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You say pranic, I say panic--let's call the whole thing off

I was thinking about poor Orac and his death crud, so I thought I'd do a little research for him. I did a quick google search for holistic healing (call a doctor? Are you kidding?) and immediately found my answer--Pranic Healing. First, I gotta tell you, it's a deal--a steal, really--because you get knowledge, and no one can take that away from you. I mean, penicillin, you take it, you're cured, and that's it--nothing left, just "wham bam thank you ma'am". The Level One class is under $400.00. Compared to the expense of a doctors visit (about $80.00), and some online research from…

Even the National Research Council Couldnât Kill It: Dudley Resurrects OMBâs Risk Assessment Bulletin

By David Michaels Matt Madia at Reg Watch has tipped us off to an article about the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs head Susan Dudley (in the subscription-only BNA), in she which gives us a preview of what we can expect from this part of the executive branch during the remainder of the Bush administration. OIRA (part of the White Houseâs Office of Management and Budget) oversees all of the Administrationâs regulatory policies, and is the office from which the White House exercises tight control over regulatory policy. Dudleyâs nomination didnât make it out of the Senate…

steal from the best...

article claims the new US Army "Counterinsurgency Manual" is substantially plagiarised There is an interesting article by David Price in "Counterpunch" which suggests that large sections of the new US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24), co-authored by Gen. Petraeus, is substantially plagiarised - that is it copies or paraphrases substantial sections of text from other published work without attribution or cite. They quote multiple examples ranging from Lawrence of Arabia to an MIT on-line sociology course. Some of the stuff is blatant, some might be considered less plagiarism and…

A golden opportunity!

Want to publish something? Worried that you don't actually have a lab or an opportunity to do real research? Never fear, the Institute for Creation Research has put out a call for papers, and anyone can get published there! (Well, just about anyone. I doubt that anything I submitted under my name could get published, or that any legitimate scientist could stoop this low.) High quality papers for the International Journal for Creation Research (IJCR), sponsored by the Institute for Creation Research, are now invited for submission. IJCR is a professional peer-reviewed online technical journal…

The Chronicle does it again

They've got another article from some fuddy-duddy prof who doesn't like the 21st century. It seems to be nothing but a long whine about modern teaching technologies — it's rather pathetic, actually, but the Chronicle seems to have a fondness for running occasional articles from defensive, confused Luddites. Here's an example: Besides using the computer more in my classroom, the experts tell me that another way to transform my teaching persona is to put more of my course materials online. I can create a course that's more user-friendly and appealing to today's students by incorporating more…

Playground Physics: Angular Momentum, Video Homework

I'm teaching relativity in a course with an astronomy prefix, which means I'm obliged to talk about stars and stuff. Yesterday's lecture was about neutron stars, and how their existence was confirmed by the discovery of pulsars (with the story of Jocelyn Bell Burnell included). This requires some discussion of angular momentum to explain how something that big ends up spinning that fast (cribbing a bit from these online notes), so I needed a good demonstration of angular momentum. Which is when I remembered this 2013 post with SteelyKid on the playground, where I estimated the mass of the…

Reality TV on the SAT's?

Here's an interesting item from HuffPo. The following appeared as an essay question on the SAT: Reality television programs, which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes, are increasingly popular. These shows depict ordinary people competing in everything from singing and dancing to losing weight, or just living their everyday lives. Most people believe that the reality these shows portray is authentic, but they are being misled. How authentic can these shows be when producers design challenges for the participants and then…

Fisher and Smith break the PLoS taxonomy barrier

Odontomachus coquereli - Madagascar Myrmecology continues to lead the way in online taxonomy. Today saw the release of the very first taxonomic paper published by the top-tier open access science journal, PLoS One. Brian Fisher and Alex Smith combine alpha taxonomy with DNA barcoding to produce a revision of the Malagasy trap-jaw ants. The revision includes mitochondrial DNA sequences from some 500 individual ants and resulted in the inference of several new species. I've got plenty to say about DNA barcoding, but I'll leave that for a later post and instead point you to the thoughtful…

Answering my email in a post.

Two items in particular. From Julie: post something! :) I'm starting to worry! From Super Sally: no blog since we left causes a mother to worry Hope you are just busy. "Busy" gets the general idea (and careful readers will have anticipated from this post that I had some serious three-dimensional-world business to attend to). Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be spread to a thickness of just a few molecules? In the last 12 days, I think I've gotten pretty close. I got through my conference (and even had the overheads for both my talks made by the day before the conference…

AGW and HIV/AIDS denial

Eli Rabett has been looking at Joel Kauffman who has published some HIV/AIDS denial in JPANDS and some AGW denial in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. I've mentioned JPANDS here before, but JSE is even further out on the fringe, promoting stuff like UFOs and parapsychology. Rabett has some choice quotes from Kauffman's piece: Either Warmers or Skeptics may accept that primordial ionizing radiation from within warms the Earth. Later in the article Kauffman elaborates, arguing that undersea volcanoes are warming the oceans. I debunked that theory here. And he believes E-G Beck's…

More on the Congressional Order of Merit

Geez, Congressman Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) sure is a busy guy. Since I mentioned his fundraising scam for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)--the "Congressional Order of Merit"--last month, myriad new reports of Cole's activities have emerged. For proof, just check out the comments on the earlier post. If that's not enough, though, there's plenty more from around the blogosphere: Thirteen Colonies The South of Iowa Online Guide to Mediation This one, though, is my favorite. From John Baer of Philadelphia Daily News: I DON'T WANT to suggest the national Republicans are…

Bizarre paper on interspecies sex hints at stacked peer review at PNAS

This strange episode of dodgy science and publishing is worth reprinting in its entirety from Ars Technica: Scientific publishing weirdness: This paper didn't strike me as weird so much as completely bonkers, given its opening sentence: "I reject the Darwinian assumption that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor." It forwarded the proposal that the difference between larval and adult forms of insects--between caterpillars and butterflies, to give one example--arose because insects are the product of a hybridization event between a caterpillar-like organism and…

Visualizing caste & linguistic differences in India (Fst)

I took the Fst values from Reconstructing Indian population history, and decided to plot them in different ways. Remember that Fst measures the proportion of between population variance, the variation which can't be accounted for by the normal variation you'd find within a population. So it's a rough measure of genetic distance. I've removed the Chenchus, Siddis and Tibeto-Burmans from the data because they're outliers, especially the last two. I've taken the Kashmiri Pandits as reference group, so that all Fst values are such that they measure the distance between Pandits and group X. I…

Do It Yourself: searching for evolution's signature in 53 human populations

Note: I'm introducing Do It Yourself as a new and hopefully semi-regular section on Genetic Future. The aim is to provide readers with instructions on how to access online resources for sequence analysis - an activity traditionally restricted to researchers, but one that will no doubt become more common as more and more people begin to access and interpret their own genetic data. In this post I'll introduce the brand new HGDP Selection Browser, a tool for exploring traces of recent positive selection in the human genome produced by researchers at the University of Chicago. Introduction: the…

Birds in the News 160

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Rock Wren, Salpinctes obsoletus, in Chaco Canyon. Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view]. Birds in Science Scientists fitted tags to wood thrushes and purple martins in the north-east of the US before the birds began their journey to central and South America. Data recovered from the devices showed that the birds took much longer to complete the autumnal migration than the return journey north in the spring. "Never before has anyone been able to track songbirds for their entire migratory trip," explained co-…

Winds of Change (the article is not about the band Scorpions)

I saw this press release and for one brief happy instant I thought it might be about the band Scorpions and their hit Winds of Change. Sadly, it was just about wind direction changing over the last 30,000 years. Boo. Alright fine. I will still post it: Dartmouth researchers have learned that the prevailing winds in the mid latitudes of North America, which now blow from the west, once blew from the east. They reached this conclusion by analyzing 14,000- to 30,000-year-old wood samples from areas in the mid-latitudes of North America (40-50°N), which represents the region north of Denver…

Jess Ainscough, Belle Gibson, and "wellness warriors" vs. cancer

Recent articles in The Daily Mail and The Australian reminded me that it's been over a month since the unfortunate demise of Jess Ainscough, a young Australian woman who was diagnosed with an epithelioid sarcoma of her left upper extremity in 2008. Before I get to the articles, a brief recap is in order. This is a very rare tumor that is generally slow growing but relentless, with most untreated patients dying within 10 years, although with radical surgery and complete removal of all tumor deposits it is possible to produce ten year survivals on the order of 49-72%, closer to 72% for young…

Hey, now, don't challenge me in a poll

It's like taunting the bull while standing in the middle of his field. It's just not smart. Anyway, there's another of these online polls ranking atheists, and Hemant Mehta has come out on Twitter threatening to destroy me in the voting. You know I can't stand for that. Go vote! Who is the Most Vocal Atheist of the Year? Richard Dawkins 49 (25%) PZ Myers 52 (26%) Christopher Hitchens 33 (17%) Bill Maher 21 (10%) Dan Dennett 4 (2%) Sam Harris 4 (2%) Victor Stenger 3 (1%) Michael Shermer 6 (3%) Dan Barker 10 (5%) Hemant Mehta 90 (46%)

If You Have Voting Problems

Tell these good people: Election incidents can also be reported to several national hotlines. Those reported to 1-866-OUR-VOTE will be catalogued in the Election Incident Reporting System (check out the incident map, which already reflects several incidents across the nation). Problems with voting machines can also be reported by calling 1-888-SAV-VOTE (1-888-728-8683). You can also report incidents through the DNC by calling 1-888-DEM VOTE or by filling out this online form. Also, I'm keeping a running log of Republican vote fraud here.

A birthday benefit for half the population of the world

The crafty Taisha McFall, creator of the Ray Comfort Tampon Case, is having a birthday tomorrow. What she'd like for her birthday is that women everywhere be free of fear and able to live their lives in some security, but barring that, you could make her happy by donating to Women for Women, an organization that works to help women survivors of war. Donate online. It's a nice present for Ms McFall and even nicer for women who've been raped, who've lost their homes, or worse, lost their children.

What am I doing in Washington DC this weekend?

Besides spending some time with the good people of Americans United, I'll be giving a talk at George Mason University at 7pm on Saturday night. Here's the flyer: If you can't quite read that tiny print, the information is also online at the Beltway Atheists Meetup Group and on Facebook. Say, does anyone want to invite Obama to show up? By the way, you should read AU's post-election analysis of the state of the religious right. You will be disappointed to learn that they did not simply evaporate after the election.

Your civic duty

You know what to do. Get out there and vote. I'm going to be squeezing in a long day working as an election judge at my local polling place (and I'm hoping that I will be very, very busy with a large turnout), in addition to taking care of teaching. If it's a little quiet around here, don't worry — it's just that today is the culmination of a lot of anxious agonizing. At the very least, I'll be back online after the polls close. Until then, tell us about your voting experiences — may they all be routine and boring.

It's a new flu season: do you cough safely?

I'm teaching an on-line bioinformatics course this semester for Austin Community College. They are in Texas of course, but I am in Seattle. This presents a few interesting challenges and some minor moments of amusement. Today, the school sent all the faculty emails telling us to stay home if we're sick. Got it. If I think I have flu, I will not fly to Texas. Instead, I'll stay home and watch videos on coughing without contaminating others. Watch "Why don't we do it in our sleeves?" and find out how you rank on the safe coughing scale.

Ray Kurzweil is in a snit

I have heard that he is absolutely furious about that Newsweek article on him — he's harrassing the editors and staff, is demanding that they print his full rebuttal, and is particularly upset that they would question his amazing powers of prognostication. He has put a letter online, in which he claims that all his wrong predictions were actually correct. Near as I can tell, he likes to make vague claims of the inevitable, and doesn't like it when it's pointed out that the details (which are the only testable parts of his predictions) turn out to be false.

The poll…I cannot resist

Oh, man…you know you've got colossal wackaloonery when you find a website titled "Remember Thy Creator" — but then you discover that they are sponsoring a YEC conference at the end of July, that they list luminaries like John Morris and Ken Ham, and that they've got a front page article demanding that people reject the idea that the earth is old because the Bible says so, and best of all, they've got an open online poll. "Do you think Creation should be taught, along with Evolution, in public schools?" Go on, skew that sucker.

ALL Royal Society Publishing Content FREE!

Great News, everyone! Effective immediately until 30 July, all Royal Society Publishing's online journal content is available for free in celebration of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary -- three and a half centuries of scientific publishing! Everything published by the Royal Society between 1665 and 2010 is now available to everyone with no restrictions, no daily download limits and no paywalls! Now is the time to download all those Royal Society publications you need to complete your personal library! Here's a special "Happy Birthday to You" for the Royal Society as played on a…

Du bist Terrorist

tags: Du bist Terrorist, You are a terrorist, internet security, online censorship, politics, satire, social control, cultural observation, social commentary, streaming video Du bist Terrorist (or "You are a terrorist" -- yes, this video has English subtitles) is a satirical response to two official German social-marketing-campaigns. One of them, Du bist Deutschland (You are Germany), was promoting nationalism and a child-friendly Germany, Du bist Terrorist is a look at today's politics in Germany, where all citizens are viewed with general suspicion and Germany has become a preventive…

ScienceOnline09 - even more individual session pages

And here are some other sessions that you will be able to attend, either physically or virtually: How to paint your own blog images Hey, You Can't Say That! Web and the History of Science Blogging102 - how to make your blog better Nature blogging Reputation, authority and incentives. Or: How to get rid of the Impact Factor Blog-To-Book: You are a science blogger but you want to publish a pop-sci book? Science blogging networks - what works, what does not? Race in science - online and offline Open Access publishing: present and future

We are but a crude mob

Pleasant as it is to be acknowledged for our poll-smashing abilities, we really are a brutish, blunt instrument. The true masters of the poll hack are the denizens of 4chan (a name I mention with hesitation; it's like invoking Hassan-i Sabbah, and you really don't want to encourage these people to even look at you), who are able to shift even the biggest online polls at will. It shows how meaningless these polls really are when your position in them may be dictated by the happenstance of the first letter of your first name.

Today is OneWebDay

OneWebDay is.... ....an Earth Day for the internet. The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy), focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills), and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet. So, think of OneWebDay as an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem. It's a platform for people to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet's future. There will be events organized around the world,…

ScienceOnline'09 on the Radio!

This Wednesday at 11am, tune in to Radio In Vivo with Ernie Hood at WCOM-FM 103.5 in Carrboro, NC (or check out the podcast online afterwards), because the show will be fantastic: Radio In Vivo December 3, 2008 Guests: David Kroll (NCCU), Anton Zuiker (Duke), Bora Zivkovic (PLOS) - co-organizers of ScienceOnline'09 Topic: ScienceOnline'09, coming Jan. 16-18, 2009, Sigma Xi, RTP Ernie will even open up the phone lines (919-929-9601) for the audience so you can call in to heckle us or ask really tough questions ;-)

Web-literacy - essential for 21st century?

Literacy debate: Online, r u really reading?: As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading -- diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

How's Your Vocabulary?

tags: vocabulary, online quiz Your Vocabulary Score: A+ Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person. How's Your Vocabulary? How about you? By the way, I actually have linked to an even better vocabulary game that will appear Sunday. The upcoming game will ask you to define vocabulary words and, if you get the word correct, you not only get a harder word to define, but the game will also donate ten grains of rice to the United Nations to help end world hunger. Weird, I know, but it's a fun game!

What Your Hands Say About You

tags: hands, online quiz What Your Hands Say About You You are logical, analytical, and rational. You have good verbal skills. Idealistic and dreamy, you tend toward the impractical. You have a knack for getting yourself in sticky situations. Brainy and intelligent, you are intellectual to the point of being incomprehensible. Your emotions tend to be nervous and potent. Your energy - both positive and negative - deeply impacts your life. What Do Your Hands Say About You? I had no idea that hands could say so many conflicting things about a person .. did you?

How Rare is Your Personality Type?

tags: personality type, online quiz Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP) Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving. How Rare Is Your Personality? 4% of all people have my personality type, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men .. does this mean that there are fewer men than women out there if only 4% of everyone shares this personality type?

Worth reading: Better condoms, government handouts, and online violence

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: L.V. Anderson at Slate: We Should Have a Better Condom by Now. Here’s Why We Don’t Emily Badger and Christopher Ingraham at Wonkblog: The rich get government handouts just like the poor. Here are 10 of them. Mark Binelli in the New York Times: Inside America’s Toughest Federal Prison Ashley Judd at Mic: Forget Your Team: Your Online Violence Toward Girls and Women Is What Can Kiss My Ass Jonathan Cohn at the Huffington Post: Working Parents Should Be Very Happy About This Obscure Senate Vote

Sign some more

Here's another online petition you can sign — this one is to censure Kathy Griffin's censorship. Go ahead and sign, although I'm beginning to wonder if the reason people aren't marching in the streets and fending off flying teargas canisters and roaring angrily in person at the bad guys is that they're too damned busy filling out all these forms on their computers, instead. Maybe I need to create a new category here: "futile, impotent political posturing" or something. But at least it feels a little bit good. (via Greg Laden)

Sunday Times Round-Up Addendum

One item I forgot to mention in the previous post: The Times Book Review section today features an article on backlist books and the so-called "Long Tail" exploited by on-line sales. It has some interesting stuff on the business of publishing and the sales of backlist books. As with the medical story referenced in the previous post, I'd be interested to hear what any of the publishing types out there think of this. As an outsider, it sounds interesting enough, but it could be horribly inaccurate, and I'd never be able to tell.

The Future... And Beyond!

It's almost finished now, so this is a little late in being posted, but the Washington Post has been running a week-long series of on-line chats with noted "futurists," under the title Beyond the Future. I'm a little dubious about most "futurism," but reading about people's predictions for future trends and gadgets can be a good way to waste a little time on a Friday afternoon, if you're so inclined... (Sadly, I can't really afford the time-- I've got to get back to my windowless basement lab, and align some optics...)

Count your bones!

My last Seed column is online. Print media feels a little weird — it's like I wrote that one long ago, the one I finished earlier in July is going to print right now (and will be out in mid-August), and I'm already working on the column after that. It's like looking at old history for me. It's also an old story for you subscribers. It's just those who haven't subscribed yet who are months behind the times. So when are you people going to join the rest of us…in the future?

Open Position: Climate Wiki Intern

A small non-profit concerned with climate change is seking a "Climate Wiki Intern" which sounds very interesting. Knowing that many of my readers would be very good at this, It thought it was worth a blog post to point you in this direction: Climate Wiki Intern Posted by: The Heartland Institute Posted date: Mar-05-12 Location: Chicago Description Responsibilities: The internship will involve a wide variety of online communication responsibilities, including writing and researching original articles, data entry, and basic "wiki" programming. Specific tasks include: Click here to read the full…

All-Purpose Political Commentary for 2011

It is my fervent hope that at some point in the future, we will once again live in a society where all discussions of politics are not indescribably depressing. Really, that pretty much sums up my feelings about everything in the news right now, on-line and off. There are a bunch of things going on that I sorta-kinda feel I maybe ought to write something about, but I think I'd rather slam my fingers in my desk drawer repeatedly than type any of those posts. People with happy news are encouraged to post it in the comments.

De-Lurking Week

Orac mentioned that he runs recurring De-Lurking Days on his blog. "Lurking" is to hang around a web forum or a blog without making your presence known. "De-Lurking" is to come out into the light of on-line day, however briefly. Aard currently has about a hundred visits by returning readers every day, and most regulars don't come here every day. This means that Aard must have several hundred lurkers. Dear Reader, is Aard on your blog reading list? Then please make a comment, as brief as you like. Thank you.

Four Stone Hearth Call for Submissions

At short notice, I've taken on hosting the next Four Stone Hearth blog carnival (about anthropology in the widest sense, including archaeology). It's supposed to come on-line on Wednesday. The carnival's home page currently doesn't reflect the change in scheduling, so you'll simply have to believe me. There is one small problem. I haven't received a single submission yet. This means that I will have to hunt around pertinent blogs I'm aware of to find good new stuff. Please help me by sending links to good stuff, your own or somebody else's!

Your psychologist could be an Intel chip....

Well, not really, but if on line CBT takes off, how will we know when they make the switch? Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) seems to be effective when delivered online in real time by a therapist, with benefits maintained over 8 months. This method of delivery could broaden access to CBT in primary care. These are the conclusions of an article in this week's Global Mental Health special edition of The Lancet, written by Dr David Kessler, NIHR National School for Primary Care Research, University of Bristol and colleagues. source

Christmas shopping?

One of the small disadvantages of academia is that we get hopelessly busy just before Christmas, which makes squeezing in the gift shopping difficult. I'm probably not even going to step into a store until sometime around the end of next week. That's why you have to appreciate these online gift suggestions. I'm leaning towards the Televangelists' Rapture Early-Warning System as a universally useful gift for my family members of all faiths. Even the atheists should like the half-hour warning before the Rapture so they can rapidly convert!

links for 2008-06-18

June 18: Polar Land and Life Day Happy birthday to me... (tags: animals environment science news education biology geology) Halo: The Cole Protocol (and welcome to all you new readers) at Tobias Buckell Online "Project X" revealed. (tags: books games SF blogs) The Giant's Shoulders A monthly science blogging event about classic science papers. (tags: blogs science history) Testing your free energy machine. "Here therefore is the Built on Facts Protocol for testing perpetual motion or free energy. It is a literal instantiation of a black box test." (tags: physics energy blogs)

A Glossary of Insect Surface Sculpturing

Areolate In 1979, Rick Harris wrote a definitive paper illustrating the various terms used by taxonomists to describe the intricate patterns on the insect exoskeleton. His guide is tremendously helpful to those of us who struggle to decide if those ridges on the head of an ant are strigate or costate.  Via Sifolinia, I now see that Harris's illustrations are available online: A Glossary of Surface Sculpturing Incidentally, Rick was the guy who taught me how to use a Scanning Electron Microscope, although at this point it'd be a minor miracle if I remembered any of it.

Inspiring Talks: Drew Endy

Good talks are rare gems. Good talks about interesting topics even rarer. Good talks that make you want to change fields and design E. Coli which smell like bananas are the best. I saw a good one earlier this week, and its now online: Learning to Program DNA by Drew Endy. If you get a chance, check out the picture of Drew going off a waterfall in a kayake on the Lower McCloud river. That's very close to where I grew up (and don't you city folk come up there and ruin that beautiful neck of the woods. Stay way slicker!)

Stealing Virtual Furniture

Can you be arrested for stealing furniture in a virtual world? The source of this question: Philip K. Dick? Nope, NPR: A teenager faces charges of stealing furniture that doesn't exist. The youth in the Netherlands was on one of those Web sites where you create virtual people to wander around virtual buildings spending what amounts to real money. You pay cash for credits to spend online. The 17-year-old allegedly stole $5,800 worth of imaginary furniture. Real police arrested him. They suspect other teens of receiving the stolen goods.