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Shocking News from Academia: Special Alcohol Edition

Two news releases came across my EurekAlert feeds containing findings that I'm shocked-- shocked!-- to learn about. The first delivers the startling news that "A high percentage of young males appear willing to purchase alcohol for underage youth." They conducted a "shoulder tapping" study, in which young-looking students approached strangers outside liquor stores, and asked them to buy booze. Eight percent of the general population agreed, compared to nineteen percent of "casually dressed [males] entering the store alone who appeared to be 21 to 30 years old." You might question whether 19%…

Health Care Reform and Photography

Every year my part-time photography business does a little better than the year before.  A few new clients, a few new venues, a few more visitors to my web sites.  It's not a meteoric rise by any measure, but considering the current economic situation I am counting my blessings. Naturally, of course, when business is good I muse about expanding it.  What would it take to become a full-time professional photographer? If I replaced all the time I spent running PCRs with time spent calling up potential clients and marketing my wares, and replaced the time I spent writing papers with time…

Tagged by the five things meme

As if I don't already have enough to do, Comrade PhysioProf tagged me with this meme last night. I was also fortunate to be tagged by Isis the Scientist in her new digs at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess. So, since these folks seem interested, here goes: 5 Things I was Doing 10 years Ago: (1) Gleefully watching my first PhD student complete and defend her dissertation. (2) Liberating myself from a demonic, parasitic spouse. (3) Starting a long-distance relationship with PharmGirl. (4) Releasing my first co-authored book. (5) Preparing my tenure dossier. 5 Things On My To-Do…

Teleportation Between Separately Trapped Matter Qubits

Lots of news about the Chris Monroe's group teleporting between ions in different traps. The original paper in the January 23rd issue of Science: Quantum Teleportation Between Distant Matter Qubits, S. Olmschenk, D. N. Matsukevich, P. Maunz, D. Hayes, L.-M. Duan, and C. Monroe. Official press release here. New York Times article. My favorite quote: The method is not particularly practical at the moment, because it fails almost all of the time. Only 1 of every 100 million teleportation attempts succeed, requiring 10 minutes to transfer one bit of quantum information. "We need to work on that…

It Can't Be The Lad's Problem, Can It?

Bora pointed me to a post at The Phineas Gage Fan Club about an undergraduate student in Sweden who has been rather severely punished by her university for appearing naked in the pages of a "lad mag". The department demanded that the student attend psychotherapy with a member of faculty, and that she apologise in front of her entire year. They then barred the student from going on work placement (which all the other students in her year were doing), leaving her to work in the department (presumably photocopying and boiling coffee). I have to agree with Johan that this is an expression of…

Fixing Nemo

Scibling Rebecca Skloot's new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is coming out next month. To celebrate I thought I'd dredge one of my favorite pieces of hers out of the archive: "Fixing Nemo." Dr. Helen Roberts was about to make the first incision in what should have been a standard surgery -- a quick in-and-out procedure -- when she froze. ''Bonnie,'' she said, turning to her anesthesiologist, ''is she breathing? I don't see her breathing.'' Roberts's eyes darted around the room. ''Grab the Doppler,'' she told her other assistant. ''I want to hear her heart. Bonnie, how's she doing…

Better than Talk Like a Pirate Day

I have a confession to make. I've never really understood the whole pirate schtick that PZ and some other bloggers find so amusing and that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has included as an integral part of the great religion of Pastafarianism. I suppose that makes me an apostate or something like that, but I guess I just never really "got it." And I really never got Talk Like A Pirate Day, which, it just so happens, was yesterday. I realize that I probably risk being excommunicated from the ScienceBlogs collective by admitting that, but there it is. Oh, long ago, I tried to curry favor and fit…

Alar (That doesn't taste like apples!)

Like auxins, (see also) alar is a small molecule that modulates plant growth: Chemists will recognize the N-N moiety as a hydrazine, some nasty stuff (and 1,1-dimethylhydrazine is a hydrolysis product of this stuff). Back in the late '80's, there was a huge cancer scare about this stuff - and farmers were spraying it all over our fruit. It's regarded as many corners as an overblown food scare, but some insist that this was the beginning of a slippery slope towards food libel laws (the basis for Texas ranchers suing Oprah Winfrey for saying she was done with beef during her mad cow episode…

Sequencing your genome just got cheaper

Jay Flatley, CEO of sequencing giant Illumina, announced at the Consumer Genetics Conference today that the company had reduced the price of its retail whole-genome sequencing service. At $19,500 this still isn't in the realm of an impulse buy for most of us, but it's a long way down from the $48,000 that Illumina offered at the launch of its service, and more than an order of magnitude below the $350,000 price paid for the first ever retail genome.  Illumina's press release notes that bulk orders of 5 or more genomes drop the price to $14,500 per genome, and "[i]ndividuals with serious…

A little pareidolia, anyone?

Ya gotta love it. Whether it be the Virgin Mary under a freeway overpass on W. Fullerton Avenue in Chicago or on a window in Perth Amboy, NJ, or the face of Jesus on a shell, on the wall of a shower, on a sand dune, a potato chip, or (my personal favorite) a pierogi, it would seem that human capacity to attribute miracles to the tendency of the human brain to see images in patterns is never-ending. This time, Jesus has appeared to a man in Connecticut, who, according to this story, is selling holy hardware on Ebay. (Where else?): MANCHESTER, Conn. Feb 26, 2006 (AP)-- Thomas Haley was…

Credit Cards and the Brain

David Brooks' column today is filled with some depressing financial facts: Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion, the report said. State governments aggressively hawk their lottery products, which some people call a tax on stupidity. Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is starkly regressive. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income. Fifty-six percent of…

The incredible leaf-tailed geckos (gekkotans part V)

Before I start, allow me to announce that Tet Zoo merchandise is now available! So far, I've only used the Tet Zoo logo for these products, but I might produce additional designs in time. Anyway... welcome to another article in the Tet Zoo gekkotan series. I really want to get through to the end without too many distractions (like amphiumas, wayward grey whales, manatees, white rhinos, giraffe-necked tortoises), otherwise I might never finish. Look what happened with toads and temnospondyls - so much work left to do! Anyway... by now, the generalities of gekkotan diversity, biology and…

Bad Faith Criticism of Science

I've recently written about the Serengeti Strategy, a coin termed by climate scientist Michael Mann to describe the anti-science strategy of personal attacks against individual scientists in an attempt to discredit valid scientific research one might find inconvenient. Science Careers (from Science Magazine) has a new item called "Science under the microscope" looking at bad faith criticism of science and scientist. Some of this comes from within science itself, where the term "torpedo" is sometimes used. Rival scientists do take shots at each other in the peer review or grant review…

Declan Butler's interview with Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari

Nature's senior correspondent, Declan Butler, was one of the first to raise the profile of a pandemic threat in the scientific community and has had done some superb reporting since, including several stories on sharing gene sequences. The problematic actors in his earlier stories were respected scientists and the business-as-usual way they were approaching release of genetic sequences even as the world worried that the virus they were studying, influenza A, was inexorably searching for the right recipe to enhance its own raison d'etre, to make still more copies of itself, potentially with…

Coal mining industry insisted on new dust sampling technology, now they don't want MSHA to use it

It's too late for Ronald Martin of Dema, Kentucky. "I'm in last stage of black lung," he wrote in shaky script, "please help the miners so they won't suffer like I suffer. I can't breathe but a little." Mr. Martin sent his note to the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to comment on the agency's proposed rule to reduce workers' exposure to respirable coal mine dust---the dust that damaged his lungs so severely. Other coal miners also sent their comments to MSHA, urging the agency to put a more protective regulation in place as soon as possible to prevent…

Washington's Anti-Gambling Law and Free Speech

Once again, the ban on internet gambling in Washington state has a pernicious effect. After seeing the state issue cease and desist letters to publications that even mention online gambling, at least two magazines have been forced to pull all subscriptions to that state. Happy 4th of July, eh?

New Blog

There's a new blog that should be interesting to watch. It's called The Secular Outpost and it's the blog of the Internet Infidels. Contributors include several old online acquaintances of mine - James Still, Jeff Lowder, Jim Lippard and Taner Edis. Very smart guys, all of them, and well worth reading.

New Blog

There's a new blog that should be interesting to watch. It's called The Secular Outpost and it's the blog of the Internet Infidels. Contributors include several old online acquaintances of mine - James Still, Jeff Lowder, Jim Lippard and Taner Edis. Very smart guys, all of them, and well worth reading.

Djurhamn 2008 Fieldwork Report On-Line

The Stockholm County Museum has just put my report on last summer's fieldwork at Djurhamn on-line (in Swedish). As you may remember, I blogged about it at the time (here, here and here). The results were actually a bit of a let-down after the sword I found in '07.

Ben Stein's Trojan Horse: Tracking Expelled's Impact

My latest "Science and the Media" column at Skeptical Inquirer Online is now up. In the column I review the likely audience impact of Expelled and focus on the use of the film as part of a communication strategy to push through "academic freedom" bills in states across the country.

Mixwit.com - a neat mixed tape web tool.

This is kind of neat. A web tool called www.mixwit.com that allows you to post high quality mixed tapes online. Here's a sample of a three song mix that took me 15 minutes to make. Thanks by the way for suggestions (on the blog and off) for the previous post.

And the other 50% of me is ?

You’re 50% Irish You’re probably less Irish than you think you are...But you’re still more Irish than most. How Irish Are You? This despite being born, and spending 25 years, in Ireland. Just goes to prove how dumb these online quizzes are! (Via Mike).

Blog Spotlight on the California Stem Cell Report

Want to keep up with the details of stem cell funding and politics in California? The California Stem Cell Report is the place for you. And while you are there, check out this reaction to my recent Skeptical Inquirer Online column on political communication strategy in the Congressional debate.

Etceterata

Just some reminders: In case the Underground has not yet sufficiently infiltrated your online life, I'm on twitter, facebook, and friendfeed. It's all great fun, but I'm still not sure what to make of all these media. Still, I'm trying them out, and we'll see what shakes out.

That dang online ads problem again

A discussion at reddit. Is it ethical to block online ads using your brower? My personal opinion: Hell, yes. I don't block Google Ads and I don't block flash ads at many sites where ads are relevant and show some taste. Site owners and advertisers who invoke guilt ethics could do better.

Cutting-edge Communication at Duke: Interview with Karl Leif Bates

Karl Bates is the Manager of Research Communications at Duke University where he is involved in a number of very cool new online projects. He is also a "repeat offender" - his experience at the first Science Blogging Conference did not stop him from attending the second one last month. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real Life job? My name is Karl Leif Bates (Leif has a long A like "safe"). I'm the science editor in Duke's news office, where I edit press…

Weekend Diversion: Thinking about Food

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. -Luciano Pavarotti I'm not going to lie to you; I think Pavarotti's totally got it right. It's not only a necessity for living, it's one of the greatest pleasures that we get to indulge in, and we get to do it every single day. But I'm not 18 anymore, and I not only care about the taste of the food I eat, but also its nutritional value and where it comes from. I'm not an expert on this by any means (although Sharon is), but I've started to become more…

Porn, Stimuli, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

By way of Pandagon, we learn that the stimulus check isn't, well, stimulating 'values': An unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan, a plan that George Bush contends will "boost our economy and encourage job creation," has surfaced this week. An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans' mailboxes across the country. According to Kirk Mishkin, Head…

Cleaning out the mythological clutter

Here's a fine idea to benefit the public: an exchange progrram called Fiction for Fiction in which people can trade in their tired old religious texts for novels. It seems a little unfair, though: they're offering great novels in exchange. Wouldn't it be better to trade them some tatty old cheap pulp for the Bible? I think exchanging Gor novels for the Bible would be thematically appropriate. (Trading porn for bibles is also a good idea). The one big problem with these schemes, though, is that the organizers are going to end up with a big stack of even more crappy books than they started with…

Rental Sculpture

I'm a big fan of sculptress Maria Lundberg, particularly her work in hardwood. Now, I can't afford to buy her stuff. But being a good friend of the family, she's agreed to a somewhat unusual arrangement. I've rented one of her pieces for a year. Most artists have a large backlog of unsold work sitting around their homes and studios. This way, Lundberg has one less bulky piece to house, it earns her a modest amount of money, and she retains the option of selling it at any time with a simple partial refund for me. I'm not a hoarder. This is actually an ideal arrangement for me: I get to keep a…

Gadget Query: Presentation Remotes

I'm going to be giving a bunch of presentations in the coming year, mostly using PowerPoint on my Tablet PC. One of the awkward things about using it in class is that I have to keep walking back across the room to change slides (I prefer physically pointing at the screen to waving a laser pointer around). Thus, I am considering buying a presentation remote-- one of those wireless clicker things that lets you move back and forth without being at the computer. This being the Internet, I'm sure people have Opinions about this. So, what sort of presentation remote should I buy? Terms, conditions…

An open letter to teachers and school administrators of America

I was shocked to learn only a few minutes ago that the administration of the largest independent school district in the state of Minnesota had no idea until today about the President's intention to speak to the school children of this country next week. As one teacher said to me, "It is very hard to just add in an activity with no prior warning or knowledge that this is happening. I don't expect a lot of teachers to just buy into this regardless of the politics." That is interesting, disappointing, and shocking. It is also remarkable that the event is scheduled for 12:00 EDT. That's lunch…

The BMHB Reviewed in The Columbus Dispatch

The Big Monty Hall Book just got a favorable review in The Columbus Dispatch. The reviewer is Rob Hardy. He writes: Indeed, some of the chapters here are full-power mathematics, with unknowns x, y and z, summation or conditional probability symbols, and complicated equations choked with parentheses within brackets, and more. Math phobics won't get far with such stuff, but there is enough other material here, along with different explanations of the basic puzzle, that will be of interest to anyone who likes recreational mathematics in even the slightest degree. I was really happy to read…

Pimp Me Digital Cameras

The vast majority of the SteelyKid pictures posted here have been taken with our Canon PowerShot A95 camera, which is around five years old at this point. It's served us well, but is getting old, and has a few sub-optimal features, in particular the lag time between pushing the button and actually taking the picture-- I can't tell you how many incredibly cute baby pictures have been missed because she moved or changed expression during the shutter lag. I've got a little disposable cash at the moment, and I'm toying with the idea of getting a new camera. I'd probably look at something a little…

I apologize

Arizona has unfortunately been a hot-bed for Young Earth Creationism (YEC). Some of the smaller church-affiliated schools here teach YEC, and there are a number of groups that run creationist tours to the Grand Canyon. Up north, the Creation Research Society maintains the Van Andel Creation Research Center north of Chino Valley. And in Phoenix, we have Walt Brown's Center for Scientific Creationism. For these alone, I'd have to apologize to the world on behalf on Arizona. I recently stumbled across the Lost World Musuem which is apparently opening in Phoenix NY this Fall. The Musuem's…

This girl needs a list!

In a few days, I'm leaving Mystery City for a whole month. Wow, that's a long time. It's a trip combining visits to family with a workshop and some field work, and Minnow will be along for the whole incredible journey. Fish will be with us for a week and then he'll return home to care for the Princess Pup. Needless to say, I've got a lot to get done before we go. In lieu of real content today, below the fold, I've got a partial to-do list for today. Maybe I'll update this as I proceed through the week, maybe not. Set up bill pay to cover the household bills while I'm gone. Fix the Endnote…

Now that's what I call a monster truck

Aquasaurus paint, resin, steel Jitish Kallat, 2008 At first I thought this piece by Indian artist Jitish Kallat was an oil tanker truck, and that it represented some sort of play on "fossil fuels" (and perhaps the morbidity of the behemoth domestic auto companies). But apparently that was my American bias at work. It's actually a water tanker, entitled Aquasaurus, and it represents the rapid transformation of urban India: Aquasaurus is a monumental seven-metre long skeletal sculpture of a water-tanker morphing to become prehistoric creature that personifies the radical transformation of…

Friday Grey Matters: Your Grey Will Outlive You

We've been talking a lot about life span here on ScienceBlogs, and on Retrospectacle. So, thought for this week's Grey Matters I'd talk a bit about the life span of African Grey parrots. In a nutshell, they live a long time--about 60-80 years. Although, there have been a few accounts of captive Greys living past 100 years of age! This fact is often a huge surprise to people looking into buying a Grey parrot, and should be weighed very heavily before making the jump to buy. Seriously, your getting a life partner more than a pet. Will you still want your bird when you are 70? (I know I will!)…

What is John Lott trying to hide?

David Glenn in the Chronicle of Higher Education: In a motion filed last week in federal court, Mr. Lott's lawyers asked the judge to place a gag order on any information that might turn up in depositions or private documents as the lawyers on both sides prepare for the trial. The motion asserts that "publication or dissemination of information that is obtained during discovery, particularly if provided without context or explanation, could be extremely damaging to sales" of Mr. Lott's new book, Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't. The book, which was…

Biologically Inspired Jewelry

Perhaps you have noticed that I haven't been blogging very much lately. Probably not, which is why I don't ever do these "sorry for not posting" posts, but I'm making an exception this time because it is a very special occasion. So, apologies for my recent lack of posts, but I got married last weekend! Of course, my wedding was not without biologically inspired design appropriate for mention on this blog. On my special day I wore Nervous System's algae inspired Filament Necklace. Nervous System is a small and awesome company that combines background in biology, architecture, math, and…

David Kirby smacked down--and not by me!

As you may have guessed, I'm tired of David Kirby. I've slapped down his nonsense so many times before, but, like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps going and going and going, spewing his pseudoscientific antivaccine nonsense, all the while asking that we really, truly believe that he isn't "antivaccine." He just repackages standard antivaccine tropes in clever and dense verbiage to make them somewhat less obvious--but not to those of us familiar with them. Most recently, he attacked Dr. Rahul K. Parikh, a pediatrician who wrote an excellent and largely favorable review of Dr. Paul Offit's latest…

Introduction

We started our Statistical Modeling blog in 2004 as a way that I could share information with students, postdocs, and others in my research group. The idea was that we would post ideas and use the blog to comment on them. The blog was open to the world so that outsiders could hear about what we were doing and comment also. (We also set up a wiki but we found it awkward to use, and then it got hacked, so we abandoned that idea.) But I soon realized that the blog was really more of a place for me to throw out ideas--a convenient notebook where I could write things down and no longer have to…

Being Poor All The Way To The Bank

On poverty, personal, national and global, and why it makes sense not to have a bank account when you are poor (October 04, 2005). Espcially in light of recent news about the way big banks rip off people by depositing big checks first - placing accounts into the red - then depositing multiple small checks which otherwise would have cleared but now incur fees which, added over many customers, add up to billions in profit for the banks. This practice kills me every month. I pay the biggest things (rent) by MoneyOrder so I am not afraid of that bouncing, but I'd like to minimize the number of…

Links for 2011-06-11

The National Oral History - Grantland "The National Sports Daily, on the one hand, is a long-dead and short-lived newspaper that, for 18 months, between January of 1990 and June of 1991, attempted to cover sports in a way that no other American publication would, could, or had ever even imagined. On the other hand, the paper is emblematic of the parts of culture and media that were not yet ready to converge. Typewriters and satellites. Mexican titans of industry and American daily news. Content in too many forms. Born from an impetuous whim only a billionaire would call a business plan, the…

Passing thoughts on nature documentaries.

We've been watching some episodes of Blue Planet here, marveling at the beautiful cinematography, as well as at how emotionally gripping they can be. Especially in the Frozen Seas episode, I found myself feeling almost wrung out by the dramatic roller-coaster. This is definitely nature red in tooth and claw (and blood-soaked maw), although as my better half points out, there's actually rather less on-camera carnage than you might expect from the narration.* I think part of the dramatic tension comes from the fact that most of the animals featured in this episode are fairly charismatic mid-…

Another Reason to Buy Ice Cream by the Barrel

"Common food wrappers contain hidden rubber proteins that could trigger allergic reactions in up to 3.5million Britons some of them fatal, a study has shown." I was just returning to consciousness after spending a peculiar night floating through Dreamland on a mission to eat as many chocolates, candy bars and ice cream treats as possible when the morning news came on, sending volleys of horrifying language through the air like sabers headed for my pillow. As the clipped, rather patronizing voice garbled on the reality of what he was saying pulled the last vestiges of sleep from my eyes. I…

Christopher Hitchens' War on Iraq, Funny Women, and Reason

Maybe it sounded good at the editorial meeting: Have Christopher Hitchens, supposedly funny, clearly chauvinistic, write about Why Women Aren't Funny. And so we gots, in a recent issue of Vanity Fair, Hitchens -- who seems ever more a boorish drunk rather than a quick-witted friend of the vine; an intellectual bully who refuses to admit (regarding his support of the Iraq War) that he Got It Wrong; a one-time thoughtful leftist who finds himself stuck in the same dunce corner with the determinedly unthoughtful George W. Bush -- trying to legitimize a mix of half-baked 'conventional wisdom'…

Guest Post: Shooting the Stars on a Budget

"Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth." -Ptolemy As regular readers here will know, earlier this month I went to Glacier National Park, meeting up with an old friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a few years. What you may not have known is that Rich is not just into photography, but he's recently taken an interest in astrophotography, which I started noticing when he started sending me photos like this. Image credit: Richard Helmich, from April of 2012…

Missed my lecture? Here it is!

My talk at the Secular Student Alliance (given the day after the Creation "Museum" trip) is now available online. I think this video was put together by Ashley Paramore, whose smiling face appears near the end of the video — she was also one of several mischievous people who disobeyed a certain sign.

Infographic: Epidemics of North America

I dont know about you all, but I love those infographic things people create. They make statistics a lot more understandable and relatable than a chart of black-and-white numbers. Here is a cool one that turns devastating diseases into really pretty graphics ;) An infographic by the team at Online Masters In Public Health