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Shopping for a graduate school?

Have some money to burn? Don't get enough creationist readings on teh intraweb? How about getting a Master's Degree in "Creation Science?" After all, it's academically rigorous: Each MS candidate is required to take six science education courses, three science courses and two electives. Applicants must already possess a bachelor's degree in a field of science or in science education. All 11 courses will be offered online. Or, not: Each online course approaches the content the same way ICR's scientists approach the study of origins: if an idea, scientific or otherwise, is contrary to God'…

Poll: Why Are You In It?

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Excellent list of neuroscience blogs

The Neurophilosopher has a great list of neuroscience blogs. The ones I've added to my RSS feed are listed below. Neuroevolution. Madame Fathom. Channel N. Also via Neurophilosopher: This firsthand account of having electrodes implanted in the brain to combat Parkinsons' disease. How some brains "rewire" themselves. When assessing research conclusions, consider who funded the work. Homework studies: Different countries offer different results. Today's college students: more narcissistic than ever? Online research: it's not just for Casual Fridays anymore. One lab at Harvard hopes to conduct…

US College Degrees

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Bartlett Is Half Right About Those Refund Checks

In the NY Times, economist Bruce Bartlett opposes the refund stimulus plan: WITH unusual speed and cooperation last month, George W. Bush and Democrats in Congress agreed to a tax rebate set to be paid out beginning in May. Families will get checks for $300 to $1200 or more, and it is assumed that they will all rush out to spend this money immediately, giving retailers a boost that will raise economic growth. Despite the bipartisan support for the rebate, few economists have supported the idea. They note that we have tried rebates in the past -- most recently in 2001 -- and there is no…

Don Herbert, 1917 - 2007

Don Herbert died yesterday, just short of his 90th year. Don Herbert was host of television's Watch Mr. Wizard, a Saturday morning live TV show that had a run of 547 episodes from 1951 to 1965. He was an important figure in the youth of many of today's scientists. The weekly 30-minute show featured Herbert as Mr. Wizard with a young assistant who watched while Herbert performed interesting science experiments. The experiments, many of which seemed impossible at first glance, were usually simple enough to be re-created by viewers. The show was very successful. (Wikipedia entry on Don Herbert…

scary shorts for faculty

seasonal snippets for our seniors your calendar shows more hours in committee than class this week the papers need to be graded before the next assignment is due oh, we charged a different overhead on that grant, a higher one 4070 unread e-mails ...including yours not including the 1600 from mailing lists that are automatically filtered to archive 146 of them have .doc attachments at the current rate it will take 37 weeks to catch up on arXiv again, but at least the time is now finite and positive yes, we are more than halfway through the semester "I just need your signature on…

Breaking News: George W Bush Presidential Library in Planning Stages

According to information leaked this week from the White House, planning is underway to design the George W. Bush Presidential Library, despite the fact that Bush has reportedly never read a book in his entire life. This library will include the following: The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has yet been able to find. The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction. The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything. The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't even have to show up. The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they…

Greek PM drops trousers

Or rather, drops euro referendum plan1 but the effect is much the same. When the referendum was announced a few days ago, some thought he had played a blindingly good political hand. Which just goes to show that economists aren't so great at politics and the cobbler should stick to his last. Which is why I'm commenting, obviously. But the argument - that he had magically got out of a difficult position (the Greek public didn't like the deal that was struck, this was he evaded responsibility, and maybe the need to buy off the public might result in a better deal) sounded quite plausible to me…

Ah, Home Again

Or for the first time, in this case. All the big stuff is moved and my living room is full of boxes, most of them full of books. I went out and bought a couple of bookcases and I think I'm gonna need a couple more. The one thing I don't like about my new house is the size of the kitchen. It doesn't have a separate dining room, so there's a dining room table in a kitchen that was already too small to begin with. For someone who loves to cook, this is a problem. On the good side, it has about a 400 square foot deck, and since I do a lot of my cooking outdoors, this is a good thing. I'm also…

I'm like "Joe the Plumber?" WTF, John McCain?

John McCain has got to be the biggest moron this side of stoopidville. For so many reasons. The latest is his very public cozy-ing up to the now famous "Joe the Plumber." We are at war in two countries. The economy is in a state not seen since the beginning of the Great Depression and no one really knows why. America's standing in the world is at a nadir, at a low point never ever seen in our entire history. And the best John McCain can do in the final debate with his Democratic opponent is to leverage the yahooistic ramblings of a man named Joe who claims to be a plumber but is not,…

Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman Series

One of the very best treatments of the scientific method in fiction that I've read-- I suspect it may be the best, but years on the Internet make me want to hedge everything-- is the Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein. The main character, Rowan, is a Steerswoman, a member of an order dedicated to collecting and sharing knowledge of the quasi-medieval world in which she lives, and over the course of four books she puzzles out some amazing things about the secret origins of her world and society. It's a joy to watch the scientific reasoning process Rowan follows, and the plots have plenty…

Many Worlds, Many Comics

The Digital Cuttlefish looks at the Archie comics, and waxes poetic: Two paths play out in a comic book, When Archie walks down memory lane "The road not taken" is the hook; So now, the writers take a look And re-write Archie's life again, This time with Betty as his bride; Veronica the woman spurned, Who once upon a time, with pride, Was wed to Archie. Thus allied, They lived while many seasons turned. Why am I commenting on this, given that what little I know about Archie I learned from The Comics Curmudgeon and Chasing Amy? Because he goes on to talk about the Many-Worlds Interpretation…

Hugo Nomination Suggestions

As Kate notes, I am a paid-up member of this year's Worldcon, and thus entitled to nominate works for the Hugo Awards. Of course, there are a zillion categories, and I'm not entirely sure what to nominate for any of them. So, if you are a reader or watcher of science fiction and/or fantasy, this is your opportunity to influence my nominations. If there's a book, story, tv show, movie, editor, or artist that you really, really want to see on the ballot, drop me a comment and let me know. I'll look at the work, if I have time, and give it proper consideration. If you are a person who cares…

Where did Cain get his wife?

People keep asking me this question after the creationist event here in town — Mortenson spoke about how creationism is so much more egalitarian than evolution, and how the Bible talks about these wonderful things people did in the book of Genesis, like Cain going out and founding a whole city, by himself! At a time when the world population was 4, however, that doesn't seem like a great accomplishment. Anyway, some people thought that far, realized that in the creationist conception of an entire world population arising from two people only, there was an obvious problem in the second…

Universe Event in NYC Tomorrow

I'm flying out to New York City on Sunday to participate in the very exciting BRAINWAVE series at the Rubin Museum of Art. BRAINWAVE, which is in its third year, brings thinkers from different disciplines to sit down with scientists to wrap their (and our) minds around the things that matter. Past pairings include Composer Philip Glass and astronomer Greg Laughlin, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and physicist Brian Greene, and performance artist Laurie Anderson with astrophysicist Janna Levin. Needless to say, it's a fascinating series, and I'm honored to be involved. I'll be talking with…

The Lorax Was Wrong: Skyscrapers Are Green

I've been harping on this for years: To live easy on the earth, live densely -- which is to say, in densely built neighborhoods. This Times Economix column describes a study showing just that. Other studies have shown living more densely creates richer social lives and stronger communities. Yet we continue to spread out willy-nilly. I see this to my dismay here in Vermont, where I live, in Montpelier -- the country's smallest state capital, and the only one without a McDonald's -- in a neighborhood of single- and multi-family houses so densely built that today you couldn't build it here,…

Quote of the day

From Lawrence Krauss, in a discussion with Natalie Jeremijenko that is featured in the latest issue of Seed: I think that's what makes science special. As a scientist and someone who tries, for better or worse, to extol the virtues of science in a society that doesn't appreciate many of those virtues, I think that ultimately the good stuff wins out even if it takes a while to do it. Because the final arbiter of success isn't people. In science, it's experiments. It's the ability to make it work. If it works, then people buy into it, whether they like it or not. And I really think that's…

The internet is a series of tubes

This is helpful. Senator Ted Stevens explains how the internet works. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material. Stay with this idea, please, because it is how I'm going to get rich. My plan is to install peristaltic pumps on fiber optic cables, and working on the same principle as…

Rove's Math

I know too much schadenfreude isn't good for you, but I just couldn't resist posting this little excerpt of Rovian braggadocio from NPR last week: SIEGEL: We're in the home stretch, though, and many would consider you on the optimistic end of realism about - ROVE: Not that you would be exhibiting a bias ... SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you're looking at every day. ROVE: No, you're not. No, you're not. SIEGEL: No, I'm not. ROVE: No, you're not. You're not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week. You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes…

Sucky Hybrids

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the vast majority of hybrid cars aren't worth the surcharge. You'd get much better mileage with a smaller engine, especially if it was a clean diesel. What worries me about hybrids is that they seem to satisfy this bourgeois lust for environmentally friendly brands - nothing says upper class liberal like a Prius parked in a Whole Foods parking lot - and yet typically don't represent significant environmental improvements. We assuage our conscience without doing much good. Now Forbes has compiled a list of the least fuel-efficient hybrids: In fact,…

Tim Tebow gets a lesson

Tebow is an obnoxious hyper-religious football player. He recently had to take some kind of test with a group of other players, and this is what happened: At the Scouting Combine, the Wonderlic exam is administered to players in groups.  The 12-minute test is preceded by some brief instructions and comments from the person administering the test. Per a league source, after the person administering the test to Tebow's group had finished, Tebow made a request that the players bow their heads in prayer before taking the 50-question exam. Said one of the other players in response:  "Shut…

Kratos has a new mission

There is a video game called Gods of War in which you guide your ultraviolent hero, Kratos, through a series of missions that lead to an assault on the Greek gods. You get to kill Zeus! There has been a whole series of these games, apparently, and Penny Arcade hints at a new direction they could take. One has to wonder what the public response to such a game would be. Killing Zeus is reasonable and uncontroversial (except for generic concerns about violence), but I suspect a swordfight with Jesus would freak a few people out. I've never played this game, but I admit…give me a shot at the…

Pale Male on Labor Day

tags: Pale Male, NYC red=tailed hawk, Image of the Day The photographer writes: I caught the world famous celebrity Red-tailed Hawk Pale Male in a patriotic mood on one of his favorite perches atop the flagpole at the Castle in Central Park. No doubt he was getting into the spirit of this holiday weekend. Let him be an inspiration to us all. Viva Labor Day. It appears to me the city could find the budget to buy a new flag. This one's a bit worn around the edges but then some of us feel the same way. Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George. [larger].

How depressing

Creationist can actively impede science. One of the largest mastodon fossils ever found was discovered on a ranch in Texas owned by a fellow named Joe Taylor — an infamous creationist who runs the Mt. Blanco Fossil "Museum", a wacky little place that peddles fossils while claiming they support a 6,000 year old earth. Now he's putting it up for auction, and you can buy the skull for something north of $60,000. We can't win this one. Even if it's bought by a reputable museum and studied scientifically, it still means that this creationist is going to get a huge chunk of change to use in…

I'm not the only biologist with too much free time.

I just want to say that this might be the coolest thing I've ever stumbled upon while surfing the net. Hands down, by far, the best. Subsequently, it would be downright immoral for me not to share it with you: Someone (found by this person) actually figured out how to knit a dissecting rat and frog. I'm sorry - I just couldn't help myself. I officially need to learn to knit, so I can make a pair of my own. Get the pattern for the rat or frog and make your own! Or if you're lazy, buy them. I think they'd make a great gift - especially if I'm on your Christmas list.

Last call for Skepticon

Only a few weeks are left until Skepticon III takes place, and only a few seats are left — this is a conference that has some fabulous speakers (well, except for me. Since I utterly reject the notion of the supernatural, I'm merely mundane), yet admission is entirely free. All you have to do is cough up travel money. If you can't make it, there's something else you can do: buy one of their calendars to help them pay for this event. They're amazing works of art, and educational, too. I have learned that naked skeptics are masters of the art of the Strategic Placement of Random Objects. I think…

Minchin morning

At the youtube page for this video, it's recommended that you buy his DVD. I agree! I want it! But, unfortunately, I only found one Minchin DVD at Amazon, and it won't play in the US. Any suggestions? Anyone? When I see Tim Minchin in London in the fall, do I have to beat him up, steal his computer, bootleg everything he has encoded on it, and get rich selling the stolen data on the internet? No, that wouldn't be nice at all, especially since he'd probably beat me up and then write a satirical song about me that would mean I could never leave my house ever again. Where's the Minchin HBO…

"What use has this company for an electrical toy?"

It is said that these were the words uttered by William Orton, President of Western Union, when given the chance to buy out a 10% share of Alexander Graham Bell's patents for $100,000. Those patents included those related to the telephone. A few weeks later, on this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Watson carried out the first two-way "long"-distance conversation on a telephone, borrowing for the purpose in-place telegraph line, between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. By spring of the next year several additional tests were run over much longer distances, most (but…

420: Friday Fractal LXXVI

For some of my friends, today is a holiday. So, to celebrate, here’s a fractal: Fractal 420(Click the image for a desktop sized version, or here for an alternate version.) Note: If you’re wondering where I’ve been, or why this post is so brief, don’t worry. I’ve just been having some issues with my keyboard (it keeps typing the wrong things or jumping a "page up") which makes any writing a serious pain in the wrist. I’m going to try to clean my keyboard out with canned air later today, or, if all else fails, I’ll just buy a new one. Fractal created by the author using ChaosPro.

Science Fiction Anthology Book - Buy Now!

TheScian Science Fiction Anthology - a collectible very first paperback edition is now available for purchase. For eye-candy, preview and to buy visit the book page. Shipping to US is 2-3 days (one day with Amazon Prime), to Europe and UK takes about 5 days. Kindle eBook edition and an Indian paperback edition will be available in a few weeks if you don't want to spend more on shipping. That said, I think you'll enjoy this 150 page volume more on real paper. Follow us on Twitter where we talk about books, publishing and more. (How do you handle spam on twitter? I just created the account…

On second thought...

So naturopaths want to be licensed to practice "primary care". I've come down pretty hard on this idea, but one of my colleagues is asking me to reconsider for some pretty good reasons. If we license them as PCPs, then they must be held to the same standards as MDs, meaning they must provide insurers including medicare with PQRI data on quality measures and outcomes, and they must buy malpractice insurance (and lots of it). I have a feeling that as when they have bad outcomes and are found to not be following the standard of care, the trial lawyers can make a few more boat payments.

Two Recommendations

1) Away, by Amy Bloom. The prose is perfect. It's the best written new novel you'll read this year, and that's saying something, since Ian McEwan also came out with a new novel. Another interesting thing about the book is that I almost didn't buy it because the cover is so terrible, or at least unappealing to me. But that would have been a mistake. 2) Into the Wild, by Eddie Vedder. Haven't seen the movie, but the music is fantastic. If Thoreau had an iPod, he'd be listening to this in the woods. That, of course, begs the question: would Thoreau have owned an iPod?

The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy

One of the great things about the internet is that you can always look back. See the 5 star reviews for The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy. Pretty funny. Here's a sample: Jeff and Larry have written a volume destined to stand alongside "The Hoover Miracle" and "Lyndon Johnson: Triumph in Vietnam". If you have to buy one book about a nonexistent phenonmenon this year, this is it. In the bizarro world there really is a Bush boom. But over there Larry Kudlow is a vegan with a ponytail delivering tofu pizzas for minimum wage. That's a review which came out…

Wal-Mart scares the bejeebus out of 2-year-old

Wal-Mart scares me on the best of days, but not quite like this. Seems there was a two-year-old who "had a fit" when he came across a Wal-Mart Halloween display that came to life before his innocent little eyes: The tot was with his grandmother on Tuesday night at the Hendersonville [N.C.] Super Wal-Mart when a Halloween display seemed to take on a life of its own. As Hendersonville resident Jan Overcash and Tucker were leaving the store, an employee directed their attention to the display, said Overcash, 47. It seemed harmless at first. "The head was still on it, but then the arms raised up…

Save Net Neutrality from The Corporate Takeover of Media

From Al Franken: The Comcast-NBC merger is the first domino. If it falls, the rest will soon follow. If no one stops them, how long do you think it will take before 4 or 5 megacorporations effectively control the flow of information in America not only on television, but online? How long do you think it will take before the Fox News website loads 5 times faster than DailyKos? It's almost too late to stop this from happening, but not quite. The government can stop them. . . but first the government has to be MADE to act. Net Neutrality is THE First Amendment issue of our time. If you want to…

Sea turtles are bloggers,too

Conservation International wins this year's Award for Affirmative Action by hiring an endangered species to raise awareness about biodiversity conservation and habitat loss. His health benefits are probably better than ours. He'll need those benefits, too. Nearly 90% of leatherback turtles in the Pacific Ocean failed to show up at their nesting grounds a few years back. Apparently, one of them quit the pelagic life to take a jobby job in the nation's capitol. Mr Leatherback has become so popular that he blogs daily, keeps a website on MySpace, and he's friends with rock stars like Stone…

Underrepresented Groups, Online Science Media, and ScienceOnline2010

Over at A Blog Around the Clock there are a series of posts with great video interviews from ScienceOnline2010, but I'd like to especially point your attention to this one with David Kroll and Damond Nollan, both of North Carolina Central University. It was filmed shortly after their session on "Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Session: Engaging underrepresented groups in online science media". I missed this session due to a combination of sleep deprivation and headache, and am really regretting it. Isis has a good post based on her attendance at the session, however - you should read it…

Lefty Blogosphere and the Love/Hate of Hillary

I wrote this on January 28, 2006. Was I wrong then? Is that wrong now? Have things changed in the meantime? ------------------------------------------------ Chris Bowers on MyDD recently had a post asking why the Progressive blogosphere does not like Hillary Clinton. Here's a little bit from Chris: Now I can explain what this all has to do with Hillary Clinton. As obvious as I thought my last point was, it is probably even more obvious by now that Hillary Clinton is, um, not exactly the most popular Democrat within the blogosphere and the netroots. I can offer loads of anecdotal…

How to get minority kids interested in geology field work? Check out Rue Mapp's Outdoor Afro blog!

While many folks 'round these parts have been focusing on tweets and posts from the Society for Neuroscience meeting, several of our geology blogger colleagues have been at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA). Geobloggers rock and we've got a great outcrop at ScienceBlogs. They're usually really gneiss people and they don't take any schist from anyone. And while their ideas may not always hold water, they are quite often a gas. I really get a recharge out of them and their attitude is uplifting. Put simply, I am an alluvial fan. I hope that she doesn't mind the…

Hugo and Nebula Thoughts

There's been a fair bit of discussion of this year's Hugo nominees around the Internets, most of it centering around the gender of the nominees (that link goes to a fairly civilized discussion, which includes links to a rather more heated argument). For those who haven't been following the controversy, only one of the twenty nominated works in fiction categories was by a woman. What follows will be rambling and discursive and probably not terribly productive, but I've become accustomed to thinking by typing, so there you go. If you're not fascinated by squabbling over SF awards, scroll down…

Miscellaneous Comments on Who Killed the Electric Car?

Who Killed the Electric Car? opened this evening. As Seed has a nice interview with the filmmaker, Chris Paine, I thought I would see it and write of a review. (Incidentally, I saw this film tonight in a theater of a whopping 27 people in downtown Manhattan. Considering that this is Manhattan, and it is opening night I wouldn't be holding out for An Inconvenient Truth level turnout over the next couple weeks.) (I don't have time to write a coherent essay on the film, so my issues with it are dealt with below in more or less random order.) First, I disagree with this movie's title. I guess…

Best Science Books 2010: Toronto Star / Public Policy Forum

Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. This list is the Holiday Reading list from the Toronto Star Public Policy Forum, picked from individual lists in today's print newspaper. Bizarrely, I wasn't able to find the list online. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It by Robert Glennon The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow Carbon Shift: How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada (and Our Lives) by Thomas Homer-Dixon I'm…

Take Denialism 101

John Cook, of Skeptical Science fame, has created an online course through the University of Queensland and edX, on denialism and climate change. Easy to access and free to take, I found it simple to join from their facebook page, and if you don't want to join you can still see the lectures from their Youtube channel. Having gone through the materials so far I have to say Cook nails it. His graphic depicting the 5 tactics is very clear and easy to understand. Also I think he has done a great job of making clear that the problem isn't one of education, facts or knowledge. The problem is…

Go East, Young Neanderthal

Map of newly extended certainty of Eurasian Neanderthal range. From Nature It has for some time been difficult to assess the eastern limit of classic "Neanderthals." Some have claimed that Neanderthals were limited to western Asia, others that they extended across much of Asia. The fossil remains themselves have been difficult to interpret. One reason for this is that Neanderthals are not different enough from other contemporary hominids to assert a similarity or difference for a particular fossil, unless you have enough of it, and the fossil record in Central Asia and East Asia for the…

Gary Null can kiss mein tuchas

But apparently he'd rather have me fill it with coffee. Really...I mean it. I love coffee, but c'mon now! I can't stand that this idiot is given time on public television during pledge drives to peddle his woo... I stumbled across a website that goes on and on about the supposed vast conspiracy of the medical community to...well, I'm not sure. Anyway, given that you have to buy Gary Null's quack tomes to get his advice, it's hard to know exactly what he is selling. The conspiracy theorist from the above-linked site was kind enough to share some of Null's secrets (at least they are cited that…

Lack of Regulation, and the Crisis

Mean-spirited reactionary politics below the fold. If you're a kind-hearted liberal here for the physics, you might want to skip this post, have a nice tea instead, and calmly meditate on Obama's recent rise in the polls. I've had several conversations with people over the past few days about the cause of the current financial crisis. One common refrain is that deregulation regulation pushed though by heartless free marketers is the cause. "Ok", I ask them, "what regulation specifically?" And I generally don't get an answer. The reason is that the crisis is due to loans not being repaid…

A Weight Loss Plan That Works. (or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the gym.)

As you might have noticed, ScienceBlogs picked up a couple of new bloggers recently. Peter Janiszewski and Travis Saunders moved their blog, Obesity Panacea, over to these parts last week. Their move gives me an opportunity that's way too good to pass up - an excuse to present my latest excuse for a prolonged gap in blogging. I've been too busy getting thin to post much. OK, maybe "getting thin" isn't the most accurate description. But it sounds so much nicer than reality - which is more like "becoming merely overweight instead of downright obese". (For starters, it's a much pithier…

Bailout 2.0 is Upon Us

From href="http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2008/09/quotable-on-bank-balance-sheets.html">London Banker: "The problem with financial institution balance sheets is that on the left hand side nothing is right and on the right hand side nothing is left." It's pretty obvious that financial institutions are struggling.  We've had href="http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html">16 banks taken over by the FDIC in the past two years, 13 so far this year.  Other failing banks have been taken over or merged, lest they too have the FDIC take them over.   href="http://ml-…

Which American Accent Do You Have?

I found this nifty little quiz that tries to diagnose where you are from in the USA based on how you pronounce certain words. Okay, I show you my results below the fold, so the least you can do is show me yours, too! By the way, I am curious to know how the Aussies and Brits score on this quiz, too, so don't be shy! What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell…