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On Baby Harp Seals, Coal Plants and Nuclear Power

One of the things I've been arguing for years is that most people in the developed world, given a perceived lack of alternatives and no narrative to explain change and sacrifice, will do almost anything to keep their present way of life. I point out that if they become cold enough most people would shovel live baby harp seals into their furnace to keep warm, while carefully justifying why this is reasonable and necessary and probably convincing themselves that baby harp seals like to be burned alive. I have been thinking much about this metaphor lately, as the tone of the discussion of…

More Tooth Fairy Science: Acupuncture does not improve in vitro fertilization success rates, no matter what acupuncturists say

Here we go again. Oh, well. These things come in waves, and sometimes I have theme weeks. Right now, this week appears to be developing into a week of quackademic medicine involving dubious acupuncture studies. Yesterday, it was acupuncture for lymphedema after breast cancer surgery, a study coming right about what is rapidly becoming the Barad-dûr of cancer quackademia, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. How a hospital that is so awesome in every other way can have such a blind spot bigger than the Eye of Sauron, I don't know, but it does, and the result is a steady stream of…

Peak Oil vs. Peak Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peak Oil is a controversial concept. Some people actually think that the production of oil in nature is continuous (which is a tiny bit, but hardly at all, true) so we can keep pumping oil out of the ground and it will just keep being produced by tiny microbes. But aside from that particular, and annoying, made-up controversy, "real" Peak Oil (or should I say Peak Real Oil) is still controversial. Peak Oil is defined as the moment when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction occurs, and thereafter production declines steadily, like on a bell curve. But that is, in my view, the wrong way…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Who needs statins? Or: Sacrifice the teeth to remove those toxins!

Some woo is very, very complicated. The reason, of course, is that the often self-contradicting complexity of this sort of woo serves to make it harder for people without specialized training to figure out easily that it makes no sense scientifically. It's more a matter of baffling 'em with bullshit than because such complexity is actually needed. (No one that I can think of personifies this better than Lionel Milgrom, a man who's a veritable poet of woo.) Other times, the concept behind the woo is simple. In fact, it's usually just one idea. In fact, this one idea is usually based on an…

Abe Foxman calling for a "hate crime" investigation for Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic remarks? Probably not.

I had seriously considered jumping all over this story when I first saw it early Monday morning. After all, look at the headline: Jewish groups call for hate-crime probe on Mel Gibson A more truly ominous thing to be calling for based on a drunken anti-Semitic tirade I have a hard time imagining. As you may remember from my previous discussions of, for example, the David Irving trial, I am very much against hate speech laws. What I don't recall if I've ever mentioned before is that I'm also very skeptical of hate crime laws. I can see using racial or religious bigotry as an aggravating…

Dances with Wood: Life with My Cookstove

Note: A cold, wet day in November seems like as good a day as any to talk about owning a wood cookstove, re-running a piece I first wrote in 2007. When people come to my house, they are often a little disappointed to see that it looks pretty much like other houses. But the wood cookstove really is different than what most people know - even folks who heat with wood usually don't cook with it as well. And while heating and cooking with wood aren't appropriate in every environment, it is appropriate to mine, and maybe to more people than have given it thought before. I also know it is one…

Caltech: Robotic Ocean Gliders Discover Why Antarctic Polar Ice is Melting

Dear Readers, Find below an interesting press release I may as well share verbatim: The rapidly melting ice sheets on the coast of West Antarctica are a potential major contributor to rising ocean levels worldwide. Although warm water near the coast is thought to be the main factor causing the ice to melt, the process by which this water ends up near the cold continent is not well understood. Using robotic ocean gliders, Caltech researchers have now found that swirling ocean eddies, similar to atmospheric storms, play an important role in transporting these warm waters to the Antarctic coast—…

How Far Away is the Farthest Galaxy?

"Master looks after us now, we don't need you anymore. Leave now and never come back!" -Smeagol, LOTR You all know how to find the farthest galaxy ever, right? You take the most powerful telescope in the world, put it into space, and have it stare into the darkness for days on end. What do you find? Image credit: Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Galaxies! In just a tiny area like this, only about a fiftieth of a single degree on a side, over ten thousand galaxies are visible. And, as you'll notice if you click through, and zoom in on a small section of these, some of these galaxies are much dimmer…

Censorship == They Won't Work For Me For Free!

Sorry, but as a software guy, I just couldn't resist mocking the sheer insane hypocrisy of this. There's a right-wing political site out there, called RedState.com. RedState is serious far-right - constantly bemoaning the nanny-state, the culture of entitlement, the virtues of personal responsibility, and so on. According to RedState, Social Security is bad - people should save for their own retirements, not rely on the government to take care of them. Socialized medicine must be avoided at all costs: people should pay for their own medical insurance, not expect the state to do it for them…

The Utterances of Hollywood Celebrities: Why We Need Better Science Truth Detectors

By Larry Bock Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival Ahh celebrities. From music and acting to the world of supermodeling and sports -- they are respected, admired, even worshiped, for their talent and magnetism. But herein lies the danger when these stars publicly espouse or endorse viewpoints and products in health and medicine without first thoroughly exploring the scientific validity of such claims. Why danger? For segments of the population -- especially kids who are easily influenced by star role models -- celebrity statements and viewpoints (however misguided…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Global Changes Alter The Timing Of Plant Growth, Scientists Say: Different plant species mature at different times. Scientists studying plant communities in natural habitats call this phenomenon "complementarity." It allows species to co-exist because it reduces overlap in the time period when species compete for limited resources. Now, in a study posted online the week of Sept. 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ecologists working at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve report evidence that climate change may al ter this delicate balance. Mother Deer Cannot…

My Last (I promise) on Donohue, Bloggers and Edwards

After writing her side of the story in Salon, Amanda Marcotte is quite busy in the media these days, making various apperances on radio, including NPR's DayTo Day next week. She will also be joining TPM Cafe and has a post up on Huffington Post: Think Tanks, 503s and Rush Limbaugh--What's The Real 'Soft Money' Now, Melissa McEwen published her take on the whole affair in Guardian: My life as a rightwing target. Check the comments and tell me that the Rightwingers are not delusional, dangerous psychopaths. And they are in the White House right now. (Oh, and if anyone thinks that Amanda and…

Epidemiology and social media: conference fail

I have written and deleted this post. Twice. But damn it, it needs to be said. I'm here in charming Montreal for the North American Congress of Epidemiology. It's a good-sized meeting, as far as epi meetings go. The site notes that it's a joint effort between four major Epi organizations: The American College of Epidemiology (ACE); The Society for Epidemiologic Research; the Epi section of the American Public Health Association, and The Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Collectively, those associations represent a lot of epidemiologists. The conference started off well.…

New and Exciting in PLoS Computational Biology

This week's PLoS Computational Biology is chockful of interesting articles, including these: Open Access: Taking Full Advantage of the Content: This Journal and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) at large are standard bearers of the full potential offered through open access publication, but what of you, the reader? For most of you, open access may imply free access to read the journals, but nothing more. There is a far greater potential, but, up to now, little to point to that highlights its tangible benefits. We would argue that, as yet, the full promise of open access has not been…

Repeat violators of mine safety rules targeted in new Labor Dept regulation

In the month's preceding the deadly explosion in April 2010 that killed 29 coal miners, Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine had racked up hundreds of serious violations of safety standards.  In 2009 alone, this included 48 orders from federal mine inspectors to withdraw workers from the UBB mine because of dangerous conditions.  But Massey knew how to game the system.  Mine managers would make a couple tweaks, correct the immediate problem, and it was back to mining coal. usually within an hour or so.   There was no real consequence for their or other mine operator's repeated…

Spider Kama Sutra

I've been savoring this lovely used book I picked up a little while ago, The Book of Spiders and Scorpions by Rod Preston-Mafham, and am appreciating more than the fact that it is full of beautiful photography of spiders and lots of general information on arachnid behavior and physiology; it's also true that spiders are awfully sexy beasts. They are playful and romantic and kinky and enthusiastic and ferocious and savage and exotic, and really know how to have a good time. I thought I'd share a few of the pretty pictures and details of the arachnid sex life with the readers of Pharyngula—so…

VICTORY!

As expected, the Laden/Myers tag team utterly crushed the Nisbet/Mooney team. The decision was unanimous. Only a few crazy people might have found the framers at all persuasive. (It helps, too, that Nisbet/Mooney are on a plane flying away and won't be able to get out their side of the story until later, and even when they do, my blog has more traffic than theirs. I win! Hey, maybe this framing stuff has some virtues.) If you want an independent account, look in the comments. The whole shebang was taped, so I presume it will be online at some time in the near future. And hey, guess what? Your…

Open Access Publishing: When open forums go wrong

As a scientist and a blogger and a science communicator, I luvs me some open access publishing! I can link to a paper everyone can read, people can leave questions or comments or ideas in my comment section-- its interactive and educational and a lot more fun for everyone (I end up learning a lot answering peoples Qs, or by others answers myself). I also love the idea of open comments on papers. I dont have to hunt down an email and hope an author responds to a technical question or point-- post your question/comment, and either someone on the paper or someone else can answer it for you!…

Information overload? Heavy multimedia users are more easily distracted by irrelevant information

Our minds are battlegrounds where different media fight for attention. Through the Internet, desktops, mobile screens, TVs and more, we are constantly awash with headlines, links, images, icons, videos, animations and sound.  This is the way of the 21st century - a saturated sensory environment where multi-tasking is the name of the game. Even as I type these words, my 24-inch monitor displays a Word document and a PDF side-by-side, while my headphones pump Lux Aeterna into my head (see image below). You might think that this influx of media would make the heaviest of users better at…

From the archives: A Structural Exploration of the Science Blogosphere: Director's Cut

This was originally posted 1/9/2009 on my old blog. Due to popular demand (well 3 requests :) ), this is a commentary and additional information for my conference paper and presentation: Pikas, C. K. (2008). Detecting Communities in Science Blogs. Paper presented at eScience '08. IEEE Fourth International Conference on eScience, 2008. Indianapolis. 95-102. doi:10.1109/eScience.2008.30 (available in IEEE Xplore to institutional subscribers) [also self-archived - free!- here] The presentation is embedded in another blog post, and is available online at SlideShare. The video of me talking…

Rube Goldberg Contest: Make a hamburger

Rube Goldberg is the inventor of the Mouse Trap ... the better mouse trap that is... He was actually a cartoonist who made famous the Rube Goldberg machines, which were increcibly complicated, intricate devices to do something simple in as many unlikely steps as possible. The board game "mouse trap" is based on this concept. I have a vague memory or Rube Goldberg being featured on a PBS TV show called "The Great American Dream Machine" ... must have been some time before his death in late 1970. Anybody remember that? Anyway, there is an annual compeition for the Rube Goldberg Prize that…

General Thoughts on the NIH

I've been tagged by Hope for Pandora (who was tagged by DrugMonkey, who was tagged by Writedit) in a blog meme regarding the NIH's request for feedback on its peer review system. I'm not huge into these blog memes, so I'm not going to pass this along to seven others, but I will share a few thoughts. Being only in the second year of my Ph.D. (and studying overseas), I haven't applied for an NIH grant before, so I'm not intimately familiar with the NIH's peer review system and can't offer much in the way of constructive criticism there. I can, however, speak generally about some of the major…

Soccernomics

With regards to the World Cup, the Dutch Bank ABN AMRO has asked the question, "which team is our 'economic favourite', that is, the country which should become world champion in order to maximise the impact on the world economy." Say what? Yes they released a report on this very important issue. So why do we do this? Leaving aside the fact that many economists who are also soccer fans will use any excuse to bring soccer into their work, we are convinced that soccer has an impact on the economy and therefore justifies some research effort. So ... the goal is to help the world economy. And…

The Nine Defining Characteristics of the Christian Conservative

Wingnuttia, O Wingnuttia. There are so many lunacies uttered in that fabled land that one cannot possibly keep up with them all, so it's useful when one of them distills it all down and gives us a condensed list of the properties of a True Conservative. We have such a useful list, written by Rob Hood in the Conservative Voice. He is a very silly man, but that online rag has him up there on the front page with Robert Novak and…and…well, a lot of ranting nobodies. This is a distinguished host in Wingnuttia, though! As a matter of fact if you like Ann Coulter and want to make some liberals'…

Race and gender and religion

America is a very religious country, and has been for a long time.  Regardless of broad cultural revolutions and trends in the culture wars, about the same number of people say religion is "very important" in their lives today as 35 years ago. Other measure of religiosity shift, as Gallup points out.  "Self-reported church or synagogue membership has drifted slowly downward over the past 70 years," they found in 2007, a year when perception of religion's influence in society plummeted.  Confidence in organized religion has dropped by a third since the '70s. But whatever people might think of…

Counting work-related injuries, disease and death among US workers: Part 1

"Death takes no holidays in industry and commerce," is how Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz described the toll of on-the-job death and disability for U.S. workers. The Secretary's remarks in 1968 were part of congressional hearings on legislation that ultimately established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He suggested that because most work-related fatalities and injuries happen one or two at a time, day in and day out, the carnage continues "because people don't realize its magnitude, and can't see the blood on the things they buy, on the food they eat, and the…

Koch Brothers And Utilities Try To Ruin Solar Energy

Solar energy is one of the best and most easily implemented options to reduce our use of fossil Carbon based fuels. Never mind that the sun is only up and strong for part of the day, and is often covered by clouds. If you put a few square meters of solar panels on the roof of a residential or commercial building, you get clean and free (after the investment into the system) electricity thereafter. Clearly, this is an underutilized technology. In recent years there has been a precipitous drop in the cost of implementing solar energy, so it is now economically kinda dumb to not put solar…

Further thoughts on the recount

Think back to Florida eight years ago. There is a reasonable argument that Al Gore was duly voted, even via the electoral college, to be President of the United States, but George W. Bush was placed in that office for one and only one reason: The recount process in Florida was transformed into a circus, and the mainstream press in the United States whipped large parts of the populous and many involved in the process into a panic. The delay in determining the winner was going to damage democracy. The free world could not survive any more waiting. It did not matter that the guy running…

Fish on Eagleton on God

During a recent bookstore browse, I came across Terry Eagleton's recent anti-New Atheist book Reason, Faith and Revolution. I was tempted to buy it in spite of Eagleton's deeply silly review of Dawkins in the London Review of Books. This review was, in large part, the motivation for P.Z. Myers to coin the term Courtier's Reply. By this Myers meant people who responded to Dawkins not by addressing his arguments in any serious way, but instead by rattling off a load of irrelevant theological esoterica Dawkins is expected to master before ever opening his mouth on the subject. Since I am…

The Truth Effect and Other Processing Fluency Miracles

Why are so many people convinced that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Eskimos have n words for snow, where n is as high as you need it to be for the desired rhetorical effect? Or more seriously, why have some people, particularly Fox News viewers (no, really), persistently believed in Saddam Hussein's involvement in 9/11? Why does that used car salesman who waves at you as you drive by the dealership on the way to work every morning look so trustworthy, even though you know used car salespeople are never, ever, under any circumstances to be trusted? And why do you dig Henri Matisse's "…

The Irony of Henry Adams: The most misunderstood quote evah!

I just received a mass emailing from Julia's high school, in the name of the principal. Routine business. At the end of the missive was this quote: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. What does this quote mean to you? If you don't know its context, you may be in for a surprise. A repost You see this quote all the time on K-12 educational material as a header, footer, slogan, logo, inspirational message, and so on. It obviously means something good about teachers. Maybe something good about education. The quote is by Henry Adams and comes from…

The Irony of Henry Adams: The most misunderstood quote evah!

I just received a mass emailing from Julia's high school, in the name of the principal. Routine business. At the end of the missive was this quote: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. What does this quote mean to you? If you don't know its context, you may be in for a surprise. You see this quote all the time on K-12 educational material as a header, footer, slogan, logo, inspirational message, and so on. It obviously means something good about teachers. Maybe something good about education. The quote is by Henry Adams and comes from his book "…

Two checklists for feminists

That implicit consent thread has just broken a thousand comments, so I'm closing it and inviting everyone to move here. Just to keep it interesting, I found (via Jen) a couple of lists. The one on the left is from one of those liberal progressive sites, and clarifies the whole issue of male privilege, which many of the commenters still fail to comprehend. The one on the right is from a batty wingnut site, where each point is greatly expanded into an exercise in blaming women. Here's your opportunity to find some common ground, I hope. There probably aren't many commenters here who find the…

Memory Hole: Preserving a post from Uncommon Descent

Over at IDolator Bill Dembski's blog, Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary has been on a tear lately, blogging about the supposed racism inherent in evolution. Fellow blog contributor DaveScot responded with a long post observing that the leadership of racist groups today and in the past are often vehement antievolutionists. DaveScot fails to observe that the Klan was prominent at the Scopes trial, firmly opposing the teaching of evolution. In any event, one might have expected this contrary voice to suddenly disappear from the blog, since Dembski and his sycophants have a long history of censoring…

Hybrids vs. Heirlooms: New York Times Death Match!

There's a very silly article in the New York Times about controversy over hybrids vs. heirlooms. Yes, this is a real debate. No, it isn't as stark or as stupid as the Times makes it. There are plenty of horticultural reasons heirlooms can grow glorious fruit. One is size. An heirloom tomato is often a big, robust plant. The central stalk is usually indeterminate: it keeps shooting up after setting fruit. Mr. Ball, of Burpee, recalls a customer telling him about a Brandywine plant that crept into the house through a second-floor window. An heirloom tomato will also have a lot of leaves, in…

Saletan on the Ethics of Stem Cells

William Saletan takes the position that progressives have no real bioethical position on stem cells in his most recent column in Slate. I'm a bit disappointed with Saletan over this one, because in his never ending quest to be thoughtful about everything, he's usually much more fair to people - even those he disagrees with. But listen to his characterization of "progressive bioethics". I have problems with liberals. A lot of them talk about religion as though it's a communicable disease. Some are amazingly obtuse to other people's qualms. They show no more interest in an embryo than in a…

On cannibalism and Jameson

A recent twitter conversation prompted me to dig up some old posts on cannibalism, and maybe a few memories of my time in Central Africa. The twitter conversation concerned a story in which it is claimed that James Jameson, heir to the Jameson Irish whiskey empire, bought a slave girl (for the price of six handkerchiefs) in order to watch her be eviscerated and eaten by cannibals, and in particular, so that he could make some nice watercolor painting of the event. Apparently this is going around the internet. If this is true, which as I will argue in a moment is not actually the case, then…

Tatiana Is Telling us Something

TatianaThe killing of one visitor and maiming of two others by Tatiana, a Tiger, in the S.F. Zoo raises questions that go far beyond one cat and three victims. One might ask: Should there even be zoos? We do not yet know what happened in the San Francisco Zoo yesterday, but some details are starting to emerge. It looks like Tatiana leaped out of her enclosure. If that proves to be true, we should not be too surprised. Cats have amazing, and I believe under investigated muscular ability. The 1.2 foot long cats we are cat sitting for routinely leap 600% of their length to achieve such…

The good, the bad, and the blurry: Wildlife Photography

Female Snow Leopard twins born last year at the Bronx Zoo. When I initially started posting pictures on my blog, I didn't know if anyone would have anything to say about my pictures. I frequent zoos, museums, and aquariums, usually shooting between 200 and 600 shots per trip, the handful of good shots making their way onto the internet. I've been certainly pleasantly surprised, therefore, to see all the positive remarks made about my pictures, especially since I don't really have any idea what I'm doing. Still, many of you have asked how I have been able to get the kind of shots I've…

Poof vs. the neo-creationist "orchard model"

Upchucky award runner-up and Disco. 'Tute staffer Casey Luskin is upset. Last fall, we were on a panel together, and I mocked his defense of the neo-creationist "orchard model" described in Explore Evolution as claiming that life "poofed" into existence. In the course of one of Casey's regularly scheduled bouts of logorrhea, he decides to respond to this claim: I presented some of this information discussed below at the St. Thomas conference last fall, and NCSE staff member Josh Rosenau repeatedly alleged that I was making a âpoofâ hypothesis for the origin of monkeys. No. That is not what…

Statements by those who have made general statements about the 1997 survey

[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on April 6, 2003. I have added critical commentary, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ] Statement on John Lott's Survey Work on Self-Defensive Uses of Guns by David B. Mustard Monday 10 February 2003 Background John and I started working on our concealed carry paper in the fall of 1995. I was finishing my Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Chicago, and John was a faculty member. We worked on our paper intensively from about February 1996 to September 1996. We presented it at the American Law and…

Birds in the News 183

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Fiji (MacGillivray's) Petrel, Pseudobulweria macgillivrayi, off Gau Island, Fiji. Fiji Petrel Pelagic Expedition, May 2009. Image: H. Shirihai, Tubenoses Project [larger view]. Birds in Science News Maori legends told of a giant predatory bird called the Te Hokioi, whose wingspan approached the length of a full-grown man and whose prey included human beings. Now Kiwi scientists are adding to the legend by claiming that a skeleton found in the 1870s shares some of the legendary bird's traits. "We don't think it…

Birds in the News 173 -- Memorial Day Edition

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Who's shooting endangered condors? The shooting of two rare California condors, like this one, set phones ringing at the offices of environmental groups. Image: [larger view]. Birds in Science Northern Mockingbirds tend to sing fancier tunes with changing climate, say researchers. The research team from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre (NESCent), the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and McGill University showed that species in more variable climes also sing complex tunes. "Survival and reproduction become more…

Common Sense: Math is the Root of All Evil (including Evolution)

Sorry that the blog has been so quiet lately; I managed to catch a vicious flu for the first time since I started getting flu shots, so I've been feeling too ill to write. I'm still far from recovered, but I'm feeling well enough to share a bit of delightful foolishness with you. After seeing my recent post about a relativity denier, a reader sent me a link to another extremely amusing anti-relativity site. (In fact, I've recieved a bunch of links to anti-relativity sites; I'm only posting the most amusing ones.) This one has several particularly amusing properties, but from my point of…

The Bullseye Diet

This was an important discussion back when I wrote it in 2007, and somehow, I've never re-run it (although it does appear in Aaron and my book _A Nation of Farmers_). It is definitely time to talk more about this model, and I'm hoping to enlist many of you in doing an evaluation of the real productivity of our home gardens and farms - using this as a model. So time to run it again, as a starting point for seeing how much progress the local food movement has really made in the years since it began! The 100-mile diet has gotten trendy - but there's a problem with this model. The idea that…

In which my words will be misinterpreted as "proof" that I am a "pharma shill"

I would have written about this one on Friday, except that Your Friday Dose of Woo had to be served up. (You did read last week's YFDoW, didn't you? It was a particularly loopy bit of woo, with a bad computer interface grafted on to it, to boot!) The reason I wanted to write about it is because the responses to this particular bit of news in the blogosphere grated on me, for reasons that will become apparent soon. It's about a new cancer drug that I learned about from both fellow ScienceBlogger Jonah and readers who forwarded articles about it to me. If you believe some other bloggers (one of…

Swine flu and ICU bed use in Canada and Mexico

The online publication of three papers and a commentary yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA; free access, links at bottom of post) provides some further data on what demand for critical care resources might be from the current swine flu pandemic. One paper reports on the Mexican experience, where mortality seemed unusually high but where access to services may have made the outcome worse. The papers from Canada are perhaps most pertinent to what might be experienced in the US and Europe. It appears that in terms of demand for ICU beds, the first wave from last…

Ship of fools

Every man and his lagomorph has a post taking the piss out of the "Ship of fools", so I won't bother. But (since I seem to have managed to get censored by every denialist blog I try to post on) I thought I'd make a handy list of said blogs and comments. Warning: there's no useful content anywhere in this post; its all just record-keeping for me. Also, I do find it tedious when people whinge on about censorship. So I'm a bit reluctant to do so myself. But I'm going to indulge. In roughly chronological order: P Gosselin: From “Jewish Science” To “Denier Science”: Copernicus Charade Is Latest…

Spotlight on Louis Villarreal

If you are looking for a 'hero' to look up to in the viral evolution world, you probably couldnt find a better choice than Louis Villarreal of the University of California, Irvine. I mean, he is like *the* definition of someone who came from a tough background, had to struggle through school a bit, but followed their passion to become a leader and innovator in an extraordinarily competitive field. Villarreal is a Mexican American who grew up in friggen East LA. First one of his family to graduate from high school, he tested the academic waters by first attending community college, then…

My voice has been absent from the blogosphere. . .

. . .because my voice has also been absent from the offline world. Yes, the final gift to me from LungMutiny2010 is a case of inhaled corticosteroid dysphonia - and another opportunity to cultivate compassion for those with chronic illnesses and permanent loss of physiological functioning. Here's a recap: After a three month battle with pneumonia, I returned to the university as much as I could about six weeks ago. I say "as much as I could" because, once again, I was amazed by how little my body would let me do after being confined to bed for ten weeks. Some days I'd just be doing great and…