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A Labelled-Line Code for Numbers in the Monkey PFC

How the brain codes numbers is a challenging problem. We know that certain parts of the brain must code numbers because they are involved in numerical calculation. Some of them -- such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC) -- are also involved in the calculation of reward, so it would be good if we knew how numerical rewards were encoded. Neider and Merten address this issue of neural encoding of numbers in a recent paper in the Journal of Neuorscience. In the paper, they trained monkeys to respond to different numbers of cues in a delayed response task while they were recording from their…

Mr Lynch Goes To Washington

I’m finally back from spending a few days in DC - my second trip to the city in the past two weeks. I was there to receive the CASE/Carnegie Professor of the Year award for Arizona. The award - presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education - is the only national award that recognizes professors for their commitment to undergraduate education and mentoring. I was deeply, deeply, honored to be counted among the four national award winners and the forty state winners, especially as the nomination comes from your…

Olbermann on Bush - "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

It is to our deep national shame--and ultimately it will be to the President's deep personal regret--that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies--or even question their effectiveness or execution--to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present. Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so--the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, "a media campaign to…

Ear Infections: How's This For Poetic Justice?

Yeah, I have an ear infection (otitis media). So, why not take this opportunity to describe what an ear infection is, why it hurts, and what you can do about it. Otitis media literally means "middle ear inflammation," but it really refers to the build-up of infected fluid in the spaces in the middle ear, behind the ear drum, which are usually filled with air. This causes pressure to accumulate in this space, which translates to pain and the feeling of "ear fullness." The pressure can distort the ear drum slightly, which also causes pain and a reduced ability to hear in that ear. Children get…

A Holiday Post about Lying

My suspicion is that many of you went home for the holidays, and my suspicion is that many of you were not entirely honest with your relatives while you were there. While it is not my intention to encourage this behavior -- I, of course, am totally honest all of the time ;) -- you are not alone. Here is a great article from the NYTimes about the prevalence of lying: Much evidence suggests that we humans, with our densely corrugated neocortex, lie to one another chronically and with aplomb. Investigating what they called "lying in day-to-day life," Bella DePaulo, now a visiting professor of…

Injectable Bone

Here is a cool idea. Researchers in Britain have come up with injectable bone: "Injectable bone is the first delivery system for stem cells and growth factors that forms a material with the strength of a bone," said Robin Quirk, a pharmacist and co-founder of RegenTec -- the University of Nottingham, In England, spin-off company commercialising the technology. ... Quirk said he hopes that injectable bone might one day reduce or eliminate the need for bone-grafts to repair skeletal defects and fractures -- which often require painful invasive surgery. Not only does the technique reduce the…

Should everyone take vitamins?

Over at the NYTimes Well blog they have a really good summary of studies about vitamins and improvements to health. Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get from foods usually are adequate to prevent vitamin deficiency, which is rare in the United States. That said, some extra vitamins have proven benefits, such as vitamin B12 supplements for the elderly and folic acid for women of child-bearing age. And calcium and vitamin D in women over 65 appear to protect bone health. But many people gobble down large doses of vitamins…

The Astonishing Irrelevance of our Marijuana Control Policy

John Tierney reports this shocking revelation: our marijuana control doesn't work and no one -- particularly the government -- wants to admit it. Now that the first five years' results are available, the campaign can officially be called a failure, according to an analysis of federal drug-use surveys by Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. The prevalence of marijuana use (as measured by the portion of the population that reported using it in the previous month) declined by 6 percent, far short of the 25-percent goal, and that decline was…

Not just Sally Ride

I had never heard of the Women in Space Program before, but apparently, after the Soviets sent Valentina Tereshkova into space, there was actually an effort to train American women as astronauts. The participants of the Women in Space Program experienced tremendous success. "Nineteen women enrolled in WISP, undergoing the same grueling tests administered to the male Mercury astronauts," Brandon Keim wrote in 2009. "Thirteen of them -- later dubbed the Mercury 13 -- passed 'with no medical reservations,' a higher graduation rate than the first male class. The top four women scored as highly as…

Circadian and social cues regulate sodium channel trafficking in electric fish

SEVERAL hundred species of fish have evolved the ability to generate electric fields, which they use to navigate, communicate and home in on prey. But this ability comes at a cost - the electric field is generated continuously throughout life, so consumes a great deal of energy, and it can also attract predators which are sensitive to it. Electrogenic fish species therefore utilize various strategies to save energy and to minimize the likelihood of being detected. Some generate irregular pulses of electrical discharges whose rate can be modulated; others can also modulate the strength of the…

Christopher Wren & the architecture of the brain

The current issue of Nature contains an interesting article about Sir Christopher Wren's contribution to neuroanatomy, by art historians Martin Kemp and Nathan Flis of Oxford University. The article focuses on the anatomical illustrations produced by Wren for Thomas Willis's 1664 book Cerebri Anatome (The Anatomy of the Brain). This was a landmark publication in the history of neurology, not least because of Wren's detailed and accurate figures, which were among the very first modern images of brain anatomy. Even so, this aspect of Wren's work was overshadowed by his architectural designs,…

WTF, NatGeo?

Oh, it's another crappy television show put on by a purported science-positive network that I completely missed. National Geographic ran a show called "Chasing UFOs" on Friday, and since about the only television I ever watch any more is commercial-free movies on Netflix, I wasn't tuned in. Fortunately, Robert Sheaffer did, and found it "lurid and sensational". A fellow named Kacey Simmons claimed to have seen UFOs in a particular forested area, so the UFO Chasers decide to go there to check it out. At night, of course. So they attach themselves to absurd-looking night vision equipment with…

At Columbia Journalism Review, a Call for a Framing Beat

At the Columbia Journalism Review, managing editor Brent Cunningham argues for a new journalistic beat that covers the obscuring uses of language and messaging in politics. The essay is part of a special issue devoted to "Orwell in '08." The benefits of a "rhetoric and framing" beat would be obvious and sorely needed, as he asks: What if on 9/11 our major media outlets had employed reporters whose sole job it was to cover the rhetoric of politics--to parse the language of our elected leaders, challenge it, and explain the thinking behind it, the potential power it can have to legitimize…

DC "PlaceBlog" Event: NSF Talk on Evolutionary Leap from Fish to Land Animals

Today I am launching a new regular feature where I will spotlight DC events of interest for readers of Framing Science who live, work, and play here in the Beltway. While Framing Science covers mostly national and international issues, with the site's readership spanning the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia, the "DC Events" feature emphasizes the "place-blog" nature of this site. DC is perhaps the world capital for science, public health, and environment-related strategic communication activities, with many leading institutions and organizations focused on the topic. So I am hoping that…

Unrepentant vandalism in BC

Tomorrow, I'll be in Kamloops, British Columbia. The godless have been rampaging across that province, what with this evil conference where atheists will be actually encouraged to speak, and a bus campaign in Kelowna and Kamloops and Victoria, where innocent eyes will be assaulted with vile atheist propaganda, with slogans like "There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". Then, of course, I'll be descending from the skies like a wrathful angel, striding across the landscape with my eyes afire, crushing the pious with my righteous fury, while occasionally being mistaken…

ABCs of JML

I'm procrastinating a little as, like Janet, I have a stack of grading staring at me. The good news is that two of my three classes this semester are over, the bad is that there is still grading to be done, along with end of semester administrivia. Still, two weeks should see it all over and me hanging with a buddy in San Diego for a few days. So, to aid my procrastination, I'll do the ABC meme thingie that Janet and RPM have already completed. See below the fold. Accent: Irish. It used to be a lot stronger, though compared to many Irish accents it was always kind of neutral. Teaching in the…

A win in Kitzmiller v Dover

Quick post as I have to head out for the day but will post again later... Judge Jones has found for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v Dover, holding that ID is not science and that the ID policy violates both the purpose and effect prongs of the Lemon test. See here, here, and here. Legal buffs can read the 139 page decision here (pdf). From the conclusion: In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents. Both…

"Frankenstein Was Here": Synthetic Biology as Graffiti

Earlier today, I took a walk in the blustery winds of Washington DC with Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist from MIT. We had just been talking with Congressional staffers about the promise and perils of being able to manipulate life. There was too much to fit into the ninety minute session, and so our conversation spilled out on the street. And one of the things we talked about was the question of whether you can put your signature on a living thing. The question came up thanks to Craig Venter and his team, who announced last week that they had synthesized the entire genome of a microbe. The…

An Adequate poem

This poem from the EvC Forum, "Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce," tickled my fancy, so here it is. All credit goes to the author, who goes by the name Dr Adequate. Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce "I asserted — and I repeat — that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only…

A Tale of Two Quagmires

Bill Moyer's Journal - LBJ's Road to War, Part 1Novemeber 20, 2009Part 1 / Part 2 Bill Moyers has this brilliant piece of journalism pointing out the similar difficulties faced by President Johnson in Vietnam and President Obama in Afghanistan. Quite obviously there are important differences, but the basic issues are the same. Both inherited an unpopular war and were pressured by the Joint Chiefs and the Republican hawks to commit further troops to what everyone acknowledged could not result in victory. Political calculations took precedence over strategic wisdom. In both wars the goal…

Flying over the Himalayas

Image of bar headed geese in flight from John Downer/Nature Picture Library/Corbis I listened to a really interesting story on NPR this morning about new discoveries regarding the flight patterns of bar-headed geese. These birds are known for their incredible ability to fly over the Himalayas on their annual migration to central Asia. Until now, it was often assumed that the birds reached a specific altitude and then simply maintained it for the duration of their migratory route. A new study published on Thursday in Science questioned this assumption. Dr. Doug Altshuler (Zoologist,…

Contrary to Lott's claims, Cummings' study has been replicated

Earlier I observed that Lott had claimed that a paper by Cummings et al that found a significant decline in juvenile accidental gun deaths following the introduction of safe storage laws was widely discredited because the researchers never factored in that accidental gun deaths have been falling everywhere for decades. When I pointed out that their paper clearly stated that they had controlled for national trends by using fixed effects, Lott responded with: We had been unable to replicate their claimed results using fixed effects and the only way we could get…

Comps day 1

Communication, a major area, so 4 hours to write 2 essays, in a row, without a break. (sure I could get up and get water, etc., but I didn't want to waste time). I got there pretty early, which was good. First thing, had to get someone to open the door. The student worker at the desk had no clue what I was asking her. The proctor (the associate dean) came through with keys and asked if I had checked to see that everything was set up - I hadn't because I couldn't get in. She let me in - no computer, no printer. No IT person (she's on vacation this week). Trotted down a couple of flights of…

I believe....

I believe in libraries and librarians. I think it was Dana Roth who posted this quote to a listserv: "To ask why we need libraries at all, when there is so much information available elsewhere, is about as sensible as asking if roadmaps are necessary now that there are so very many roads." ~Jon Bing, Professor of IT Law, Univ. of Oslo I hear this all the time - why do we need libraries? why do we need librarians? If it weren't for accreditation, we would get rid of this place... Young kids today, they can find whatever they need on the web. I can find it myself - why just the other day,…

The suffocating Vedic flatulence

I'd love to see us stop the suffocating Vedic flatulence. Among my country men and women, there's a tendency to inflate the past beyond reasonable limits. If someone can draw a thread from Vedic literature, Vedic mathematics, Vedic astronomy, Vedic quantum mechanics and Vedic levitation it's considered a mark of distinction - or so it is assumed. So, let me call it what it is: Bullshit. I am not an iconoclast. Past casts a long shadow. Without respect for history, without empathy for those who lived before us, we'll never understand the present. However, getting irrationally and romantically…

Biophemera on civility and tensions among blogospheria

  When Jessica Palmer gave a talk at the "Unruly Democracy" conference last month, she gave what appears, from her after-the-fact blog post excerpted here, to have been a semi-contrarian take on blogospheric civiility: What I did endeavor to convey in my brief talk was the difficulty of blogging on interdisciplinary borders, where science meets art and the humanities. My big concern? While individual blogs often have communities who are internally civil and share norms and history, when you move from blog to blog, those norms and history break down. There are no universal norms in the…

To boost or not to boost, or how our H1N1 vaccines will leave millions naked

My latest piece for Slate examines the unsettling consequences of the United States' choice of swine flu vaccines. The good news about these vaccines is that, to judge by the first vaccine trial results, published last week, they appear to work fast, safely â and at about a half to a quarter of the doses that the CDC expected. This means we effectively have about two to four times as many vaccines as we had figured we would. Since we ordered 195 million doses, we could vaccinate damn near the whole country. If the fast-tracking efforts continue to work and the flu peaks closer to Christmas…

Mona Lisa sheep and sheepdog art, explained

Were the makers of that sheepherding-art video I put in an earlier post (and further below in this post as well) pulling the wool over our eyes? Can you really get sheep to do that stuff? My sister Ann, who sent me the link to start with and who has spent some time training sheepdogs and watched others do so, says Yes: I think they're being true to "extreme sheepherding". Watch the tiny dots in the Pong game and you'll get a good idea; the tiny dots are the sheepdogs. The walking sheep is speeded up, but yes, it's great sheepdogs and great shepherds, hence the "extreme sheepherding". From…

Angell on drug money: Just say No

Marcia Angell makes it plain: The fact that drug companies pay prescribers to be "educated" underscores the true nature of the transaction. Students generally pay teachers, not the reverse. The real intent is to influence prescribing habits, through selection of the information provided and through the warm feelings induced by bribery. Prescribers join in the pretence that drug companies provide education because it is lucrative to do so. Even free samples are meant to hook doctors and patients on the newest, most expensive drugs, when older drugs -- or no drug at all -- might be better for…

Score: Romantics, 1 - Cynics, 0

Well, we might not be able to prove 'love at first sight', but hopeless romantics out there can defend their belief in long-lasting true love - physiologically. Cynics and single girls tend to argue that love fades in a relationship, and married couples don't really feel the same way about each other as they once did. Well, that's not necessarily true. A new study, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, has found that couples that have been together for a long time and claim to be "madly in love" still actually are, at least as far as brain scans can tell. Most…

Could 'The Happening' happen?

The plot of M. Night Shyamalan's movie 'The Happening' is that plants mysteriously start releasing a neurotoxin that causes people to kill themselves. Originally I thought it was too ridiculous, but maybe, just maybe, it is possible. A new study by by Drs. Michael Poulter and Hymie Anisman and colleagues in the October 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry found that the DNA of people who committed suicide is altered epigenetically compared to people who died suddenly of natural causes. Let me explain. The human genome has tens of thousands of genes, but not all are expressed in every cell. To…

Evolution in action!

One of the biggest claims of those who disagree with the 'theory' of evolution is that we can't see it happening. Therefore (so they say) it isn't any more valid than other 'theories' of how species came to exist. You know what I say to that? Spend some time watching cichlids in Lake Victoria. That's right, folks - we've got evolution in action. Species actually splitting. It's some cool stuff. Here's how it works: The deeper you go, the darker water gets, but there isn't just less light. Light is filtered out by wavelength, meaning certain colors can only penetrate so deeply into the water…

New Book: Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments?

Here begins another new series at Omni Brain. This one is called, Review copies of books Steve gets in the mail from publication companies, like Prometheus Books, that love bloggers, Long enough title for you? I actually don't have time to read anywhere near all of these books so I'm going to give you the Amazon shtick ;) These books really do look interesting and are definitely worth checking out! If you've read them please let us know what you think in the comments section. Our first book is... Science and Ethics: Can Science Help Us Make Wise Moral Judgments? Book Description: In a…

Politics Tuesday: A Red Tide State of Emergency

Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org If you were wondering why we've been pushing red tide legislation on Capitol Hill, check out this story about Nassau County, Florida declaring a state of emergency due to a severe outbreak of red tide along the northeast Florida coast. It got so bad that the Today Show even talked about the outbreak as an extreme weather event on October 1. Here's an excerpt from the story: On Sept. 26, the Nassau County Health Department announced water samples had tested positive for Florida red tide, Karenia brevis, a large grouping of microscopic algae that…

The dangers (?) of public funding of drug trials

Ezra Klein relays Jim Manzi's worry that public funding of drug trials exposes you to the inverse problems of the current system. Namely, "bureaucrats and politicians tend to have enormous career risk from an unsafe drug introduction, but almost none from a rejected drug that would have been effective had it been introduced...[it] would likely result in fewer new drugs being brought to market." There's a bit to this. But it misses something important: The biggest problem with the present system may not be that deeply unsafe drugs are approved but that too many drugs that carry modest safety…

From the Archives: Why Do Women Cry? Obviously, It's So They Don't Get Laid

If you didn't already know because, by chance, you missed my tweets, posts, and facebook updates, there is a science blogging contest going on RIGHT NOW. The 3 Quarks Daily Science Blogging Prize is currently narrowing down the top 20 posts from 87 nominees. To get through the gauntlet, a post has to get enough votes. Rather than remind you again to vote for Observations of a Nerd, I figured I'd show you why you should. Over the next 24 hours, I'll be reposting the three posts in the competition in case you missed them the first time. If you like them, and haven't already, cast your vote…

Almost Genius

In my strolls around the internet, I have found a few things that are so awesome, they're not. The Sharky Tea Infuser Duh-nuh. Duh-nuh. Duh-nuh Duh-nuh DUH-NUH - it's the Sharky Tea Infuser! Designer Pablo Matteoda from Argentina created the ocean-inspired infuser for a contest through Designboom.Com. The idea is that you add loose lead tea to the uber-cool-looking infuser, set in it hot water, and watch it bleed brew. The air chamber created by the fin keeps the infuser on the surface, so once your tea is brewed you can easily pull it out. While totally neat looking, it's not quite genius…

Self-healing car paint? Ok, I'm in.

Who hasn't walked to their car after getting groceries or the like and suddenly found a nice, large scratch where you're fairly sure there wasn't one before? Then you think do you spend $50 on some random infomercial product claiming to fix scratches of every color, get the thing repainted, or just live with it? In my case, of course, the third is the obvious option. What can I say? I'm cheap, and my car is instantly recognizable for its terrible paint job (let me tell you, black + Florida weather = bad idea). But what if my car's paint could fix itself? That would be worth dropping a huge…

This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite

If you've ever watched a National Geographic or Discovery Channel special on the deep sea, you know just about everything that lives in the dark part of the ocean is a Sci-Fi writers dream. The species are so diverse and strange that even the best thought-out aliens hardly hold a candle to the bizarre life that lives in the deep. They have fish with lighted lures, strange, colorless creatures, octopuses that resemble elephants, and, of course, this week's parasite. The Cookie Cutter Shark, Isistius brasiliensis Imagine you're in the deep. You look above you, and contrasting the very, very…

You're not as hot as you think.

Sure, no one wants to think they're ugly. Statistically some of us have to be, but no one wants to think they're below average. But most of us, save a few that Carly Simon might have sung about, think we're pretty accurate about how we look. We know if we're a 2 or a 10 - whether we like to admit it or not. Or, do we? An ingenious study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PDF) looked at how well people knew their own face. They took neutral photos of people and morphed their images to different degrees to either be more "attractive" (like a composite face) or "less…

Dueling Halls of Fame

This is an awesome coincidence. The availablity of all those quantifiable metrics extracted by Google Books has fueled the establishment of a Science Hall of Fame, which lists scientists by an objective measure of their fame, the frequency with which they are cited in books. It was announced in Science, where they also introduced a new unit of measure, the milli-Darwin. To be able to compare scientists to one another, it is helpful to have a standard unit of fame. I proposed one that would make this kind of fame easy to comprehend: the Darwin. It is defined as the average annual frequency…

Are Men Necessary? "Ask a Science Blogger" Wants To Know!

Ask a Scienceblogger asks: " What's the deal with "virgin birth" (parthenogenesis)?" Many people, when they hear "virgin birth", think of the Virgin Mary. But all good Catholics know that Mary, Queen of Heaven, is not a true example of parthenogenesis. Really - do you imagine that the Catholic church would let a mere female lay sole claim to giving birth to the God-child? God had to send his "Holy Spirit" down to help Mary along and cuckold poor Joseph. Mary may be the Handmaid of the Lord and the Vessel of Selfless Service but no pope is going to give her sole credit for Jesus. No,…

Gender Equity and the Poor Disadvantaged Men

Young Female Scientist asks her readers to rank their undergraduate and graduate institutions on a scale of 1 to 10, "10 being the most egalitarian and synergistic even with conflicting opinions from strong personality types (probably doesn't exist), 1 being the most sexist, demeaning, lawsuit-deserving place in the world". She wants people to name names - not their own, but that of their institutions. In the four comments she got, nobody named names. Apparently people - women? - do not feel safe enough to call out their departments and institutions on their sexism. What if someone…

The Madame Curie of Machine Tools

Penny Richards wrote via email to tell me that Saturday, November 25 was Kate Gleason's birthday. Gleason (1865-1933) was the first woman admitted to full membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, in the 1910s (she represented ASME at an international conference in Germany in 1930). She was also the daughter of Irish immigrants, a bank president, an executive at her family's gear-planing company, and a lifelong suffragist. At Rochester Institute of Technology, the Kate Gleason College of Engineering is named in her honor, and displays a bust of Gleason at its entrance.…

Best Science TV Show EVER!

So, you ask us bloggers this week... ...What's the best science TV show of all time?... For real-life science shows, I guess I would have to pick NOVA. This is because Mr. Zuska, who is not a scientist or an engineer, will actually sit and watch Nova and become absorbed in the program and occasionally ask me questions about what they are talking about. He once watched an entire program on string theory called The Elegant Universe. He even watched part of it a second time. I watched it with him but I had to cover my eyes when the little vibrating string graphics were on the screen because…

Birthday Quotes 3: Darwin on the nuts-and-bolts of good fieldwork practice

On at least one occasion, Charles Darwin took the time to share some of the little details involved in conducting geological fieldwork. He was one of a number of noted scientists who contributed to a book that was edited by John Herschel, and which had been commissioned by the Lords of the Admiralty. This book, A Manual of Scientific Enquiry, was designed to serve as a guide that the Royal Navy's medical officers could use when they were acting as naturalists. Darwin wrote the chapter on geology, which provided scientific novices with some of the things that many other geologists (both…

Of White Whales: or, The More Things Change

Here's a quote for you. It's one of the ones that should make you wonder whether you should laugh or cry: And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this: "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. "WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN." That, if you haven't guessed from the name in the middle line,…

Today's Bob Jones "Biology for Christian Schools" Howlers

I've been continuing to put some time into criticizing Michael Behe's expert report on the creationist texts involved in the California Creationism Case. This is a slow process, partly because I'm also working on other projects and partly because it's difficult to read the Bob Jones "Biology for Christian Schools" text without encountering a range of unpleasant side effects. I've been fighting the increased blood pressure and the nausea, and soldiering on. Along the way, I've encountered some real gems that I thought I'd share with you. Today, I'm going to give you two quotes: one on…

Bush and the ESA - Time to get Congressional Oversight

According to widespread media (and blog) reports, the Bush administration is about to release a set of administrative rules changes that would "gut" the Endangered Species Act. Actually, "gut" really isn't descriptive enough to do justice to what they are getting geared up for. They are getting set to completely eviscerate the act. Basically, their plan is to take the thing, slit it up the middle, dump all the internal organs onto the ground and jump up and down on them. Then they're going to stuff the carcass of the Endangered Species Act with straw, and drag it around with them in a…

The "banning" of Pandas - A final (I hope) update

As most of you probably know, there's been a bit of discussion over the question of whether or not the pro-Intelligent Design textbook Of Pandas and People qualifies as a "challenged" or "banned" book as a result of the ruling in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover lawsuit. A few things have happened since my first two posts about the "banning." In this post, I'm going to summarize the recent events, and explain what I've learned about the ALA's views on this situation. On the 26th of September, William Dembski posted a brief article on the Uncommon Descent weblog mentioning that "a colleague" had…