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Panda relative discovered, Steve Steve overjoyed

This image released by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing shows front views of a new fossil panda skull, Ailuropoda microta, from Jinyin Cave, Guangxi, China, left, and a living giant panda skull, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, right. The first skull of the earliest known ancestor of the giant panda has been discovered in China, researchers report. Discovery of the skull, estimated to be at least 2 million years old, is reported by Russell L. Ciochon in the Tuesday June 19, 2007 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (AP Photo/ Institute…

But could it do a Haka?

While some may be blogging about large extinct beasties, it's also worth remember the little ones. AP is reporting: The discovery of fossilized remains of a mouse-like animal that lived at least 16 million years ago is the first hard evidence that New Zealand had its own indigenous land mammals, a researcher said Thursday. New Zealand paleontologist Trevor Worthy and his team say they discovered two parts of a jaw and a femur (thighbone) -- about the size of a fingernail -- during digs in New Zealand's Central Otago region from 2002 until 2004. Their findings were published in the…

AGU experimenting with open peer review

This was in an earlier EOS (pdf, not available online for institutional subscribers so I found this by flipping through the print!) - number 32 of this year from 11 August. They're trying what Nature tried and dropped and what EGU has been fairly successful with in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics - although neither gathered/s many comments. They're trying it for just a year and only for a few journals: G-cubed Global Biogeochemical Cycles (?) JGR-Earth Surface JGR-Planets Radio Science It's completely voluntary.Registration is required to comment. The formal reviews will be posted (may…

Seed Magazine in the Classroom: Grounds for Suspending the Teacher??

Apparently, offering high school English students the chance to read an article on the Seed Magazine website is ground for suspension - at least if you're an English teacher in Piasa, Illinois. According to several media reports, teacher Dan DeLong has been suspended with pay pending a Monday evening board meeting. The suspension came about when a parent complained about the content of an optional, extra-credit assignment that DeLong had offered students in one of his 10th grade honors classes. The assignment? Read an online version of an article by ScienceBlogger Jonah Lehrer that…

Cass Sunstein to Head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

That's the news from the Chicago Tribune. I'm interested to hear whether any environmentalists are going to be rattled by this choice. Sunstein is an ingenious scholar, and continues the whole "best and brightest" motif of the Obama administration--so welcome after so many years of Bush anti-intellectualism. But on the other hand, some of Sunstein's views on regulation are controversial, although certainly very thoughtful. Important question: Will he roll back the Bush administration's overuse of the Data Quality Act? By the way, I haven't read all of Sunstein's books, but I have read…

A brief word of thanks

Many thanks to everyone who has read, commented, and promoted my posts on "Ida", the 'missing link' that wasn't. I have been floored by the response - over 25,000 visits in the last 24 hours; being mentioned on Wikipedia; being quoted on Slashdot; and being picked up by blogs on the Guardian, the New York Times, the Times online (twice!), Popular Science, and New Scientist websites. And to think I was worried that no one would pay attention to my little 'ol blog amongst all the hype... I think the prize for the best response has to go to Ed of Not Exactly Rocket Science, though. Ed writes;…

You can buy anything on eBay, I guess

There ought to be some regulation of the kind of fraud some people peddle online. I'm tempted to try this one: BOOTY ENHANCEMENT Spell Cast by Powerful Wiccan Witch (note: bikini-clad bottom on display at that link), just to see what happens. Except that I know what will happen: nothing. Less than nothing, actually, since we're changing diet here and I expect my booty will be shrinking — the TrophyWife™ has actually put together a flavorful, low calorie, non-fat menu for me that looks pretty good already. But then…the magic spell is only $8.95! And this is the most dismal statistic of all: 99…

Wired on Storm World (Or, Which Kicks More Butt, Hurricanes or the Transformers?)

The latest issue of Wired features The Transformers on the cover. And all I can say is, why did Hollywood wait so long to make this movie? Don't they know what I put my parents through when I was six years old and trying to keep pace with friends who'd collected more of these nifty bots than me? The latest Wired also features a short item about Storm World. You can read it online here, but I vote for the PDF version (here), so you can see the truly awesome graphic design (the best I've seen from my clips so far on the new book). And thus the question becomes: Which is tougher, bots that…

I don't think he's going to help

There's a group in the UK called "Truth in Science" (it's not just Republicans who title things ironically) which is pushing creationism in the schools there. A recommendation in Parliament is trying to dismiss these silly people as something that should be treated very cautiously by the schools, and one blogger wrote his member of Parliament asking for support. He got a curious reply. I would be very happy to act on this matter as soon as you can prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Creationism is not true, and I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. My first thought is…

Editor's Selections: Technology in our Social Lives

As Psychology and Neuroscience Editor for ResearchBlogging.org, each week I choose 3-4 of the best posts from around the blogosphere in those categories. Here are my picks for this week: This week, we've got an selection of posts exploring the increasingly complex and sometimes unsettling roles that social media and technology play in our social lives. First, Erina Lee of eHarmony Labs writes about the accuracy of the online profile picture. Is an accurate photo better than a perfect photo? Dr. Shock describes recent research investigating the relationship between Facebook use and academic…

Regular show?

It's true that I don't have a lot of free time on my hands, but last nights UStream event with the crew was lots of fun. Isis and Arikia have been hosting a regular Friday night get-together on UStream, which is a total blast, but last night Isis couldn't tear herself away from her hot, hot science to host. As an experiment, I opened up a UStream channel and we happily chatted far to late into the evening. And...the format is interesting. I can broadcast live video, and have a parallel text chat. This got me thinking. There are one or two online doctor shows (OK, only one that I know…

China builds new manned submersible

China has a knack for naming their exploration vehicles. They gave the world the Shenzhou (or "divine vessels") to reach outer space and the Taikonauts to fly them. Now China is planning an ocean exploration program 'equally important' to their space endeavours, including plans to build a sub-sea base station and a manned submersible capable of diving to 7000m by year 2010. So, how do you say "sea dragon" in Mandarin? You can never have too many deep diving manned submersibles. Less than a dozen vessels I know of are capable of working beyond 1000m depth. Between the Chinese submersible,…

Bye, bye, Expelled

This coming Friday will mark the beginning of the summer 2008 movie season, the first big-budget film to make an appearance being Iron Man. What does that mean for the unfunny and atrocious propaganda piece Expelled? If the theaters near me are any indication, it means that Stein's film flunked at the box office and is being expelled to make room for summer blockbusters. Of the three theaters that carried the film in my area, all of them are going to drop it this coming Friday, although I'm sure Expelled will soon re-appear on DVD. The fact that Expelled is getting dropped from theaters doesn…

Worst... interview... EVER!

A few days ago I mentioned that paleontologist Terry Gates was going to appear on Bill O'Reilly's show to speak on the subject of whether global warming killed the dinosaurs. As we all know, FOX News = Fake News, and I don't understand why Gates agreed to be on the show. It was the absolute worst interview I've ever seen, and basically consisted of a lot of clips of dinosaurs killing each other interspersed with a few questions that made it seem like scientists don't know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to the K/T extinction (which, of course, marked the extinction of groups…

Photo of the Day #76: Towering Barosaurus

A light in the ceiling illuminates the holes in the skull of the towering Barosaurus mount in the Grand Rotunda of the AMNH. The trip into the city yesterday was tiring, but it was definitely a lot of fun, especially since I got to hang out with my fellow dino-nerd Amanda (and her boyfriend) in one of the best museums in the world. Amanda and I also got to chat with one of the "Fossil Interpreters" at the museum for a while, and it was definitely nice to chat with someone who knew a lot about the exhibits (Here's a tip if you visit the museum yourself; look carefully at the ribs on the left…

Monopoly and News Media

Rogue Columnist describes how newspaper consolidation--a result of increasing laxity of anti-trust decisions--has damaged newspapers: -The creation of monopoly markets and, through consolidation, cartels of newspaper ownership. Economic history shows us that monopolies and cartels always commit suicide. Divorced from the imperatives of real competition, monopolies easily slip into a self-centered world of bureaucratic conformity and a desire to protect the status quo. They became slow and rigid, in other words, road kill for competitors. -Consolidation of newspapers into large, publicly held…

Environment and Humanities Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Environment and Humanities & Social Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Environment. Clouds over the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. From Flickr, by *clairity* Humanities & Social Science. From Flickr, by eschipul Reader comments of the week: In Ah, Carbon Capture; we hardly knew ye, James Hrynyshyn of The Island of Doubt laments the dismal results of a pair of new carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) studies. Both studies seem to quash any hopes that the technology would make coal-fired…

They think that sex is yucky so they don't want us to enjoy it

From January 15, 2006, another good book.... From Chris Mooney, a book suggestion, that I immediatelly followed. You know I have written a number of times on sexual politics, from the historical non-existence of "traditional" marriage to femiphobia as a psychological root of wingnuttery. Thus, of course I clicked on the link and ordered the book immediatelly. Who knows, once I read it I may write a post on it, too. The book is How The Pro-choice Movement Saved America by Cristina Page. Here are a couple of excerpts from the editorial reviews: The abortion issue is a cover for a…

Misty NYC

tags: Manhattan, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Looking east along West 21st in Manhattan on a foggy evening (2 May 2008). Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [larger view]. Last week, I went to Seed Media Group's offices in Midtown Manhattan to hang out with two of my colleagues at ScienceBlogs, Jake (who lives in NYC) and Razib (who was visiting), as well as to talk with the Seed people and to drink some free beer. They buy great beer, not that undrinkable michelob light crap, by the way. When I left that evening, I was delighted to see that the city had become foggy and cool, but wasn't…

Another Way Big Sh-tpile Is Hammering Municipalities

A couple of weeks ago, I described how the collapse of bond insurers meant that it will be harder and more expensive for state and local governments to float bonds, which means you'll get fewer government services and have to pay higher taxes, mostly property taxes, for them. Well, Bit Shitpile just keeps rollin' on (italics mine): The credit crisis paining Wall Street is reaching out across the nation, afflicting municipalities, hospitals and cultural touchstones like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In recent days another large but obscure corner of the financial world has come under acute…

I Always Did Like Roger Ebert

From the archives comes this post about movie critic Roger Ebert and the email he sent me. A little while back, Roger Ebert wrote a column assailing Imax theaters for pulling movies that were about the origin of life, the origin of the universe, and evolution. I suggested that we should send him email and thank him for supporting science. Well, I did just that, and in my email In Box today was a reply from Ebert. Pretty damn cool.To sum up, he says that he's received a lot of ('countless') emails from creationists who use ridiculous arguments. The criticism he's received the most is what he (…

Joan Crawford has risen from the grave!

As it says in the good book: Junkies down in Brooklyn are going crazy They're laughing just like hungry dogs in the street Policemen are hiding behind the skirts of little girls Their eyes have turned the color of frozen meat No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Joan Crawford has risen from the grave Joan Crawford has risen from the grave Catholic school girls have thrown away their mascara They chain themselves to the axles of big Mac trucks The sky is filled with hordes of shimmering angels The fat lady laughs, "Gentlemen, start your trucks" Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…

Big Media Me: Here and Now

The NPR program Here and Now has been running segments this week on Science in America, and one of these from yesterday featured me talking about science literacy. We had some technical difficulties getting this recorded-- it was supposed to happen at a local radio studio last week, but they had some kind of glitch, so instead we did it via Skype from my office on campus. (Where there was some sort of heavy equipment running outside my window before and after the interview, but miraculously, they took a coffee break for the crucial fifteen minutes of the actual call...) You can listen to the…

Cosmic 'Spitballs' Released From Milky Way's Black Hole (Synopsis)

"Other galaxies like Andromeda are shooting these ‘spitballs’ at us all the time." -James Guillochon, coauthor on the new study Imagine you're a star passing too close to a black hole. What's going to happen to you? Yes, you'll be tidally disrupted and eventually torn apart. Some of the matter will be swallowed, some will wind up in an accretion disk, and some will be accelerated and ejected entirely. But quite surprisingly, the ejected matter doesn't just come out in the form of hot gas, but it condenses into large numbers of rapidly-moving planets. An artist's illustration of large, rapid…

The Astroturf de Tocqueville Institute, update

John Quiggin has a heuristic to help detect outfits like The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute. ADTI claimed that Ken Brown's attack on Linux was based on "extensive interviews" with "Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum". We already saw Tanenbaum's repudiation of Brown. Now Groklaw has Stallman's and Ritchie's. The one from Ritchie is particularly interesting because it lets us see the leading questions Brown was asking: In my opinion, Linus Torvalds did NOT write Linux from scratch. What is you opinion? How much did he write? I talked to a Finnish programmer…

Pseudoscience in the Press of the Past | 06/30/2007

Today starts a new series that I perhaps blatantly stole from Shelley over at Retrospectacle, but it's such a darn great idea! From the mouth of Shelley: Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps never should have.) Clearly I'm not doing the same thing, but her idea gave me one of my own. We here at Omni Brain will be digging into classic media coverage of all things science (usually brain related - clearly). I have a…

Phineas Gage, the feral child & the unresponsive bystanders

Four representations of Phineas Gage, from Macmillan, M. (2006). Restoring Phineas Gage: A 150th Retrospective. J. Hist. Neurosci. 9: 46-66. [Abstract] Here's some more neurohistory from the Beeb: following on from last week's episode of In Our Time, which featured a discussion about the history of the brain, is the BBC Radio 4 series Case Study, which looks at - yes, you've guessed it - individual case studies that have made significant contributions to neuroscience and psychology. In the third episode of the series, which airs tomorrow at 11am GMT is now online, presenter Claudia…

I'll try to say something WiSE tomorrow

WiSE, a network of Women in Science and Engineering at Duke University is hosting a panel Shaping the world, one job at a time: An altruistic/alternative career panel tomorrow, Friday, at noon in Teer 203. If you want to show up, please RSVP online as soon as possible so they know how many boxed lunches to get. It will be an informal panel: each one of us will get 3-5 minutes to introduce ourselves, followed by a discussion and Q&A. We are also likely to hang around for a few more minutes afterwards. The panelists? Under the fold.... Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom: K-12 education Dr.…

"Women in Science" blogs: can they be used as recruitment tools for girls?

It has been proposed by the fabulous Pat of FairerScience and other places that the developing genre of "women in science" blogs might be used as a way to recruit girls and young women into science and engineering careers(see a good outline and guidelines here). Women who write about their passion for doing science, their ideas for balancing work and family, their professional desires and challenges may indeed encourage girls who are readers to consider science - I think about it as an online version of seeing women as role-models in science. I'd like to get your thoughts on the subject, in…

More Flu Measures

The administration are people too. I just want to start off saying that. However, in this case, I just don't get it. The more I think about it, the less I get it. Here is the plan our administration came up with. Faculty will report class absences for every Tuesday and Wednesday course. Absence reports are due online by Friday. I guess the goal here is to try to monitor the health of the student population and see if we have a flu outbreak or something. Here are the first problems I thought of: Won't there be some type of attendance noise anyway? Maybe attendance goes up and down…

My picks from ScienceDaily

How Zebra Finches Learn Songs: Cellular Killer Also Important To Memory: A protein known primarily for its role in killing cells also plays a part in memory formation, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report. Their work exploring how zebra finches learn songs could have implications for treatment of neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease. ----------------- "Graham had this intuition that growth and memory is really a kind of remodeling," said Clayton, who is a professor of cell and structural biology. "You can't have growth without…

Adapting in Place and Memorial Day Weekend

A couple of administrative notes before I head off to a weekend involving friends, arboretum plant sales, weeding the asparagus patch, planting an alphabet garden and trying to decide if we really do need a pet sheep. First, as some of you may remember I'm running an on-site family workshop at my house in rural upstate New York over Memorial Day weekend. Families are coming with their kids (if any) to spend time learning about goat care, dairying, herbs, gardening, poultry, wild foods, soil building, reducing your energy usage and adapting in place. I've got one spot left for a family…

Bone marrow for Vinay

Over the summer, I wrote about Vinay Chakravarthy, a doctor of South Asian descent who had been recently diagnosed (at the age of 28 and fresh out of medical school) with leukemia and was in need of a bone marrow transplant. However, as Razib and others noted, the odds of him finding a match were quite slim (~1 in 20,000), given the small donor pool that was most genetically similar. Vinay's friends and families took his misfortune and turned it into something positive, organizing bone marrow drives in several states, and concentrating on getting additional minority donors to join the…

ScienceOnline'09 - introducing the participants

So, let's highlight some of the participants of this year's ScienceOnline09 conference: Eva Amsen is a newly-minted PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, and she blogs on Easternblot, Expression Patterns and Musicians and Scientists. Melissa Anley-Mills is the News Director in the Office of Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Samia Ansari is a Biochemistry Undergraduate student at the University of Georgia, and she blogs on 49 percent. She will co-moderate the session on Race in science - online and offline. Apryl Bailey is the Creative Director…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Social Amoeba Seek Kin Association: Starving "social amoebae" called Dictyostelium discoideum seek the support of "kin" when they form multi-cellular organisms made up of dead stalks and living spores, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University in Houston in a report that appears online today in the open-access journal Public Library of Science Biology. Adult Brain Neurons Can Remodel Connections: Overturning a century of prevailing thought, scientists are finding that neurons in the adult brain can remodel their connections. In work reported in the Nov. 24 online…

Week in review

This was a busy, crazy week. On Monday and Tuesday I was in Boston. You may remember I went to Boston last year as well and for the same reason - spending a day at the WGNH studios, helping with the World Science project that combines radio, podcasts and online forums. You have probably noticed I have posted announcements of these throughout the year. A short story airs on the radio show The World, about some science-related topic with a global angle. The same scientist (or physician, or science journalist) who is interviewed for a couple of minutes on air is also interviewed for 20 minutes…

Iranian Nukes - Plain Language Repost

This spring I took a look at the Iranian nuclear options. The summary version is that I think the focus on uranium enrichment is a red herring (unless there is intelligence that says there is a policy decision in Iran to go that route - presumably following Pakistan - except the public evidence is consistent with Iran following all options for nuclear development, HEU, Pu-239 breeding from power reactors, and from natural uranium heavy water reactors). The way for Iran to get a few nukes quickly, is to reprocess the fuel of the Bushehr-1 reactor, after a "short burn" (to avoid Pu-240…

Breaking the inverted pyramid - placing news in context

News journalism relies on a tried-and-tested model of inverted storytelling. Contrary to the introduction-middle-end style of writing that pervades school essays and scientific papers, most news stories shove all the key facts into the first paragraphs, leaving the rest of the prose to present background, details and other paraphernalia in descending order of importance. The idea behind this inverted pyramid is that a story can be shortened by whatever degree without losing what are presumed to be the key facts. But recently, several writers have argued that this model is outdated and needs…

More dangers of internet drug purchasing

It's been just over a month since we last discussed cases of misfilled internet prescriptions and misbehavior by a US drug wholesaling firm. Yesterday, Sandra Kiume at OmniBrain told us about the death of a woman in British Columbia from what sounds like another case of terribly misrepresented drugs purchased over the internet (a second story is here). As Sandra noted, A "strong sleeping pill and sedative" which "has been linked to overdose deaths in other countries and is not legally available in Canada" [nobody says which one!] along with an "anti-anxiety" medication and acetaminophen…

Birds in the News 162

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Chatham Island (Mollymawk) Albatross, Thalassarche cauta eremita. With 18 out of 22 albatross species threatened with extinction, the FAO should be congratulated on establishing a gold standard for reducing seabird bycatch -- a major conservation step forward. Image: Alan Tate [larger view]. Birds in Science Some of the world's leading paleontologists are attempting to recreate a dinosaur -- or something a lot like a dinosaur -- by starting with a chicken embryo and working backward to engineer a "chickenosaurus" or…

Nematodes and Crohn's Disease?

When I was taking invertebrate zoology, my teacher remarked that if you got rid of all multicellular organisms, and replaced nematodes (tiny little, multicellular worms) with points of lights, you would see the outline of every multicellular organism on the planet. Since nematodes are everywhere, it's surprising that the role of nematodes in the maintenance of 'normal' health hasn't been well investigated. So this NY Times magazine article about nematodes and Crohn's disease fascinating (all the more so since I just helped submit a proposal to study the effects of the microbiome on…

I Would Go With PacBio, But Not Because of Human Genomics

I guess. Over at the Motley Fool, Brian Orelli asks, "Which Is a Better Buy: Complete Genomics or Pacific Biosciences?" While I agree that PacBio is probably the better bet (and bet is the operative word), I don't think the reasoning is right. Orelli: If you're interested in trying to catch the boom and get out before the bust, both Complete Genomics and PacBio look like a good choice to benefit from an exponential increase in DNA sequencing. It's too early to make a definitive call, but of the two, I like PacBio better because I'm not fond of the low-cost, high-volume business model. Sure…

Dark Matter: A Ruling Theory with no Clothes?

Dark matter - that invisible stuff that is supposed to make up some 20% of the Universe - was thought up to explain a puzzling observation. The amount of mass we can see through our telescopes is not enough to keep galaxies from spinning apart. The existence of great quantities of hidden mass would provide the gravitational pull needed to form those galaxies and enable them to rotate in the way that they do. But not everyone is willing to buy the idea that the Universe is cloaked in "invisible cloth." An alternate theory, first put forward by Weizmann Institute astrophysicist Prof. Moti…

Shout Out to Fab Lab DC!

Shout out to Fab Lab DC for posting about the USA Science and Engineering Festival last week. www.fablabdc.org USA Science & Engineering Festival Festival Dates: 10/10/10 - 10/24/10 Expo on the National Mall: October 23rd and 24th, 2010 The Inaugural USA Science and Engineering Festival will be the country's first national science festival and will descend on the Washington, D.C. area in the Fall of 2010. The Festival promises to be the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the United States. The culmination of the Festival will be a…

Repeat this mantra every day: McCain is not a moderate maverick

As John said right after the last election: Besides picking our candidates and races, I think the most valuable thing most of could do is to help shape the conventional wisdom. We blog, we write letters to the editor, we talk up our relatives, neighbors, and co-workers. We should try to take down the straight talking St. McCain and the weak-on-defense Democrats narratives. It's never too soon to start casting doubt on the Republicans we plan to target; broken promises are the most effective critique. And, of course it's never too soon to start talking up the candidates we support.(bolding…

On Milosevic

Ten months later (this was posted first on March 22, 2006), he has a tenure-track position there. Not a bad idea to give a good talk at various places.... ----------------------------------------- I have to brag about my famous brother and at the same time provide you with some quality reading about Milosevic and Serbia. Feel free to tranfer the ideas to the USA, the victimhood of the fundamentalist Christians etc. First, here is an article about a talk my brother gave in Alberta the other day: Lecturer examines 'poisonous zombie swamp' of Serb politics and here is a little bit older, but…

Let's Just Hope There's No Lead in Your Toys Until 2010

The toy companies that moved their production to China in order to save money apparently didn't calculate the full costs of offshoring. Testing their products for lead is just too expensive, they argue. They have successfully lobbied to delay lead testing rules for children's toys. Joseph Pereira and Melanie Trottman of the Journal report: Under pressure from manufacturers, federal regulators have postponed for one year certain testing requirements for lead and other toxic substances in toys and other children's products. But unless Congress acts, retailers and manufacturers still won't be…

Kids' Book: Religion is Evilism

Check it out--for a mere 12 Euro, you can buy, Wo bitte geht's zu Gott?, fragte das kleine Ferkel, a book that is reportedly causing a stir for its depiction of the world's major religions. This children's book is pitched to atheists who wish to indoctrinate/inoculate their children against religion: The book tells the story of a piglet and a hedgehog, who discover a poster attached to their house that says: "If you do not know God, you are missing something!" This frightens them because they had never suspected at all that anything was missing in their lives. Thus they set out to look for…

Ben Stein sinking ever lower

Several people have notified me that this ugly mug is appearing in the ads on this site: Yep, Ben Stein is hawking "free" credit reports on my site. Only…they aren't free. They aren't useful. And Ben Stein is being an exploitive douchebag. A few points are worth noting here. First, the score itself is not very useful to consumers. What's useful is the report -- if there's an error on the report, then the consumer can try to rectify it. Secondly, and much more importantly, if you want a free credit report, there's only one place to go: annualcreditreport.com. That's the place where the big…

linkedy links xii

Atlas Hedged Bankrupt Icelandic gazillionaires and Woe Is Academia Atlas Hedged updating a classic for the modern age - recommended Peek-a-boo - the Economist explains why Astronomers should have lots of new toys. Check Out new SciBling "Confessions of A Science Librarian" PhysioProf's Handy Dandy Guide to D00dly D00d's - how fuckin' not to fuck up in comments on some peoples' blogs FSP explains why you should read the backlog of student e-mails before going to the last faculty meeting - have to get into the right frame of mind. Iceland: Lára Hanna interviews Michael Hudson on where…