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ScienceOnline'09 - individual session pages

If you check out the Program, you'll see that I have started making pages for individual sessions - just click on "Go here to discuss" next to each session. Over the next few days I will do this for all the sessions and the session leaders will use those pages in whichever ways they want. For now, I have made pages for these sessions - check them out: Science Fiction on Science Blogs? Science blogging without the blog? Science online - middle/high school perspective (or: 'how the Facebook generation does it'?) Transitions - changing your online persona as your real life changes Semantic…

What Kind of Atheist Are You?

tags: atheism, online quiz Okay, the questions on this quiz are kind of annoying, something that I discovered only after I took it, but as I said, I took it, so here are my results; What kind of atheist are you?created with QuizFarm.com You scored as Scientific Atheist These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist…

What Kind of Writer Are You?

You Should Be A Poet You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways. And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery... Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever. You're already naturally a poet, even if you've never written a poem. What Type of Writer Should You Be? If this online quiz is accurate (doubtful), it would go a long way towards explaining why I cannot find a paying job doing anything at all because it effectively labels me as a misfit (have you known a poetic scientist? Have any of you known a poet who was employed as a poet?) Okay, I showed you my…

Online Poll Results: Are You Religious?

tags: religious, online poll I have recently been conducting online polls on my left sideboard in an effort to learn more about my audience as a collective without putting any of you "on the spot". The first question that I asked seems rather obvious, but I thought I got some surprising answers anyway. I did not expect so many atheists and agnostics in my audience, nor did i expect to see any readers who were fundamentalists or evangelical. When writing up the quiz, I expected to see a large number of respondents who were "spiritual, but don't go to church." Anyway, I have a new question…

Susan the Scientist, the next Bill Nye?

Remember Bill Nye the Science Guy, that television popularizer of science for kids? Maybe it's time to give him an update and a facelift. That's the goal of Susan the Scientist, a project of Dr. Susan Reslewic, who is launching a new blog, myspace, and youtube presence to (in her words): teach 'citizen science' to kids and curious adults using music and objects in our local households to conduct simple experiments online. The idea is to make science both hip, simple, and most importantly fun. We hope to build this project and message making this available, free online this coming year. Here's…

An Award (And An Apology)

A little more horn-tooting: The Loom has just been named a winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2004 Science Journalism Award. The judges considered three pieces: Hamilton's Fall, Why the Cousins Are Gone, and My Darwinian Daughters. Here's the press release. Thanks to the judges--it's gratifying to see that it's possible for a little blog to swim with the big online sharks. On the other hand, the news is a bit embarrassing, coming as it does while I've left the Loom woefully neglected over the past couple weeks. I've been working on a lot of articles, such as a…

Oops

A site called Progressive Nation is pleasantly surprised by the results of a Fox News poll. Is it possible that even the center-right tilting viewing audience of Fox news programs is also open to significant upgrades of gay civil rights? That is what a surprising new, unscientific survey of a Fox web audience seems to be showing. With pleasure, I direct you to this interesting Fox News online poll in which at the time of this posting 300,499 votes had been cast. I hate to break the news to them, but that poll was pharyngulated and also hit hard by bots. Sorry. That's the thing about online…

'Experimental Heart' - first novel by Jennifer Rohn

Jennifer Rohn's first lab lit novel, 'Experimental Heart' is now available for sale! It is described as "A literary thriller/romance set in the London research scene, 'Experimental Heart' is a thought-provoking, page-turning lab adventure that exposes the hidden world of modern scientists": During his many long nights in the lab, scientist Andy O'Hara has plenty of time to wonder about the mysterious and beautiful Gina, first glimpsed in a lit window across the courtyard. He doesn't realize she is consumed by her vaccine research, concerned about her biotech company's financial problems, and…

Scientology vs. South Park

Most people know by now that Isaac Hayes has quit working on South Park (he was the voice of Chef) because they did an episode making fun of Scientology. Comedy Central decided to pull the episode, and their reason for doing so is so ridiculous that no one in their right mind would buy it: A Comedy Central spokesman said Friday that the network pulled the controversial episode to make room for two shows featuring Hayes. "In light of the events of earlier this week, we wanted to give Chef an appropriate tribute by airing two episodes he is most known for," the spokesman said. Nonsense. Someone…

Mark Fuhrman: Media Whore

In response to my post about the Schiavo autopsy on In the Agora, an anonymous poster that everyone there refers to as "Leon" left a typically amusing comment. He wrote: I note also that Mark Furman, author and criminal investigator, has spent a number of weeks going over the totality of the records and will shortly deliver a book to the public. I suggested that he should replace "author and criminal investigator" with "disgraced former cop and infamous racist who was last seen on television committing perjury in the OJ trial." But alas, it's true. Fuhrman does have a book coming out about…

Daniel Keys Moran

Over in LiveJournal land, Kate has an open letter to Daniel Keys Moran: As someone who very nearly cries at the idea of a completed Trent novel languishing on your hard drive, may I introduce you to Lulu or Cafe Press? Both will print books from uploaded files, as they are ordered, for the price of their cost plus whatever profit you like (meaning no money up front for the author, though I understand some services are extra); both have you retain your copyright; and both are very easy. I've seen Lulu books myself and the quality is quite good. If you don't know Moran, he's the author of a…

Now Available!

The BSB (that's the big Sudoku book, for those not up on the local slang) is now available! It's both a math book and a puzzle book. As math book it contains a survey of some of the mathematical aspects of Sudoku puzzles. For those familiar with the BMHB, the present book is considerably less technical. A few sections are tough going, but most of it should be accessible even on a casual reading. Indeed, one of the points of the book is to use Sudoku puzzles to introduce ideas from higher mathematics. As a puzzle book it contains close to ninety original puzzles for your solving…

Links for 2011-02-28

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Fracking | The Intersection | Discover Magazine "I just watched this video of Cornell University engineering prof Anthony Ingraffea giving a lecture on fracking-a long, long lecture. But it's tremendously informative, gives more perspective than I've found anywhere else, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the issue:" (tags: energy environment blogs intersection video academia science politics us) I'd buy that for $50,000 | Bors Blog "The fact is Detroit is one of America's most economically devastated cities and could…

Public Plan as Inoculation Against Mandate Backlash | Gooznews

But every version of reform fails to deal with the root cause the uninsurance problem: millions of employers in our "employer-based" system do not provide their workers with health insurance. Why isn't there more discussion about the free rider distortions in that state of affairs?  Instead putting the mandate on employer free riders, the bills now before Congress put it on people with minimal penalties for employers who refuse to provide coverage.  Then, on the subsidy side, the bills offer help only to the poorer of the poor (working, but not on Medicaid). They do nothing for two-earner…

A plethora of cancer quackery: one-stop shopping

This link provides a truly lengthy diatribe on "11 Effective, Natural Strategies To Kill Your Cancer" that I found the other day while reading on ABCNews about Sheryl Crow's battle with breast cancer. It literally takes about 15 min to read and then ends with a list of links to purchase products mentioned in the "report," with nearly all being mail order supplements from one Robert Harrison of Homer, Alaska. Before even getting into the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the diatribe, I started to tally the cost of all the immune boosting supplements I should purchase, but grew weary…

One way holy books can alter your brain

I'm amused to see an Australian burned pages from a Bible and Koran — to good purpose! I'm happy to report, too, that Muslims in Australia are reacting in a reasonable way, with the leadership urging no retaliation. There is a bit of silly whining going on, though. Sheik Wahid said the burnt pages represented a sacred connection for Muslims. "He doesn't understand people have a strong feeling towards those sacred books," he said. "It's not a piece of paper, it's a sacred law by the divine for the humanity to follow and we have a very, very strong connection to those books." Nope. To me…

A Hooters on Big Beaver?

As a native Detroiter, I couldn't help but find this little story amusing (sorry, it's just the adolescent in me): Hooters of America Inc. is moving ahead full throttle with a campaign to pressure the Troy City Council into granting a liquor license transfer for the chain's new Troy location on Rochester Road near Big Beaver. Officials with the company made the announcement at that location this afternoon, as Hooters girls -- dressed in orange jumpsuits and orange scarfs -- picketed outside, carrying signs with messages, such as "Don't Endanger The Owl" and "City Council Buy U A Beer?" The…

One quarter of my heritage at its finest

I've probably never mentioned it before, buy I'm 1/4 Lithuanian. Here's something one of my cousins sent me to make me "proud" of that heritage: VILNIUS, Lithuania - Lithuanian police were so astonished by a breath test that registered 18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their device must be broken. It wasn't. Police said Tuesday 41-year-old Vidmantas Sungaila registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly on different devices after he was pulled over Saturday for driving his truck down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the capital, Vilnius.…

Nine days of 9 (part 5): Is there any point to post-human technologies?

Many thanks to everyone for their wonderful, thoughtful and altogether delightful ideas on what memories we should store for a post-apocalyptic world. Now, in case you're some knuckle-dragging moron who can't follow links or scroll down the page, or worse, a freakin' newbie, let me explain: I got a whole load of these books. They ain't your regular yawn splash science textbooks! These are some fine glossy coffee table books, containing stills and things from the Tim-Burton-produced Shane-Acker-created animated feature 9 starring Jennifer Connelly and also a bunch of other people I don't have…

Winter mornings

My kid is growing, and I'm of course ambivalent about it. It's not that she's becoming some sort of giant---she's still a tiny little thing, but now she picks up books and starts reading them. When she does, I usually start shouting excitedly, but she reminds me that I'm not allowed to be excited. She wants to enjoy her new powers in peace. She's outgrowing her car seat, especially when bundled up for winter. And with Midwestern winters being what they are, she's bundled more mornings than not. It's time for me to buy a booster. When I wake up in the morning, I take my shower, shave…

The times they are a-greening

Where environmental groups had been fighting against new coal plants only days ago, a record buyout will put TXU firmly behind their agenda: Under a proposed $45 billion buyout by a team of private equity firms, the TXU Corporation, a Texas utility that has long been the bane of environmental groups, will abandon plans to build 8 of 11 coal plants and commit to a broad menu of environmental measures, according to people involved in the negotiations. The roster of commitments came through an unusual process in which the equity firms asked two prominent environmental groups what measures could…

Like fish in a barrel

I doubt that the research that produced Nobel prizes in Chemistry and Medicine/Physiology cost $4 million combined. I don't really know for sure, but some of the most fundamental discoveries cost quite little to make. I point this out only because the DI's "Mr. Suave" aka Rob Crowther, is bragging that the "Discovery Institute Has Put Over $4 Million Towards Scientific and Academic Research into Evolution and Intelligent Design in the Past Decade": “In 1996, it was almost impossible to receive funding to do scientific research related to intelligent design,” says Bruce Chapman, President of…

It Isn't Gridcrash that Makes the Lights Go Out

April is the month that utility shut-offs are resumed in much of the northern half of the country - it is against the law to shut off people's primary heating fuel during the winter, but when they can't pay their bills, generally speaking, April 1 means that you can cut them off. There has been some upheaval in our area, where an unusually cold spring has meant that there is still a need for supplemental heating, and many poor people with very cold houses. I thought it was worth re-running this article - a version of this ran in 2005, and I've republished it several times since then. We…

Behold the Birth of the Giga-Borg

If you follow @ScienceBlogs on Twitter, you may have seen a cryptic tweet yesterday, just saying: ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - so stay tuned! SciBlings (who by then knew what the news was going to be, but were asked to keep it under the wraps until the official announcement) had some fun teasing everyone else - here are some examples: RT @ScienceBlogs: ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - so stay tuned! (We are ALL Belle de Jour) RT @ScienceBlogs: ScienceBlogs will soon be making a very exciting announcement - stay tuned! (We plan…

EuroTrip '08 - Trieste, the Open Access panel

Here are, quickly for now, some pictures from the yesterday's panel "Open Access; let's do it: top down, bottom up or both?" Stevan Harnad did his presentation first via Skype (from Montreal) which was, unfortunately, not recorded. The rest of the session was recorded and at some time in the future will become available online - I will let you know when this happens. Since most of the panel discussed institutional library repositories, I felt I needed to focus entirely on the "other Open Access", i.e., the OA journals, especially PLoS. More later....(also it seems that the wifi at the hotel…

It's Big Bird! No, it's Gigantoraptor!

This is Gigantoraptor erlianensis, a newly described oviraptorosaur from late Cretaceous of China. It's a kind of nightmare version of Big Bird — it's estimated to have weighed about 1400kg (1½ tons for non-metric Americans). Histological examination of the growth structure of the bones suggests that this fellow was a young adult, about 11 years old, and that they grew rapidly and reached nearly this size by the time they were 7. And since it is a young adult, there were probably bigger gigantoraptors running around. They also compared limb length to other dinosaurs, like the tyrannosaurs—…

The Telegraph has second thoughts

Earlier, I blogged about the seriously flawed Telegraph article about rape. Now Carl Zimmer has discovered that the newspaper has yanked the article from its site. No explanation, no apology - it's just gone. I feel silly that I didn't grab a screencapture of the original article. Although I'm aware that nothing is immutable on the Internet, it just didn't occur to me that someone would yank a published article from a newspaper with no explanation. I guess we have to think of online newspapers as unreliable AND impermanent. Ephemeral, in fact - just like the real, pulpy, newsprint-smudgy…

Nature special issue a treasure trove for personal genomics fans

The latest issue of Nature contains an embarrassment of riches for those of us interested in personal genomics, and indeed I'm having trouble figuring out which article to write about first. Just look at the options: there's a review on approaches to tracking down the missing heritability of common diseases; there's a potentially highly controversial plea from Chicago researcher Bruce Lahn for acknowledgment that "genetic diversity contributes to variation across numerous physical, physiological and cognitive domains" between human populations; and there's an advance online publication…

Congratulations to Daniel Rhoads

Via A Blog Around the Clock comes news that Daniel Rhoads, who writes the informative blog Migrations (and formerly A Concerned Scientist), has successfully defended his dissertation. So, after a few minor revisions, it looks like it won't be too long before we'll have to call him Dr. Rhoads. In good blogger form, Daniel has published the first chapter of his dissertation online. The title of the chapter is "Integrin receptors and determinants of polarity in directed cell migration," and it looks like a nice overview of the subject. As someone who used to study cell migration in blood…

Federal fisheries address shark butchery

Surfrider Foundation's online newsletter Soup is reporting new rules from the National Marine Fisheries Service that federal shark fisheries in the Atlantic ocean and Gulf of Mexico will need to bring shark fins in to port with the carcass of the animal attached. Environmental News Service details the story here. It's a grim ruling, but should help to curb the practice of cutting fins from living sharks and then returning the animals directly to sea. Hopefully, the increased load to fishing vessels will reduce profitability. Any ocean lover who has seen video of the bleeding and sinking…

Blogger Perceptions on Digital Preservation Survey

If you have a moment, this is a useful study to participate in: Do you blog? If yes, then please consider participating in an online survey from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. The study, Blogger Perceptions on Digital Preservation, is being conducted under the guidance of the Real Paul Jones. The study team is interested in hearing from all bloggers on their perceptions on digital preservation in relation to their own blogging activities, as well as the blogosphere in general. To hear more about this survey, please visit the study'…

We're OK TO GO!

As you have undoubtedly heard from sources more overtly journalistic than this one, SETI is back online! After federal and state financial cutbacks forced the institute's shiny new Allen Telescope Array (ATA) into indefinite hibernation earlier this year, cosmically-minded geeks all over the globe donated money in droves, bringing the search for extraterrestrial life back from oblivion. Over $200,000 in donations from thousands of fans -- including Contact's own Jodie Foster, science-fiction writer Larry Niven, and Apollo 8 Astronaut Bill Anders -- will get science operations up and running…

What happens to the poorest residents in states declining the Medicaid expansion?

The Washington Post’s Lena H. Sun writes about Obamacare implementation, and finds that it differs greatly between Maryland and Virginia, which share a border but have very different attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act. Both have large uninsured populations (around 800,000 in Maryland and 844,000 in Virginia), but Virginia’s opposition to the law means it’s getting far less federal money and leaving its poorest residents with fewer options for affordable insurance coverage. The lawmakers who wrote the ACA included two main ways to help those without employer-sponsored health insurance…

Finding Land - Shared Land

I've written previously that I suspect that given the enormous pressure to feed a world of 9-10billion people that will dominate the political, social and activist dynamics of this century, Land access is going to be one of the central issues. Indeed, in much of the Global South it has been for many years - consider the Brazilian MST as one of many examples of how people's movements bent on establishing land access for the very poor emerge. At the same time, we can see the global land-buy-up occurring now as nations as diverse as China, India and Saudi Arabia, all facing a future in which…

Willpower depletion and the brownie decision

In a new New York Times Magazine piece, John Tierney pulls together the results of several studies that suggest willpower is finite and decisionmaking exhausting. While these findings are important in many ways (Tierney leads off with an example from the criminal justice system), I was especially interested in the implications for dieting. The whole article is well worth a read, but in a nutshell, researchers have found that subjects' willpower can be depleted by resisting temptation and be restored by glucose -- but not by artificial sweetners that provide less energy. When subjects'…

Science Online 2009 London Conference Scheduled

Last year, thanks to you, my loyal beloved readers, I was able to attend the Science Online conference held in London, England, where I was a speaker. This conference is being held again this year -- and I hope to be there! Proposed topics include blogging and microblogging, online communities, open access and open data, new teaching and research tools, author identifiers and measuring the impact of research. Science Online 2009 London is scheduled for 22 August at the Royal Institute of Great Britain, thanks to the generous support of Nature Network, Mendeley Research Networks and The Royal…

Monckton and Bolt defame John Lefebvre

Richard Littlemore has posted an annotated transcript of his debate with Monckton, with corrections to Monckton's numerous false statements. Andrew Bolt thinks the best argument that Monckton had in the debate with Littlemore was his defamation of one of the funders of Desmogblog, so he repeats it, falsely accusing John Lefebvre of being "a convicted Internet fraudster", when in fact Lefebvre has not been charged with fraud, let alone convicted of it. I don't know much about the law, but doesn't that make Bolt liable as well as Mockton if Lefebvre decides to sue? Jacob Sullum comments on what…

Links 7/15/11

Links for you. Science: The Asian needle ant, an accidentally imported termite killer A Journal Is Not a Data Dump How Seawater Can Power the World Tiny snails survive digestion by birds (I wonder what this does to your microbiome...) Other: Ann Coulter Confuses Liberal and Conservative Psychology Not-So-Representative Investors The selfish revolution 11 Things the Richest U.S. Households Can Buy That You Can't More Proof That Obama is Herbert Hoover (when a former Goldman-Sachs employee argues using Marxist language that Obama is too conservative, he has gone way too far to the…

It's yet another atheist bus poll

I just don't get it. Put a few signs with the atheist point of view on a bus, and people everywhere just freak out. Anyway, Toronto secularists are planning to slap some signs on some busses now, so this poll asks the strange question, "Should atheist groups be allowed to buy advertising space on the TTC?". I should think that the answer to this one ought to be 100% yes — after all, what grounds do they have to discriminate against atheists? — but here's the current results. Yes - if religious groups can do it, why not let atheists as well? 57% Maybe, but it depends on the wording of the…

Fraud, Debt Levels & Educational Attainment

I'm continuing to bore you with the Federal Trade Commission's report on Consumer Fraud in the United States. Would it be surprising to hear that individuals with higher levels of debt are more likely to be victims of fraud? Yes, people in debt can be desperate, and thus be more likely to fall for scams, but there is another reason--people in debt are highly targeted by listbrokers (companies that sell lists of consumers). DirectMag's Listfinder has over 400 lists of debtors for sale. Scammers can buy these lists and target these populations for their frauds. The good news is that,…

How much plastic did you throw away today?

There is a gigantic pile of plastic garbage accumulating in the Pacific. It's concentrate by currents into one floating mass of bottle caps and detergent bottles and nylon debris, all slowly breaking apart into broken bits of polymer bobbing in the waves. It's not good for marine life. One of the most vivid demonstrations of the effects is this series of photos of dead sea birds on remote Midway Island — all completely undisturbed and photographed as found. Finding decayed bird corpses reduced to bones and feathers isn't at all surprising, but some of these remains look more like the remains…

Homeland Security saves money by dropping newspaper subscriptions

So they say. I guess even the government is not interested in saving the newspaper business....eh! Q1: why did they subscribe every employee? Couldn't they buy one copy and put it in the waiting room at the reception desk, or at the water cooler, or in the dining hall? Or, well, they could have come up with some kind of a video-rental store, but for books/newspapers/magazines. Oh, wait! Q2: why don't they introduce this brand new technology to all their employees? It is called a computer and it can be used to get into a set of tubes called the Internet, where one can go on something called…

Darwin Quotes

Here we see how potent has been the effect of the introduction of a single tree, nothing whatever else having been done, with the exception that the land had been enclosed so that cattle could not enter. But how important an enclosure is, I plainly saw in Farnham, in Surrey. Here there are extensive heaths, with a few clumps of old Scotch firs on the distant hill tops: within the last ten years large spaces have been enclosed, and self-sown first are now springing up in multitudes, so close together that all cannot live. - Charles R. Darwin, Origin of Species, p.123 Support The Beagle Project…

Tesla Model 3 is Breakthrough Technology

The Tesla Model 3 will have a 215 mile range. Zero to sixty in 6 seconds, in case you ever have to do that. Seats five adults. Five star safety rating. Uses supercharging (so, if supercharged, charges in something like the time it takes to fill up a gas car IF you also use the bathroom, pick up a candy bar, there's a few people in line ...). It cost the same as a lot of cars a lot of people buy: $35,000. It is 100% electric. You can't have one yet, but if you really one one and work on it you might be able to get one by the end of the year. The first ones out will be distributed to their…

Ex Football Star Publishes Book on his Multiple Personalities

Just a short note via Sports Illustrated: Georgia football legend Herschel Walker is expected to reveal in an upcoming book that he has multiple personalities -- a revelation that surprises the man who coached the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner. ... "Breaking Free" will chronicle Walker's life with multiple personality disorder, according to Shida Carr, the book's publicist at Simon & Schuster. Carr said the book will be published in August, but gave no other details and declined to provide excerpts. I wonder whether this developed after football? I'm curious to see the book when it comes…

The way things go

The Way Things Go Peter Fischli and David Weiss, 1987 Hirshhorn Museum I went by the Hirshhorn a few weeks ago, and this was my favorite piece: a film depicting a slow-moving, low-budget Rube Goldberg apparatus built by artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss out of tires, candles, fuses, ramps, ladders, and random objects. I mean, what's not to like about a flaming tetherball? The purpose of the apparatus? Nothing, really, except to spin itself out. It's pointlessly meditative. And I liked that - you could start watching the film at any point and stop at any point, as if you were watching…

How Dumb are Car Buyers?

So dumb that we're still buying SUV's. Despite the fact that gas is now almost $3 a gallon, the average fuel economy of new 2006 models was virtually flat with a year ago at 21 miles per gallon, according to a new EPA report. In fact, this is lower than the average fuel economy of new cars in 1987 (22.1 mpg). Why the lack of progress? Because people are more interested in horsepower than fuel economy. While new cars in 1987 had an average of 117 horspower, new cars in 2006 averaged 219 horsepower. This is depressing news: even when the marketplace should encourage people to buy more fuel…

WTF? That's all I have to say.

A few weeks ago, having fallen asleep on the couch watching TV, I awoke to an ad for a most wondrous product. Well, not exactly. In fact the product, known as a Snuggie, left my scratching my head. Three questions came to mind: Who on earth is too stupid to use a blanket? Who on earth would buy a product that makes them look either like a complete dork, or a monk with a fuzzie robe? Would anyone actually go out in public with such a thing? That's why, on a Sunday when my brain's too fried to write anything about science (or even that coherent), I was happy to see the cheap and quick blog…

Safrole (Root beer or amphetamines?)

Safrole is a simple organic compound found in sassafras oil: It has a pleasant odor and used to be used to flavor root beer, but sassafras oil has fallen out of favor in the past few years for a few reasons: first, safrole has been deemed carcinogenic and banned as a flavoring agent by the US FDA. Second, it's actually a drug precursor - like pseudoephedrine-containing allergy medicines, it's not illegal to buy sassafras oil (as far as I know, I've never tried!), but it's watched closely by US drug enforcement. The people buying pints at a time probably aren't making a few gallons of root…

Delicious Internet Noms

The science of espresso, with a dash of geology -- Darcy's law! Four Stone Hearth (58th Edition) -- Anthropology carnival! Association of American Geographers Anne U. White Fund -- A grant for doing field work with your partner. Would've been nice to know about this when I was scrimping to pay for plane tickets in an LDR... The Curious Cook - Wine Enhancement Devices Are Put to a Test -- "the obnoxious, dank flavor of a “corked” wine, which usually renders it unusable even in cooking, can be removed by pouring the wine into a bowl with a sheet of plastic wrap." And remember, if you're in…