Search Content

Displaying results 86201 - 86250 of 87950

Inhofe's global warming hoax

Judd Legum at Think Progress reports some outrageous claims by Inhofe: Yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attacked Al Gore and global warming science, claiming that Gore was "full of crap" on global warming. Appearing on Glenn Beck's radio show and CNN television program, Inhofe said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which concluded that global warming was real and caused by humans, used "one scientist." Inhofe added: "[A]ll of the recent science...it confirms that I was right on this thing. This thing is a hoax." Legum corrects Inhofe's misrepresentation of the…

iPods cause autism?

I thought this was a joke when a reader e-mailed me about it. I mean, it's just so over-the-top that I had a hard time believing that it was real. It was (found via MacDailyNews): The huge rise of autism in Britain is linked to old iPod batteries, mobile phones and other products of the electronic age, a leading scientist claimed this weekend. Autistic children have been shown to have problems getting rid of toxic metals - and those metals are increasingly polluting the environment, says Dr Richard Lathe. "Think of iPod batteries, computers, television sets and mobile phones - thousands of…

Fetuses wiggle. So?

Ultrasound imaging technology is coming along so fast that you can now get a near-real time, moderate resolution image of a living fetus. Unfortunately, this new technology is also having an unfortunate consequence. Sophisticated ultrasound scans that show foetuses as early as 12 weeks appearing to "walk" in the womb have had a dangerous impact on the public debate over abortion, leading doctors and scientists said yesterday. The emotive photographs, taken with new fourdimensional imaging technology, have created a misleading impression that foetuses become viable and potentially self-aware…

O'Donnellgate

The latest attempt by the climate auditors to smear a scientist comes from Ryan O'Donnell who accused Eric Steig of "blatant dishonesty and duplicity". According to O'Donnell, as an anonymous reviewer Steig forced O'Donnell to use a particular method ('iridge') in his analysis and then, as himself, criticized O'Donnell for using that method. But as a fair-minded reading of the review comments reveals, and Steig himself explains this is not true. Steig as reviewer did not force them to use iridge, rather, he said that it seemed reasonable but there were problems with the method that the…

"Hey Judge, Can I Also Sue My Oncologist for Not Treating Me?"

Teen can opt out of chemotherapy. The 16-year-old Virginia boy may undergo radiation and alternative treatments. This story has been reported before by Orac and others, but I just wanted to add a couple of highly biased comments to the latest development in the case of a teenager who took chemotherapy for Hodgkin lymphoma, had awful side effects, then suffered a relapse and refused the advice of his medical oncologists, which was to undergo high-dose chemotherapy followed by a stem-cell transplant, which of course is one of the standards of care for relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma in a young…

Going Green at Home

Better Homes and Gardens recently listed 10 Easy Ways to Go Green in a slideshow on their website. While the ideas are accompanied by classy pictures, none of them are especially novel or revolutionary. However, they are excellent ideas, and most of them can save money around the house. (BHG details just how much with each slide.) Here are their suggestions, written by Kelly Tagore, along with my comments: 10 Easy Ways to Go Green Change a Light Bulb BHG recommends changing your light bulbs to compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). We changed all of our light bulbs well over a year ago, and…

Strange Shapes in Space

Which is a stranger place to find an interesting shape: on the north pole of Saturn or in 248 dimensions? In either case, without 21st century technology, we wouldn't be seeing anything at all. In the first case, astronomers knew about this strange sight since the 1980s, but didn't get a clear view until Cassini hit the right angle: A hexagonal form surrounding the north pole of Saturn. This image reveals atmospheric activity on Saturn at a wavelength typically invisible to the human eye. Here's NASA's description: In this image, the blue color shows high-altitude emissions from atmospheric…

Behavior that persists [encore edition]

As recompense for the daily slog that is residency, Signout is going away for a much-needed week or so at the beach. She promises that when she returns in mid-October, she will be tanned, rested, and ready to resume taking everybody's shit. Meanwhile, please enjoy some of her greatest hits [in her own mind]. Since it's October, and therefore time to start preparing in earnest for Christmas, today's selection is presented as a seasonal offering. If you are a wacky gentile and it happens to whip you up into a holiday frenzy, Signout cannot be held responsible for your resultant purchases…

Community hospital

This month, I'm rotating through a small community hospital that is affiliated with the academic center where my residency program is based. For residencies based in well-staffed, well-resourced academic centers, the point of having their residents rotate through a community hospital is to expose them to the real world of medicine. A significant proportion of the hospitals in this country are community hospitals, and because these facilities have little to none of their budget devoted toward research, they often have far fewer specialty services and facilities than academic hospitals do. This…

Evaluating the 2008 Farm Bill

Critterthink, the blog of the Center for Native Ecosystems in Denver, CO has posted a guide to the 2008 Farm Bill from a conservation perspective, highlighting what they call the good, the bad and the ugly. If you haven't had time to review the bill yourself, take advantage of the hard work these folks put into breaking it down for us. The Farm Bill is an omnibus bill passed every few years, setting a policy toolkit for agriculture in the US. It has massive implications for industry, food, foreign policy and, for our purposes, conservation and the environment. Here are a few things that stuck…

Donors Choose Update: Prizes!

As you may or may not be aware, Green Gabbro is one of the smallest blogs on the ScienceBlogs network. But on the challenge leaderboard tonight, I'm just two donors behind a first place tie between Drug Monkey, Science Women, and Uncertain Principles. These blogs all get at least triple my traffic (and Science Woman and Alice have stooped to bribery, to boot), but still are struggling to keep up with your generosity. On a per capita basis, the geoblogosphere kicks philanthropic ass! I'm also pleased to report that we've put new hot plates into a woefully underequipped high school science lab…

Scientific Color

We can babble philosophically about whether or not what we call "red" looks the same from another person's eyes, we can compare the adjectives we use to specify colors--is it maraschino red or cayenne?--but when we're talking to our computers, categorizing flowers, designing objects for mass production, branding a company, or establishing a flag's official colors we have to be able to be specific about which exact shade of red we want. These days we have standard color systems that define colors as specified mixes of red, green, and blue pixels on screen, specific mixtures of pigments in…

Arguments against routine screening for severe disease genes; food for thought

Yesterday I pointed to an article by New Scientist editor Michael Le Page advocating routine carrier testing for severe disease genes in parents-to-be, followed by IVF and pre-implantation genetic screening of embryos for couples unfortunate enough to both be carrying mutations in the same gene. I asked for well-reasoned objections to this approach from commenters. Razib responded with a post at Gene Expression. Firstly, he pointed out that well-reasoned objections are not what matters in this debate: ...though reason is the "front side of the house" in this discussion, the real work is being…

Sanger sequencing is not dead?

Daniel G. Hert, Christopher P. Fredlake, Annelise E. Barron (2008). Advantages and limitations of next-generation sequencing technologies: A comparison of electrophoresis and non-electrophoresis methods Electrophoresis, 29 (23), 4618-4626 DOI: 10.1002/elps.200800456 The dideoxy termination method of DNA sequencing (often called Sanger sequencing after the technique's inventor, Fred Sanger) has been the workhorse of pretty much every molecular biology lab for the last 30 years. However, over the last few years the method has been increasingly supplanted by so-called next-generation sequencing…

We Need to Pass Health Care Reform Now!

It's been a rocky ride this year, getting heath care bills passed in the House and the Senate. It's been just over a month since the Senate passed its bill in a dramatic Christmas Eve vote (and much longer since the House passed its version), but the fate of health care reform still appears as uncertain as ever. In particular, a surprising political setback in Massachusetts has made the already difficult Senate an almost impossibly hostile environment for reform. The most obvious solution is for the House to pass the Senate bill without hesitation; however, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has…

Barack Obama Receives Key Endorsement from the Heart of Texas

Two weeks before what could be a decisive Texas primary, Barack Obama picked up the endorsement Monday of Congressman Chet Edwards, whose district includes Texas A&M University, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, and George W. Bush's Crawford ranch. I'm not going to go so far as to say that I called this one, but I certainly pointed out last week that Edwards was saying some pretty favorable things about Obama (although his office said he hadn't taken an official position yet). I usually don't track endorsements too closely, but I think this one is significant because not only…

Locusts

Everyone I know is raving about this short, speculative video about the future of space exploration. Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo. I'm not so enthused; I even find the words of Carl Sagan troubling. It's lovely and all, but… There's nothing in those exotic landscapes as lovely and rich as mossy and majestic cedars of the Olympic Peninsula, or the rocky sea stacks of the nearby coast. The northern tundra is more alive than an icy plain on a distant moon; having Saturn's rings as a backdrop is not as glorious as an earthly sunset. If you want desert…

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Good Science-Related Causes

In the comments of a recent post, one reader asked for recommendations of good science-related causes to donate to. Not having much (or any) disposable income myself--being a poor grad student and all--I realized that I didn't have many suggestions myself. So, I asked around, and I found, not surprisingly, that there are a ton of worthy causes and organizations out there that need funding. In particular, some of my SciBlings here at ScienceBlogs.com were very helpful with their own suggestions. Although I've compiled quite a list here, I know that this just barely scratches the surface,…

The New York Times "Pay to Click" Launches March 28

Source. The days of "free clicks" to access news media articles could be ending soon. But don't worry. Newspapers need to reinvent themselves for the new media and The New York Times will be launching a "newsonomics" model that makes sense - at least to a news junky like me. The Neiman Journalism Lab at Harvard University posted an intelligent analysis of how it will likely work, and could save newspapers adapted to a new age. Come to think of it, the term "newspapers" is likely to become an anachronism. Will this become a new model for the industry? How much are you willing to pay? {…

Fraudulent Vaccine-Autism Study Is News?

View full size Tanya Kovacs of Iselin holds her 20 month old son Caleb as they take part in a rally in front of the State House opposing new vaccine mandates by the state for children. TONY KURDZUK/THE STAR-LEDGER As reported by the Associated Press and in The New York Times this evening {"filed 7:50 pm}: The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research. The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and…

Guess who's speaking at the NSTA National Conference

The featured speaker at this year's National Science Teacher Association conference in Boston is…Mayim Bialik. The lucky ones among you are saying right now, "who?". Others may know her from her television work, but maybe don't know the full story behind her 'science' activism. She's an actor who plays Sheldon's girlfriend on Big Bang Theory. Right there, as far as I'm concerned, we have a major strike against her: I detest that show. It's the equivalent of a minstrel show for scientists, where scientists are portrayed as gross caricatures of the real thing — socially inept, egotistical…

The anthropologists really are buzzing

I've been getting lots of email and twitter remarks from the HBD mafia -- they don't seem to realize that I don't have any respect for a gang of pseudonymous incompetents, and that they're in a clique of self-deluded racist twits. You want to see real tribalism in action, there's a group that demonstrates it beautifully, driven by one primitive tribal distinction, race, to constantly affirm to each other that they are right to reinforce their prejudices. I'd rather read what real anthropologists -- you know, professionals who have wrestled with and studied this specific problem deeply -- have…

Doctoring Your Way to a Doctorate

If you have not read it, go check out Nicholas Wade's article on doctored images in scientific publications. This is especially pertinent given the recent Hwang Woo Suk stem cell debacle. There is nothing all that revolutionary, but Wade gives a nice review and introduces us to some of the editors who are trying to catch the cheaters. In commenting on the article, John Hawks brings up a good point regarding Photoshop: "I don't worry too much about Photoshopping illustrations of fossils. Instead I worry about two things. "One is picture selection. It is easy to choose pictures that…

There is no Controversy

Are There Disagreements Between the Fossil Record and Molecular Data? Molecular biologists have a tradition of reworking a lot of the evolutionary relationships and timescales that morphologists and paleontologists worked so hard to figure out. This can really piss off the non-molecular folks, but I prefer to think of it as a cooperative relationship. The molecular clock, for example, would not be possible without calibration from the fossil record. It is important to note that molecular and morphological data tell two different stories, which I outline below the fold . . . When I wrote…

Ask a ScienceBlogger: Finding the Time to Blog

This week, Seed asks its ScienceBloggers: How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?... As you probably know, I find myself in the grad student demographic, and as such I have a very busy but flexible schedule. When I first started blogging in January, I had only recently started by Ph.D. in biochemistry, and it seemed like I was going to have quite a bit of free time on my hands. It was kind of like working a nine-to-five job, but with more flexible hours, and…

The Phylogenetics of Animal Testing

Phylogeny Friday -- 30 May 2008 Research on animals in under attack throughout the world. Animal rights activists not only stage rallies against animal testing, but they also engage in criminal behavior. They vandalize property, sabotage experiments, and terrorize researchers. How can scientists fight back? Michael Conn and James Parker have written book documenting the animal rights issue from the scientists' perspective (The Animal Research War). Conn and Parker have also briefly described their position in the FASEB Journal. Here is how they summarize their book: This book is a personal…

Francis Collins Should not be Pres. Science Advisor

Matt Nisbet thinks that Francis Collins should be the next presidential science advisor. He does this after rejecting excellent popularizes of science, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and E.O. Wilson, on the following grounds: Most science popularizers such as Wilson or Tyson don't have the years of government experience to understand the machinations of Federal science policy. Moreover, they have a paper trail of strong opinions on issues that might make appointment politically tough. I'm not sure what exactly those issues upon which they have strong opinions are. Is it that they're both…

Recombination Rate, DNA Polymorphism, and Mutation

In one of the most important papers in population genetics, Begun and Aquadro showed that levels of DNA sequence polymorphism are positively correlated with recombination rate. There are three ways of interpreting this result: Recombination is mutagenic, and polymorphism is higher with increased mutation. Positive selection on beneficial mutations decreases levels of linked neutral polymorphism. This effect is greater in regions of decreased recombination and is known as hitchhiking. Selection against deleterious mutations also decreases linked neutral polymorphism. Like hitchhiking,…

When "Western" woo invades the East

In case you hadn't guessed, because of the holiday weekend, blogging's been rather slow. This is in general a good thing, a chance to rest and rethink, but occasionally, even while chilling out, I see things that I can't resist mentioning briefly. Things like this. If there's one thing about "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) that has always puzzled me, it's that, at least here in the "West," there seems to be an inordinate fascination with ancient "Eastern" medical systems. These include, of course, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Indian Ayruvedic medicine, both of which…

Turn off your damned phone!

I love my iPhone. I really do. There is, however, one thing I don't like about it, a characteristic that (or so I've learned) the iPhone shares with many other "smart" phones, and that's its annoying tendency to interfere with poorly shielded electronic devices. The phenomenon, known as radiofrequency interference, manifests itself as hysterical bursts of mid-frequency electronic buzzing that sound something like "dit-dit-dit-dah-dit-dit-dit-dah," or Morse code on speed with a continuous buzz behind it. The problem appears to be most common with GSM-based phones, such as AT&T (the iPhone'…

The new strategy of the antivaccination movement: Autism is a "misdiagnosis" for mitochondrial disease

I should have seen this one coming a mile away in light of the concession of vaccine injury in the case of one child that led to the incredibly shrinking causation claim when it comes to vaccines and autism. Having had it conclusively demonstrated through several large studies in multiple countries that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism (nor do vaccines themselves), the mercury militia are rapidly changing course. No longer is autism a "misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning." Now it's a "misdiagnosis for mitochondrial diseases." Or it soon will be. Just wait. The new propaganda from the…

For 2012, Rethink the Science Debate Strategy

Bush-Gore Debates 2000: The focus was on performance rather than substance. For those that have seen the Nisbet/Mooney Speaking Science 2.0 talks over the past year, you might have witnessed during the Q&A some disagreement over the merits of actually having the presidential candidates participate in a "Science Debate." As I have said at these talks, I think the goal of raising the profile of science and environmental policy in the presidential election is a good one, it's just that I have doubts about whether or not pushing for an actual debate between the candidates is the right…

Making standards that work

One phenomenon that will be—indeed, already is—utterly unavoidable in the data-curation space is the creation of standards. I once heard Andrew Pace say that standards are like toothbrushes: everybody thinks they're great, but nobody wants to use anybody else's. Be that as it may, standards development and compliance is one way to make everybody's data play nicely with everybody else's data. It's not the only way, to be sure; one very important way that I'm sure we'll also see more of is Being The Only Game In Town. ICPSR manages this quite successfully, and so does the Digital Sky Survey. If…

CEQ Chair Passes on Cherries, Revises History

In an interview with E&ETV last week (subscription required) White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Jim Connaughton managed to get through the entire interview without touting the much-used but much-cherry-picked claim that the US has been beating Europe in reducing greenhouse gas emissions That's not to say that there wasn't some fuzzy math-talk and a bit of revisionist history. Monica Trauzzi: You mentioned the near-term goals, what steps will the U.S. take to limit emissions in the next 10 to 20 years? Jim Connaughton: Well, in the next 10 to 20 years we are currently…

Hair.On.Fire.

Want to know what the life of a recently graduated journalism MA with staggeringly high student loans looks like? Not so much? Well, I don't blame you. It's not exactly the stuff memoirs are made of, but it is keeping me extremely busy. There's been some freelance reporting for The New York Times and Fortune Small Business Magazine, a regular gig fact-checking at The New York Observer, a couple of pieces for Psychology Today, along with my normal gig writing about community events for the local newspapers. Hustling is a prerequisite for success in this field, and as long as I get to write…

More on the brain size debate: Part I

Okay, I know I promised the next entry would be devoted to Temple Grandin's views on language -- a subject well worth exploring -- but I've found myself distracted by some of my other reading this week. (So much to read, so little time.) Be assured, we'll delve into "Grandin on Language" at a later date. Today, I find my thoughts once again turning to the teaspoon of gray matter separating the male and female brain. ("When it comes to brains, does size really matter?) I revisited this entry after the Tangled Bank Carnival and found myself no less irate over Terence Kealey's pseudoscientific…

Vaccinations and autism: we're number one?

It has been alleged by Great Minds such as Jenny McCarthy (D.Goog.) that the US recommends far more vaccinations than other countries.  Her precise statement was, "How come many other countries give their kids one-third as many shots as we do?" She put this into the context of wondering if our current vaccine schedule should be less rigid.  The entire piece was filled with what could charitably called less-than-truthful assertions, but I'm not feeling that charitable: they are lies (or the rantings of an idiot, or the delusions of lunatic.  There are probably other possibilities that I haven'…

Just get un-fat already!

It's hard to avoid news about the "obesity epidemic". Depending on who you talk to, obesity may be the number one killer of Americans or completely irrelevant to health. Alternative med boosters love to focus on obesity and other supposedly behavior-related illness. They use this to simultaneously blame the patient for their own ill-health, blame society for enabling them, and blame real doctors for not fixing it right. The truth is that obesity is a real threat to health. The causes are protean. Societal problems, individual genetics, and politics can all contribute to obesity, as can…

Are you convinced? Do I care? Do you?

I had a nice dinner last night with a group of medical bloggers and journalists (I don't recommend the scallops). One journalist, a veteran of many years, asked me, "is your goal to convince people, or are you preaching to the choir?" It's a simple question, one that I probably should ask myself daily but don't. Rather than extracting an answer from my behind, I decided to think about it for a while. The answer, I think, is both and neither. It's hard to judge given that the percentage of readers who comment is low, but the question wasn't "are your readers convinced", but "do you intend…

Are we insane?

An old medical joke goes like this: An oncologist goes to check on his patient, a 90 year-old man with Alzheimer's disease and metastatic pancreatic cancer. The doc is about to start him on a new round of chemo, but when he goes to the patient's room, he's not there. He demands of the nurse, "Where's my patient?" "He took a turn for the worse and was transferred to the ICU. He looks like he's reached the end." "My patients don't just die!" he says as he picks up the bag of chemo and marches to the ICU. When he gets there, he asks the charge nurse where he can find his patient. "I'm sorry,…

Public figures, public statements, public ethics

In relation to my recent bits about Jenny McCarthy and her antivaccination nonsense, reader Isabel asks the following: I've been following this discussion for awhile, PalMD, and while I agree that JM sounds like a nut, and while I feel sorry for her kid for being stuck with her as a mother, it's hard for me to see her as the evil force she is being portrayed as. For starters, through no fault of her own, she's obviously not particularly bright, which makes it hard to take her seriously, in either a positive or negative way. She seems like countless other neurotic women who are desperate for…

Battlestar Galactica blogging: Season finale

I have mixed feelings about the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, which aired Friday night. Overall, the second season has been a lot less consistent than the first. Some episodes (Downloaded, for example) were as good or better than anything in the first season, while a couple (Black Market, for example) bordered on being downright stinkers. Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II contained elements of both the best and the worst of the second season. At the very least, this episode confirms that Battlestar Galactica is surely one of the most exhiliratingly and infuriatingly adventurous shows on…

Truth, Justice, and Regularity invade ScienceBlogs

Regular readers of this blog since before the move to ScienceBlogs a month ago have probably wondered when everybody's favorite blog mascot would return. It's likely that Christopher Mims and the rest of the ScienceBlog editors probably hoped that he wouldn't, so as not to associate the Seed Magazine name with such strangeness. Perhaps even my fellow ScienceBloggers, some of whom may not be familiar with the wonder that is Orac's mascot, may find themselves scratching their heads and wondering, "WTF?" while wishing Orac would restrain his stranger impulses. If only it were so easy. Orac has…

New Nucleating Strategy for Crystallography?

Well I was reading BK's excellent blog Life of a Lab Rat (an opinion piece from the Guardian "Only biology is safe and, as everybody knows, biology is science for girls." WTF?) When I came upon a link to this great entry on x-ray crystallography (here is some background on what the hell x-ray crystallography is). My current lab is a remarkable mix of various disciplines in the life sciences ... we have biochemists, cell biologists and x-ray crystallographers. We non-crystallographers have had many discussions about that last group. They are a curious breed of biologists ... well really…

If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??

Can you stomach a little more Jim Pinkoski? He's ranting in the comments most amusingly. You guys LIE about Java man, you LIE about Lucy, you LIE about the horse ancestary chart, you LIE about fetuses mimicking evolution stages, you LIE about upright trees sticking through different geology layers, you LIE when you ignore the arguments about the earth's magnetic field, you LIE when you respond to the rotation of the moon orbiting the earth -- SO WHY SHOULD I EVER CONCLUDE THAT ANY OF YOU ARE ACTUALLY "RIGHT" ABOUT ANYTHING? All I see is repeated pathological LYING done by evolutionists in…

Hurricane and Global Warming Mitigation Industry?

ATMOCEAN, a firm based in Santa Fe, NM with Philip W. Kithil at the helm, is according to their website the company is "at the forefront of the emerging Hurricane and Global Warming Mitigation Industry." What is that you ask? In their own words... Our patents-pending Atmocean technology is based on a wave-activated pump that brings cold water from the deep ocean to the surface, to cool sea surface temperatures and potentially reduce hurricane damage to onshore and offshore property and infrastructure, and save lives. For each 0.5 degree Celsius drop in surface water temperature, hurricane…

The species question

Razib has two interesting posts up at Gene Expression (1,2) that touch on something related to my own research: the question of whether or not "species" are really "real" biological entities, or just artificial groupings that humans use to make the world easier to understand. Razib has, he admits, "serious issues with the idea of species as such," and believes that focusing on things like the best way to define "species" can get in the way of understanding what is really going on. I certainly can't argue with the second point. Focusing on how to define "species" can certainly get in the way…

Obama Guilty of Attempting Reasonable Compromise

Enough already with the "Obama flips-flops on offshore drilling"! You can really tell when the news networks need a lead story: They simply leave out some salient details and allow their talking heads to spin. If you haven't seen the original interview that appeared in The Palm Beach Post, here's the most important bit: "My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices," Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post. "If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling…

A Visit to Nurmth

I don't know if it was part astral projection and part sleep paralysis, or just a too-large slice of autumn bread too close to bedtime, but I recently spent some time at planet Nurmth. Don't be alarmed. It's much like Earth and populated by sentient hominids with technology similar to ours. There was one striking difference though. The inhabitants of Nurmth are obsessed with numbers. When I first arrived, I noticed that many cars had bumper stickers with numbers on them. Some people wore jewelry in the form of numbers and still others sported number tattoos. At first I though this was some…

But Plumber Chicks Are HAWT!

Last night I was watching tv with Mr. Zuska and the loathsome Kohler's "Jo's Plumbing" commercial came on yet again. Plumbing is one of those trades that have been traditionally dominated by men. Women have struggled to gain access to these well-paying jobs. It is a job that takes a women out, often on her own, into the houses of strangers, where she might be vulnerable to sexual assault, not to mention the harassment and discrimination she might have to put up with on the job from colleagues. In this commercial the young plumber is, of course, hot and sexy, dressed in tight clothing to…