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What are you going to simulate?

The EU is sinking €1.2bn (and the US is proposing to spend more, $3 billion) into a colossal project to build a supercomputer simulation of the human brain. To which I say, "What the hell? We aren't even close to building such a thing for a fruit fly brain, and you want to do that for an even more massive and poorly mapped structure? Madness!" It turns out that I'm not the only one thinking this way: European scientists are exasperated with the project. "The main apparent goal of building the capacity to construct a larger-scale simulation of the human brain is radically premature," Peter…

Attack of the Hybrids

For some reason, I have been collecting links to articles involving hybridization. That, on its own, would call for a massive link dump, but a recent news item makes for a nice contrast. First, the hybrids: Where better to start than this review of hybrid speciation -- a topic I've discussed previously. The take home message: we first thought that hybrid speciation only happened in combination with polyploidy in plants, then we found out that hybrid speciation can also occur without polyploidization in plants, and then we discovered that the same thing happens in animals. Here's an article…

Jesus is bornd

A reading from Luke. (LOL Cat Translation) Oh hai, Jesus iz bornd 'Roun dis tiyem, Caesar Augustus wuz like, "I can has cenzus?" ... And all teh doodz went home for teh saying, "I is heer!" So Joseph went from Naz'reth to Judeeah to Bethlehemm whar David wuz bornededed, 'coz David wuz hiz graete-graete gran-daddie, An Mary went wif him, 'coz she was gonna be married wif him an she was preggerz. When wuz time for teh baybee, it wuz a boy, so he wuz wrapd in blanket like burrito an placd him in fud dish, cuz innkeeper wuz liek, no room here kthxbye! ... Jesus brung to teh templlez…

The End is Near

In just over one year from now, there is a good chance that your television will stop working. Like in that old TV show, The Outer Limits. But for real. And the frustrating thing is that nobody seems to believe it. Like how nobody believed that the earth was being taken over by pod people in that movie about the pod people. We are speaking, of course, about the coming of Digital Television. In a telephone survey in November of 1,017 people, only 48 percent said they had heard about the switch to digital television. And only 17 percent correctly identified 2009 as the year that analog…

IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

A report accepted by Working Group II of the Intergovernmental on Climate Change but not approved in detail Summary of main findings Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases. A global assessment of data since 1970 has shown it is likely that anthropogenic warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems. Other effects of regional climate changes on natural and human environments are emerging, although many are difficult to discern…

Things blowing up and burning

You may or may not have heard the news: There was a major explosion, or set of explosions, with suicide bombers and everything, 31 or more dead, at the Moscow Airport. The details are sketchy. And in a totally unrelated story, but still with an explosion, then there's this: God's Highway, I 35w, is famous for the fact that it winds back and forth through Minneapolis. There is one cruve that requires drivers to slow down to about 35 mph. This is a major interstate. On a different turn, which is not as tight, a semi truck fell over about 10 years ago and landed on a man and his young son…

The Cost of College: California

Over the last several years, the cost of a college education in Minnesota has gone up several percent, but the range of services and opportunities one may have access to has not gone up (and in many cases gone down). This is probably true across the country. Right now, in California, there is debate over a 32 percent student fee increase. Which reminds me: There was a time when you could estimate the cost of college by knowing "tuition" and then cost of living while in college, and throwing in a couple of hundred bucks a year for other stuff like books. Then the book prices went through…

Messing Up Darwin's Origin

Please do me a favor. Start collecting those bogus-ized copies of Darwin's Origin being distributed by Ray Comfort. We're low on firewood up at the cabin. Oh, and if you see Ray, puke on his shoes for me, OK? It's not that I like burning books. But this is not burning books. When Ray Comfort distributes a faked-up copy of The Origin, he's committing a kind of intellectual violence. Tossing the books into the wood stove is a parry. If you want to reduce the effects of global warming, you could always bury them in your garden thus sequestering the carbon they are made from. Here are the…

Do you want the alpine email client to remember your passwords?

By default, the text-based email client 'alpine' requests a password the first time, per session, that it is requested a password from any email services it checks. For the duration of that session, it remembers the password, but forgets it if you quit alpine so you have to enter it again later. From a security point of view, that is probably a good thing, but most people do like to have their email client remember the password between sessions. The way this works in alpine seems a little obscure at first, but actually makes a lot of sense. Alpine checks for a file in which passwords should…

Seeking Extraterrestrial Sitcoms

What are the chances that life evolved on other planets? 100%. What are the chances that some of THAT life evolved "intelligence"? Say 0.00001%. What is the chance that that life form is beaming messages to us? Zero. Nada. Zilch. But... What is the chance that intelligent live has junk TV, radio-transmitted music and other forms of EMF communication? Very very high. Therefore, the way to find extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe is to try to tune in their version of Days of Our LIves or MTV. Hey, we'll take the Milton Berle Show if we have to. And now, finally…

It's almost here: The 95th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle!

It's almost here yet again. (Man, how time flies!) This Thursday (September 11), longtime skeptic extraordinaire Robert Carroll, the man behind the indispensable Skeptic's Dictionary, will be hosting the 95th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle at Skeptimedia. That's a mere four days from now! I can't wait to see what Bob cooks up for this special Meeting of the Circle, especially given that it happens to coincide with a certain horrific event from seven years ago that in even that short a time period that has brought out some of the very worst conspiracy-mongering and paranoia requiring a…

Good for a giggle on a Sunday afternoon: The cause of autism explained

John Le Sainte apparently has a rather inflated view of himself. You see, he seems to think that he's the heir to Nostradamus. Ever worth a giggle on a Sunday afternoon (or any other time, for that matter), he seems to think that, channeling Nostradamus in some fashion, he's predicted what will be discovered to be the cause of autism: I have had over 30 e-mails requesting if I had seen into the future and discovered why Autism is becoming epidemic now. Yes, I have. This is what I know from the visions as guided by my guardian and teacher Nostradamus. An interesting fact will become known in…

Instructions on how to be a homeopathic bioterrorist...

... are here. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that Paul quite understands how homeopathy supposedly works. He's gotten the claim that dilution and succussation make a substance more potent right, but I think he's misinterpreted the homeopathic principle of "like cures like." (As I've pointed out before, this concept is no more than an adaptation of sympathetic magic.) Instead, he's generalized in homeopathy that the diluted substance causes the opposite of its usual effect. This is not quite the full story. In homeopathy, the cure for a symptom or illness is indeed usually something that causes…

Lott's claim that Ayres and Donohue's results are not significant

In Lott's 8/20 blog entry he writes: There is a pretty obvious reason why these guys have choosen to publish their work in nonrefereed publications. Despite their continuing claims to the press, Ayres and Donohue's own papers do NOT provide any statistically significant evidence that violent crimes increase (for a brief discussion see point 2 here). Even most of their own results show that violent crime rates decline after right-to-carry laws are passed. And this is his brief discussion: the bottom line is that Ayres and Donohue fail to discuss…

Avoiding roach motels

The latest issue of the International Journal of Digital Curation is out; if you're in this space and not at least watching the RSS feed for this journal, you should be. I was scanning this article on Georgia Tech's libraries' development of a data-curation program when I ran across a real jaw-dropper: One of the bioscientists asked the data storage firm used by one of the labs recently about the costs associated with accessing data from studies conducted a few years ago. The company replied, "you wouldnât want to pay us to do that. It would be less expensive to re-run your experiments." (p.…

Stepping away from the shiny

There is a certain kind of digital project that strikes terror and dismay into the hearts of digital preservationists everywhere. Not a one of us hasn't seen many exemplars. They make me myself feel sad and tired. They're projects that, no matter their scholarly or design merit, are completely unpreservable because they were built from unsustainable tools, techniques, and materials. What's worse, even a cursory examination with an eye to sustainability would have at least signaled a problem. It's not the unpreservability so much. It's the obliviousness that makes me hurt inside. For various…

Open Access Week: Profile of Sarah Shreeves

I have intentionally steered Book of Trogool away from open access. I still believe in it; I still work for it. Toward the waning days of Caveat Lector, however, it became clear that I was shedding more heat than light on the subject, so I made a conscious decision not to repeat that mistake here. This is, however, Open Access Week. I would feel rather churlish about ignoring that, especially since I was speaking yesterday for the occasion. What I'll do, then, is try to set a radical example I wish others in the open-access movement would follow: I'm going to celebrate a librarian. Her name…

Answers from the Experts: Dr. Sandra Martin on Hibernating Ground Squirrels

Photo by Bryan Roeder of a hibernating ground squirrel courtesy of Dr. Sandra Martin. I sent these great comments and questions about a recent blog on Dr. Sandra Martin's work with hibernating ground squirrels to the expert for her response: Halie J: I really found this article interesting. Knowing that animals gain muscle mass while they hibernate is fascinating and I'd like to know more about how that happens. I'm not sure it's a good thing they are losing body mass though because isn't it healthier to have more body mass then muscle mass? If fasting increases the antioxidant levels in the…

Experimental Biology 2011- Day 2

Day 2-Sunday The comparative physiology seminars and posters are all being presented today (Monday) and tomorrow. Since there will be a comparative physiology symposium today on fuel utililization and energy metabolism, I decided to attend the symposium held yesterday morning on energy metabolism and how it relates to the pathology, treatment and prevention of obesity and diabetes. This was a fantastic session that provided much information on how changes in energy metabolism impacts human health. Leading researchers in this field who gave presentations were: -Christopher Newgard, Duke…

Worldwide vertebrate status

The status of the world's vertebrates and conservation efforts were recently published in an article from Science Magazine. The study looked at various data covering the taxonomy, distribution, population, and threat status for 25,780 species of vertebrates (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, cartilaginous and bony fish). Also included in the analyses were potential threats to the species as well as conservation efforts. Species were categorized using a standard called the Red List set by the International Union for Conservation and Nature (IUCN). Threatened species include those in the…

Jet Fuel in Drinking Water:Pentagon Trumped EPA Analysis

Earlier this week, a special report in the Oregonian uncovered the recent efforts by the White House and Pentagon to stymie the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to recommend safe levels of perchlorate (a component in solid rocket fuel) for water. Alex Pulaski reports in "Pentagon pressured EPA on perchlorate" (part 2 of a 3 part series) that industry, financial, and political interests trumped the EPA's analysis (hat-tip to Joe DiGangi). Under pressure from the U.S. Defense Department and contractors facing potential cleanup costs in the billions of dollars, the Bush administration…

Pinker says: Don't bother disciplining the kids

I recently started reading Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker, an MIT psychologist, much lauded for his poetic approach to science writing. There can be no doubt, the man's a great writer. But he's also far smarter than the average bear (i.e., me) and I occasionally get lost in the dense thicket of his ideas. Still, I'm always drawn to his work, because he's willing to confront the scientific fallacies born from political-correctness. He doesn't shy away from the notion that there are inherent physiological differences between men and women, for instance--differences that may account for men's…

Climate change as a religion, and the more general use of "religion" as a term of insult

The newest way to slam a belief you disagree with--or maybe it's not so new--is to call it "religious." For example, "Market Fundamentalism is a quasi-religious faith that unregulated markets will somehow always produce the best possible results," and so is global warming ("The only difference between the religions right and the religious left, is that the religious right worships a man, and the religious left worships . . . Mother Nature"). As is evidence-based medicine ("as religious as possible . . . just another excuse, really--to sneer at people"). And then there's the religion of…

Does the Senate Finance Committee version of the health-care bill threaten to cripple evidence-based medicine?

A colleague sent me an article by Harry Selker and Alastair Wood about the rules for comparative effectiveness research ("evidence-based medicine") in the House and Senate versions of the health-care bill. The key point: The [Senate] Finance Committee bill also includes language requested by industry lobbyists (pages 1138-1139) that threatens to withdraw federal funding for 5 years from any investigator who publishes a report on research funded by the proposed institute that is not "within the bounds of and entirely consistent with the evidence." Determinations regarding such consistency…

"Mind affects body": what a new Science placebo study tells us

As I've written before, the placebo effect is a rather messy phenomenon. It usually refers to the difference in outcomes in a study that are not due to the intervention but to multiple other variables associated with being in a study. More colloquially, "placebo" often means a positive effect seen from the administration of a biologically inert substance. There's a bit of a buzz brewing about a recent brief communication in Science. The report used fMRI to look for physiologic correlates to pain responses that were attenuated by an inert substance. (For the purposes of this discussion, I'…

Swine flu: what you can and can't do

Influenza kills somewhere around 36,000 Americans every year (and perhaps twice that number, depending on the estimate). The novel A H1N1 ("swine") flu circulating this year has found a world population with little natural immunity (at least those of us under 65---older folks may have some immunity from previous pandemics). The attack rate is ridiculously high, but the virulence is thankfully not much worse than other seasonal influenza. Unfortunately, the virulence doesn't have to be higher to increase the total number of hospitalizations and deaths. Now, here's what won't help:…

Is this what we're fighting for? (Part II)

A few days ago, I wrote about Abdul Rahman, an Afghan man who converted to Christianity and was being prosecuted under Islamic Sharia law as an apostate, the penalty for which can be death. Indeed, the prosecutor was seeking the death penalty. It looks like someone finally came to their senses: KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said. The announcement came as U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faced mounting foreign pressure to free Abdul…

Miranda Devine writes rubbish about the Lancet Study

In today's Sydney Morning Herald Miranda Devine has a go at the Lancet study, writing The British medical journal The Lancet published a paper last October (timed deliberately, its authors admit, before the US presidential election), estimating that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected if the war had not happened. Since then, this figure is constantly, unquestioningly cited as an article of faith. And yet the research has been criticised enough by credible people to have doubt cast on what is, after all, only an estimate based on…

Rough Sheets and Smooth Tubules

Just a quick lab advertisement, my bay mate Yoko and my boss Tom have a review article in Cell about how morphological differences between various regions of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) are representative of functional differences. You can divide the ER into 3 morphological parts. - The Nuclear Envelope (which can be further divided into an outer nuclear membrane and inner nuclear membrane) - Peripheral ER sheets - Peripheral ER tubes As I've mentioned before, a main focus of our lab (the Rapoport lab) concerns the mechanism of how newly synthesized protein is translocated into the ER.…

Giving your mRNA a boost by increasing GC content

Just read this Abstract from PLoS: Mammalian genes are highly heterogeneous with respect to their nucleotide composition, but the functional consequences of this heterogeneity are not clear. In the previous studies, weak positive or negative correlations have been found between the silent-site guanine and cytosine (GC) content and expression of mammalian genes. However, previous studies disregarded differences in the genomic context of genes, which could potentially obscure any correlation between GC content and expression. In the present work, we directly compared the expression of GC-rich…

Open Letter to Canadian PM on Climate Control

Talking to some people about Dyson, I was told to take a look at this open letter in the National Post (the conservative national newspaper in Canada): Open Kyoto to debate Sixty scientists call on Harper to revisit the science of global warming. From the article: As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines, we are writing to propose that balanced, comprehensive public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation of the federal government's climate-change plans. This would be entirely consistent with your recent commitment to conduct a…

Caltech Postdoc Survey Parsed by Gender

So a couple of weeks ago, I wrote an entry about gender and science. I encourage you not only to read the post but also the comments. In that post I mentioned a 2003 Caltech postdoc survey that parsed some of the data by gender. Again I strongly recommend that you examine the raw data. Here are some interesting differences between Female and Male Postdocs from this 2003 survey: - Male postdocs are more likely to have children. - Male postdocs with children have their wives take care of the kids, female postdocs with children rely more on daycare. As a result, female postdocs spend more on…

Steering Moths with Remote-Controlled Vemon Injecting Metabolism Regulators

We've all seen articles detailing remote controling insects via electric pulse systems on their nervous centers. A paper that we uncovered from last year (thanks NVDH), however, details the beginnings of a new kind of remote controlled moth. Hold on to your hats, because this is about to get complicated. Basically, it all started when aeronautic engineers started looking closely at "insect inspired micro aircraft" as a complement to the large air vehicles that we currently employ. Large vehicles such as planes and helicopters are so massive that they are only minutely affected by changes in…

The Jellyfish are Watching

I study deep-corals (gorgonians mostly) but I am fascinated by all things cnidarian (sea anemones, hydroids, jellyfish, corals). These are suspension feeders that filter food from the water column, so I am also inevitably drawn to dabblings in physical oceanography, and I will try to post on these whenever I can. For now, though, I think I'll use my first post at the new Deep-Sea News to spill the beans on some old trickery. One thing you should know about DSN is that Craig keeps real strict rules on his definition of the deep-sea, so I work to find a way around this when something…

Ice-free Arctic by the year 2030

Spring is in the air. Spring Break is upon us, and the mind begins to wander... to the poles? Well, yes, because the Antarctic is calving enormous glaciers and researchers are predicting a seasonally ice-free Arctic by the year 2030. Break out the kayaks and suncreen. It's "Wild on, Nuuk." The news wire is full of stories about the rapid melting of the Wilkins Ice Shelf 1000 miles south of South America. If the warming trend continues, the folks on the Patagonian coast of Argentina will be watching icebergs float off their coast just like the Kiwis in the video below. Check it out. Can…

Will ocean acidification affect deep-water corals?

The global ocean has already taken up half of the atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by humans over the last 200 years, so the ongoing effects of climate change are dampened. That's right, you can thank the ocean for saving the planet so far. Without the ocean, what we would have? A place that looks a lot like Mars. Ocean chemistry is changing, though, ever so slightly. The global ocean pH is about 8.2, slightly basic, but pH is falling (~0.1) due to an increased concentration of hydrogen ions resulting from the chemical reaction of water molecules and carbon dioxide at the ocean surface.…

Fun Is Where You Find It: The Tune

Much has been written on the Refuge regarding what might be termed fine motor co-ordination experiments. That, and something to do with playing the drums in a manner that most drummers don't, you know, like backwards. Some might ask "What is the point of practicing a double paradiddle on a bunch of left-side mounted toms for a right handed drummer?" I guess one could be philosophical and say "Because it's there" but ultimately, doing something musical is what matters, at least to this little bonobo. Exercising your brain to perform unusual patterns at will simply gives the musician a larger…

America's Most Smartest Model - a new guilty pleasure

On many occasions, I have made apparent my predilection for viewing some of the worst crap televised. Ever. I land on it like a fly on fresh feces (and not just monkey feces), so this past weekend was no exception when a friend turned me on to America's Most Smartest Model, one of the plethora of reality TV shows that litter the airwaves, or cable lines as the case may be. This one is broadcast on VH1. Apparently, it's a hit among the science-geeks of my friend's Boston biotech crowd. The models, seven men and seven women, are not only judged for their Derek Zoolanderish qualities, but are…

So there's no hell. Children will invent one anyway.

I, like, really want to be one of the cool kids here on Science Blogs so I am reading The God Delusion by that Oxford don Dawkins. I ventured into what passes as campus town here in Einsteinville, and bought the last copy on the shelf at a proudly independent and somewhat self-congratulatory bookstore. After reading Dawkins' thesis that religion should not be accorded special respect, I remembered my stash of old National Lampoons (circa 1972-1977ish) mouldering away in the basement. Those NatLamPoo boys respected nothing, and I vaguely recalled that they certainly did not spare religion…

Friday Flower Porn: Sex Toys Gone Bad

Insects and plants co-evolved because insects are the marital aids of flowers. Magnolias entice beetles, apple blossoms seduce their bees, and orchids go to elaborate lengths to draw in horny wasps. But sometimes sex toys go bad and take eating out (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean, say no more!) to an extreme. For example, check out these gaudily striped, ribbed-for-her pleaure dildoscerpillars. Here's a dude munching away lustily. His little claws give that extra stimulation. A double headed toy for fast action: And here's the orgy shot. That parsley plant didn't have a…

It seems a waste of vodka

Somebody is angling for an Ig-Nobel, I think. Apparently, it's a Danish myth that you can absorb alcohol through your feet, so soaking your feet in a tub of spirits is a way to get drunk (they also mention that soaking your feet in beet juice will make your urine red, but they didn't test that one, unfortunately). So the hypothesis that one can get drunk through your feet was thoroughly tested. The participants abstained from consuming alcohol 24 hours before the experiment. The evening before the experiment they rubbed their feet with a loofah to remove skin debris. On the day of the…

Rush Limbaugh, racist pig and sterling representative of the modern Republican

It's hard to listen to this. It isn't just racist, it's stupid. I have to suspect that Limbaugh is back on the oxycontin. For a great communicator, he sure does have a knack for drawing out his discussion beyond what is necessary; pithy and cogent are not words to apply to Rush. Here's the relevant part of his talk. How many native americans were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war? … how many people have died since the wm arrived due to lung cancer, thanks to the Indian custom of smoking? Who are the real killers here? … Where are our reparations? The…

A Well-Spent Afternoon

I made myself a nice lunch. Diced two small yellow squash, sauteed them in butter till just tender, plated and topped with some minced parsley from my herb garden...mmmm. Sliced up a kohlrabi and ate that too. Iced decaf coffee. Ate outside on the back patio, cats lolling about with Papa Cardinal chirping fiercely at them (because Mama Cardinal and, I think, babies are in the nest in the nearby arborvitae. Don't worry, Papa - I keep an eye on the kitties, too, and never leave them unsupervised.) Took out the spent flower stalks from all the iris in the garden bed by the street. (Really am…

Eat Your Veggies!

Well, with a little pork. My mother used to make haluski, which is basically chopped cabbage fried in butter and served over boiled noodles. In the old days, the bubbas made their own noodles, but we used store-bought packaged. As I kid, I was not fond of haluski, but as my palate became more refined, I fell in love with the treasure that is fried cabbage. I like to eat haluski in the winter and so does Mr. Z. Lately we have been mixing up the basic, simple recipe. Tonight we got a little carried away. You could make this without bacon and it would still be delicious, but we started…

Witch Hazel at the Morris Arboretum

A week or so ago I went for a walk at the Morris Arboretum on a day with lovely weather, when it had warmed up just enough to make a winter walk delightful. I came around a bend in the path and encountered a cloudy vision of yellow - a witch hazel in full bloom. It's not the best picture, but mind you I took it with my cell phone. This closeup didn't come out too bad: Isn't that pretty? Witch hazel blossoms are such amazing things. And yet -why, why, why, I wondered, why is the Morris Arboretum's witch hazel in such a glory of bloom, while the best my witch hazel can do is produce a few…

Ryun tripped up, now tries to blame the refs

In a meeting with the Topeka Capital-Journal editorial board, former congressman Ryun blamed their coverage for his failed campaign: Ryun acknowledged that a Capital-Journal article in October about how well he knew Rep. Mark Foley, accused of improper conduct with House pages, was OK. Ryun was quoted as saying he had only recently discovered that Foley lived across the street from him. But the article also reported that the previous May, Ryun took part in the second annual "D Street Block Party," in which Ryun, Foley and three other representatives on the block opened their homes to…

Science education disparities

Most Students in Big Cities Lag Badly in Basic Science, and the reason seems largely based on economics and race: while Atlanta was below the median in the ranking of urban performance, its white fourth graders not only did better on the exam than did 86 percent of fourth graders across the country but also outperformed the nation’s white fourth graders as a whole, who reached only the 62nd percentile. At the same time, the city’s black fourth graders were in the bottom 22 percent of fourth graders nationwide — two points below the national average for blacks. I've seen studies (and can't…

Political manipulation of science: why elections matter

A series of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act: show that [deputy assistant Secretary of the Interior Julie] MacDonald has repeatedly refused to go along with staff reports concluding that species such as the white-tailed prairie dog and the Gunnison sage grouse are at risk of extinction. Career officials and scientists urged the department to identify the species as either threatened or endangered. MacDonald is a civil engineer by training, and does not have direct power to approve or reject petitions for listing a species. Instead, she applied pressure to the experts…

Not a lobotomy pact, either

As the Senate makes Bush's torture bill walk the plank, the New York Times reviews Not a Suicide Pact by Richard A. Posner: the positions he takes in this volume will not only fuel his own controversial reputation but also underscore just how negotiable constitutional rights have become in the eyes of administration proponents, who argue that the dangers of terrorism trump civil liberties. The very language Judge Posner uses in this shrilly titled volume conveys his impatience with constitutional rights…. He … declares that the absence of an Official Secrets Act — which could be used to…

Friday Find: Vole edition

Voles are among the most abundant mammals in North America, but most people have never actually seen one. There's a native vole species found pretty much anywhere from the Arctic into Mexico. There are a couple dozen species in North America, and about twice as many in the Old World. These fuzzy beasts are one species I study (this Meadow Vole, Microtus pennsylvanicus, was at a rest stop in Massachusetts), and I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment expressed in by the author of a recent review of vole genetics: "Nobody has posters of voles on their wall," said J. Andrew DeWoody,…