So, follow these two simple steps to nominate (nominations made without links or without correct submission will not be counted) 1. Write a post on your blog linking to a. The 2008 Nomination page & b The blogs & sites that you want to nominate (must be linked to!) You can nominate for as many categories as you like, but only one nomination per category, and not yourself :) You can nominate a blog (or site) for more than one category) 2. Use…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Local bloggers 2)

There are 77 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 113 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Antony Williams is the Director of ChemZoo Inc, which runs ChemSpider which is an Open Access online database of chemical…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Technology + Science + Business = Uber-geekery)

There are 79 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 112 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Emile Petrone is a young entrepreneur who designed and runs one of the first science-specific online social networks - Knowble.net…

Feeling ethically challenged?

Confused about terms like "autonomy" and "beneficance" and their relationship to biomedical research? The Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) is offering a short course at the University of Washington, Feb. 29th and March 1st, on Ethics in Science. Registration details and a description are below. An Ethics Shortcourse February 29, 2008, 4-8pm and March 1, 10am-4pm Waterfront Activities Center, University of Washington Registration Deadline: February 15, 2008 To apply online, please visit: http://www.nwabr.org/education/esc.htm $25 with credit card or $20 with check.…

Not an “accident”: Ascencion Medina, 44 suffers fatal work-related injury in Greenville, SC

Ascencion Molina Medina, 44, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, July 30, 2015 while working at a construction site in Greenville, SC. Greenville On-line reports: Medina “lost his footing” and fell about 30 feet, according to the county coroner. He died several hours later at the local hospital. The construction project is a new mixed use development called Main + Stone which will house residential and retail properties. The Beach Company is the developer and the project broke ground in late 2014. The general contractor of the Main + Stone development is Yeargin Potter Shackelford…

Let us pray

Just the title of this book is good for a laugh: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Prayer. They've certainly got their target audience pegged. As an added bonus, the reviews are amusing. Have reviewed a number of books on prayer and they usually get too complicated and bogged down. "Close your eyes and pretend" is too complicated? Are there rules and regulations and rituals that must be performed for this prayer thing that are baroque and beyond my understanding, or is this reviewer the kind of person who finds swallowing to be an act of will that requires concentration and practice? I just…

Hackers & Painters and The Charterhouse of Parma

These were part of my reading matter for the summer. They contrast somewhat; the former is by Paul Graham and is a collection of essay about the software world; the latter is a classic novel by Stendhal. But they do link together, vaguely, in this sense: One of PG's themes is money, or wealth as he would prefer (wiki has a stub, which will at least point you to the book and the essays online). How to make it, and why its fair to have large disparities, and such. He asserts that a rapid rise in wealth occurs when socieites allow individuals and groups to retain the rights to the wealth they…

Baylor episode is getting wider circulation

The story of the Robert Marks debacle has now made the pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education. If the account is accurate, I'm going to do something you'll only rarely see: I'll take the side of the creationist. The problem is that Baylor was more than a little ham-fisted in intruding on Marks' academic freedom. Marks is promoting this bogus idea of something called "evolutionary informatics", and he admits that he is doing it on his own time (which leaves Dembski, his colleague, dangling without any legitimate connection to Baylor; if Marks is doing it on his own time, what is he doing…

More Deutsche Dodging

You gotta love this. George Deutsche continued his dodging in an interview with the New York Times. Here's my favorite line: "When I left college," he said, "I did not properly update my resume. As a result, it may appear misleading to some. However, I was up front with NASA about my undergraduate status when they hired me." Apparently he thinks that on a resume, you put in all the stuff you hope to accomplish later and then delete them if you don't before you send it out. He also says that the email demanding that the word "theory" be appended to "big bang" every time it was mentioned on a…

Gravitational Waves Win 2017 Nobel Prize In Physics, The Ultimate Fusion Of Theory And Experiment

"Well, I walked into Building 20 and looked in at the various little labs. There was a bunch of people doing something that looked to me to be sort of interesting, and since I knew all this electronics, I asked them, “Look, can you use a guy?” And I sold myself off as a technician for about two years." -Rai Weiss, on the start of his physics career at MIT It’s official at long last: the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three individuals most responsible for the development and eventual direct detection of gravitational waves. Congratulations to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and…

LIGO-VIRGO Detects The First Three-Detector Gravitational Wave

"Einstein's gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea." -Richard Feynman For over a century after the publication of General Relativity, it was uncertain whether gravitational waves were real or not. It wasn’t until their first direct detection less than two years ago, by the LIGO scientific collaboration, that their existence was spectacularly confirmed. With the VIRGO detector in Italy coming online this year to…

John A. Davison: fool in his own words

This simpering sycophant to John A. Davison has been spamming the site recently, yammering away to get everyone's attention despite the fact that he has been banned. Please do not reply to V.Martin, or anyone who is babbling about Davison — their posts will be deleted as soon as I notice them. This particular irritating fool has not only been morphing his username to get past my filters, but has at least once imitated a regular here, a particularly obnoxious and contemptible strategem that guarantees that I won't ever be lifting the ban. One reason he has been so frantic is that his hero,…

Skamby Boat Grave Paper Published

When you've finished an archaeological excavation, you always produce an archive report describing the results. Most excavation units these days actually publish their reports in small print runs. If you're lucky enough to find something really interesting, you should also try to publish it in a journal, anthology or monograph. This is good for you, because it enhances your academic qualifications, and it's good for research, because it makes new data available to colleagues and opens up a discussion of the new finds. In the summer of 2005, me and my friend Howard Williams directed the…

Green Buttocks

Does anyone watch TV anymore? Anyone? I mean, seriously, its like every other day Creationists are doing something infinitely more hysterical than anything Hollywood can think up. Todays side-splitting sitcom is brought to you by William Dembski and a new character*-- a buxom young brunette named Sean McDowell. They wrote a new hip (some would say, 'groovy'... perhaps even 'ZANY!') book on ID Creationism for teenagers, 'Understanding Intelligent Design'. I think Creationists are going for 'The Odd Couple' spin with this mismatched duo! Check this out! Dembski: theotard with no scientific…

More Falwell Lies

Media Matters has a report on the many lies told by Jerry Falwell in his appearance last weekend on Meet the Press. It's just baffling to me that he continues to lie about his incredible statement on the 700 Club after 9/11, where he said, "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the…

Framing and Arrogance

An idle observation: One of the more ironic things about the whole framing argument (other than the sheer number of people talking past one another, as Mike notes in passing) is how quick a lot of the anti-framing people are to declare that Mooney and Nisbet are just completely and totally wrong. And the people who are most adamant about Nisbet and Mooney being way off base are the people who are most outraged whenever somebody with an engineering degree dares to say something stupid about biology. The irony here is that this framing business is exactly Nisbet's area of expertise. This is…

Links for 2010-05-04

Online civility: between 10,000 cliques and 2 cultures, where's the neutral ground? : bioephemera "Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the blogosphere abhors a neutral and nonpartisan blog. For whatever reasons, cultural or historical, participants expect partisanship. They want to know if you're with them or against them; the dedicated communities at various blogs can be pretty defensive of their space, and sometimes stream like lemmings through the aether to attack a blogger that they perceive as threatening. It's human nature: when our friends get attacked, we get mad. The problem is, we're…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

Been a little while since I've done an Obsessive Update, but a few noteworthy things have come up recently: A very nice review at Pet Connection: "this brilliant and (relatively) simple book explains the basic premises of quantum physics in terms that dogs and most English majors can understand." Which is not to say that English majors are less likely to understand it than dogs-- English majors are a big part of our target audience, and it's nice to hear that it works for at least some of them. Another blog review, this time at Synergy of One: "Throughout the book, the author's extremely…

Links for 2009-08-27

Why Our Analemma Looks like a Figure 8 : Starts With A Bang "We got a good number of thoughtful comments, many of which are on the right track, and many of which have some misconceptions. Let's clear them up, and then let's give you the explanation of what gives us our figure 8, and why other planets make other shapes." (tags: science astronomy blogs starts-with-bang) Are recent developments in scholarly communication relevant to undergraduates? « the Undergraduate Science Librarian "I am very excited about these changes, and I spend some of my time checking out real-time science blogs…

Links for 2010-01-28

Resolving the Red Controversy? : Starts With A Bang "Earlier this week, I introduced you to the Red Controversy, the observations recorded around 2000 years ago in Europe asserting that the star, Sirius, appeared red. Now, taking a look at Sirius today, it is clearly not red: And, based on what we know about stars, they don't change color on timescales that quickly. " (tags: science astronomy blogs starts-with-bang pictures history) Cambridge physicist wins Glamour magazine award | Varsity Online "The award gives Professor Donald a chance to bring attention to the under-representation of…

Three white guys to leave ScienceBlogs: an opportunity for increasing diversity?

All of us at Terra Sig world headquarters are sending out hearty congratulations to the boys over at Deep Sea News - Peter Etnoyer, Craig McClain, and Kevin Zelnio - on the announcement of their September move to the Discovery Channel online. I've had the good fortune of meeting all three gentlemen in person, even breaking bread with Craig. I can tell you that they are individually and collectively superb stewards of the deep sea and tireless promoters of conservation and habitat preservation. Best wishes to you fellas - we'll miss you but we'll keep reading (plus the Zelnio family is…

Mooney Invades My House (Again)

The June issue Harper's features Seed's (our) own Chris Mooney. In a series of short commentaries about "Undoing Bush," Chris contributes some thoughts on science. The 11 contributors all ponder "How to repair eight years of sabotage, bungling, and neglect." Although the Harper's website has vastly improved (and subscribers have access to the entire 156 run of the magazine, which should elicit a big ole, Holy Shit! I had no idea Henry Smith Williams wrote that article on the century's progress in chemistry in the October 1897 issue), it doesn't yet have the June issue's contents up. And…

Another Christmas gift suggestion: Cat Cloning for $32,000 (although it does come with a free video, maybe)

Since Ben has posted on the new hypoallergenic cat, I thought it pertinent to talk a little about the Granddaddy of transgenic pet services, that is the company known as Genetics Savings and Clones. Here's a company with some pretty strong research credentials having been published in the not too shabby Nature (this was the cloning of a cat named "cc:"). In essence, they were the first to provide a pet cloning service with the February 2004 launch of their "Nine Lives Extravaganza," to the first 9 clients for $50,000 each. This by the way, was adverstised as coming with a "free video",…

Help me put the Bergman-Myers debate on YouTube!

I've received a suggestion that one potential source of a lot of the recent nonsensical creationist literature-quoting has a plausible source: Jerry Bergman. That guy is completely nuts, as I learned in a debate a while back; he's also pretentious while not knowing much, and he's painfully prolific, publishing lots in fringey creationist pseudo-journals. So now I have a technical question. I have a DVD copy of that wretched debate, and I've even gone so far as to rip it, and now have five MP4 files sitting on my computer (I also have a folder of the raw ripped files, a bunch of .bup, .ifo, .…

Video Game Violence Leads to Mass Bugnapping

Now Benny and I have always been suspicious of claims that violent video games spawn violent children. In fact, after zoology, few things are closer to our hearts than violent video games. However in a cruel twist of fate, it appears globalization has pitted our passions against one another. This does look fun... A new video game, (Mushiking) Insect King, has taken Japan by storm. In the game, which is targeted to young children, competitors fight one another with digital stag beetles. Sounds fun right? Well as with many Japanese obsessions, things have been taken a step too far. Excitement…