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Lesson: Never Check a Bag

You know those guys you see getting on planes with big shoulder bags that couldn't possibly be made to fit in those little test boxes they put by the gates that everybody ignores? I'm one of them, for good reason: whenever I check luggage, something goes wrong. Take yesterday, for example. I was out late Friday night, and we were scheduled for a two and a half hour layover in O'Hare airport in Chicago, and I just couldn't cope with the idea of lugging my big bag all over that deeply unpleasant airport (about which more later). The larger of my two bags was just full of dirty laundry and…

And the point of publishing scientific findings was what again?

Pencils ready? Here's a quick quiz; circle all that apply*: 1. You're a scientist and you've just published some research in a peer reviewed journal. You want: a. Scientists in your field to read and discuss your work. b. Interested non-scientists to get the important bits of what you found and why it matters, whether by powering through the article themselves or by getting a clear explanation of the article from a scientist. c. No discussion of your article at all -- once it's on the page in the journal, there's nothing else to say about it. d. All discussions of your findings to be based…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Antony Williams is the Vice President of Strategic Development for ChemSpider at Royal Society of Chemistry. He lives in Raleigh, NC, blogs on ChemSpider blog and tweets. At the conference, Antony will be quite busy - he will co-moderate the session "Citizen Science and Students", give two Ignite talks ""Crowdsourced Chemistry - Why Online Chemistry Data Needs Your…

I'm a Scientist, Get me out of Here!

tags: I'm a Scientist, Get me out of Here!, internet chatrooms, online program, technology, public outreach, scientists, employment, what do scientists do?, teenagers, streaming video This video describes a new online program targeted to UK teenagers; "I'm a Scientist, Get me out of Here!" This program's goals are to provide teens access to real scientists, to provide them the opportunity to get beyond stereotypes about scientists, to learn how science relates to real life and to provide the scientists with feedback on their communication style -- can they explain their work to teenagers?…

Is surfacestations.org dead?

The long slow wiki edit war over exactly what sort of denier AW is continues - RationalWiki is more informative - but the issue of surfacestations.org remains untouched. Is it alive? Dead? Undead? Having browsed around a bit I can't find anyone saying - or, indeed, caring - but being a caring sharing sort of individual I thought I'd poke it a bit. http://www.surfacestations.org/ is unpromising: NEWS Updated 07/30/2012 New paper in process, see details here. NOTE: Surfacestations.org gallery server has received heavy traffic and some attacks in the last 24hrs. The online image database aka…

World 2.0 at Rainbows End

Books: "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge. It's 2025 - What happened to science, politics and journalism? Well, you know I'd be intrigued. After all, a person whose taste in science fiction I trust (my brother) told me to read this and particularly to read it just before my interview with PLoS. So, of course I did (I know, it's been two months, I am slow, but I get there in the end). 'Rainbows End' is a novel-length expansion of the short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High" which he finished in August 2001 and first published in "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge". The novel was written…

Gloomy Post

I have always scoffed at people who say there is only the Republicrat party in this country, but after reading this depressing piece by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone I'm not so sure. What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his…

Deepak Chopra, placebo effects, and The Secret

If there's one thing that goes back to the very beginning of this blog (or at least it started in the first year), it's having a bit of fun with Deepak Chopra. I realize that to some it might seem like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. With a rocket launcher. On the other hand, I like to look at it this way. Deepak Chopra has a multimillion dollar alternative medicine and "quantum consciousness" empire milking the credulous to buy attend his lectures, buy his DVDs and books, and even to buy his video games. He's on television all the time, including appearances on Dr. Oz's show and on…

New York City trip - Part VII: Spamalot

Saturday, May 27th After revising our strategy - substituting quality for quantity - we had a good night's sleep and woke up at a more decent time on Saturday morning. I took the kids down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast for some delicious pancakes and waffles, while Mrs. Coturnix went to buy some matinee tickets for whichever (family-friendly) Broadway show she could get. 'Wicked' was the first choice, but those tickets have been sold out for months in advance. A couple of hours later, after waiting in the long line twice, she finally got a good deal on tickets for Spamalot from a…

Guster at SPAC, 8/17

Every summer, we go to a concert or two up at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC). We already had lawn seats for Springsteen, and last week, we had indoor seats for Guster and Ray Lamontagne. We ended up not using the actual seats, thanks to some exceptionally drunk college girls in the row behind us ("Do you need to throw up again?" is not a question you want to hear asked of the person seated immediately behind you), but we had good weather, and it was a pleasant evening sitting on the steps of the pavillion. Musically, there's not a whole lot to say about the show. If you've heard…

Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article

In today's PLoS Computational Biology: Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article: Scientific innovation depends on finding, integrating, and re-using the products of previous research. Here we explore how recent developments in Web technology, particularly those related to the publication of data and metadata, might assist that process by providing semantic enhancements to journal articles within the mainstream process of scholarly journal publishing. We exemplify this by describing semantic enhancements we have made to a recent biomedical…

Links for 2010-07-30

Getting young scientists into the science teacher pipeline: IU News Room: Indiana University "Producing science teachers who can keep up with rapidly advancing fields and can also inspire students is not an easy task. With a grant from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is challenging science majors -- individuals who enjoy and appreciate science -- to transfer their enthusiasm and knowledge to students in middle school and high school classrooms. Through the Noyce Summer Internship…

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Erica Tsai

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Erica Tsai, the co-organizer of the Friday evening events at ScienceOnline'09, to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? I'm a graduate student in the Department of Biology at Duke…

AAI: Toni Marano

As soon as you walk into the conference hall, you can't miss the big posters of a semi-nude Toni Marano. She's selling videos to help with pilates training, and also does "lifestyle intervention". I just have to say…good for her. It's an unfortunate fact that atheist conventions are sometimes a little too gray and stodgy, and she's bringing a little life to the meeting. Along similar lines, I'm seeing more young people and more women in attendance; not enough of either, but still a good sign of a healthy, growing movement. So what do you think? Should I buy one of her dvds?

Such temerity!

People are telling me that my blog entries are getting sprinkled with creationist ads in the RSS feeds, like this: Heh. I think it's great. This is an old and familiar game that has been played for years, where creationists buy up lots and lots of ad placement on searches for topics in evolutionary biology, and I think they should continue to throw their money down that sinkhole. It seems like an entirely ineffective tactic, to try and dun people who are already willing to look at the evidence with appeals to their dogma. Shall I start taking out ads in the local church bulletins, perhaps?

Darwin Quotes

Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Celebrate the Darwin Day Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself. ..and much, much…

Darwin Quotes

The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of mans inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed by earth-worms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures. - Charles R. Darwin Support The Beagle Project Read the Beagle Project Blog Buy the Beagle Project swag Celebrate Darwin Day Prepare ahead for the Darwin Bicentennial Read Darwin for yourself. Thanks Michael Barton for today's quote.

2,185,714

is how many people you could employ for a year for $306 billion, at a cost of $70 per hour, for 40 hour work week, 50 weeks per year. Those people would then go out and spend the money, generating some velocity and additional jobs. or at a mean hourly rate of only $15,000 - you could get 1,000 of the top financial executives in the USA, for a year. That is, to be fair, taking the mean only for the top 20 or so CEOs. So it'll buy you a bunch of COO and CFOs for matched sets.

The Corporation. Have you seen it?

Have you seen The Corporation? It is an excellent documentary that runs through the list of psychiatric disorders that seem to be endemic to corporations. It came out in 2004, but is still very relevant. If you've not seen it, you should. The film has a website, here. In some countries you can watch at least part of the film there (it may also be on YouTube, I've not checked lately) and The DVD costs about 20 bucks to buy or a few dollars to watch on Amazon. It is not on Netflix streaming, but it is available as a DVD.

Multi Head Computers 4U

This, I've gotta try: Build a three-screen workstation for $230 or less. ... This involves taking the video output of a laptop and running through a widget that gives you two (or four, for a bit more money) additonal screen, which, in turn, you've bought really cheap somewhere. There are open questions as to how windows would be managed on this extra real estate; This method may not be as smooth as the multi-head systems when you have an internal video card. Worth a look, though. Or, just buy one of these: Lenovo to release ThinkPad laptop with 2 LCD screens

Allergan will be doing just fine with Latisse™

Even at this incredibly slow time of the year for blog traffic, we hit about 250% of our average readership yesterday with search engines finding our post on Allergan's new eyelash enhancing cosmeceutical, Latisse. Lots of folks wanting to know where to buy Latisse - Allergan stock anyone? (Aside: Among my other search term hits yesterday was: "'junior faculty' hate my job." It hit an older post on whether junior faculty should invest time in writing review articles. I suggest that the reader start adding feeds to many of our commenters who with whom they may be able to commiserate.)

For the working scientist: what lab instrumentation would you buy?

This one's for the molecular and cell biology and pharmaceutical chemistry crowd: what's on your current wishlist? If you had a US$250,000 equipment budget, what would you buy to outfit the lab? Assume that your department has all the big ticket items like real-time PCR, confocal microscopy, flow cytometer, histology gadgetry, >500MHz NMR, MALDI-TOF, LCs, etc. And, no, not for scientist salaries - instrumentation/capital equipment only. I just want to know if there are any newfangled whizbang thingamabobs out there that I haven't seen in the last year or two, perhaps along the lines of the…

RIAA sends a clear message

RIAA, the music industry's mouth-piece and hired hand, sends you a message through this case: Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement in the nation's first file-sharing case to go before a jury. Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties. It's time for people who make music and buy music to move on. Like what Radiohead have done. Go for indie music. Look at ccMixter. Let the dinosaurs go extinct.

links for 2007-10-15

Stores make customer testing for their products too easy The result: Customers overestimate their ability and buy fancier stuff than they need Audiophiles and the limitations of human hearing Can we *really* hear the difference $7,000 speaker cables make? What about $100 cables? Radiohead lets fans decide how much to pay for their album Notes on the psychology behind this plan Did language originate with hand gestures? A flaw in the ganzfeld parapsychology experiment? I sense a disturbance in the literature about parapsychology Artificial erections They may be good for business,…

Ivory Billed Battle Continues

How naive I am. I thought it was settled that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was back among us. I guess I was wrong. As an amateur birdwatcher, I also thought that the videotape provided of the bird was extremely convincing. But I guess I can't be too certain any more, as a real expert ornithologist doesn't buy it. There's a lot of hope involved here, and hope can easily cloud our judgment. But once again--though I'm not an expert--I don't see how hope alone can explain the striking white outer wings of the bird in the video. My hunch, and it's only a hunch, is still that this is the real thing…

Which hybrid should I get?

I'm saying a sad goodbye to my trustworthy vehicle of 7 years that has been declared a total loss after a traffic accident last week. But, I'm excited about the prospect of buying a new car this weekend. We've decided to get a hybrid. I spend too much of my commute stuck in traffic, and it vexes me to lecture my students about carbon emissions and global warming and then go idle in traffic for a half hour. The question for you is: "Which hybrid should I get?" Do you drive a hybrid? What have your experiences been with it? Would you buy it again?

Rejected Greeting Cards: Appropriate for No Occasion

There's a new humor presence on Twitter and Facebook: rejectedcards. The author says, "I'm a copywriter for a major greeting card company. I get bored and create cards I know we'll never print. These are those cards." Cards like. . . "Another Year, Same Birthday Question: (inside) Are you sure you don't want us to pull the plug?" or "So sorry you lost your job. Are there other professions that use poles?" I wish this writer would collaborate with the snarky letterpress outlet Blue Barnhouse. I'd totally buy their products. But FYI: some of them are pretty offensive, so don't say I didn't…

Tick tock, tick tock.

I wanted to remind all the nerds (a term I use to encompass as well geeks, poindexters, dweebs, and those in allied fields) that you'll need to nerd things up by Sunday evening if you want to be considered for the final nerd-off rankings. The time remaining to represent is ticking down. And that reminded me of my nerdy DARPA time piece, pictured here. You can't buy this watch in stores! But perhaps even nerdier is the reason I always opt for analog over digital watches: analog watches remind me of the unit circle, for which I have a deep and abiding love.

Best or worst birthday card ever?

While looking for a birthday card for a relative a while back, I found this card and was intrigued enough to buy it, even though it wasn't appropriate for the person for whom I was seeking a card: So far, it's just pretty standard Bush-chimp stuff, a staple of comedy ever since W. took office. But what got me was the inside of the card: Two points: It's rather amazing that the whole "intelligent design" debate has become so ubiquitous that it's showing up in birthday cards, of all things. I haven't decided if this is the best birthday card ever or the worst birthday card ever. Opinions?

Dann Siems Benefit

A colleague and fellow freethinker at Bemidji State University, Dann Siems, has been diagnosed with a terminal glioblastoma. This is not good. This is damned scary stuff. He's still blogging away occasionally, discussing the experimental treatments being tried on him, but this is all expensive, and he has a family as well. If you'd like to help, there is a benefit concert being held on 5 June with a raffle. Maybe you can't attend because Turtle River, Minnesota isn't exactly next door, but you could buy a raffle ticket. Or if you'd rather, you can just make a donation through Headwaters…

Wikipedia Academy, Lund

I'm at the first Swedish Wikipedia Academy conference in Lund. Yesterday I did a talk on inclusionism vs. deletionism (vs. mergism) on the online encyclopedia (text available on-line in Swedish). Above is my audience who asked a lot of questions and were nice & friendly. Most participants are not themselves Wikipedians, they're largely librarians and teachers. I've chatted with a lot of people, notably Mathias Klang and Lennart Guldbrandsson and Lars Aronsson, and I look forward to future collaborations. [More blog entries about wikipedia, Sweden; wikipedia, Lund.]

Grand Rounds 3.38

I'm on the road today, literally--driving from Iowa to Ohio with kids and dogs in tow. (Well, okay, not exactly in tow--I do allow them to ride *inside* the car). I have a post scheduled for a bit later, but in the meantime, hop on over and check out not one, but two versions of this week's Grand Rounds. For you minimalists, click here; whereas if you want a bit more meat with your post descriptions, check out this version instead. Not sure when I'll next have a chance to get online, so I apologize in advance for any comments that get hung up in the junk filter...I'll pull them out as…

Last night in NYC

"In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.", Emile Zola (1840-1902) Or, in modern online usage - "Pics, or it didn't happen!" So, here are some of the pick from last night. First, we went to Seed offices, where we met everyone during the Happy Hour, including the Overlords, Erin and Arikia: Then we walked over to Old Town Bar, where we soon were joined by my Scibling Jake Young, my old friend from SciFoo and the 1st Science Blogging Conference Jacqueline Floyd, my Twitter buddy Arvind Says, and the Overlords of the new Nature Network NYC Hub Barry…

Cool new Open Access Journal

From Sage Ross, via John Lynch come exciting news about a new Open Access Journal - Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science Spontaneous Generations is a new online academic journal published by graduate students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. The journal aims to establish a platform for interdisciplinary discussion and debate about issues that concern the community of scholars in HPS and related fields. Apart from selecting peer reviewed articles, the journal encourages a direct dialogue…

Alice is heading offline

Folks, I know my blogging has been near non-existent recently. I've just come back from yet another workshop (this time on engineering and identity - v. cool) and tomorrow we head out on vacation. We're camping across the country, then spending some time with my folks in Canada, then camping back. I suspect the intertubes will be thin on the ground but will post snippets when I can. I'm also at the cusp of making a big decision, and the time away from online I think will be really helpful for me. So I leave you in the hands of the always insightful Science Woman for the next few weeks - I…

How Reporters Can Connect Climate Change to Cities

Earlier this week, I argued that a fundamental shift was needed in climate change communication strategy and that the shift meant refocusing news coverage on urban areas rather than arctic regions: Climate change needs to be repackaged around core ideas and values that a majority of Americans already care about. This means shifting the public lens away from distant arctic regions, socially remote people and places, or consequences far off in the future, and instead recasting climate change as an urban problem with local impacts and solutions. Now comes this report from Cristine Russell at…

The Coal Industry Understands Framing

Excerpt from coal and utility advertisement run in Kansas Back in November, by framing their advertising appeals in terms of economic competitiveness and patriotism, a coal company and utility effectively promoted it attacks on the governor of Kansas. Their claim, conveyed powerfully in ads as shown above, argued that the governor's rejection of two power plant applications on the basis of greenhouse emissions would force the state to rely on natural gas from an Axis of near-Evil that included Venezuela, Iran, and Russia. The Wichita Eagle newspaper responded with both a print editorial and…

On the Microbial Road

Blogging briefly from Chicago. Today's talk at the Field Museum went well--I managed to lure a fair number of people inside from a beautiful spring afternoon to hear me talk about a gut germ. I also had a chance to walk through the fabulous Shedd Aquarium. The Field Museum has an acquarium of its own--filled with 520 million year old creatures. They set up three gigantic screens on which they have a mind-blowing animation of Cambrian animals--slithering, flapping, wiggling, and looking quite alien. I found it mesmerizing. The animators have a movie you can watch online, but if you ever get a…

Wildlife photograph of the year

(Image: Ben Osborne)  This photograph of an elephant at a watering hole, by Ben Osborne, has just been announced as the best overall photo in the 2007 Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. "I staked out this waterhole in Botswana's Chobe National Park for three weeks," Osborne says, "taking pictures from my vehicle of thirsty elephants and other animals coming to drink. Sometimes the waterhole overflowed, and this huge bull was the first to indulge in a head-to-toe spa. I focused on the centre of the action, an explosion of texture and colour." This, and the winning images…

Activism for Activism's Sake

The Coalition Against Biopiracy has announced their winners for the 2006 Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy, and they're a hoot. We already knew that Darwin was a pirate, but now we learn that so are Craig Venter and Google. What are their crimes? Venter is accused of being the "Greediest Biopirate", and Google is accused of being the "Biggest Threat to Genetic Privacy". I have some more details on these charges below the fold, in addition to showing why the Coalition Against Biopiracy needs to walk the plank. Venter is accused of: "undertaking, with flagrant disregard for national…

Vague and Curious, Geithner's Explanation of Bank Plan Resembles Post-modernity

The Geithner Treasury plan for rescuing the banking system (more here) is getting panned on both sides of the aisle for being excessively vague. Megan McArdle: Tim Geithner reveals that the Treasury has a plan to fix the problems in our broken capital markets by . . . er . . . fixing them. ... The Wall Street Journal adds that "critical details of the plan remained unanswered, despite the weeks of planning leading up to Tuesday's announcement." Plan? That's not a plan, it's a fervent wish. Paul Krugman: An old joke from my younger days: What do you get when you cross a Godfather with a…

The Science of Blogging

Via Bora Zivkovic, I see that there's a new blog in town -- this one devoted to the joys of scientists blogging to advance their work. It's called Science of Blogging and it's by Peter Janiszewski and Travis Saunders who blog at Obesity Panacea. I'll let them explain their mission: Social media provides a tremendous outlet by which to translate and promote scientific knowledge and engage the public discourse. All scientists, researchers, clinicians, government and not-for-profit organizations have much to gain by adopting an effective and viable social media strategy. Science of Blogging will…

The legal consequences of acing an ethics test.

If you ever wonder why state employees are so marvelously equipped to believe six impossible things before breakfast, this story from Inside Higher Education will provide some context: Who would have thought that doing too well on a test could get you in trouble? Certainly not Tony Williams. After passing a new online test on ethics required of all state employees, the tenured professor in the English department at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale received a notice from his university ethics officer and from the state inspector general that he was not in compliance with state…

AZA Annual Conference - Animal Art Auction Today at 4PM (CT)!

I stumbled into a meeting my brain and experience are wholly unqualified to report on, so instead, I will tell you about this much more exciting piece of information. Today, from 4PM-7PM, the AZA will be holding a live auction of paintings created by animals. Anyone can join the auction online but be aware you must register first. Thanks to reader JuliaGoolia for cluing clueless me in. Check it: Art by Mishindi the Rhinoceros from the Denver Zoo Art by Hari and Hakuna the Meerkats from the San Diego Zoo more below the fold Art by the Chubs Raccoon Family from the Huchinson Zoo Art by…

Democrats Want to Create Green Jobs, but Newt Gingrich Seems to Favor Porn

From Think Progress, we learn that Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) group is choosing people for 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year awards by his Business Defense and Advisory Council. One little problem though: Pink Visual is a porn DVD superstore -- not the type of company you'd expect Gingrich would want stimulating the economy. ThinkProgress contacted Gingrich aide Joe Gaylord, who sent the faxed letter to Vivas, but we didn't receive a response. An ASWF representative reportedly called Pink Visual this morning saying it had "inadvertently" sent the fax to…

Best Science Books 2012: Planetizen

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2012 lists are here. This post includes the following: Planetizen Top 10 Books - 2013 (urban planning, design and development). Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet by Kendra Pierre-Louis Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into…

Do You Know What You Eat?

Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Troy Duster, Elizabeth Ransom, Winona LaDuke, Peter Singer, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Eliot Coleman & Jim Hightower recently participated in a Nation forum: One Thing to Do About Food. Here are a few excerpts - go read the whole thing: "Once you learn how our modern industrial food system has transformed what most Americans eat, you become highly motivated to eat something else." "....the American food system is a game played according to a precise set of rules that are written by the federal government with virtually…

Quack Miranda Warning

"These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." This "Quack Miranda Warning" is on every just about every woo-meister's website. I see dozens of patients every day, and I never Mirandize them, so whats the deal? There are three ways to look at this: the truthful way, the sinister way, and the bat-shit insane way. Truth: Anyone who wants to sell you something that's a load of crap must use this statement to cover themselves legally. Sinister: Variation of above--someone wants to sell…

Microbiology for preschoolers

As I mentioned, I spent yesterday morning talking microbiology to a bunch of 3, 4, and 5 year olds in my son's preschool class. It was fun, actually--I took along a prepared slide to show them some bacteria under the microscope, and then took a scraping from my son's tongue and Gram-stained it to show them a more realistic bacterial sample (a mixed sample of Gram negatives and positives of different shapes). I also passed around some pictures of bacteria and viruses. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I'm used to giving lectures and talking science with high-schoolers and college-age…

a modest financial proposal

we need to make the political personal Hank Paulson, US Secretary for the Treasury, wants a "clean" bill to bailout the investment banks. $700 billion, he disposes, no review or oversight. Now, there is an argument that the bailout will lead to a probable profit for the taxpayer in the long run. The argument is that forced sales of mortgage bonds have driven prices too low, and that vulture investors are waiting to pick them up for too low a price, after the banks go under due to positive feedback driving down asset prices, and the government must not only save the banks (for systemic reasons…