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No one expects the Republican Inquisition

Kansas State GOP Chairman Kris Kobach is a busy man. He's running around the country, trying to keep children some who've graduated from public high schools in a given state from getting in-state tuition at public universities. He's also been working hard to make sure the state Party spends more than it takes in, doesn't pay its staff, and, in his spare time, created a Loyalty Committee, dedicated to rooting out sedition within the state Party. This committee is charged with carrying out Chairman Kobach's fatwa against any Republican officeholder helping any Democrat getting elected.…

Conservatives & Creationism

I was browsing RedState today and I noticed an advertisement for the National Geographic special on the Neandertal genome. At first I was surprised at the appearance of this on a right-wing website; after all, there is a bias toward Creationism on the modern American Right. Then I realized that the ad was probably part of a network and RedState was just one of many sites which were automatically included in some package. Nevertheless, it got me thinking about the Right and Creationism. Why is there this association on a deeper level? A survey from several years back showed that in…

Fernandina and Llaima Eruption Updates for 4/13/2009 - Updated!

Fernandina, Ecuador Fernandina erupting in 2009. UPDATE 4/13/09 at 12PM: The NASA Earth Observatory has posted a nice MODIS image showing the plume from the Fernandina eruption drifting out over the Pacific. We have a few more details on the ongoing eruption at Fernandina in the Galapagos Islands. Officials from the Parque Nacional Galápagos (PNG) flew over the island (in spanish) and saw the eruption is coming from a several-kilometer-long fissure vent that flows towards the sea, dividing into multiple flows and then coalescing when it reaches the sea. There is also a lot of vapor being…

James Hansen on Solutions to Climate Change

From Nick Breeeze, "This video contains excerpts from interviews with Dr James Hansen. Here he gives his view on how we can get emissions from burning fossil fuels under control."

Swine flu : yet another paper testing in animals and a look out the window

Yet another paper testing the current swine flu pandemic virus in animals appeared in Nature yesterday, covering much the same ground as two published July 2 in Science and with similar findings. All three of these papers show the pandemic virus more likely to infect tissues deeper in the lung than seasonal flu viruses used for comparison. But each of these papers had a slightly different author spin. This one is even being construed as suggesting that we may be confronting a virus much like the 1918 monster. We discussed the first two, one from Holland and one from the US, in this post a…

DNA sequencing and bioinformatics, part III: a case study from the classroom

This the third part of case study where we see what happens when high school students clone and sequence genomic plant DNA. In this last part, we use the results from an automated comparison program to determine if the students cloned any genes at all and, if so, which genes were cloned. (You can also read part I and part II.) Did they clone or not clone? That is the question. But first, we have to answer a different question about which parts of their reads are usable and which parts are not. (A read is the sequence of bases obtained from a chromatogram file.) How does our data get…

Tennessee senator not concerned about dead babies, women, or men. If they were HIV+, they werent 'regular' anyway.

Im glad none of you accused me of joking or exaggerating when I told this story: A *very* common exchange I have with the general public regarding HIV-1: Person-- Where did HIV-1 come from? Me-- HIV-1 is related to a virus we can find in African primates, SIV. SIV crossed over from chimpanzees to the human population to make 'HIV' sometime in the late 1800s, early 1900s. This event happened at least three times, giving us the three groups of HIV-1, Groups M, N, and O, however it most likely has occurred numerous times over the course of human evolution, it just never lead to a pandemic…

Ulcers of the World, Unite

There are six and a half billion human stomachs on this little planet of ours, and over half of them are home to a microbe called Helicobacter pylori. Scientists have known about the bacteria since the late 1800s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that Australian doctors noticed that H. pylori was in the stomachs of just about everyone with an ulcer. A swig of antibiotics turned out to be a great way to make ulcers disappear. Scientists have since demonstrated that H. pylori strikes up an uneasy truce with its human hosts. In most cases, H. pylori lives amicably in our stomachs. When the truce…

Everything you wanted to know about didymoconids and wyolestids but were afraid to ask (mesonychians part VI)

Time to finish with the mesonychians. Previous articles have looked at Andrewsarchus and the triisodontids, the mesonychids, and the hapalodectids. That's essentially it... though - as mentioned a few times now - Andrewsarchus doesn't seem to be a mesonychian after all. However, there are a number of other obscure Paleogene mammal groups that have been considered to be allied to (or part of) Mesonychia by some authors, and in the interests of completeness I want to look at them here. We start with the didymoconids. This is a peculiar group of Asian mammals known from the Paleocene, Eocene…

Long-snouted marsupial martens and false thylacines

Distractions distractions distractions. Mayfly chameleons. Sea monster carcasses. Avian supertrees. Fake tiger photos. New pterosaurs. Frogs. But... must... complete... borhyaenoid... articles... For the intro, go here. Time now to crack on with hathlyacynids and prothylacinids. If you don't care, let me note that this is (to my knowledge) the biggest amount of information yet made available on these animals outside of the technical literature. Yes yes, I feel your love, thank you... Hathlyacynidae is the biggest and longest-lived borhyaenoid clade, with members that range in age from Late…

AIDS at 25: Live-Blogging from the 16th International AIDS Conference

From a working journalist's perspective on the ground in Toronto, to a bench scientist's appraisal of the hottest research abstracts, three bloggers deliver running commentary on the 16th International AIDS Conference. As part of Seed's exclusive coverage of the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, ScienceBlogs is hosting a special, short-term blog dedicated to the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. The Conference runs from August 13th-18th, and the blog will be up from now until Monday the 21st. Check in for daily updates from two Seed journalists in Toronto,…

Must-read posts

I was travelling over the weekend and I'm incredibly busy up through Wednesday, so new material from me will have to wait until later in the week. In the meantime, I'll point you to a stellar post I wanted to highlight last week, from Revere on H5N1 and the evolution ov virulence, and another excellent one from Mike regarding the importance of surveillance when it comes to detecting and containing outbreaks (such as the recent O157 outbreak). He also describes a timeline for how long many of the common procedures take; quite a bit different from what you get watching CSI or similar shows…

San Diego Zoo survives the Wildfires (so far)

Via Russlings (here, here and here so far), information about the effects of San Diego wildfires on the San Diego Zoo: San Diego zoo ordered closed, Wild Animal park in immediate danger Fire Update from the Panda Station from a blog by a zoo researcher, and Fire Update from the Wild Animal Park from the Zoo public relations person. Finally, the oft-updated fire page of the San Diego Zoo blog: October 2007 Fire Updates Apparently, the zoo was quite threatened, but survived OK and will re-open soon after a big clean-up. Some of the employees were affected by the wildfire, though, and some…

A Motley Crew at Dinner

Burt Humburg sent me this picture from a conference we attended 3 years ago at Berkeley. I think I have to do it as a popup image because it's too wide for the columns on this blog. It's a bunch of us at dinner at Spangler's in Berkeley. View image. From the left to the right: Guy from Colorado Citizens for Science whose name I forget; Woman from a physicist's society whose name I forget; Nick Matzke of the NCSE; Alan Gishlick of the NCSE; Liz Craig of Kansas Citizens for Science; Skip Evans, formerly of the NCSE; Burt Humburg, the typhoid mary of creationism; Steve Rissing of Ohio Citizens…

Eli

A occasional series of portraits of notable bloggers. From Bizarre and vulgar illustrations from illuminated medieval manuscripts. Phrase of the day (not, I should hasten to add, one that has any relation to the noble lagomorph) arrant gasconading from Houseman. From which comes "insult of the day" (or perhaps "motto of the day"): ...his mind had keenness without force, and was not a trenchant instrument. His corrections, deft as they are, touch only the surface of the text; his precise and lucid explanations are seldom explanations of difficulties, but only dispel perverse misunderstandings…

The Most Precise Signal in the Universe (Synopsis)

“We… are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.” -Jill Tarter But that doesn't mean we can't also look to the hydrogen itself, and use its information to learn about where other things may have come from! Image credit: Lionel BRET/EUROLIOS. An extraordinary example of this -- including what's possible, if not yet practical -- comes from looking at the 21-cm emission line of hydrogen, a forbidden transition with the smallest inherent line width of all! Images credit: R Nave of Hyperphysics from Georgia…

Norm Coleman, Cry Baby Senator, Impotent Inre Database Exposure

Paul Schemlzer has a writeup in Minnesota Independent covering the fallout from the exposure of the exposure of Norm Coleman's donor database. Paul addresses the mean spirited Republican reactions to professional IT consultant Adria Richards, who... ...has been the target of anger from Coleman supporters, including some who had their personal information revealed in the Web site breach. She received a phone call on Friday from one such man. The caller was irate, offering the vague threat, "I live less than a mile away from you!" She later calmed him down. This report makes it very clear…

Away From the Red Eyes of the Crowd

Red Eye: A drink made from beer and tomato juice, drunk by Canadians A kind of cicada. Tomato ketchup. Or is it catsup? A European fish, the rudd, Leuciscus erythrophthalmus. I was once a rudd, of a different kind. What Dave will be doing tonight to get to the East coast. BINGO! From the OED: White House Diary 31 Mar. (1970) 642 Lynda was coming in on 'the red-eye special' from California, about 7 A.M., having kissed Chuck good-by at Camp Pendleton last night as he departed for Vietnam Bonus points if you can guess who Lynda is. Double bonus if you can explain where the title of this…

Quote of the Day - the Inigo Montoya Edition

Actually, there are two quotes today - one from fiction, and the other from the US Government. The first comes from that all-time classic movie, The Princess Bride: Vizzini: Inconceivable! Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means. The second quote comes from The Hill: "We are fully committed and it is in our best interest to have a U.S. attorney that is confirmed by the Senate," DoJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. "It is inconceivable for a member of Congress to believe that use of an appointment authority to fill a vacancy is in any way an…

An Aussie in Wisconsin

In a stress test of such quizzes, I took the test and found out I'm actually from the Great Lakes region... What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." The Northeast Philadelphia The Midland The South Boston The West North Central What American accent do you…

Other Reviews of Climate Crisis Action Day

Here's what other folks are saying about the rally: A faith based review from BPT A nice photo essay and review from JohnKerry.com A review from the Daily Kos Some bland irreverence from a bland dissenter (C'mon, man. I know you can do better than that!) What Sour N Sweet learned at Action Day Sylvia's experience at the rally and her thoughts on Barbara Boxer Zandria really meant to go, but the DC metropolitan area can be a bit confusing If you've written a post reviewing the event (or plan on it) leave a comment on this post or e-mail me; I'll add your link to the post.

Human Evolution on Trial - Species - by Terry Toohill

This is a very interesting guest post at Remote Central: All species vary through time and space. You don't necessarily look the same as any one of your ancestors. Therefore "like begets like" but each individual can be a bit different. It is impossible for a sperm whale to evolve from a bowl of petunias, or a duck from a dandelion, as some creationist and Intelligent Design supporters accuse evolutionists of believing. But over time it is possible for a cow to evolve from something like a camel, or a human to evolve from something like an ape. Evolution doesn't proceed in a straight line…

Before Groups from Categories: a Category Refresher

So far, I've spent some time talking about groups and what they mean. I've also given a brief look at the structures that can be built by adding properties and operations to groups - specifically rings and fields. Now, I'm going to start over, looking at things using category theory. Today, I'll start with a very quick refresher on category theory, and then I'll give you a category theoretic presentation of group theory. I did a whole series of articles about category theory right after I moved GM/BM to ScienceBlogs; if you want to read more about category theory than this brief…

Case report: nanoparticles in workers' lungs

Three physicians and researchers from the Capital University of Medical Sciences (Beijing, China) have published a case report in the European Respiratory Journal describing severe lung disease in seven female workers employed at a shop where they applied polyacrylic coatings to polystyrene boards.  The lung disease is just one part of the story---two of the women died (ages 19 and 29)---the other part is that pathology samples from the workers' lungs identified 30 nm (nanometer) in diameter particles.  Further investigation found that the coatings used by the workers contained nano…

Q&A: Immune system 'strength' & influenza

EMAIL! (technically, a paraphrased really great question from someone at FreeOK!) Dear ERV-- Is there any reason why I, a young healthy adult, really *need* to get the flu shot every year? Even if I do get the flu, wont that just make my immune system stronger? Blech. Flu shots. Every damn year people are bugging us to get the flu shot. But no one likes shots. They cost like $10-$20. Have to take off work or run to get one in between classes. And then your arm hurts allllll daaaaay and you might get a headache or a little fever. UUUUUUUGH WHYYYYY????? WHYYYY???? "Do I *have* to…

Genes from Chagas parasite can transfer to humans and be passed on to children

Millions of people in Latin America have been invade by a parasite - a trypanosome called Trypanosome cruzi. They are passed on through the bite of the blood-sucking assassin bug and they cause Chagas disease, a potentially fatal illness that affects the heart and digestive system. The infections are long-lasting; it can take decades for symptoms to show and a third of infected people eventually die from the disease. But T.cruzi does much more than invade our flesh and blood; it also infiltrates our genomes. T.cruzi is unusual in that a massive proportion of its DNA, around 15-30%, lies…

Education & Careers and Politics Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Education & Careers. From Flickr, by arquera Politics. From Flickr, by R80o (Mark Strozier) Reader comments of the week: In The Hippocratic Oath for Graduate Students? Really?, DrugMonkey shares a proposed oath published in the June 20 issue of Science which would require all incoming graduate science students to swear their commitment to ethical research. The oath met with mixed reactions from DrugMonkey's readers, some of whom like the…

Digital Biology Friday: What sequences do you believe?

During the past few Fridays (or least here and here), we've been looking at a paper that was published from China with some Β-lactamase sequences that were supposedly from Streptococcus pneumoniae. The amazing thing about these particular sequences is that Β-lactamase has never been seen in S. pneumoniae before, making this a rather significant (and possibly scary) discovery. If it's correct. tags: DNA sequence analysis, antiobiotic resistance , microbiology, blastn The way this sequence was identified as Β-lactamase was through a blastn search at the NCBI. And in fact, it was correct to…

Historical Physicist Halloween Costumes

It's that time of year again when people start thinking about Halloween costumes-- SteelyKid is apparently planning to re-use her Peter Pan outfit from last year-- and the conceptual costumes post from a while back has proved enduringly popular at this time of year. If you're not into conceptual art, though, maybe some historical cosplay is more your thing, so here are some totally serious ideas if you want to go to your local physics department's Halloween party as one of the great physicists of the last half-millennium. Sexy Niels Bohr This was actually the trigger for this post, when…

Second confirmed poppy tea death in Boulder, Colorado

The Boulder County coroner announced today that the July death of a Boulder teen was indeed due to opioid intoxication from preparation of a poppy pod tea. Jeffrey Joseph Bohan, 19, of Boulder, was found dead in his friend's Boulder home about 6 p.m. July 21 after drinking poppy-pod tea the night before with his brother, according to Boulder police. Investigators suspected the Fairview High graduate, who was going to Colorado State University, died from the psychoactive tea, which is brewed from the plant that produces opium. But they couldn't be sure until the Coroner's Office confirmed…

Possible origin of tuberculosis in the Americas

Image of seals from www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-animal-kingdom/images/14060694/title/seal-wall… Paleogeneticist Dr. Johannes Krause (University of Tübingen, Germany) and colleagues were interested in the origin of tuberculosis (TB) in the Americas. Since strains of TB found in the Americas are related to strains found in Europe, prior theories held that Spaniards may have introduced it to the Americas while colonizing South America.  The problem with those theories is that pre-Columbian skeletal remains showed signs of TB much earlier. Dr. Krause was quoted in Scientific American, “Pathogens…

Pebbles: Fraudulent cell phone calls, daydreaming, autism, Glenn Gould, and Roy O & Dustin Pedroia

Roy Oswalt, bringing it. Some good hits from the last week or so (but not too many off Roy): SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT: Fraud Charges Cast Doubt on Claims of DNA Damage From Cell Phone Fields -- Vogel 321 (5893): 1144a -- Science  As shocking a story as the title suggests. Oops, update: As that story is behind a pay firewall, I excerpt the first couple grafs here. It has received extraordinarily little news coverage since then -- an oddity, given how much press the papers in question generated originally. Time allows I'll post more on this later. In the meantime, from the Science story: The…

TV News Audiences Are Split Along Party Lines

Apparently, this did not used to be true. TV news viewers in the past did not pick their news station in a way that correlated with party affiliation in the US. But now, increasingly so, they do. This is from a study from the University of Georgia, Athens, based on data from the Pew Center for the People and the Press from 1998 to 2006. In 1998, Fox News was watched byt 18 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans. But in 2006, 26 percent of Republicans watched Fox, compared to 19 percent of Democrats. What I want to know is, why are these Democrats still watching Fox News? The…

How is this night different from all other nights?

It isn't Passover right now, but several people recently commented that this is one of our better posts from the old blog, so enjoy. On all other nights, we may eat either leavened or unleavened bread; on this night, only unleavened bread. On all other nights, we may eat any vegetable; on this night we are required to eat bitter herbs. On all other nights, we are not bidden to dip our vegetables even once; on this night we dip them twice. On all other nights, we eat our meal in any manner; on this night we sit around the table in a ceremonial fashion. The unleavened bread is the bread of our…

Open Access Humor

Yes, even serious topics like Open Access can be funny. From Vimeo, moments from the SPARACRL forum. You will laugh, you will cry. SPARC Forum: The Flip Side from Matt Agnello on Vimeo.

Impacts of the California Drought, Part 2: Net Agricultural Income

Heather Cooley, Kristina Donnelly, Peter Gleick Last week, the Pacific Institute published the first comprehensive analysis of the impacts of the drought on California crop revenue and agricultural employment through 2014. The study showed that during the recent drought California’s agriculture sector experienced record-high crop revenue and employment. Crop revenue peaked in 2013 at $33.8 billion, the highest level in California history, and declined only slightly to $33.4 billion in 2014 (all economic data have been corrected for inflation). Statewide agriculture-related jobs also reached a…

Newly discovered Ebola viruses: filling in gaps in viral ecology

It's only taken 30 years, but information about Ebola in nature is finally starting to snowball. First, after almost 15 years of disappearing from the human population, Ebola returned with a vengeance in the mid 1990s, causing illness in 6 separate outbreaks in Gabon, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and South Africa (imported case) between 1994 and 1996. As doctors and scientists rushed in to contain the outbreaks, they were also able to collect viral samples, and trap animals and insects in the area, searching for a reservoir for the virus. In this decade, there have been…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

PLoS Biology, Medicine, Neglected Tropical Diseases and ONE publish on Tuesday. What's new today? As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Condition and Phenotype-Dependent Dispersal in a Damselfly, Calopteryx splendens: Individual dispersal decisions may be affected by the internal state of…

T. rex: A Glorified Chicken (But You Already Knew That)

tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, dinosaurs, birds, Tyrannosaurus rex, ornithology, paleontology The Tyrannosaurus rex femur from which researcher Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University recovered soft tissue. Image: Science. It wasn't too long ago that paleontologists thought that fossilization was a process where all biological material was replaced with inert stone. However, in 2005, Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University rocked the paleontological world when she recovered a still-elastic blood vessel from inside a fractured thigh bone fossil of…

Live mice from stem cells!

News today has spread about new stem cell research out of China. Two teams used mouse fibroblasts, a kind of cell found in skin connective tissues, to create induced pluripotent skin cells (iPS), which were then used to create living mice. Their breakthrough research suggests that both cloning full animals from stem cells and the creation of completely pluripotent stem cells from skin cells are both not only possible, but a current reality. The two teams published separately, in Nature and Cell - Stem Cell, both very prestigious journals. The first task for either study was to create stem…

A drug company, a psychiatrist, and an inexplicable failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist at Emory University alleged by congressional investigators to have failed to report a third of the $2.8 million (or more) he received in consulting fees from pharmaceutical companies whose drugs he was studying. Why would congressional investigators care? For one thing, during the period of time when Nemeroff received these consulting fees, he also received $3.9 million from NIH to study the efficacy of five GlaxoSmithKline drugs in the treatment of depression. When the government ponies up money for scientific research, it has an interest…

If you're going to cite me, at least read and understand what I wrote

Bloggers love it when other bloggers cite them to support their arguments. I'm no different, as even a blinking Plexiglass box of lights likes to have its arguments appreciated. I particularly love it when a skeptical blogger uses some small thing I've written to refute particularly egregious nonsense. Unfortunately, there's the flip side to this. There are times when I'd prefer I wasn't cited. No, I'm not talking about anti-vaccinationists like J.B. Handley launching broadsides against me when I hit a particular nerve, various quacks or boosters of quackery going after me when, well, I hit a…

W.H. Flower's Ungulate -> Cetacean hypothesis

A porpoise, or "sea-hog", from Appletons' Annual Cycloaedia. I do not have much time to write today, so rather than type something from scratch I have decided to share an excerpt from my book (still in-progress). In my recent post "Ancient Armored Whales" I briefly drew attention to a quote from Richard Lydekker deriding William Flower's hypothesis that whales may have evolved from ungulates. Presented below in the passage on this subject as it presently appears in the chapter "As Monstrous as a Whale"; A lack of other transitional forms had stirred debate about the place of Basilosaurus…

Friday Fun: Time Between Thing Being Amusing, Extremely Irritating Down To 4 Minutes

This seems to be the trajectory for absolutely everything now, from music, to film, to internet memes, everything. That doesn't mean it's not funny, of course. From The Onion, Time Between Thing Being Amusing, Extremely Irritating Down To 4 Minutes PROVIDENCE, RI--According to a study released this week by Brown University's Department of Modern Culture and Media, it now takes only four minutes for a new cultural touchstone to transform from an amusing novelty into an intensely annoying thing people never want to see or hear again. *snip* "The results are the same for everything from TV news…

Quick Picks on ScienceBlogs, December 28th, 2006

Hand-picked for your delectation. From Cognitive Daily, Casual Fridays: Christmas Procrastinators' Edition. Christmas is over, but there's still time for holiday faux-pas. CogDaily readers weigh in on last-minute gift giving: "Are gift certificates appropriate? What about cash? Everyone can use cash, can't they?" From Respectful Insolence, A Most Uncomfortable Quesion. "There's nothing like being trapped in a small examination room with a 450 lb. woman and three members of her family, with nowhere to run." From The World's Fair, MIT Professor Denied Tenure Will Start a Hunger Strike. "James…

Telcos Pump Cash into Rockefeller's Coffers

Over at Threat Level Ryan Single reports that all of a sudden, Senator Rockefeller, the putative custodian of legislation to give telecommunications companies immunity from privacy lawsuits, is getting lots of cash from such companies. And most of these donations come from out-of-state donors (Verizon and AT&T employees who do not live in West Virginia). Suspicious! Single reports: Top Verizon executives, including CEO Ivan Seidenberg and President Dennis Strigl, wrote personal checks to Rockefeller totaling $23,500 in March, 2007. Prior to that apparently coordinated flurry of 29…

Two years post-earthquake, Haiti still struggles with cholera

Two years ago, a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing 300,000 Haitians and leaving 1.5 million homeless. Nine months later, a cholera epidemic began -- its first victim a 28-year-old man who bathed in and drank from a river that was likely contaminated by raw sewage from an encampment of UN peacekeepers from Nepal. Half a million people have been stricken by cholera since then, and 7,000 have died. New cases are being reported at a rate of roughly 200 per day. Cholera is also spreading in the Dominican Republic, which shaires the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. Officials from CDC, UNICEF,…

Kent Hovind, working on his "world's most obnoxious prisoner" title

There are new epistles from convicted swindler and evangelical Christian — but I repeat myself — Kent Hovind. The first is an account of his transfers within the prison system, and although I don't feel even a twinge of sympathy for Hovind, I do feel for the other prisoners who experience the impersonal neglect and arbitrary abstention from human contact that is imposed by they system. I can't feel much for Hovind, because his accounts are loaded with increasing amounts of frantic piety—he's praying, praying, praying and proselytizing, proselytizing, proselytizing as if he's desperated for…

Escape from a black hole? Not in this Universe (Synopsis)

"Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." -Stephen Hawking The New York Times ran an article on Stephen Hawking promising there was a possible escape route from a black hole, after all. In the text, Hawking asserts, "They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. If you feel you are trapped in a black hole, don’t give up. There is a way out." While it might appear that matter escapes a black hole, this is only from matter well outside of the event horizon at all times. Image credit: ESO/MPE/Marc Schartmann. But what the actual…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Festive Update

There's no rest for the wicked, as last weekend's hectic running around is followed by another busy weekend, with some on-campus stuff on Sunday as part of our annual Accepted Students Days. More importantly, though, I will be on a panel at the Empire State book Festival on Saturday from 12:45-1:30 pm: BLOOK: Going from Blog to Book Empire State Convention Center, Meeting Room 4 Books derived from blogs are a publishing phenomenon of the past few years. Why is there an audience for previously digital content in analog form, and what does this say about the future of the book? Hear from a…