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"Swine" flu, whooping cough, and vaccines in my town

When I was little, I was vaccinated for the things that were recommended at the time: polio, measles, German measles (rubella), diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough (pertussis). I had the mumps and chicken pox when I was little, and was re-vaccinated for measles before college (because the late 60's vaccine wasn't effective enough, I think). My kid's list of vaccinations has been much longer, and includes a lot of diseases I didn't recognize immediately (Hib, for instance). A lot of parents I know are skeptical of vaccinations - aren't they potentially dangerous, and maybe better when kids get…

Keeping up with Carcharodontosaurus

Over the past two decades there has been an explosion in the number of large theropods that have been discovered (or as we shall see, rediscovered) in Africa and South America, the predatory dinosaurs of what was once Gondwana being just as large and terrifying as their more famous Northern Hemisphere counterparts. Abelisaurids (i.e. Carnotaurus, Rugops, Majungasaurus), Spinosaurids (i.e. Baryonyx, Suchomimus, Irritator, and Spinosaurus), and Carcharodontosaurids (i.e. Giganotosaurus, Tyrannotitan, Mapusaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus) have all emerged from the rock at an alarming rate,…

Disco. rubs out new writer's ministry background

Every now and again, the Disco. 'tute's blog rolls out some breathless announcement. Sometimes they've been invited to join other creationist groups at a public forum, or maybe they're angry at a newspaper article claiming they have ties to religion, or they might just have come up with another reason to claim evolution is at odds with their theistic understanding. My favorites, though, are the times when they invite a new contributor to their blog. First it was the incomparable Michael Egnor. Then Martin Cothran, who is such a stereotypical wingnut that I'd have had to invent this…

Play a game!

Here's a fun little toy from the Science Museum — use a little physics and logic to bounce a ball into a target. Don't show it to the kids or they'll take the computer away from you! (via Unhindered by Talent)

Shorter Clive James

Shorter Clive James on Queensland floods: I get my climate science from poems. 'Shorter' concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™ Acknowledgement copied from Sadly, No!.

What word should they have used?

Three girls have been suspended from school because, during a reading of an excerpt from the Vagina Monologues, they used the word—get ready to be shocked—"vagina". Obviously, the girls should have consulted this list for a euphemism.

Response to the Anonymous Creationist

I've got an anonymous creationist (AC) who keeps piling one absurd statement on to another in the comments on a post below. I'm going to move the discussion up here to keep it from getting lost. This post is addressed directly to him. The problem at this point is that you think you're not being taken seriously because you're a "skeptic" of evolution. The truth, however, is that you're not being taken seriously because your arguments are really, really bad. Let me give just a few examples of the statements you have made that are either incoherent, false or meaningless: Examples of adaptation…

Miscellaneous Post-Election Tidbits

Sorry about the abrupt end to the liveblogging last night; Firefox crashed, and CoverItLive wouldn't let me log back in as the moderator. Anyway, it's a good day to be a liberal. As you all know by now, it was Obama in an absolute landslide. He won by a huge margin in the electoral vote, and by a good margin in the popular vote. The Democrats also kicked Elizabeth Dole and John Sununu out of the senate, which is wonderful. But they didn't take enough seats to get past a filibuster in the Senate. This means that we can expect to see a really dramatic level of obstructionism from the…

It's When the Pundits, Not Lobbyists, Divide Over Antibiotic Resistance, We'll Be Screwed

Recently, ScienceBlogling Jeff Toney responded to Chief Veterinarian of the National Pork Producers Council Liz Wagstrom's argument that widespread antibiotic use in agriculture has little effect on the antibiotic resistance problem. He concludes: However, the scientific facts support this idea [of agricultural misuse being a problem] - imagine the effect on our population of literally thousands of tons of antibiotics used in agriculture and animal husbandry, not intended in any way to support public health. Any microbiologist knows that if you grow bacteria in low levels of antibiotics, you…

Why Federally-Funded Academics Should Seriously Consider Blogging Pseudonymously

A few weeks ago, Glenn Greenwald gave a speech where he discussed the climate of government intimidation in the U.S.: I received a lot of comments from people via email, from people in person telling me at my attended events, from people in my comment section, American citizens who said the following: "I understand and agree with the idea that Wikileaks has a lot of potential to do good, but I'm actually afraid of donating money, because I'm afraid that I'm going to end up on some kind of a list somewhere; or that eventually I will be charged with aiding and abetting, or giving material…

Another Way to Break the NIH Pipeline: Shift More Money to SBIR/STTR Programs

In keeping with the Broken Pipeline theme (see ScienceBloglings Greg, Coturnix, and Drug Monkey), this letter to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) from the Coalition for the Life Sciences about his efforts to shift more funding to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs seems timely (italics mine): I am writing on behalf of the Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy (JSC) to express our concerns regarding S. 1932 and its intent to double the percentage of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget earmarked for the Small Business…

China's environmental problem is us?

China is becoming an environmental nightmare. Now experts from the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, a Chinese government think tank, have located the culprits. The rest of the world. We are forcing China to make products for them and as a result making their country an environmental paradise -- for polluters. Don't blame me for this bogus argument. I'm just telling you what they are saying: A high-profile report released by a governmental think tank in Beijing, last week, berated current trade patterns, which resulted in China bearing the brunt of…

Gaza assault: heartless, cruel and stupid

Less than a week ago we posted on an impending public health emergency in the embattled Gaza strip region of Palestine, where a relentless Israeli assault had cut off much of the population from water and power at the height of summer heat. The warning came from our friend, Palestinian doctor and social justice activist, Dr. Moustafa Barghouti (this is not the Barghouti currently being held in an Israeli jail). Things have deteriorated further and UN aid agencies have joined in the urgent warnings. From Reuters: U.N. aid agencies said on Saturday that Gaza was on the brink of a public health…

Bird flu and internet integrity

The question has been broached here before by our commenters: if a pandemic is a threat to our civil infrastructure, how do we know the internet will continue to function? It's fine to tell workers to telecommute, but what if the information highway the commuters travel is grid locked? Good questions without good answers. But information technology professionals are at least thinking about it. The IT trade mag, Computer World, has a story about a simulation held recently at the world Economic Forum by management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. The scenario was pandemic flu arriving in…

An Interview with Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle

This time around, we're talking to Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle. What's your name? Shelley Alyssa Batts. I feel like you should now be asking me my favorite color and then the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow. What do you do when you're not blogging? Working on my doctoral thesis, re-submitting my NRSA grant, playing tennis, pilates, logic puzzles, PS2 (GTA Vice City!), teaching my African Grey (Pepper) Bond movie themes and disturbing movie quotes. I also enjoy a good beer or six. What is your blog called? Retrospectacle What's up with that name? I don't know. I think I thought…

Tomorrows Table: What does GMO really mean?

Tomorrows Table: What does GMO really mean?   For years, journalists, television producers and newspaper reporters that write about genetically engineered crops, have used the term “GMO” (genetically modified organism) to describe these new crop varieties. The marketing industry has taken to writing “GMO-free” on their products, as a way to increase sales to consumers fearful of the genetic engineering process.The problem is that the term GMO is misused and misunderstood.Take, for example, a recent story on Voice of America about a newly developed rice variety that is tolerant of flooding.…

USA Science & Engineering Festival Mourns the Passing of Advisor Dr. Charles Vest

Image from National Academy of Engineering This past week, the USA Science and Engineering Festival lost a dear friend and advisor —and America lost one of its true visionaries in education, engineering and technology.  Dr. Charles M. Vest was a tireless advocate for research and science in roles as President of the National Academy of Engineering and President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He passed at home of pancreatic cancer at the age of 72. Dr. Vest was best known as the 15th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,  serving from 1990 to 2004. He led…

Education and Medicine Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Medicine & Health channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Duchamp Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by jurvetson Reader comments of the week: In Don't Go to Grad School (in the Humanities), Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles dipenses some sage advice for prospective grad students: "If they're not offering to pay you, don't go." For physics students but even more for humanities students, the potential payoffs are not enough, in Chad's opinion, to…

Jumping to Conclusions about the NSTA

One of my favorite books, "The Phantom Tollbooth," by Norton Juster, has a wonderful description of the penalties for making decisions without carefully evaluating the facts. Whenever the characters in the book arrive at a decision too quickly, they end up, literally, "jumping to Conclusions," an island far off the shore. The penalty for quick blog posts isn't so high. And, I'm pretty certain that no blogger has been stranded on a distant island for writing something without having all the facts. Still, it seems that the story of the offered "An Inconvenient Truth" DVDs, wasn't as…

Did bird flu fly the coop in the UK?

The mess up at the Bernard Matthews H5N1 infected turkey farm just gets worse by the day. Health officials are urgently investigating fears that the disposal of contaminated waste from the Bernard Matthews plant at the centre of the bird flu outbreak may have allowed the virus to spread to other parts of the country. Experts fear that meat and packaging contaminated with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus from the Bernard Matthews processing plant at Holton, Suffolk, may have found its way on to landfill sites, where wild birds might become infected. Meat carrying the virus could also have been…

The mismatched flu B problem and what to do about it

DemFromCt's excellent post at DailyKos alerted us to the fact that this year's vaccine appears to have a mismatched influenza B component. Each year vaccine makers try to anticipate the strains that will be circulating 6 months hence, based on surveillance data. They have been fairly good with their guesses but things seem to be getting more complicated in recent years and mismatched strains are becoming more common, that is, the vaccines don't protect as well or at all against the strains that are actually circulating. There are three strains in the yearly "flu shot," two influenza A strains…

Apparent spread of transgenes from GM corn

In 2001 Ignacio Chapela, an ecologist from the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author David Quist published a highly controversial paper in Nature that appeared to show that genetically engineered genes used in genetically modified (GM) corn (maize) was spreading from GM cornfields in Mexico into traditional corn crops. This set off a firestorm where proponents of GM agriculture declared the paper fatally flawed, pointing out some apparent errors. Accusations of agribusiness conflicts of interest were traded with those of political agendas. Nature subsequently published an "editor'…

Climate denier declines to disclose funding

I post occasionally on climate change here but other SBers do it much better (e.g., Chris Mooney at The Intersection). When I have posted on it I have neglected to mention the amount of money I make from the climate change issue. The subject just "didn't come up." Well now it has, so honesty requires me to disclose that I make $0 from my position on climate change. I mention it now because Patrick Michaels, one of the news media's favorite climate change deniers (no relation to my friend David Michaels from The Pump Handle), has withdrawn as an expert witness in a court case rather than…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Do You Hear What I See? Research Finds Visually Stimulated Activity In Brain's Hearing Processing Centers: New research pinpoints specific areas in sound processing centers in the brains of macaque monkeys that shows enhanced activity when the animals watch a video. This study confirms a number of recent findings but contradicts classical thinking, in which hearing, taste, touch, sight, and smell are each processed in distinct areas of the brain and only later integrated. Harmful Environmental Effects Of Livestock Production On The Planet 'Increasingly Serious,' Says Panel: The harmful…

Cloning Domesticated Animals: Pros and Cons

Food From Cloned Animals Safe? FDA Says Yes, But Asks Suppliers To Hold Off For Now: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued three documents on the safety of animal cloning -- a draft risk assessment; a proposed risk management plan; and a draft guidance for industry. The draft risk assessment finds that meat and milk from clones of adult cattle, pigs and goats, and their offspring, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals. The assessment was peer-reviewed by a group of independent scientific experts in cloning and animal health. They agreed with the methods…

Ugly truth about Maryland's crab industry; no wonder the locals don't want the jobs

In an amazing and comprehensive report entitled "Picked Apart," the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante and the International Human Rights Law Clinic of American University College of Law reveal the ugly, dark side of the Maryland crab industry. Some employers are skirting the law and exploiting workers hired under the H2-B guestworker program. Many of these workers are women from Mexico who've traveled thousands of miles in a bus to remote villages on Maryland's eastern shore. They'll work during the Blue crab harvesting season, to pick the meat by hand. The H2-B program allows employers…

CSB's public relations ploy?

by Ken Ward, Jr.,  cross-posted from Sustained Outrage: a Gazette Watchdog Blog During a public hearing last night in Georgia, the federal Chemical Safety Board tried to answer critics who complained the board had backed off its strong recommendation that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) write new rules to protect workers nationwide from the dangers of explosive dust.  In approving a final report on the disastrous explosion that killed 14 workers at and Imperial Sugar refinery, board members unanimously added this language as a recommendation to OSHA: Proceed…

DC Appeals Court chokes on Bush air pollution rules

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure I'm sure it will be years before we have cleaned up all the garbage -- literally and figuratively -- from the Bush administration's Environmental "Protection" Agency. The notoriously conservative DC Appeals Court, in a unanimous decision, did its part recently when it declared the Bush EPA's standards for air particulates âcontrary to law and unsupported by adequately reasoned decisionmaking." The language doesn't get much stronger than that. Just a few days before the Supremes refused to hear a challenge to a lower court decision striking down…

Think like a doctor, don't let them crack your neck!

This week's think like a doctor column in the NYT is great. It asks the question, if a woman goes to a chiropractor, gets her neck manipulated, and within hours and for the succeeding four years she's had symptoms of severe headaches and a pulsatile sound in her ears, what is the diagnosis? You can guess what mine is... Quackery! It's a great case because it comes with an excellent set of images and reports on this woman's case. But what I can't get over is that the most obvious problem here is that the woman was seeing a chiropractor. The most obvious conclusion of the piece is that this…

Ben Stein loses all intellectual credibility

On his blog Stein espouses one of the weakest attacks I've heard yet against evolution, and not even original. It's a pathetic set of logical fallacies. Basically, he starts from the assumption that scientific theories arise if they serve the prevailing ideology of the time period, and because "Darwinism" was developed during the Victorian/imperialist age, it represents nothing but the worst aspects of that era. Let's make this short and sweet. It would be taken for granted by any serious historian that any ideology or worldview would partake of the culture in which it grew up and would…

Two Court Decisions for Science

There have been two interesting court decisions, I think both decided correctly for science this week. In the first, a federal court has decided states may regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In particular, one statement from the judge seemed to come straight from the deck of cards. "There is no question that the GHG (greenhouse gas) regulations present great challenges to automakers," Judge William Sessions III, sitting in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, wrote at the conclusion of his 240-page decision. He added, "History suggests that the ingenuity of the industry…

Feminism gives you breast cancer

I ran across this story study linking breast cancer protection to housework while browsing Scienceblogs briefly over the break (GrrlScientist mentioned it here), but hadn't had a chance until now to read through the actual publication. As usual, I'm late; Orac has a good overview, as well as some comments made by other bloggers railing against "feminism" and how this study proves that feminist philosophy kills women. First, here's how the BBC story describes it: Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests. The research on more than…

Killer sperm whales

You would be forgiven that doubting that this awesome object - displayed in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History - is a fossil odontocete skull, but it is. Discovered in Lompoc, California, and as yet unreported in the scientific literature (so far as I can tell), it is the skull of a large predatory sperm whale purportedly closely related to the Japanese Miocene physeterid Brygmophyseter shigensis (but read on). The extant sperm whale Physeter lacks functional teeth in the upper jaw and in fact even possesses special sockets in the maxillae that house the lower jaw teeth when the…

3 Quarks Daily Announces The Quarks - blogging prizes

The First Award for Best Science Blogging Judged by Steven Pinker Celebrating the best of blog-writing on the web, 3 Quarks Daily will award four annual prizes in the respective areas of Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy for the best blog post in those fields. This year, the winners of the 3QD Prize in Science will be selected from six finalists by Steven Pinker, who will also provide comments about each of the three winning entries. Please nominate your favorite blog entry in the field of the Natural and Social Sciences by placing the URL for the blogpost in the…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Honey Bees Can Tell The Difference Between Different Numbers At A Glance: The remarkable honey bee can tell the difference between different numbers at a glance. A fresh, astonishing revelation about the 'numeracy' of insects has emerged from new research by an international team of scientists from The Vision Centre, in Australia. Climate Change Largely Irreversible For Next 1,000 Years, NOAA Reports: A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large…

quantity has a quality all its own

It is ok to piss in the forest. It is natural, the bear behind you does it too, the plants need the water, and you're even recycling some valuable nitrogen and salt compounds. It is not ok for 8 million people to take a piss in Central Park. This is why climate change is important. The problem is not the working schlob in his SUV, the problem is that he is one of a hundred million. We exhale carbon dioxide, and that is ok. What is not ok is that we dump several gigatons of carbon in CO2 into the atmosphere every year for many decades. This is not a matter of marxist theory or liberal…

Endangered Turtle Found in Cambodia

tags: turtle, Cantor's giant softshell turtle, Pelochelys cantorii, endangered species, herpetology, reptiles This photo released by Conservation International, shows two rare Cantor's giant softshell turtles, Pelochelys cantorii, thought to be on the brink of extinction. Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund announced today, 16 May 2007, that scientists discovered the rare species in Cambodia in a former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge in March. A rare soft-shell turtle has been found in Cambodia's Mekong River, raising hopes that the threatened species can be saved from…

“It’s like an oven in there”: preventing work-related heat illnesses

I spend most of my time these summer days in cool air-conditioned (AC) environments. I feel the 100 degree heat when I’m going from one AC-cooled building to another. For me, the intense central Texas heat is something that is “out there” not "in here." But I was reminded today of people whose jobs cause them to say “it’s an oven in there.” An acquaintance's husband works as an auto mechanic. The garage where he works normally has a couple of large fans to circulate the air. Today one of the fans broke down. Temperatures inside the garage matched the outdoor temperature of nearly 100 degrees…

Keeping track of working conditions and workers’ rights in global supply chains

With the whole world literally involved in global supply chains – how to keep track of working conditions and workers’ rights in global supply chains? There is a comprehensive “one stop” way – and then a several-other-stops method for the more ambitious. The one-stop shopping is to sign up for weekly notifications from the UK’s Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. The staff of this non-profit organization in London scours the internet every day for the latest reports from companies, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on all aspects of global business.  Their concise…

Community groups, labor applaud new California refinery safety protections

Former Mayor Gayle McLaughlin remembers the phone calls from that evening. It was August 6, 2012. Constituents were calling McLaughlin at home to describe a huge cloud of black smoke infiltrated their neighborhoods. The cloud of pollution was coming from the Chevron refinery. A corroded pipe at the Chevron refinery failed, causing a massive cloud of hydrocarbon and steam that ignited. Next was the shelter-in-place warning. It covered the mayor's town of Richmond, CA town and neighboring San Pablo. The warning lasted lasted five hours. Four transit line stations were closed. Residents of…

Study: Affordable Care Act driving reductions in racial, ethnic insurance disparities

More good news from the Affordable Care Act: Since it became the law of the land, uninsurance disparities between white, black and Hispanic residents have narrowed significantly. In a study published this month in the journal Health Affairs, researchers found that by the fourth quarter of 2014, the uninsurance rate for Hispanic adults had fallen to 31.8 percent from about 40 percent in the third quarter of 2013. During the same time period, uninsurance among black adults declined from 25.5 percent to 17.2 percent, while uninsurance among white adults fell from 14.8 percent to 10.5 percent.…

New York City’s restaurant letter-grading system improved food safety, researchers find

In 2010, New York City health officials launched a new food safety tactic that assigned restaurants an inspection-based letter grade and required that the grade be posted where passersby could easily see it. So, did this grading make a difference? A new study finds that it has, with the probability of restaurants scoring in the A-range up by 35 percent. To conduct the study, researchers with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene examined data from more than 43,400 restaurants inspected between 2007 and 2013. A restaurant’s score is based on how well it complies with local…

Anti-Drug Ads Increase Drug Use

You gotta love this article in Slate about the failure of government anti-pot propaganda. Since 1998, the federal government has spent more than $1.4 billion on an ad campaign aimed primarily at dissuading teens from using marijuana. You've seen the ads--high on pot, stoners commit a host of horrible acts, including running over a little girl on a bike at a drive-through. Or a kid sits in the hospital with his fist stuck in his mouth. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the arm of the federal government that funds research on drug…

The Real Dave Fafarman Revealed

Well folks, the mystery has been solved once and for all. And - surprise, surprise - Larry is lying through his teeth. Here's what he had to say on his blog when someone told him that I had traced the IP addresses and found that the 2nd Dave came from his IP address: I don't know if Ed Brayton said that, but if he did, he is full of shit. For starters, Ed Brayton could be lying, and being the lousy scumbag he is, this is a strong possibility. But even if he is not lying, he is still full of shit. I use dial-up service, and my computer's local IP address changes every time I log on to AOL, but…

WUWT: taking incompetence to a whole new level

Since we're on fig 7.1.c, I was browsing around for google images and came across the following: Well, that's certainly odd. The pic is a copy (stolen with no attribution, are you surprised?) of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipcc7.1-mann-moberg-manley.png]] which I uploaded to wiki (once again I'm moved to comment that although the denizens of WUWT pretend that they don't trust wiki, actually just like everyone else they use it, and forget their scruples whenever convenient. Note also that the current wiki pic has had the green line added by DS). Its from When the IPCC ‘disappeared’…

An appeal to help someone out

This is a repost from here. John is a friend and a great guy and I hope you can do as he asks. Thanks. Please help Tessa and Marlowe This is a plea to save my ex from a financial death spiral. The short, short, short version is that she needs about $3500 by the end of next week or she loses both her car and her apartment. Tessa lost her job soon after the crash in 2008 and hasn't had a permanent job since then. For a while, we tried to build a home business around soaps, lotions, and scents that she made, but that never did more than break even. She's an experienced technical writer and…

Weekend Diversion: Aim for the Heart

"The heart, Ramone. Don't forget the heart. Aim for the heart, or you'll never stop me." -Clint Eastwood, in A Fistful of Dollars Sometimes, the greatest things that art, music, or even astronomy has to offer are the traditional standards that have been around for a very long time. Only, a new interpretation sheds a different light on the meaning, feeling or depth that comes along with it. Take the traditional song Columbus Stockade Blues, where the late Jeff Hickey performs my favorite version, recorded as: Columbus Stockade.So it goes with the skies as well. Take a look at the Eagle Nebula…

From the Sun to Your Sky in just three days!

Skinner: Well, that was wonderful. A good time was had by all. I'm pooped. Chalmers: Yes, I should be goooo-(notices kitchen on fire)-od lord, what is happening in there? Skinner: Aurora Borealis? Chalmers: Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen? Skinner: Yes. Chalmers: May I see it? Skinner: No. Agnes: Seymour, the house is on fire! Skinner: No, Mother, it's just the Northern Lights. -The Simpsons, episode 22 Short Films about Springfield Something rare and exciting happened just three days ago in our…

Why Globular Clusters are the Smallest

"From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician." -Sir James Jeans Last time we met, I posed a mystery to you: why are globular clusters the smallest in the Universe? And what's more than that, we never find them in isolation! We always find them bound to galaxies (or, if not bound to a galaxy, then within a cluster of galaxies; thanks Steinn), but never just off in deep space, floating on their own like some lone Death Star. Like all structures in the Universe, everything we're talking about here -- stars,…

The Greatest Story Ever Told -- 09 -- I'm going to be a star!

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. -Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Welcome back to The Greatest Story Ever Told, where we're covering the natural history of the Universe from before the Big Bang to the present day. You can catch up on the first eight parts here, going forward from Inflation in part 1 to parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and reaching the formation of the first neutral atoms in part 8. But during all of this time, gravity has been working its magic. In…