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Make Your Own Hurdles

No, not the kind used in track and field (although if you really want to jump over them I won't stop you), I mean the sort used to keep livestock in without breaking the budget on fencing. They look cool, and now is the perfect time of year to prune out branches and hurdle making materials. We use low ones to keep chickens out of spots we don't want, and have a few that we use for moving livestock to create chutes - but I'm working on more. As long as it is time to prune trees and cut wood anyway, you might as well make some fence as well! Two tutorials, first a written one here from the…

Fake Plant Botany

Great article from "The Annals of Improbable Research" on "Artificae Plantae: The Taxonomy, Ecology and Ethnobotany of Simulacra." It is about time someone did this research: A previously unacknowledged plant family of significant economic importance plants has been flourishing around us for many years. The fact that this immense and diverse family has been heretofore ignored by most botanists is astonishing--its members are found worldwide in nearly every society. This family is more than a botanical curiosity. It is a scientific conundrum, as the taxa: 1.lack genetic material, 2.appear…

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Summer 2009

Some highlights from the IEEE's very fine Technology and Society Magazine, v29i2. You'll need a subscription to the magazine to access it on the IEEE's site. Those in academic settings might want to especially take a look at Communication technology, emergency alerts, and campus safety. Innovation as energy policy for the world [Policy Perspective] by Andrews, C.J. Wireless nomad: Pioneer in an urban residential environment by Wong, M.A. K-Net and Canadian Aboriginal communities by Fiser, A.; Clement, A. Communication technology, emergency alerts, and campus safety by Gow, G.A.; Mcgee, T.;…

Linkedy Links XIII

Playing catch-up here: Science is Hard - Chad's take Waiting for the Revolution - David Gross's take Why Open Access Makes No Sense - I think Robin Osborne is actually saying something other than social network reactions thought he was saying, but I am not saying he is right. The End of Kepler - Chris Tinney's take. This is the week they try to jostle the Kepler reaction wheels back to life. Long shot. Worth trying. Build a Better Solar System Something Seems Wrong With This Tenure Math MOOA! Ahahahahahahaha. No. Seriously. Why not? Why pre-School Shouldn't Be Like School Better Conference…

linkedy links II

More random topics that crossed my path: bureaucratic entropy: "...In 1987, except at private research universities, where administrators outnumbered tenure-track faculty, colleges had approximately as many tenure-track faculty as full-time administrators. By 2008 there were more than twice as many administrators as tenure-track faculty at all types of institutions." Cuts loom for US science. Wise and Shine - UC Berkeley startup providing machine learning and big data services. Significant astro and time domain data analysis group. High Speed Trading goes berserk - morbidly fascinating…

Vanity, Vanity

Even though the Vanity Fair Green Issue features an excellent piece on Monsanto (which, in addition to its long history of toxic contamination, now has a reputation for ruthless legal campaigns against small farmers), we here at The Pump Handle were most excited to see this sentence on the book review page: In Doubt is Their Product (Oxford), David Michaels calls out the corporationsâyou'll recognize themâthat bankroll lobbyists and unethical scientists to attack the factual evidence that their products, such as asbestos, lead, and tobacco, are deadly. Weâve just posted the Introduction of…

NYT Applauds Obama's Choice of Michaels

Today's New York Times editorials include a ringing endorsement of President Obama's choice of David Michaels to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: David Michaels, a research professor and occupational health expert at the George Washington University School of Public Health, seems just the right man to steer the agency back toward an emphasis on protecting workers after eight years of lax oversight and favoritism to industry under the Bush administration. Although we here at GW were pleasantly surprised to see this editorial today, it's not really so surprising. The New…

I'm not the only weirdo on my block

In case you too have an obsessive fascination with our home on the prairie, Morris, Minnesota, there is another blog based in my neighborhood, and the latest talk is about all the construction going on. College Avenue, the street running in front of my house, is being ripped up and reconstructed, a process that's supposed to go on for a few months. Anyway, there's a strange fabric fence that's been put up between us and the university, which the precocious young man living near us has decided is a Physicist Fence, to protect us from wandering physicists, presumably drawn by the sound of heavy…

Ken Miller weighs in on Expelled

Guess what? He didn't like it, nosir. "Expelled" is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our…

Million comment party

We're still working on a Michigan meetup to celebrate our millionth comment. Ed Brayton, who has to trek over from the west side of the state, has suggested a more central location (not unlike early Michiganders). Rather than SE Mich, there is some interest in Lansing or East Lansing. If forced to trek up there, I'd certainly vote for El Azteco, but if Ed's willing to plan it, I'm fine with it. If there is considerably more interest for SE Mich rather than EL, please let me or Ed know. I'm also going to see if I can round up any bloggers who have michigan roots or may be in the area---…

Propaganda

Here and in other venues, we've written quite a bit about the tactics used in the anti-vaccination movement (or as I like to call it, the "infectious disease promotion movement (IDPM)"). Let's examine some less subtle tactics. The disease promoters are good---very good. Take this, for instance: From a public health department: An alternative suggested by disease-promoters: It's hard for the rational among us to compete with this garbage. We can talk until we're blue in the face (no pun intended) about how SIDS and vaccines have nothing to do with each other, but once the propaganda…

Things that suck about medical school

My least favorite thing? Being constantly ill. Of the eight weeks or so I've been back, I've been sick for about four of them. I managed to get by the first three or four weeks cold-free through neurotic hand-washing before the current cold circulating the hospital got a whack at me. It was a pretty obnoxious cold and I still was just getting over it when I got hit by this second cold, a gift, I believe, from a friend working on a pediatrics rotation. This one actually floored me with a fever of over 101 and now I'm finally coming down below a hundred. And you know what the real…

Two links for you

So nothing special for today, I'm too busy with meatworld, but you might enjoy these two links: Teen sex has been wronged by a puritanical society - it appears teens who have sex earlier are less likely to become delinquents (however I suspect it ignores that they are also more likely to get knocked up). This makes sense to me though. Why bother with drugs, crime, and other delinquent behavior when you've got sex? Second we have news that Chiropracters might also be useless for back pain. Ouch, now that hurts. The last thing left to chiropractors that seemed to have any validity (…

Denialists' Deck of Cards: Responsibility's Good, Except for Us

This pair should sound familiar. Industry lobbyists love the idea of individual responsibility. And so they will argue that individuals should be responsible for addressing a problem (paired with the 4 of Clubs or the 6 of Clubs). But in other contexts, accountability goes out the window. They need total immunity from lawsuits. Many technology companies have sought and obtained immunity for failure of anti-terrorism technologies. "'The unintended consequence of even a single failure in a well-intended system or device we might provide could result in significant legal exposure that…

Bush Nominates New Surgeon General

President Bush has nominated Dr. James W. Holsinger, Jr. to be U.S. Surgeon General. Here's the short item from the Associated Press: President Bush has nominated a Kentucky cardiologist who is interested in fighting childhood obesity to be the next surgeon general, the White House announced. The nominee, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kentucky, has led Kentuckyâs health care system, taught at several medical schools and served more than three decades in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1993 as a major general. Head over to Effect Measure for…

The intersection of HIV and religion

To use my earlier post on stigma as a jumping-off point, there was a session today titled Religion and New Leadership: the Challenge to Deliver (video available at the link). Speakers included religious leaders from a variety of religious and cultural backgrounds, discussing the role they play in working to control the AIDS epidemic. It was noted that churches haven't completely come to the reality that people living with HIV/aids aren't just a "they;" but that they're also members of their churches, mosques, synagogues, etc. It was emphasized that this sense of people living with HIV…

In line with the zoonotic disease posts...

Joseph over at Immunoblogging has two posts on Mycobacterium bovis and gives a potential answer to Dave S.'s question here. In post one, Joseph notes (after the fold): It's interesting to note that Mycobacterium bovis, which infects farmed animals dates back roughly to the time we domesticated animals proving that for a change, we gave one of our pathogens to an animal and not the other way around. In part two, Joseph discusses mycobacteria in general, and why M. bovis is a threat to farm economies. Part three discusses the role badgers play (or don't) in the transmission of M. bovis to…

Belated news of import

Guess I should've held off an extra day on this post. Yesterday was blog against sexism day. Lots of excellent posts linked there if you're looking to spend several hours getting depressed, then pissed off, then ready to go out and kick some as over the state of affairs and the treatment of women in the 21st century. Locally, Janet shares some of her experiences. In other "can you believe this crap is still happening in 2006?" news, Orac notes that the offices of the Holocaust History Project were attacked by arsonists (more details here). This latest outrage comes after an extended…

Tet Zoo picture of the day # 14

Here is a cool photo, taken by either Steve Salisbury or Dino Frey, and previously published in a short article of mine on crocodilians. Initially I was going to use a really neat photo I have of a Cuban crocodile Crocodylus rhombifer leaping vertically from the water to grab a dead hutia, but then I became unsure about copyright and opted for something else. The photo featured here is of an Indopacific/Estuarine/Saltwater crocodile C. porosus. Unlike other Crocodylus, C. porosus possesses twin longitudinal ridges running along the length of the snout, and it lacks postoccipital scutes. It…

Meta: Typekey Re-Enable for Comments

I've gotten complaints from a bunch of commenters about problems with comments getting thrown into the moderation queue by the spam filter. Things with too many links, or with certain text properties, were getting caught even though they are clearly not spam. In order to get around this, I've re-enable typekey authentication. You don't have to login via typekey to post comments - it's entirely voluntary. But you're welcome to if you want, and if you do, your posts will be almost guaranteed to get posted without being pushed into the mod queue. (If you write a post containing links to viagra-…

Mystery Bird: Zitting Cisticola, Cisticola juncidis

tags: Zitting Cisticola, Streaked Fantail Warbler, Cisticola juncidis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Zitting Cisticola, sometimes known as the Streaked Fantail Warbler,Cisticola juncidis, photographed at Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours] Image: Dan Logen, 20 January 2010 [larger view]. Nikon D300, 600 mm VR lens with 1.4 extender ISO 400, f/8, 1/1000 sec. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. This African mystery bird has the largest range of any of its congeners and its range…

Mystery Bird: Brant Goose, Branta bernicla

tags: Brant Goose, Brent Goose, Brant, Black Brant, Branta bernicla, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Brant Goose, also known as Brant or Brent Goose, and, on the west coast as the Black Brant, Branta bernicla nigricans, photographed in Moss Landing, California. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours] Image: Joseph Kennedy, 6 May 2010 [larger view]. Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. This lovely bird is found all along the west coast…

BP Fails Booming School 101

tags: BP Fails Booming School 101, Gulf oil spill, political commentary, humor, outrage, political commentary, teaching, oil spill boom, Gulf of Mexico, BP oil spill, British Petroleum, streaming video BP Fails Booming School 101, creating an environmental disaster and is failing to take the lead in cleanup. BP claims they "are prepared" to deal with such things as an oil spill -- if they are so prepared, then why is this happening? This video shows that, contrary to BP's lies about their preparedness, they actually are NOT prepared AT ALL. Unfortunately, our federal government is also…

EU Airspace Reboot (after Iceland Volcano Eruption)

tags: EU Airspace Reboot, Iceland Volcano Eruption, flightradar24, openstreetmap.org, itoworld.com, ideasintransit.org, streaming video This video is a visualization of the northern European airspace returning to full air traffic use after being closed due to volcanic ash. Due to varying ash density across Europe, the first flights can be seen in some areas on the 18th and by the 20th everywhere is open. There are a few gaps (erm, France) and no coverage over the Atlantic, but the picture is still clear. The flight data is courtesy of flightradar24.com and covers a large fraction of Europe.…

Mystery Bird: Pacific Golden-Plover, Pluvialis fulva

tags: Pacific Golden-Plover, Asian Golden-Plover, Eastern Golden-Plover, Pluvialis fulva, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Pacific Golden-Plover, also known as the Asian Golden-Plover or Eastern Golden-Plover, Pluvialis fulva, photographed on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, Midway Island, Hawai'i. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours] Image: Image: Joe Fuhrman, March 2010. I encourage you to purchase images from this professional photographer. This migratory bird that visits North America as well as countries on the other side of the Pacific Ocean shares a…

Reminder about that iPod Touch

Your greedy, grasping host would really like to snatch an iPod Touch from Eric Hovind, so once again I'm reminding you to click on this link — each click counts as a vote for me. And oh, boy, is Eric Hovind's latest argument a winner: the current level of the Colorado River is several thousand feet lower than the peak elevations of the Grand Canyon, therefore the river must have flowed uphill to cut the canyon when it was formed. I know a few seven year olds who could take that argument apart. Yeah, I know, it's cruel of me to send you over there to witness such awesome stupidity, but think…

OneNewsNow.com makes the most truly stupid polls

Would you believe what kind of inane question they're asking now? Do you believe you evolved from an ape-like creature? Yes - 7.10% No - 91.07% Unsure - 1.83% Gaaaah. I am an ape-like creature. My mother and father are ape-like creatures, as are my brothers and sisters and grandparents and distant relatives and ancient ancestors, going back tens of millions of years. And I'm proud of them all, every one of them, except for the lackwitted atavisms who squat in squalid ignorance at Christian news sites, congratulating each other on how their ancestry is only 6,000 years old…and every one…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

There are new articles in PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine and PLoS ONE today: Gender Dimorphism in Skeletal Muscle Leptin Receptors, Serum Leptin and Insulin Sensitivity: To determine if there is a gender dimorphism in the expression of leptin receptors (OB-R170, OB-R128 and OB-R98) and the protein suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) in human skeletal muscle, the protein expression of OB-R, perilipin A, SOCS3 and alpha-tubulin was assessed by Western blot in muscle biopsies obtained from the m. vastus lateralis in thirty-four men (age = 27.1±6.8 yr) and thirty-three women (age = 26.7±6.7…

Sausages being made

The horror…if you're at all squeamish, you may not want to read this article by an editor at a textbook publisher on how public school textbooks are made. If you're curious about why Texas has such an absurd weight in the world of textbooks, though, it will explain all. It's a system that needs to be fixed. The article has some interesting suggestions, too, although the plan — more modularity and flexibility in curriculum materials, and a move away from reliance the massive all-in-one tome — also has potential for abuse. (I'm picturing the creationists producing little, slim 'supplemental'…

Who Bears the Growing Cost of Science at Universities?

From EconPapers: Scientific research has come to dominate many American universities. Even with growing external support, increasingly the costs of scientific research are being funded out of internal university funds. Our paper explains why this is occuring, presents estimates of the magnitudes of start-up cost packages being provided to scientists and engineers and then uses panel data to estimate the impact of the growing cost of science on student/faculty ratios, faculty salaries and undergraduate tuition.We find that universities whose own expenditures on research are growing the most…

Why Study Science? (1955)

Thanks to reader Paul for this tip - what an amazing piece of history: an instructional movie from the Sputnik Era, explaining why one should study science. Many of the arguments have not changed since then, though the details of sciences and technologies used in the film are very different. The role of women is, well, so 1950s.... Found on Prelinger Archives (more information in the comments) and A/V Geeks: Family on last night of vacation speaks of stars & then of how study of science can help son & daughter make intelligent decisions on problems confronting them in world.…

Google Devalues Everything? Bwahahaha!

From TechDirt: This is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. Google doesn't devalue things it touches. It increases their value by making them easier to find and access. Google increases your audience as a content creator, which is the most important asset you have. It takes a special kind of cluelessness to claim that something that increases your biggest asset "devalues" your business. Thomson's mistake seems to be that he's confusing "price" and "value" which is a bit scary for the managing editor of a business publication. Yes, the widespread availability of news may…

SF authors on the future of technology

Top sci-fi authors discuss the future of technology : Science fiction isn't (as a rule) about predicting the future, and science fiction writers aren't trying to predict it. ------------ But many science fiction stories are set in the future, which means they need to include the future of technology (or present reasons why things haven't changed). That is, they have to extrapolate from "what/where things have been and are" to "what/where might be." We invited noted science fiction authors Larry Niven, Robert Sawyer, Nancy Kress and Charles Stross to share their thoughts on technology-related…

Squid Suckers from the Little Shop of Horrors

This is one of ten Best Science Images of 2008 as chosen by National Geographic: Little Shop of Horrors fans may see a resemblance to the bloodthirsty plant from the 1986 movie in the above electron micrograph image. Drexel University doctoral student Jessica Schiffman won an honorable mention in photography in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for capturing what's actually an array of suckers found on the tentacles of a long-finned squid. Each sucker--about 400 micrometers wide, or a little smaller than the width of a human hair--is surrounded with "…

The structure of scientific collaboration networks

On arXiv, by M. E. J. Newman (Santa Fe Institute): We investigate the structure of scientific collaboration networks. We consider two scientists to be connected if they have authored a paper together, and construct explicit networks of such connections using data drawn from a number of databases, including MEDLINE (biomedical research), the Los Alamos e-Print Archive (physics), and NCSTRL (computer science). We show that these collaboration networks form "small worlds" in which randomly chosen pairs of scientists are typically separated by only a short path of intermediate acquaintances. We…

Dems Abroad, Register to Vote

From, via: Did you know that some six million eligible voters live abroad? Amazing the stuff you learn at Frameshop. And it's all free. So...now that I shared that with you, here's what you can do for me in return: Post this video everywhere! I mean absolutely everywhere. It's a snappy video created specifically to circle the globe via the world wide interweb--a viral get-out-the-Democrats-abroad-vote for every Dem living outside of the U.S. of A. Post it everywhere, post it now. Help spread the word. Special bonus: once you post it a few places, feel free to say that you and Gwyneth…

YouTube has banned the James Randi Educational Foundation!?!?

This is insane: YouTube has become an overzealous nanny, protecting kooks from offense, now banning the eminently respectable JREF. There's only one way to respond to this, in addition to writing letters of protest: I'm going to have to stop using YouTube at all. I'll be posting no more YouTube videos until the JREF is fully reinstated, and even then I'll be looking for alternatives (XTube? RedTube? No, I know…GodTube! (seriously, don't go to any of those, they're awful)). YouTube is ubiquitous, but it's a common technology, there are lots of sites that can implement it, and there's no need…

Godless scientists have an ethical imperative to sit down and shut up

At least, that's the message I'm getting. You-know-who is once again trying to insist that the ethics of scientists includes everything except speaking the truth, and I'm not going to get into it —let Greg Laden deal with the heat from the stupid 'framing' argument this time. I will say that I'm damned tired of the vapid claim that "Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world.". It ignores the essential fact that one of those two is a useful, practical, and powerful way of understanding the world, and the other is silly, wrong, and misleading — if it is a way of…

Science Foo Camp - Friday

OK, it's 2:45am here, and I have a session at 9:30 in the morning, so, below the fold, just a quick scifoo photo dump.... Getting the fossils ready to transport from the hotel to Googleplex: On the bus: Gabrielle Lyon Paul Sereno Neil Stephenson Arriving on the campus and checking in: Schmoozing and trying the famous Google campus cuisine: Alex Palazzo and Professor Steve Steve Andrew Walkinshaw Corie Lok Deepak Singh Euan Adie Eva Vertes Gabrielle and Steve Steve Gabe and me Eugenie Scott feeds Prof. Steve Steve. Jacqueline Floyd Jean-Claude Bradley Jonathan Eisen…

Storm World

Unfortunately, I will still be out of town for this, but if you are in the area on July 12th, you should go to Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh (it is in Ridgewood Shopping Center, 3522 Wade Ave.) at 7pm and meet my SciBling Chris Mooney. He is touring the country reading from his new book Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming (website). Last year, when he was touring with the "Republican War On Science" we had a grand time at his reading/signing and afterwards we, of course, had Miller Lite (at least he had, I chose something a little more beer-like). So, mark…

Were you sleeping? - Galija

Galija was a popular band from Southern Serbia. Da li si spavala Da li si sanjala Kako se ruÅ¡i Avala? Da li te nervira Kad ti iz svemira PoÅ¡aljem leptira? Da li si sanjala Kako je nestala Voda iz plavog Dunava? Da li si patila Kada si shvatila Da si me izgubila? NaÄi ÄeÅ¡ cvet Å¡to po meni miriÅ¡e NaÄi ÄeÅ¡ cvet koji nestaje NaÄi ÄeÅ¡ cvet Å¡to po meni miriÅ¡e BiÄe to cvet koji umire. Da li si sanjala Kako sa istoka Putuje tajna poruka? Kada me ne bude Neka te probude Talasi požude. (2x) NaÄi ÄeÅ¡ cvet Å¡to po meni miriÅ¡e NaÄi ÄeÅ¡ cvet koji nestaje NaÄi ÄeÅ¡ cvet Å¡to po meni miriÅ¡e…

Say Hello to the newest Scibling!

This is really suspicious - magic perhaps! Every time I make a wish (and whisper it in prayer to the, hushhhhh, super-secret gods of atheists) for a favourite blog to get invited to join Scienceblogs.com, that actually happens in a matter of a few days. Poof! Just like that. Just look at today - Brian Switek just moved his lovely Laelaps blog from the old site to the new place right here. Dinosaurs. Lots of dinosaurs! And much other good stuff - evolution, history of science, book reviews, cool animals... He'll move his old legendary posts over to the new place gradually over time, so…

Sleeping with the New York Times

Being out of town and all, I missed it, but NYTimes published a whole lot of articles about sleep yesterday. Of course, as I enjoy poking around bird brains, the article by Carl Zimmer - In Study of Human Patterns, Scientists Look to Bird Brains - was the one most interesting to me personally. But you may find the other articles interesting as well: From Faithful Dogs and Difficult Fish, Insight Into Narcolepsy At Every Age, Feeling the Effects of Too Little Sleep In the Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why We Dream at All An Active, Purposeful Machine That Comes Out at Night to Play The…

Awww, what a sweet birthday present!

A new poll gives me cheerful results: A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all. Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share…

Just Look for The Fat Guy With No Teeth

A delivery truck loaded down with Cadbury chocolate eggs worth an estimated £70,000 ($137,326) was stolen in Staffordshire, UK. The thieves tricked the driver, who had stopped near Lichfield en route from the Birmingham factory to Yorkshire, by telling him his van was losing its load. When the driver got out of his cab to investigate, the men jumped in and drove off with the eggs. "The amount stolen is a minor quantity on the grand scale of things as we make between 30 and 40 million eggs in our Bournville plant each Easter," said a Cadbury spokesman. But the thieves may end up eating all…

Autumn Leaf

An oak leaf in the photographer's backyard in Connecticut in October 2006. It had rained that morning, so the leaves were all shiny and their colors were just outstanding. The photographer says, "I had never thought of oaks as having great fall color, but it turns out I was wrong." Image: miz_geek. I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to…

Housework Cuts Breast Cancer Risk?

. This study, carried out by Cancer Research UK, showed that women who did 16-17 hours of housework per week cut their risk of breast cancer by 20% for postmenopausal women and 30% for premenopausal women. Further, it was housework specifically that has this beneficial effect, not other forms of physical activity; Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests. The research on more than 200,000 women from nine European countries found doing household chores was far more cancer protective than playing sport. [ .. ] Out of all of the…

Messy Eater

Hairy Woodpecker, Picoides villosus, Hairy woodpecker at a suet feeder who could probably do with a napkin. The photo was taken at Sullys Hill National Wildlife Preserve, North Dakota. Image: justawriter. This is another image sent to cheer me up and to brighten your day, too! I am receiving so many gorgeous images from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in those images. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me,…

The kids are getting smarter

The news from a small UK survey is heartening: teenagers are abandoning or never had much belief in religion. Two thirds don't believe in gods at all, and It also emerged six out of ten 10 children (59 per cent) believe that religion "has a negative influence on the world".   The survey also shows that half of teenagers have never prayed and 16 per cent have never been to church. I came to the enlightenment late, so I've been in church. Really, they aren't missing a single thing. Not one thing. Funny, isn't it; the religious insist that we need the fellowship and ritual and sermonizing,…

Gay Rethuglican Bible-thumper Resigns

Even though Haggard is a flaming hypocrite, the Overseer Board at his church apparently is not. The Rev. Ted Haggard agreed to resign as leader of the New Life Church after its independent investigative board recommended removal, saying he was guilty "of sexually immoral conduct." "We, the Overseer Board of New Life Church, have concluded our deliberations concerning the moral failings of Pastor Ted Haggard," a statement from the church said. "Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct." A man…