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Quick note about the swine flu vaccine

There are a couple of things that Im getting over and over and over, from readers/friends/family/overheard in the grocery store, and its driving me nuts. READ THIS NPR SUMMARY 1. Just call it swine flu. Thats what we all call it. H1N1 variants are completely normal components of generic seasonal flu. The 'new' flu is swine flu. Its just the pork industry doesnt want us to call it that in front of you all, thus we get: We use "swine flu" as one of several names, along with "pandemic flu," "the new H1N1" and "the new flu." We try not to refer to this new virus as simply "H1N1," although…

A Quick Note on Arrogance

Here's an interesting blog post written by a biochemistry professor at Seattle Pacific University. I call attention to it for two reasons. First, it is a harshly negative, but also highly substantive, review of Stephen Meyer's ID manifesto Signature in the Cell, written from a Christian perspective: So w/r/t this whole book you've just written, about how the Creator must be inferred to explain the origin of DNA? I very much wish you were right. But you aren't. I don't say this because I fear for my job. I have a feeling I could have a very nice job at the Discovery Institute if I pushed…

2010 Insect Fear Film Festival: Prehistoric Insects

Mark this on your calendar: February 27 is the 27th annual Insect Fear Film Festival. Hosted by the entomology graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the festival showcases two (usually terrible) arthropod movies.  This year's delectable offerings are The Black Scorpion (1957) and Ice Crawlers (2003). If bad movies aren't your thing, the festival also has an insect art competition, live insect displays, face painting, and other buggy entertainment.  As way of a preview, Jo-anne posted her pics of last years event here.  I've put the full announcement below:…

Digital Reconstruction: Color Images of Russian Empire

Thanks to a tip from a reader, for this one.  A photographer named href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky">Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) made glass negatives in the early 1900's that could be used to create color images.  He did this by inventing a camera that would take three different frames of the same scene, with different color filters (red, green blue) for each.  He displayed the pictures via projection, using the same filters.  Even though the negatives were only grayscale images, the result was comparable to that obtained using a color slide…

Dark World, Dark Signs

The most recent issue of Cabinet Magazine has a really good article by artist and CIA expert Trevor Paglen about the iconography of military insignia, particularly of those branches of the military that "don't exist." How do you celebrate your work with traditional military regalia, Paglen asks, while retaining the secrecy which defines it? It's an interesting question. Well, sometimes you don't. Take for example this embroidered patch, distributed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the US "black" space agency primarily responsible for the operation of military reconnaissance…

Wealth and Obesity: A Bolivian Perspective

As our regular readers will recall, my partner, Marina, and I are travelling for the summer throughout South America as a means to celebrate the successful defense of both of our PhDs (Read about our travel adventures and reflections here). I know things are hitting the fan at SciBlogs with the whole PepsiCo sponsored blog fiasco. I only superficially understand the ensuing controversy. Alas, I have VERY limited internet access available, and thus would prefer to discuss another issue which I have noticed while moving through Bolivia for the past 2 weeks. I've previously discussed the…

How can Hooters support the fight against breast cancer...

...all without being perceived as capitalistic, misogynistic, or otherwise demeaning to women? This is an open thread for y'all because I have to go to a funeral and won't be able to oversee the discussion today. I brought this point up over the weekend with my ScienceBlogs.com colleagues and it got such a passionate response that I thought I'd open it up to the blogosphere. I have a very serious question (below) related to breasts, and I really hope the women bloggers and readers will weigh in. I know that there are many high-profile female bloggers out there with a heavy feminist worldview…

Mommy Monday: My Child's Planet

This weekend, Minnow, Fish, Princess Pup and I went for a hike. We didn't go far. Just enough that we got away from the city and to a spot where we could look out over a lake and see the trees turning colors on the far shore. I've often seen environmental issues framed in terms of our responsibility to future generations. The idea is as old as the Iroquois: ""In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation..." and it is the driving force behind the idea of sustainability. Basically, I like to think of it is as a long-period version of the golden rule: "do unto…

This Week in the Unending War on Rachel Carson

Glenn Reynolds approvingly quotes Rich Karlgaard's ill-informed comments on Rachel Carson: FORBES' RICH KARLGAARD ASKS how many people died because of Rachel Carson? Buried in paragraph 27, and paraphrasing the Congressman, The Washington Post concedes that "numerous" deaths might have been prevented by DDT. Let's stop here. Any curious reader would ask, Just how "numerous" is numerous? Wouldn't you ask that question? The Post never asks that question. Why? Because the answer devastates Rachel Carson and her followers. According to these CDC figures, malaria kills more than 800,000 children…

"Miracle" Heater

Our Sunday newspaper magazine section features a two page ad for a new "miracle" heating device that looks like a fireplace and features a "hand-crafted Amish mantel". Check this out: The HEAT SURGE miracle heater is a work of engineering genius from the China coast, so advanced you simply plug it into any standard wall outlet. It uses less energy than it takes to run a coffee maker. Yet, it produces an amazing 5,119 BTU's. An on-board Powerful hi-tech heat turbine silently forces hot air out into the room so you feel the bone soothing heat instantly. It even has certification of…

If I didn't know better, I'd think it a parody

According to Lewis Black's hypothesis of the cause of cerebral aneurysms, when someone hears something incredibly stupid or irrational (i.e. "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.") the mind fixates upon it, becoming more and more stressed until a cerebral aneurysm occurs. If I should suffer an aneurysm in the next 24 hours, then, don't be surprised; I just read one of the most vapid statements I have ever come across. If you value your own health you won't proceed, but the comment from the Answers in Genesis article "A Meeting of Minds" (*snicker*) about the…

Has wingnuttery peaked?

Last October, there was a brief period when smart people wondered whether wingnuttery had crashed and burned. Within 7 minutes, it was determined that wingnuttery had not reached a peak, and was likely to continue expanding indefinitely in its inanity. And yet, post-election, I feel a great lack of wingnuttery to mock. This explains why I've written so many blog posts documenting the bigotry (and, since we're on a thesaurus kick: fanaticism, fiendishness, zealotry, mania, segregationism, puritanism, and narrow-mindedness) of Martin Cothran. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel, spending…

Creepy 1981 story about online newspapers

I like newspapers and we subscribe to two dailies at our house. But in truth I find myself reading the news online, not in dead tree form. We all know the newspaper business is in big trouble. Which is why there is something just a little creepy about this 1981 news story on San Francisco TV station KRON (hat tip Boingboing):

ScienceOnline'09 - Wow! Again.

Just six days after we opened registration for ScienceOnline'09 there are already 52 registrants! And some more people are blogging about it: 49 percent: Random Biochemicalsoul: Science Blogging Conference in Research Triangle Park, NC! Catalogue of Organisms: Open Lab 2008 Deep Sea News: Science Online '09 PODelation: Science Blogs Lecturer Notes: ScienceOnline'09 Flying Trilobite: ScienceOnline'09

Nature art

Remember the mirror? Well, having Tanja's art made on order is not the only option any more. She has just opened her online store. And if you come to the ScienceOnline09 you'll get to meet Tanja in person as she is one of the moderators of the How to paint your own blog images session.

Open Lab 2007 is now being judged

Reed has assembled more than 30 judges and provided a secret online place for them to start working today on the difficult job of choosing the 50 best posts, one poem and one cartoon for the 2007 Open Laboratory science blogging anthology. You have only 20 days left to submit your own or your favourite bloggers' antries.

thursday's news has far to go

there will be a major press release on thursday, for a paper appearing in Science this week. It is a potentially major planet discovery, I will not break embargo to leak the news, but the hint of the upcoming discovery was public exactly two months ago, and there will be some nice ancillary information provided online when the news comes out.

Graphing Pharyngula

Here's a applet that traverses the html of a web page and turns it into a pretty graph. There is an online explanation and examples, too—and here's Pharyngula. The dots are color coded specific classes of html tags. That red flower at the top, for instance, is a table—the Friday Random Ten turned into a kind of carnation. (via BioCurious)

Anthro Blog Carnival

The twenty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Remote Central. Archaeology and anthropology gonna be fun, gonna be fun, gonna be fun in de sun! The next open hosting slot is on 27 February. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro.

Anthro Blog Carnival

The twentyfirst Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Archaeolog. Check it out! Archaeology and anthropology to make you squeal and titter with delight. There's an open hosting slot on 26 September 10 October and further ones later in the fall. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me.

A Few Words from Our Senior Middle East Correspondent

I've been sticking to my "no Internet before writing something" quota fairly well the last several days, with a couple of exceptions: 1) writing or no writing, I read a bunch of RSS feeds on my phone when I'm putting SteelyKid to bed at night, and 2) I keep following events in the Middle East via Al Jazeera online, mostly their live blogging from Libya. It's fascinating to watch. Of course, this blog also has an official Senior Middle East Correspondent, namely my friend Paul, who is a journalist based in Cairo. When the Egyptian revolution started, he was out of the country on a family…

Marylanders!

You have a couple of bills working their way through the state house that offer aid and comfort to the Intelligent Design wackos. You don't want that, do you? If you live in Maryland, are a scientist, teacher, or dependent on science research, sign the online petition to oppose these nasty little bills. Work fast, too, you don't have much time.

Image Gallery Down

Smugmug, the host for my image gallery alexanderwild.com, has been down all morning.  The problem is apparently serious and resolution may take a while. I apologize for the inconvenience.  If there was a particular image you were looking for this morning and now you can't get to it, email me. *update 12:15pm; we're online again!

A Hitchens poll

Time Magazine is running a poll to determine who are the most influential people in the world — like an online poll is the best way to do that — and one of them is Christopher Hitchens, who currently has 11989 votes saying he's influential, and 570 saying he's not. Join the mob, and let's make it even more of a landslide!

The giant panda: a morphological study of evolutionary mechanisms

By way of GrrlScientist, I notice that Fieldiana (the journal of the Field Museum is now freely available online. This means that DD Davis’ classic study "The giant panda: a morphological study of evolutionary mechanisms" of 1964 can now be enjoyed by one and all. Over three hundred pages, detailing everything you’d want to know about giant panda morphology.

Human-Neanderthal hybridization (here we go again ...)

AP is reporting that a "skull found in a cave in Romania includes features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, possibly suggesting that the two may have interbred thousands of years ago." A paper to appear in Tuesday's PNAS (and not online yet) will argue that the ~40,000 year old skull raises "important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans,"

They hypocrisy of “don't ask, don't tell”

It will be interesting to see if anyone squawks about this revelation: Army Chaplain Lt. Col. William McCoy seems to have a wild and frolicsome sex life, while writing pious little books promoting Christianity. There's absolutely nothing suggesting male homosexuality in his online personal history, but isn't the occasional menage a trois or voyeurism session as sinful to an evangelical Christian?

Friday Grey Matters: Alex in Action

Busy week this week, I submitted a paper day before yesterday which is the first time I did it myself. The online submission system is really convienent! Anyway, for Friday Grey Matters, check out this amazing video of Alex the grey parrot in action with Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Its the third video down, since I can't embed the video unfortunately.

Law for Bloggers

I spent some time today chatting with Sam Bayard of the Citizen Media Law Project. It occurred to me that some of you who are newer to blogging might not know they have an invaluable database of articles on legal issues related to online publishing - a good resource to bookmark! (See, for example, "legal protections for anonymous speech".)

Encephalon 45/46

Encephalon 46 is now online at The Neurocritic's blog, and contains lots of fantastic neuroscience blogging, including posts on Senator Ted Kennedy's brain tumour, phantom supernumery limbs, and anti-drug vaccines. The previous edition, at PodBlack Blog, also contains plenty of good reading material; I didn't link to it at the time as I was still busy with my exam revision.

Thomson Scientific Nobel Predictions

Someone yesterday asked whether there were online odds for the upcoming Nobels? Well Thomson Scientific (producers of ISI and other citation indices) have their own predictions and a poll too (although they only give 3 choices???) Medicine & Physiology predictions (by Thomson Sci): For more speculation on the Nobels (including my pics and the pics of many others, click here).

Genetics and Health Interview

Hsien at Genetics and Health decided it would be interesting to interview some idiot and post the answers online. The idiot tried his best to answer the five questions (no, not those five questions) posed to him, and you can either berate him for his answers at Genetics and Health or right here in the comments section.

Carnivalia, and an open thread

Encephalon 13 Carnival of Education #98 In other news, Atheism Online is back in version 2.0. All heathens should report for registration at once. I'll mention again that there's a new Tangled Bank at Salto Sobrious. Any volunteers for future hosting duties? We have slots open starting in April—drop me a note if you're interested.

Atheists Can Not Legally Hold Public Office

There are six or seven states where you must believe in god (well, swear on the bible that you believe in god) in order to hold public office. I may have to boycott the Science Online 2010 conference, because it is in one of those states! Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Numerical Calculation in Open Office

I created another screen cast showing how to get started with a numerical calculation for one of my classes. In this case, the students are attempting to model the motion of an object falling with air resistance. The following example doesn't show the steps including the air resistance, but maybe it is enough to get someone started. Record your screencast online

Chris Anderson, Media Transparency, and the Beauty and Danger of Dumb Questions

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail, recently raised some juicy issues about bringing a Media 2.0 sort of transparency to a Media 1.0 (okay, Media 1.4) "traditional" magazine like Wired. His proposals address questions that I, as a writer mainly in 1.0 venues like print magazines and books, have been mulling over in a back-of-the-head sort of way. (My long recent silence on this blog, for instance, while due mainly to being far too busy, rose also from my ambivalence about what makes a worthwhile blog post (more on that some other time) and a slight unease with…

Sacred Imagery on Dish Rags

[More blog entries about archaeology, Sweden, Gotland, religion, feminism, ; arkeologi, Gotland, religion, feminism.] Some time ago I received a gift from my aunt, bought at the County Museum of Gotland, a limestone island in the Baltic with an extremely rich archaeological record. The gift was a sponge-fabric dish rag, and I found its decoration slightly astonishing. In the 5th through the 12th centuries, Gotland was home to a unique tradition of commemorative picture stones, comparable only to those of Pictland, with which they do not appear to have had any actual connection. The early…

Language, framing and women in computer science

As I ease myself back into the swing of things after a couple of weeks off and start to pay attention again to what's going on in the online world, I thought I'd bring this post to the attention of as wide an audience as possible. It's The importance of language and framing, part eleventy-thousand by Amy Csizmar Dalal on her blog, This is what a computer scientist looks like. Dalal draws a link between the decline in female CS enrollments since they peaked in the 1980s and the way we talk about entering the field in very competitive language rather than emphasizing mentoring or collaboration…

Role Models in Science & Engineering: Jawed Karim -- Computer Science Innovator

--Co-creator and co-founder of YouTube with partners Chad Hurley and Steven Chen --One of the first computer engineers behind the success of PayPal, the online payment service --Recently started his own internet service, Youniversity Ventures Even as a teen, Jawed Karim displayed considerable talent and genius in the realm of computer science. Among his early feats: As a high school senior, while creating a website for a research lab at the University of Minnesota, he came up with a complex computational process to help the lab map the atomic structure of a crucial protein -- a process that…

Metagenomics, biomes, and dirt: separating good data from bad

The simple fact is this: some DNA sequences are more believable than others. The problem is, that many students and researchers never see any of the metrics that we use for evaluating whether a sequence is "good" and whether a sequence is "bad." All they see are the base calls and sequences: ATAGATAGACGAGTAG, without any supporting information to help them evaluate if the sequence is correct. If DNA sequencing and personalized genetic testing are to become commonplace, the practice of ignoring data quality is (in my opinion) simply unacceptable. So, for awhile anyway, I'm making a…

The making of an embryo: information and mechanics

Is the general audience "black board" talk at KITP today, giving an overview of the quantitative approches to morphogenesis program currently unverway. Symmetry breaking and mechanics. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics runs parallel programs and currently there is a biophysics program New Quantitative Approaches to Morphogenesis concurrent with the astrophysics program on A Universe of Black Holes During each multi-week program there is a black board lunch talk, for all members of KITP, giving an overview of the theme of the program or some key aspect of it. The talk is intended to…

Brilliant!

Via EpiMonday comes an interview with epidemiologist and physican Larry Brilliant, who was tapped to be the head of Google.org ("the philanthropic arm of Google") earlier this year: If Larry Brilliant's life were a film, critics would pan the plot as implausible. Trained as a physician, he was studying in an Indian monastery in 1973 when a guru told him to join the UN smallpox vaccination effort. Brilliant helped eradicate the disease from India and eventually the planet. He returned to the US and founded a charity organization, Seva, that has saved millions of people in developing…

Maybe baby Jesus is playing with Dad's branding iron again

This is Ali, a six month old baby in Southern Russia. It's a miracle! Every Monday and Thursday, fresh quotations from the Quran 'magically' appear on his legs, belly, or arms when he's home alone with his mommy and daddy, and then the pilgrims show up in the thousands to give the happy family lots and lots of attention. I simply can't imagine how red marks might appear on the delicate skin of a young baby while under the care of doting, attentive parents, or why anyone might cheat and fake a miracle…can you? The only possible explanation is that the omnipotent, omniscient master of the…

Harvard considers Free Access

In today's NYTimes: At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web: Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs. Although the outcome of Tuesday's vote would apply only to Harvard's arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university's prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at…

KITP: rapidly rotating stars

stars do turn, sometimes fast enough to be noticeably flattened this may have consequences Like So there are two issues related to stellar rotation contemplated this morning: Altair now, way flatter than that... self-enrichment - back to the good old O/Na anti-correlation evidence for H burning at high T trick is not so much to burn the H, but to get the ashes out... can do that either with AGB stars, yes, it is the dreaded "third dredge up", or just boring old hot bottom burning... ok, don't ever google that. AGB dredge up (from Eskridge's online lecture notes at MNSU) anyway, to get…

Two New Issues Of Fornvännen On-line

Fornvännen's web site has become subsumed into the general document repository of the National Heritage Board. I am not happy about this. But still, we can now offer two new issues on-line for free! So much good research here! Autumn 2012 (no 3): Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay on the first farmers of Öland. Martin Hansson on a Medieval execution cemetery in Småland. Michaela Helmbrecht on a 10th century sword chape depicting Wayland the Smith from Uppåkra in Scania. Hanna Källström on the Medieval local cult of Saint Holmger in Uppland. Tobias Bondesson & Lennart Bondeson on a Migration Period…

Swedish Historical Bibliography Mysteriously Threatened

Here's a case of odd priorities. The Royal Library in Stockholm keeps a copy of everything that is printed in Sweden (and Swedish), and also has a lot of people tending LIBRIS, the national bibliographic database. Recently, the folks who keep track of scholarly publications in historical research (through the Swedish Historical Bibliography project) completed the digitisation of a huge printed bibliography for their field, which means that LIBRIS now contains references to almost every piece of historical research that has ever been published in this country. Now, how is the Royal Library…

Brown Bottle

Broon bottles it says the BBC. Well no, they put it more politely: "Gordon Brown has said he will not call a general election this autumn". Jolly good, all the politico-types can go back to sleep again. Of course, the true Brown Bottle (scroll to the bottom) was in Viz, but it proven hard to find a picture online. From the point of view of the smaller parties (Green :-) this is a relief and will make my personal autumn a bit easier. But where does it leave Brown? Looking fairly stupid says Beeb blogoid, which is what I thought. As far as I can tell Broon only talked about the election to…

My Bronze Age Book Is Out

Dear Reader, it is with great pleasure that I announce the PDF publication of my fifth monograph,* In the Landscape and Between Worlds. The paper version will appear in April or May. Here's the back-cover blurb. Bronze Age settlements and burials in the Swedish provinces around Lakes Mälaren and Hjälmaren yield few bronze objects and fewer of the era's fine stone battle axes. Instead, these things were found by people working on wetland reclamation and stream dredging for about a century up to the Second World War. Then the finds stopped because of changed agricultural practices. The objects…

Another Radio Appearance

I just got a call from Jim Babka inviting me on his show for a second time this Sunday. The subject will be the 14th amendment and whether or not it intended to incorporate the bill of rights as enforcable against the states. My opponent will be none other than Herb Titus, former dean of the Regent University Law School. Mr. Titus is a good friend of Jim Babka's as well as of Perry Willis, who comments here from time to time. He did the legal work on Perry's court case seeking to overturn the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, on which he and I would agree. It should be a very…