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Keep that sword out of the hands of the Lord

Here's a much more serious issue than a goddamned cracker: it's the steady accumulation of military power in religious hands. It's not overt policy, but we should be worried that there is an increasing association between religiosity and military service — an association between credulity and obscene amounts of physical power. Jeremy Hall is discovering this first-hand. Hall grew up reading the Bible every night and saying grace at dinner. Then, after his first tour of duty, he met some friends who were atheist and decided to read the Bible again. He read the whole Bible, and had so many…

California's Amazing Geology

California's Amazing Geology by Don Prothero is an amazing book about -- wait for it -- California's geology! California is one of the most geologically interesting and complex geopolitical units in the world. But so is Minnesota, and Minnesota is boring, geologically, for most people. Why? Because Minnesota is all eroded down and flattened out and covered with glacial till, so most of the interesting geology is buried, while California is actively engaged in its own geology in a spectacular and visually appealing way! Lots of places have volcanoes. California has volcanoes that blow up, or…

Just say "NO" to ScienceBlogs adverts

For those of you who read only Terra Sig and not others at ScienceBlogs (post-morning coffee delusions of grandeur), you may not be aware that a number of questionable advertisements have been appearing on the frontpage run by the purveyors of our pontifications. Many of this adverts have been of content diammetrically opposed to what each of us stand for professionally and personally. So, it was to my dismay this morning that I awoke to this ad for a bodybuilding supplement that exploits the endogenous vasodilator, nitric oxide. Commenter Daedalus will be convulsing in a corner somewhere…

The Australian's War on Science 57: the Monckton Gallop

The Australian continues to express institutional contempt for science, scientists and the scientific method with a piece by Christopher Monckton Graham Readfern has already commented on some of the errors in Monckton's piece, but there are plenty more. Cap-and-tax in Europe has been a wickedly costly fiasco. ... Result: electricity prices have doubled. In the name of preventing global warming, many Britons are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes. It's not hard to check this. The average annual bill for electricity in the UK increased from £285 in 2005 (when the EU ETS…

Bird flu, TB, anthrax and some thoughts on New Years Day

The Reveres get a lot of emails from folks who think their issue is worthy of mention on Effect Measure. For the most part, they are right, and the only reason for not mentioning them is the time and attention span of The Reveres. One of the privileges of blogging is the blogger gets to set the agenda. Periodically I get emails from someone who feels very passionately about the harm being done to military personnel by mandatory anthrax vaccination. I've even blogged about it on occasion (on the old site, here, here, here and here), and I think there are some serious public health issues…

A Way Forward for OSHA

By Adam M. Finkel Two weeks ago, Congress officially asked a question that would have been unutterable during the first six years of the Bush Administration: "Have OSHA Standards Kept up with Workplace Hazards?" I was not surprised to read Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke's testimony, in which he tried mightily to make the molehill of OSHA regulatory activity since 2001 look like a (small) mountain.  In my experience as a former OSHA executive, each of the Assistant Secretaries since at least 1997 has assigned a small army of spin-meisters to look for data, any data, that will make the agency…

Effect Measure's second blogiversary: still crazy after all these years

by revere [This is another cross-post from Effect Measure but it fits here because it lays out some of the history of the progressive public health blogosphere and welcomes The Pump Handle as its newest -- and we hope brightest -- member!] This weekend is Effect Measure's Second Blogiversary and it coincides with two other events: the new Flu Wiki Forum and the incipient debut of a new progressive public health blog, The Pump Handle, to which The Reveres will be occasional contributors (some original posts, some cross posts). We are semi-thrilled to still be around after two years. Semi-…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Reveal, Jennifer LaFleur writes about the U.S. veterans who witnessed the country’s many nuclear weapon tests, the health problems they’ve encountered in the decades since their service, and their fight for compensation. One of the “atomic veterans” LeFleur interviewed — Wayne Brooks — said: “We were used as guinea pigs – every one of us. They didn’t tell us what it was gonna do to us. They didn’t tell us that we were gonna have problems later on in life with cancers and multiple cancers.” LaFleur writes: All of the atomic vets were sworn to secrecy. Until the secrecy was lifted decades…

Making excuses

The editor of Life, Shu-Kun Lin, has published a rationalization for his shoddy journal. Life (ISSN 2075-1729, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/life/) is a new journal that deals with new and sometime difficult interdisciplinary matters. Consequently, the journal will occasionally be presented with submitted articles that are controversial and/or outside conventional scientific views. Some papers recently accepted for publication in Life have attracted significant attention. Moreover, members of the Editorial Board have objected to these papers; some have resigned, and others have questioned the…

Neural basis of congenital face blindness

Prosopagnosia is a neurological condition characterised by an inability to recognize faces. In the most extreme cases, the prosopagnosic patient cannot even recognize their own face in the mirror or a photograph, and in his 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, the neurologist Oliver Sacks describes the extraordinary case of a farmer who lost the ability to recognize the faces of his cows! Also known as face blindness, prosopagnosia is associated with damage to specific parts of the temporal lobes. But there are also documented cases of patients who have the condition in the…

The Weird History of Vaccine Adjuvants

Last week the Times ran a story by Andrew Pollack, Benefit and Doubt in Vaccine Additive, that covered some of the ground I trod in my Slate story, "To Boost or Not to Boost: The United States' swine flu vaccines will leave millions worldwide unprotected. Pollack also had the room to explore something I lacked room for -- the fascinating history of adjuvants, and the strange mystery of how they work. Like so many things that work in medicine, adjuvants were discovered more or less by accident -- and were in fact a "dirty little secret" in a fairly literal sense. As the Wikipedia entry…

AWIS Washington Wire and "Beyond Bias and Barriers" Report

From the September 15, 2006 AWIS Washington Wire Women at Work-Striving for 25% Female Faculty In 2000, the European Research Ministries set the goal that 25% of all faculty members would be female by the year 2010. Unfortunately, the numbers are likely to fall far short. To show what the visual impact of this proportion of women would be, Petra Rudolf, a professor and materials scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, convinced 35 of the university's 50 female professors to show up at the opening ceremony of the new academic year. As a result of Rudolf's planning pushed…

Pathological video gaming in kids: How common is it? (updated)

A few weeks ago, a new study made headlines in major newspapers across the country: Study Finds Some Youths 'Addicted' to Video Games, proclaimed the Washington Post. The Post article cited a figure of 8.5 percent of gamers age 8-18 nationwide showing signs of a behavioral addiction. Since the study found that 88 percent of children play video games, the scale of this problem is potentially vast -- as many as 3 million kids, addicted to video games. The claim of "addiction" is quite serious. Just doing something a lot isn't enough to qualify as an addiction, it must have a detrimental effect…

More heavy metals in dietary supplements

Via Terra Sigilatta (who beat me to this one, as I saw the press release yesterday but never got around to blogging about it), we find yet another case of heavy metal contamination of a popular supplement, this time herbal kelp supplements. This discovery was prompted by the investigation of a case of woman who suffered real harm from these supplements: The new study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Health Perspectives - available online at www.ehponline.org - was prompted by the case of a 54-year-old woman who was seen at the UCD Occupational Medicine Clinic following a two-…

How We Decide (Paperback Remix)

The paperback of How We Decide is now shipping from your favorite online retailers and should be in local bookstores. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I'd repost an interview I conducted with myself when the hardcover was published last year. If you'd like more, there's also this interview on Fresh Air, and this interview on the Colbert Report. Q: Why did you want to write a book about decision-making? A: It all began with Cheerios. I'm an incredibly indecisive person. There I was, aimlessly wandering the cereal aisle of the supermarket, trying to choose between the apple-cinnamon and…

Children, Childless, and Academia: The Need for Better Scientific Managers

There's been a lot of discussion about why women in academia have fewer children than those in medicine or law. Unfortunately, it seems to be veering dangerously close to the 'pro-kids, anti-kids' argument that ultimately breaks out, when instead, I think the problem has less to do with children and more to do with a fundamental problem within academia (and academic science in particular)--we suck at management. As bad as we supposedly are at defending evolution (if Randy Olsen is to be believed), we really do a piss poor job at managing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Dr. Crazy at…

Reading Diary: Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada by Elizabeth May

For those that don't know, Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and one of only two Greens in the Canadian Parliament -- and the only one elected as a Green. As such, you would expect that she would be a strong advocate for democracy and the environment, willing to stand up to the current Conservative government of Stephen Harper and tell it like it is. In her latest book, Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada, she does just that in an entertaining and inspiring amalgamation of memoir and manifesto. This is an amazing book, sarcastic and hopeful but still witty and…

Bourbon, vodka and hangovers

I went to medical school in the days when controls on human experimentation were not very robust (I understate). I think about that around Christmas time because one of the ways this penurious medical student used to make a few bucks was by volunteering for medical experiments (and eating Spaghetti-Os at 19 cents a can). One year I desperately wanted to buy my girlfriend an expensive ($20) book (Larousse Gastronomique; last time I mentioned it here she told me -- via email since she lives across the ocean -- she still has it after more than 40 years; hug and a wave from me and Mrs. R.). I…

Jubilee!

Brian Davey of FEASTA argues that we could do debt cancellation ethically, while leaving the larger financial system intact, and that OccupyEverything should focus its message on the idea of Jubilee. Instead we need a scheme with a pattern of rewards and incentives that is more appropriate to the times that we live in. This could be achieved by giving people the wherewithall to reduce their debts if they have debts, but also giving the same amount to people who have no debts, or have low debts, which they could use too - not on a consumption binge, but on green investment to bring down our…

Getting Your Family On Board With Food Storage

I imagine after the last few weeks, the idea of storing food isn't seeming quite so crazy to a lot of folks in the country, but still, I hear all the time "I want to start building up a reserve but my husband/sister/mother in law thinks this is nuts." So I thought I would repost this piece, on how to get your family on board (and what not to say). Ok, I've convinced you - you need a reserve of food, you want to learn to can and dehydrate, you want to start eating more local foods. But you haven't done anything yet, because, well, the rest of your household isn't on board. Before you go…

You Will Never Die

If I ever decided to abandon any pretense of integrity or credibility, and just shoot for making a bazillion dollars peddling quantum hokum, the particular brand of quantum philosophy I would peddle has already been laid out, in Robert Charles Wilson's Divided by Infinity. In the story, the narrator is given a copy of a "crank book" by Carl G. Soziere, titled You will Never Die, which makes an argument that is essentially a variant of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics: And the argument was seductive. Shorn of the babble about Planck radii and Prigogine complexity and the…

Links for 2010-08-05

Judge Walker's decision to overturn Prop 8 is factual, well-reasoned, and powerful. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine "It's hard to read Judge Walker's opinion without sensing that what really won out today was science, methodology, and hard work. Had the proponents of Prop 8 made even a minimal effort to put on a case, to track down real experts, to do more than try to assert their way to legal victory, this would have been a closer case. But faced with one team that mounted a serious effort and another team that did little more than fire up their big, gay boogeyman screensaver for two…

Movies

Time for lighter fare. There are some really good movies out there... Warning: A few minor spoilers ahead. First up, of course, is The Dark Knight. Superhero movies just keep getting better and better, but this one is going to be hard to top. It's two and a half hours long, but I wanted to go on for another two and a half. Heath Ledger is surely going to get a posthumous Oscar for this. If you've ever wondered what it means to commit to a part, this is it. But even more than his performance, the writing for the character was really first-rate. There are so many scenes that do a really…

Dawkins: Need I say more?

Why is it that one of the top critics of religion should be a biologist? Could it be that a deep understanding of biological evolution through natural selection really does lead one inexorably to atheism? If so, creationists might actually have reason to fear the inclusion of evolution in school curricula. Better not let them read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion then, because that's one of the core messages of the book. Which is funny, because Dawkins writes that he very much would like to reach those raised in a religious environment, but are a little unsure about the whole thing. "If you…

People who think they are more restrained are more likely to succumb to temptation

Will you have that extra chocolate bar when you're worried about your weight? Will you spend that extra hour on the internet when you have other things to do? Will you have that extra drink with an attractive colleague when your partner is waiting at home? Our lives are full of temptations and some of us are better at resisting them than others. But unexpectedly, the very people who think they are most restrained are also most likely to be impulsive. Their inflated belief in their own self-control leads them to overexpose themselves to temptation. In a series of four experiments, Loran…

Marjorie Grene, In Memoriam: The Passing of an Intellectual Giant

This post was written by guest contributor Jody Roberts. Follow this link for his most recent contribution to The World's Fair. The philosopher Marjorie Grene passed away on Monday, 16 March, at the age of 98. Grene's life is difficult to sum up in a few words, and I don't want to do that anyhow, since plenty of others have and surely will in much better fashion than I can muster. But since I imagine most will be unfamiliar with her work, I quote here from a letter composed by Richard Burian, a dear friend and colleague: Marjorie Grene passed away March 16 at age 98 after a brief illness…

One culture, two culture, three culture, four

The recent upswell in two-culture talk around Scienceblogs is driving me nuts (here's a good jumping in point -- oh wait, this one's better). One might question the so very many unquestioned assumptions in the current conversation about "what is science" and "what are the humanities" and "what does it mean to *know* science" and "what does it mean to *know* a poem," but instead I'll repost below something I contributed to The Education of Oronte Churm earlier this year. Call it the problem of the 13 culture divide. _________________________________________________________________ I've never…

Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 1).

In a post last month about an animal rights group targeting a researcher's car with an incendiary device, I closed by expressing my profound pessimism at the prospects of having a serious dialogue about animal rights: As a philosophical position, the case for animal rights is not completely empty or indefensible. However, as it's being propagated "in the wild", as it were, the case for animal rights is being made with lies and intimidation. Among rational people, this is a bad way to make a case for your position. Thus, it seems to me, people arguing in good faith for the animal rights…

Arthur Allen on conflicts of interest in the mercury militia movement

Those arguing the "conventional" view that sound science and epidemiological studies have failed to find a link between vaccines and autism are often tarred with the "pharma shill" brush. Meanwhile, researchers who have ever taken drug company money (particularly if it's from a drug company that makes vaccines) are castigated for having a serious conflict of interest, even to the point where conflicts of interest are invented or exaggerated beyond any reasonable recognition to tar the investigator with the dreaded "pharma shill" label. Don't get me wrong. Possible conflicts of interest should…

Intellectual curiosity at its finest

Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on June 15, 2005. Enjoy! One of the criticisms of "intelligent design" (ID) creationism is that it doesn't really offer any new theory or even hypothesis to replace the theory of evolution, which it seeks to supplant (at least in the public schools). It merely exaggerates perceived weaknesses in evolutionary theory and misrepresents…

Today's Guest Blogger Reviews: The Lucifer Effect

This week I think we could all use a brief reprieve from me and my opinions, so I'm running a review of Phillip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect, written by the wickedly smart (and just plain wicked) writer Carey Bertolet. Bio Kid-friendly version: Carey Bertolet is an avid reader because she enjoys challenging concepts and sitting on her caboose. When not at work, Carey is the host of her own imaginary cooking show as well as the co-producer of "the Boo Radley Show," her miniature pinscher's imaginary late night talk show. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband who is recapturing his…

The anti-vaccine movement strikes back against Trine Tsouderos and The Chicago Tribune

One week ago, The Chicago Tribune added yet another excellent addition to its recent series of articles exposing the dark underbelly of the anti-vaccine movement and, more importantly, the quackery that permeates the "autism biomedical" movement promoted by anti-vaccine groups such as Age of Autism. The first installment in the series, written by Tribune reporters Trine Tsouderos and Pat Callahan, examined Mark and David Geier's Lupron protocol for autism (which I had written about three years ago under the title Why not just castrate them?), and the second shone a light under the rock…

Publisher hits new low: Suing librarian for criticizing their books

So here's the rather strange story. Way back in 2010, librarian Dale Askey, then of Kansas State University, wrote a blog post critical of the humanities monograph publisher Edwin Mellen. Basically, he stated that the publishers' low quality did not justify their high prices. No big deal, really, librarians have lots of opinions about publishers and share them all the time around the water cooler, at conferences and online. But perhaps foreshadowing what was coming, Askey remarked in his post: "Given how closely Mellen guards its reputation against all critics, perhaps I should just put on my…

Woo: The future of American medicine?

If you're a physician, there comes a certain point in your career when you start caring a lot more than you did about the next generations of physicians in the training pipeline. While you're in the middle of training, you are the next generation; besides, you're too worried about just getting through medical school, residency, and Board certification to be all that concerned about those behind you in the pipeline, anyway. Then, when you're early faculty, you're concerned about establishing yourself, getting your career on track, and, if you're in academics, getting promoted. True, physicians…

Clocks in Bacteria V: How about E.coli?

Fifth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria, covering more politics than biology (from May 17, 2006): In the previous posts in this series, I covered the circadian clocks in Synechococcus, potential circadian clocks in a couple of other bacteria, and the presence of clock genes (thus potentially clocks) in a number of other bacteria. But what happened to the microbiological workhorse, the Escherichia coli? Does it have a clock? Hasn't anyone checked? Believe it or not, this question is colored by politics. But I have to give you a little background first. Latter half of the 19th…

Here come the ticks: is global warming leading to an increase in Lyme disease?

This is the last of 16 student posts, guest-authored by Jessica Waters.  Climatologists have been warning us about the ongoing and impending consequences of global warming for years. But the results of climate change affect more than just polar bears and penguins  - if you live anywhere in the northeastern, north-central or west coast states of the U.S.., you could be at a greater risk for contracting Lyme Disease. Lyme disease is an infection of the Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium that is spread through black legged ticks (otherwise known as deer ticks) who feed on the white footed mouse…

A Chrome-Plated Controversy

By David Michaels According to a report in the Wall Street Journal published last December (by Peter Waldman, 12/23/05), product defense experts at ChemRisk pulled off a particularly audacious scam on behalf of Pacific Gas and Electric, the California utility that was being sued for contaminating drinking water with hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen. ChemRiskâs scientists went to China to obtain the raw data of a 1987 study that had implicated chromium-polluted water in high cancer rates, paying the lead author $2,000, re-analyzing his data, changing the results to exonerate chromium and…

Matamata: turtle-y awesome to the extreme

Over the weekend my family and I visited Amazon World Zoo Park on the Isle of Wight. I saw tons of new stuff and had a great time, but what might have been my favourite creature is one that would have been all but ignored by the vast majority of visitors. I'm talking about the Matamata Chelus fimbriatus*, a bizarre South American river turtle that is as amazing in biology and behaviour as it is in appearance. Amazon World had two of them... * The name is sometimes written (incorrectly) as Chelus fimbriata. Matamatas are freakishly weird: they've even been referred to as "one of the…

Clocks in Bacteria V: How about E.coli?

Fifth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria, covering more politics than biology (from May 17, 2006): In the previous posts in this series, I covered the circadian clocks in Synechococcus, potential circadian clocks in a couple of other bacteria, and the presence of clock genes (thus potentially clocks) in a number of other bacteria. But what happened to the microbiological workhorse, the Escherichia coli? Does it have a clock? Hasn't anyone checked? Believe it or not, this question is colored by politics. But I have to give you a little background first. Latter half of the 19th…

So this is what a witchunt looks like…as a target

It actually feels kind of good, considering that my job is secure, and that these critics are looking increasingly rabidly insane. I just sit back and watch their hysteria grow. Case in point: Rod Dreher, who seems to be crawling the walls and screaming right now. In his 'review' of the desecration issue, nowhere does he mention the cause: the violent over-reaction of Catholics to a student in Florida walking away from Mass with a communion wafer, and the subsequent uproar calling for expulsion and punishment from Bill Donohue. His parting shot to believers: "Nothing must be held sacred." He…

Father's Day Repast Repost

(From five years ago!) There is a restaurant called Pelagos.  The name means "from the sea," in Greek.  It is underground, but has a patio open to the sky.  A staircase leads from the sidewalk to the subterranean patio.  The is a metal fence along the sidewalk.  On the patio, there are tables with umbrellas.  Large windows provide a view of the patio, from inside the restaurant.  Looking out, a person might be fascinated by the geometrical shapes formed by the window frames, the the tables, the steps, and the fence; that person might also be happy to glimpse a bit of sky. Except now it…

Bioethics of--and in--the Brain

When George Bush quietly dismissed two members of his Council on Bioethics on the last Friday in February, he probably assumed the news would get buried under the weekends distractions. But ten days later, its still hotsee, for example, two articles in Slate, and an editorial in the Washington Post, as well as Chris Mooney's ongoing coverage at his blog. Bush failed to appreciate just how obvious the politics were behind the move. The two dismissed members (bioethicist William May and biochemist Elizabeth Blackburn) have been critical of the Administration. Their replacements (two political…

The Problems with One Laptop Per Child

They are cultural, philosophical, and political. Not even John Lennon can overcome the flaws, given their deep cultural basis. Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, introduced the idea for the $100 laptop in 2005. The laptop would be geared towards children in "developing nations." Its intent was to help education in those countries. The project's goal, to be specific, is "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves." The technical accomplishments of the laptop project were swift--low power…

Text Versus Subtext

(Warning: this post contains some journalistic/blogging inside-baseball material.) Back in the dark ages (otherwise known as the 1990s), writing about science felt a bit like putting messages in a bottle. I'd write an article, a few weeks or months later it would appear in a magazine, and a few weeks or months later I might get a response from a reader. In some cases, an expert might point out an error I made. In other cases, she or he might explain the real story which I had missed. The delay could make for some disconcerting experiences. The first time I met the late Stephen Jay Gould, to…

Friday Bookshelf: Women in Science: Meeting Career Challenges

I'm going to cheat a little on this week's Friday Bookshelf. Women in Science: Meeting Career Challenges is a book I have reviewed in the past for NWSA Journal (vol. 12, no. 3, 2000). So I'm going to quote my own review. My review was originally combined with a review of a film about women scientists called Asking Different Questions: Women and Science. To understand the end of this review, you need to know something from that film. One of the scientists, Ursula Franklin, offers a metaphor of women as earthworms working to prepare the soil for a better way of doing science. She says…

#scio10 aftermath: some thoughts on "Talking Trash: Online Outreach from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch".

Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.) Among other things, this panel took up the article panelist Lindsey Hoshaw wrote about the garbage patch for the New York Times and some of the reaction to it (including from panelist Miriam Goldstein). Lindsey's article was interesting because of the process. To get a spot on the ship going out to the North Pacific gyre, where the garbage patch is, she had to come up with funding. (We learned during the session that ship time on some of…

PBS' March of Progress

A female Lowland Gorilla at the Bronx Zoo in a familiar pose. The other day I hyped the NOVA special "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial," a documentary that I have been looking forward to for quite some time. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I visited the official website for the program to find that old "icons" die hard, the infamous "March of Progress" still firmly established in popular treatments of evolution. It's strange how we pay lip service to great popular books about evolution yet often forget the lessons between the pages. Such is the case with Stephen Jay Gould's…

The wind giveth a little and taketh away a lot

I ride my bike and mostly the wind makes me unhappy. On a very few days the wind is with me on the way to work and then changes so that it is with me again. But most days the wind is fairly constant. So, if the wind is constant then shouldn't everything even out? (Even Stephen). Assumptions: Let me start with the assumption that I (a mere mortal) can output at a constant power (but not 57,000 Watts like some people). I will also assume an air resistance force that is proportional to the square of the relative air speed. Here is a diagram. A couple of quick things to point out. First,…

Not Exactly Rocket Science Review of 2008

Phew. Another year almost over and it's been a really good one. This time last year, I was still blogging at Wordpress, and it was only in late February that I beamed aboard the mighty ScienceBlog mothership. It's been a great experience and all in all, I've managed to rack up about 190 posts on new research (excluding reposts and random stuff), over 1,500 comments and over 400,000 page views in a year. Elsewhere, I published a book based on this blog, I wrote about 2% of another book called "Defining Moments in Science", and I wrote three features and several news pieces for New Scientist.…

Blue Dog Dems, Healthcare, Viral Marketing, and Quantifying the Unquantifiable

One problem with the Blue Dog Democrats is that they're corrupt, venial, and cowardly. Sadly, there's not much to be done about that. Another problem, and usually much less noticed, is that many of them are dumber than a fucking sack of hammers, with a good dash of ignorance to boot. Certainly, they have never heard of viral marketing. More about that in a bit. When thinking about reelection, most Blue Dogs still seem to be focused on traditional fundraising, although a couple probably realize that they could get some money through the intertubes. Let's not be naive about the role of…