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The Island Project

As I promised the other day, I went to Carrboro Century Center this afternoon (right after meeting with Anton around the corner) to see the Island Projects designed by the Chapel Hill High School students of Rob Greenberg. I did not see all of them - they were doing this in "shifts" throughout the afternoon and I could only stay for an hour - but I saw several of the projects and talked to a number of students (and to Rob himself). I have to say I was really, truly impressed with their work, as well as with their enthusiasm as they explained the details of their projects to me and other…

Open Lab 2007 - the winning entries for you to see!

Well, The Day has arrived! After reading all of the 486 entries at least once (and many 2-3 times) and after calculating all of the judges' ratings of all the posts, Reed Cartwright and I are happy to announce which blog posts will be published in the second science blogging anthology, the "Open Laboratory 2007". First, I want to thank the judges (at least those who do not wish to remain anonymous - let me know if I missed one of you) for spending their holiday break reading, commenting on and grading all the submitted posts and making our job that much easier. Those are: Anna Kushnir,…

Science Blogging News

Several items showed up recently that may be of interest to science bloggers, their readers, and related science communicators of various stripes.... A) Today, Eureka, the science section of London Times, published a list of Top 30 Science Blogs. Every list that has me in it is a good list ;-) They say "Zivkovic, who studies circadian rhythms, is an often-provocative evangelist for new media who has probably done more than anyone else to inspire scientists to blog. He is also a must-follow on Twitter, where he posts as @boraz" They could have had a more diverse group (in sense of gender,…

the partitioning of my brain

1 47 48 22 1 58 3 0 842 I have remembered these numbers for 35 years. They are phone numbers. Those I would need to call if I needed my family to get me, or if I was in trouble. (Yeah, Iceland is small, and five digits were enough back then - I didn't list the other numbers that are still good... with the extra digits that when the number space was expanded a few years ago). In the last ten years, I have had occasion to memorize precisely three phone numbers - not, I think, because my brain is ossified, but because I don't need to memorize phone numbers. My phone remembers them. So does my…

The Birds of Chernobyl: Better Off Drab and Lazy

tags: researchblogging.org, birds, ornithology, evolution, radiation, Chernobyl Normal Barn Swallow (a), while the other pictures show signs of albinism (white feathers; b & c), unusually colored feathers (d), deformed beaks (e & f), deformed air sacs (g), and bent tail feathers (h & i). Images: Tim Mousseau. Twenty years after the Chernobyl reactor disaster, which released clouds of radioactive particles in April 1986, the uninhabited forests within the 19 mile (30 kilometer) "exclusion zone" around the disaster site are lush and teeming with wildlife, giving the appearance…

Good Government Programs: Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units

Given how many complaints we've been hearing lately about wasteful government spending, I thought this might be a good time to highlight some lesser-known, worthwhile government-funded programs that promote public health. (Core agency functions, like EPA's Clean Air Act enforcement, are also crucial for public health, but I trust this audience is already fairly familiar with them.) One example - which comes immediately to mind because we have one affiliated with our department here at the George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services - is pediatric environmental…

Responses to My Chocolate Archaeology Piece

My debate piece in Antiquity has proved popular (many people have asked me to send it over, and now I've received the journal's permission to place the paper on-line for free in PDF format) and controversial (several have offered criticism in comments here). Mainly replies seem inspired by the two paragraphs I quoted from the article in my blog entry. Both deal with my opinion that archaeology needs to be fun and popular, because boring archaeology that interests few people is effectively worthless. In the following I will reply to the most interesting comments. To see if I've sneakily…

There are two Sochis

The Winter Olympics are just around the corner. They will be held in "Sochi," Russia. But as is the case with so many things in life, it is not that simple. When we refer to the venue, we tend to mention Sochi in part because some of the events will be held there and in part because it is on most maps. But the Olympics will be held at more than one location, as is often the case. The 2014 Winter Olympics, aka the XXII Olympic Winter Games will occur from the 7th to the 23rd of February in Sochi proper, on the Black Sea, and inland at Krasnaya Polyana. Sochi is a resort city on the Black…

My Beloved Brontosaurus by Brian Switek

Back in January, thinking about science topics to add to the book-in-progress, it occurred to me that I would really be letting down SteelyKid (and pre-schoolers everywhere) if I didn't take the opportunity to include something about dinosaurs. The problem with that, of course, is that I know next to nothing about dinosaurs, especially discoveries made since, say, 1981 or so. I remembered, however, that blogger extraordinaire Brian Switek had written a book about the latest on dinosaurs, My Beloved Brontosaurus. Sadly, a quick trip to Amazon revealed that it wasn't out yet, and in fact won't…

The evolution of the past tense - how verbs change over time

This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material. For decades, scientists have realised that languages evolve in strikingly similar ways to genes and living things. Their words and grammars change and mutate over time, and new versions slowly rise to dominance while other face extinction. In this evolutionary analogy, old texts like the Canterbury Tales are the English language's version of the fossil record. They preserve the existence of words that used to…

On Seeing Further

"All things move and nothing remains still" -- Heraclitus The history of astronomy can be read as a story of better and better vision. Over the centuries, we have supplemented our vision with technology that allows us to see further and more clearly; while Ancient astronomers, who relied only on their naked eyes to perceive the universe, managed to make star catalogues and predict comets, Galileo, pressing his to a telescope, saw all the way to the moons of Jupiter. Optical telescopes and the human eye are fundamentally limited; early astronomers were forced to gaze into telescopes for…

Study shows grad students want more balanced careers

A friend of mine posted this article to his Facebook page, and I thought it well worth pointing your attention to it. Researchers at University of California, Berkley surveyed over 8,000 doctoral students from the UC System about their career, family and life plans. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they found that "major research universities may be losing some of the most talented tenure-track academics before they even arrive. In the eyes of many doctoral students, the academic fast track has a bad reputation--one of unrelenting work hours that allow little or no room for a satisfying family life…

The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Fumento

Mike Hudson gets a whole column out of an exchange with Fumento: I decided to e-mail Fumento and gloat about his descent into ignominy. I told him that, given his positions on Love Canal and Gulf War Syndrome, it wasn't surprising to hear that he was bought and paid for by a chemical company. What sweet irony. "Time wounds all heels," I reminded him at the end of the brief message. Imagine my surprise when, nine minutes later, Fumento replied. He bragged about having "exposed" Hanchette for "lying about a perfectly safe place called Love Canal." The humorless quality of his post was…

Routine whole-genome sequencing of babies by 2019?

I'm slowly catching up on genomics news from the last week - this story in particular has been getting a lot of press. The executive summary: Jay Flatley, CEO of genomic technology manufacturer Illumina, predicts that whole-genome sequencing of newborns will become routine within a decade. Flatley has an obvious financial interest in this prediction coming true, since Illumina provides the most commercially successful next-generation sequencing platform currently on the market, the Genome Analyzer, and has recently invested heavily in emerging "third-generation" sequencing technologies (by…

Energy in an exploding water heater

The more I think about the last MythBusters' exploding water heater, the more cool things I see. How about I look at the energy of the explosion. There are three things I can look at: How much energy went into the water heater from the electric source? How much kinetic energy did the water heater have right after the explosion? How much thermal energy did the water and water heater have? How much gravitational potential energy did the heater have at it's highest point? Hopefully, I can show that the energy in from the electric source is greater or equal to kinetic plus thermal. Also, the…

Earthquake anniversary musings on what science doesn't give us.

One hundred years ago today, 18 April 1906, a major earthquake (estimated to be 7.9 on the richter scale) nearly destroyed the city of San Francisco and did some serious damage to other communities in the area. Here in the Bay Area, there are various commemorations of the event taking place, and the local papers have all hit the vaults to dig up accounts of the quake, and of the fires that followed. (See, for example, the Chronicle's "Great Quake" page. Of course, the U.S. Geological Survey has a page with great quake links, too.) So in a very obvious way, you could say there's lots of…

Pre-emptive strike at the "where are the women?" question

Regular blog readers are familiar with the rule of thumb that every three months or so there will be another outbreak of blog posts wondering where all the women are. Clancy at Culture Cat provides and extensive list of links to discussions of this question up to March 2005; I'm not sure this data supports the hypothesis of a three month period for the cycle, but then again, Clancy acknowledges that the list is not complete. The point is, the issue seems to come up a lot. There have been numerous hypotheses floated to explain the apparent absence of women bloggers (in terms of "visibility"…

Some Seriously Good Sh- er... Manure

Note: This is a repeat from ye olde blogge, brought about by the barn cleaning we're engaged in. From December to March or the beginning of April, we simply don't clean out the barn. This sounds as if it might be gross, but it really isn't - we keep layering on bedding, and sufficient carbon keeps it from smelling bad - earthy and barnish, sure, but not particularly icky. We don't just do this because we're lazy - this is good husbandry for our climate. The barn has cement floors, left over from its days as a garage, and those cement floors get cold in the winter. A very thick layer of…

Birds in the News 123

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Wilson's snipe, Gallinago delicata. It is a little unusual to see a shorebird off the the ground, but this fellow decided he needed a higher perch to take in some of the scenery. Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size]. Birds in Research The songs that each spring announce when birds are ready to compete for homes and sex have been traced to changes in the brain, according to a study that can shed new light on winter depression in people. While some birds, such as robins, sing throughout the winter, other species of bird…

Five Truths About Taxes (in the U.S.)

Before I get to an excellent NY Times article by David Leonhardt about taxes, I want to say why taxes shouldmust matter to scientists. Even so often, I get a link or a comment which decries my posts about politics*. But the lay of the political landscape is vital for scientists--and not just for the 'science' issues, such as global warming. Quite simply, taxes are what fund much of U.S. science, especially 'basic' research, which is not only the cornerstone of applied research, but also comprises a lot of the cool stuff we discuss at ScienceBlogs. In a low-tax environment (when combined…

China and choosing a new WHO Director General

With all the talk of transparency, we learn that China has yet to share its avian flu isolates with the world scientific community. This is different than the sequence issue. China has shared its sequences, but the sequences don't tell the whole story. In particular, we are still not able to make the jump to biology, for example host range, virulence and tissue tropisms. Correlating the sequences with the biology is a critical scientific goal. For that you need the viruses themselves. And since 2004 the Ministry of Agriculture, despite promises to the contrary, has not shared its isolates.…

Two debates last night - both won by Democrats

I watched the first couple of Dems debates, then skipped most of them - too busy with work and stuff - then tuned in last night for the ABC/Facebook double-feature. Brief thoughts: The GOP debate was surreal. A bunch of Grumpy Old White Men spewing nonsense and nobody called them on it (the same conversation could easily have occurred at a neighborhood bar or at a strip-club and would not seem out of place). McCain and Thompson looked like the two old geezers sitting on the balcony on the Muppet Show set, and were just as coherent. Romney was like a deer in the headlights, insulted that…

Report on chemical-asthma links a useful resource for workers at risk

by Kim Krisberg It really is a chemical world, which is bad news for people with asthma. According to a recent report released in August, at this very moment from where I write, I'm fairly surrounded by objects and materials that contain chemicals that are known or suspected asthmagens — substances that can act as asthma triggers if inhaled. There's formaldehyde (it's in office furniture, wood flooring, curtains and drapes); maleic anhydride (it's in interior paint and tile flooring); hexamethylene diisocyanate (it's in metal storage shelving and decorative metal); and diisodecyl phthalate (…

Reactions to the Democratic Convention

I'm curious to see how some of the folks whose views I respect are reacting to the Democratic National Convention, so I'm doing a little roundup of some that I've read from other bloggers. First, Brian Leiter: Let us put aside the chauvinistic masturbation that travels under the heading "patriotism"; the cheesey "feel-good" pop psychology about America's "can do" spirit; the implicit, and sometimes explicit, condescension to all other nations and all other peoples of the world; the romanticization of the last great immoral and criminal war by the United States--one also based on lies--in…

"Transgenic Drug" Controversy, Part 2

This is a follow-up to href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/07/transgenic_drug_controversy.php">the post from a couple of days ago.  It might not make a lot of sense unless you have read that post, or are otherwise familiar with the issues regarding genetically-modified crops. In general, there are valid concerns about genetically-modified crops.  However, it is important to think clearly about the issues involved.  Concerns about the technology that arise from a generalization,  may or may not apply to a specific implementation of the technology.  In order to understand…

PepsiCo blog, Food Frontiers, is an affront to those who built the reputation of ScienceBlogs

Yesterday, the ScienceBlogs arm of Seed Media Group announced that they would be hosting a blog written by members of PepsiCo's research and development leadership team. From the Food Frontiers blog: PepsiCo's R&D Leadership Team discusses the science behind the food industry's role in addressing global public health challenges. This is an extension of PepsiCo's own Food Frontiers blog. All editorial content on the blog is overseen by ScienceBlogs editors. The opening post was written by ScienceBlogs "editor" Evan Lerner: As part of this partnership, we'll hear from a wide range of…

The peril of positive thinking - why positive messages hurt people with low self-esteem

When the going gets tough, thousands of people try to boost their failing self-esteem by repeating positive statements to themselves. Encouraged by magazine columnists, self-help books and talk-show hosts, people prepare for challenges by chanting positive mantras like "I am a strong, powerful person," and, "Nothing can stop me from achieving my dreams." This approach has been championed at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale's infamous book The Power of Positive Thinking, published in 1952. But a new study suggests that despite its popularity, this particular brand of self-help may…

National, International, or City-wide Currencies?

Anyone who has traveled in Europe before and after the introduction of the euro can appreciate how easy tourism is made by the common currency (haggling with the guys in money change booths was never my idea of vacation). But a recent paper by Benn Steil in Foreign Affairs goes even further, arguing that the adoption of regional or multi-state currencies is better for economic development than the cornucopia of national currencies used in the world today. Time was, Steil recalls, it was said that three things were necessary in order to be a "real country": an airline, a stock exchange, and…

Physician's ethics: No more toys from drug companies

PhRMA -- the association of pharmaceutical companies -- has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on drug paraphernalia given to doctors: Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies -- Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs -- that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs. No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned…

The impact of failing vision on artists - and other altered perceptions.

Many famous artists and musicians have had the perception of their own art altered by abnormal physical or mental changes. Critics and historians have often credited these changes as major sources of creativity. Insanity and Drugs seem to usually be the most cited and obvious candidates but very often something a lot more vanilla, like hearing or vision loss, can have the greatest impact on an artists art. Probably the most famous case of an artist (in this case a musician) losing the one sense that was the most important to their work is Ludwig Van Beethoven. Over the course of the last…

The "Phantom" of Heilbronn and Negative Controls (Or the Lack Thereof)

It looks like there are quite a few police officers in Germany with egg on their face right now. They spent several years, thousands of man-hours, and over $14 million trying to track down a criminal mastermind, only to discover that they were chasing lab contamination. Sadly, I am serious about this. From a 2008 Telegraph article: Police in Germany have stepped up the hunt for a serial killer nicknamed "the woman without a face". The mystery woman has been linked by DNA to six murders and a string of thefts in a 15-year spree in three countries. Her latest victims may be three second-hand…

Bookshelf #1: July 2006 Cohen edition

I'm following Dave's lead here, who was following Nick Hornby's lead, who could probably be made aware of our lead following and then wax poetic on the flourishing of his format. Except I'm sure he's busy. Lunching with Cusack. Unless Cusack is lunching with Anjelica Huston, like in The Player. Damn, Robert Altman's good. Can we talk about McCabe and Mrs. Miller? Did I get sidetracked? These are the books on my nightstand, and beside my desk at my office. They shift frequently, but this is where things stand today. As of now, early July, the first ten are nightstand-based, the last…

The Wedgie Document and the creationist challenge

While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…

Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?

The Astrophysicist, when he has time, will have something to say about his reading of the physics of the material Tom Whipple sums up. This situation however seems to be changing following a lengthy interview with a fellow out in Berkeley, California by the name of Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy. He has been working in this field for the last ten years and says that he not only has a reliable heat-producing device, but also understands the physics behind it - which he calls the Quantum Fusion Hypothesis. He says that this theory of just how low-energy nuclear reactions work has allowed…

Falsehood: Humans evolved from apes

Is it a Falsehood that Humans Evolve from Apes? How about this one: Is it a Falsehood that Humans did NOT evolve from Apes???? Yes and no. Humans descend from a population of primates from which other apes also descended (minimally the two species of living chimps) and which was part of the panoply of late Miocene forms, all related to each other, that we call apes. So yes, humans evolved from apes. There are people who don't believe that. They, creationists, think that apes are apes and humans came from somewhere else, like the Garden of Eden or Mud or whatever. (This may depend on…

Evolution of Squeaker Catfishes in Africa's Lake Tanganyika

tags: evolutionary biology, speciation, species flocks, molecular phylogeny, behavioral ecology, Synodontis species, squeaker catfish, cuckoo catfish, Lake Tanganyika, peer-reviewed paper The Cuckoo Catfish, Synodontis multipunctatus [Siluriformes: Mochokidae]. This is the only fish that is a known brood parasite. This is one of the species included in this newly-published study. Image: orphaned. One of the groups of fishes that I worked with as an aquarist for nearly my entire life are the synodontids, often known as "squeaker catfish" for their ability to make high-pitched sounds.…

TEDxRTP

Yesterday I spent the day at the RTP headquarters, attending TEDxRTP. The TEDx conferences are small, locally organized offshoots of the well-known TED conference. This was the first TEDx in the Triangle region (though Asheville beat us as being the first in the state) and, judging from the response of the audience, it seems everyone expects this will become a regular annual event. You can check out the Twitter account as well as the Twitter chatter if you search the #TEDxRTP hashtag. The event was livestreamed and the rough videos are already up on the Ustream channel. Better quality videos…

An Agenda for Improving Environmental Info & Participation

Good data isn't just important to researchers; it's also essential for people who want to participate in the governmental processes that affect our environment. The US government makes a lot of environmental data available to the public and provides many opportunities for public participation, but both the information and the engagement opportunities need to improve if we're going to effectively address the many threats to our health, from air pollution to climate change. The nonprofit OMB Watch has just released an action plan that contains many specific recommendations for doing exactly…

Ask Ethan #24: Cheating Time and Space

"For the wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited dimensions." -Lao Tzu You know the deal: it's the end of the week, so it's time for another Ask Ethan! You've continued to send in your questions-and-suggestions, much to my delight, and I'm pleased to tell you that this week's question comes from Peter Tibbles. Peter asks about obtaining information from beyond where Einstein's theory of relativity allows us to see: Because of the expansion of the universe there is an event horizon beyond which we can know nothing. There’s been one instance of intelligent life evolved (us);…

Sexually transmitted allergies and other oddities

While researching Wednesday's post, I ran into a number of strange case studies. They didn't quite fit into that post, but I thought they were too interesting to ignore. If you're interested, follow me down the pubmed rabbit hole. When I typed "semen allergy" into google scholar last week, the very first hit was this paper [pdf]: We report the case of a 20-year-old woman with documented Brazil nut allergy who developed widespread [hives] and mild [shortness of breath] after intercourse with her boyfriend who had earlier consumed Brazil nuts. Skin prick testing with the boyfriend's semen…

What "Thinking" about autism (or anything) is not

Yesterday’s post was just too depressing to contemplate and even more depressing to write. It was a total downer after seen the awesomeness that was John Oliver gloriously skewering America’s Quack Dr. Mehmet Oz. That’s why I think it would be good to finish this week on an amusing note. Well, it would be amusing if it weren’t for my knowledge that the woman who wrote the post I’m about to “analyze” has an autistic child and is subjecting that child to quackery. Actually, that’s true of pretty much every woman who blogs at the wretched hive of scum and autism biomed quackery where this post…

Another week of GW News, January 3, 2010

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose... January 3, 2010 Chuckles, Copenhagen, Knorr, French Carbon Tax, Retrospectives, CRU Melting Arctic, Methane Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols, Paleoclimate, Future Climate, ENSO Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Floods &…

How Geithner's Break from Reality Is Screwing Up TARP

Yves Smith lays out just how stupid Treasury Secretary Geithner's proposal is. I think these are the key points (italics mine): Let's start with the basics. The US banking system is insolvent. Got that? Insolvent. That does not mean every bank in the US is toast, in fact quite a few are probably just fine, and another large group is no doubt hurting and undercapitalized, but a couple of years of not shooting themselves in the foot again would enable therm (via earnings) to rebuild their equity bases sufficiently to proceed more or less as normal. The problem is that a significant portion of…

Reading Diary: Open Access: What You Need to Know Now by Walt Crawford

Sometimes we Open Access advocates tend to assume everybody is already on our side. You know, all our librarian and scientist colleagues out there. Surely by now they've seen the light. They understand the main issues and flavours of OA, can ably summarize the major arguments for OA and refute the major complaints against. Of course, reality is a lot more complicated than my dreamy, unrealistic wishes. Convincing librarians to support Open Access, either directly or indirectly, is usually fairly easy but even we have a number of misconceptions and misunderstandings about what OA really…

Trump's Take It Or Leave It Approach Makes Sense

In real estate. I'm not an expert on this but I've seen the sausage being made a few times. Individuals with investment money, commercial businesses that might use new space, other possible tenants, maybe or maybe not some designers or builders, municipal or other government stakeholders, community stakeholders such as neighborhood associations, etc. consider a real estate deal. Perhaps there is a bit of condemned land the county wants to sell cheap if only you clean up the brownfield and develop something nice. Maybe the investors include a person who owns an underexploited business…

An Excellent Robot Kit: Tenergy Odev Tomo 2-in-1

Tenergy is a company that you know well even if you don't know them. They make a lot of the replacement batteries for everything, external power supplies, other electronic items. But recently they've added a few items to their line of products that reach out in an entirely different direction. Tenergy Odev Tomo 2-in-1 Transformable DIY STEM Education Programmable Robot Kit is a robot kit that can be configured as a tricycle with two large wheels, or as a two-wheeled "bicycle" which operates like a Segway. Which is pretty amazing. So far Tomo is my favorite out of the box Robot Build, and I…

Worldnutdaily Hypocrisy on Gannon/Guckert

I've just been waiting for this, knowing that Joseph Farah couldn't help but put foot in mouth in this situation. But even for Farah, this is astonishing. In a delightfully silly column called No Substitute for Real Journalism, Farah gives us his take on the whole Gannon/Guckert ordeal. He eagerly calls Talon News and Guckert "pretenders" and contrasts them with the professional standards of the Worldnutdaily. And if you're not laughing yet, stick with me. After admirably noting that, "Maybe the reason the White House didn't mind looking the other way when it came to Gannon-Guckert was the…

A Billion Tons of Nickel

Via Toby, a detailed proposal for floating colonies on Venus. I heard Geoff Landis talk about this at Boskone a while back-- the basic idea is that the Venusian atmosphere is so dense that you could easily build structures that would float high enough up in the atmosphere to be above the hellish temperatures. You still have to deal with the sulfuric acid clouds, but what would life be without its little challenges. The post linked above adds an extra, counter-intuitive motivation to the picture: There are many other reasons to colonize Venus. First and foremost, human survival is dependent…

Scott Westerfeld, The Last Days

Scott Westerfeld's new YA novel The Last Days is a sequel to his earlier Peeps, so technically, it's a book about teenage vampires. Only really it's a book about a bunch of misfit kids forming a band and trying to make it big. While the Vampire Apocalypse happens around them. In Peeps, we learn of the existence of a parasite that infects humans, and gives them vampire-like abilities (strength, speed, heightened senses) and some of the drawbacks of classic vampirism (things they used to love become anathema to them). The story there alternates with sections describing the actions of freaky…

Plan B - Take 2

After re-reading my post on the latest Plan B foolishness, I think I might have been too angry to make my point clearly. I'm still pretty damn pissed off, but I'm going to give it another shot. There's little about this thing that doesn't make me mad, but right now I'm angriest about the FDA's latest arbitrary decision in this case: to refuse to allow over-the-counter (OTC) sales of the "Plan B" morning after pill to those under 18 years of age. Here's why: The primary mission of the branch of the FDA that oversees pharmaceuticals is to ensure that drugs, whether prescription or over the…