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SciencePunk interviewed for Jemsite

Music-science crossover special! The lovely people at Jemsite, a repository for all your Ibanez JEM guitar and related musical needs, have been featuring a run of science bloggers on their blog. Since clearly music is the only thing that comes close to the awesomeness of science, I was more than happy to take part! Do you think music can help teach science or help students learn science?Without a doubt. I've already been lucky enough to hear fantastic lectures on the neurology of music from scientists such as Giana Cassidy and Jessica Grahn. Music is a phenomenally integral part our…

Dept of Business now in control of UK science

I'm in the Guardian again, talking about the Government's decision to scrap the two-year old Department for Innovation, Universities, and Skills in favour of incorporating these duties into the Department for Business. Science is in a vulnerable position at the moment: As the dust settles following Gordon Brown's cabinet shuffle on Friday, it's clear that the landscape of British science has been transformed. Where the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills once stood, now only a vacant lot and several skips filled with DIUS-branded stationery remain. If the forwarding address is…

Science and the European elections: How do the parties support tomorrow's scientists?

Reader romunov has made an excellent observation about support of science in their native Slovenia: If you look at the budget for 2009 of Slovenia (only in Slovenian) you will notice that there is little (ok, no) mention of scholarships for natural sciences by responsible Ministries. There are, however, predicted 50.732,00 ⬠for scholarships for study of law by the Faculty of law. I fail to see how we need to encourage study of law, given that this faculty receives a lion's share of new souls each year. How do you think the UK compares against this? How do scholarships available for the…

Editor's Selections: Movies, Addiction, and Liking

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week: A new post by Scicurious recommends, "If you're trying to quit smoking, it's best to stay away from movies or TV shows depicting smoking, which might induce craving and cause you to relapse." Easier said than done, perhaps. Movies and the Smoking Brain. Dirk Hanson of Addiction Inbox writes, "Every day, addicts are quitting drugs and alcohol by availing themselves of drug treatments that did not exist fifteen years ago." However, not every treatment works for everyone, and some of the differences in responses to specific anti-…

DNA Double-Strand Break Repair Review

I'm looking for a good recent review of DNA double-strand break repair. The review should focus on more than just humans and mammals, but it shouldn't be on just yeast either. Ideally, it would show schematics of different ways to repair and resolve double-strand (and, possibly, single-strand) breaks. I don't want something that just lists the known gene products involved in different repair mechanisms. And it should be from the last couple of years. If anyone reading this blog knows about this area of research, please lend a hand. To provide some incentive, the person who suggests the best…

Detecting Natural Selection in the Human Genome

This paper is rather timely considering I just finished reviewing methods for detecting natural selection. Jonathan Pritchard's group has scanned SNP data from three populations (Europeans, East Asians, and Nigerians) for signatures of positive natural selection. The authors used measures of polymorphism to detect natural selection. In their approach, they polarized polymorphic SNPs as ancestral and derived (kind of like a Fay and Wu test) using the other populations as outgroups. In this type of test, high frequency derived SNPs are a hallmark of recent positive selection; the authors…

Evolution Wiki

I have always been disappointed by the EvoWiki -- I found that I could get better information on evolutionary biology from the regular Wikipedia. Now some folks have organized the evolution content on Wikipedia into navigation templates. I have not examined the content of the entries listed in these templates, but this seems like a cool idea. Evolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Evolution Population genetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Popgen Development of phenotype (or "genetic architecture", its original name): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Genarch…

National Academies Release Climate Change Report

The National Academies today released their report on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years. The verdict? "High confidence that planet is warmest in 400 years; less confidence in temperature reconstructions prior to 1600." The reviews from around the web are equally mixed, although generally agreeing that the report vindicates Mann's hockey stick model. Tim Lambert offers a round-up of them over at Deltoid. I also noticed one familiar name in the list of the report's authors: Gerald North (the committee's chair), who's a meteorology professor at my alma mater,…

DonorsChoose.org Prizes!!!

Remember those prizes I promised if you donated to any of the ScienceBlogs DonorsChoose.org challenges? I described the prize for one lucky donor to the evolgen challenge. Now Seed has revealed what they're giving away to a few lucky contributors to any of the ScienceBlogs challenges. Janet has the lowdown at her blog -- the lucky donors will win either a t-shirt, mug, subscription to Seed, or copy of "The Best American Science Writing 2007". Also, one really lucky donor will win an iPod nano. Go read Janet's post to learn the details. Links: Blogger Challenge progress report (day 11) plus…

Taking a Skeptical Look at the Encyclopedia of Life

Have you heard of the Encylopedia of Life? If not, get out from under the rock, dude. Seriously. The hype machine has been going at full steam. This is supposed to be a database of all known species of organisms on earth. It's the incarnation of E.O. Wilson's call for a database of all species. It's a database of all species! All species! Every species!! Hooray!! Rod Page, the best biological databases blogger, isn't all that enthusiastic. He doesn't like the layout. He's seen similar ventures fail in the past. And then there's the whole issue that the EoL doesn't even exist yet. It's just a…

Barbaro NOT Cured by Jesus

Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner who broke his leg during the Preakness Stakes, is almost healthy enough to be released from his ICU stall at University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center. He has been the focus of hopes and prayers of many horse racing fans -- and little kids who are fans of horsies in general. The chief surgeon at the center has this to say about Barbaro's recovery: "It's not a miracle. It's anything but that," he said, sitting next to a Christmas tree topped with a stuffed Barbaro. "Some of the Barbaro fans aren't going to like that, perhaps. I'm a scientist, I'm a…

Hawks on Adaptive Introgression

John Hawks, along with Gene Expression regular Greg Cochran, has published a paper (PDF) on adaptive introgression in human evolution. In case the jargon is too much, we're talking about the caveman gene. Both Greg and John have blogged the paper. Check out what John says about mtDNA: However, there have been a growing number of examples of adaptive introgression between different natural populations as well. The use of more nuclear markers has begun to uncover many, but importantly many species have adaptive introgression of mitochondrial DNA.[emphasis from original] Adaptive introgression…

Follow up on Open Access Lobbying

From Thom Parks: The American Chemical Society is rich ground for blogging. Scientific American has a piece about the American Chemical Society spending close to half a million of membership dollars hiring two lobbyists to defeat open access. PBS just aired a documentary about a journalist at the American Chemical Society who was fired for reporting that the White House was suppressing federal scientists for speaking about the link between hurricanes and global warming. http://www.thirteen.org/air/111/latest.html You can watch the episode, which is titled "Science Fiction." http://www.…

Will new sequencing technology kill arrays

Keith Robison has a perceptive piece riffing off the recent Illumina instrument launch, and ponders whether 2010 will be the year that array-based genomic technologies finally start to die off with the rise of sequencing. The market certainly seems to think so. Check out the immediate effect on stock prices for Illumina (ILMN) and array manufacturer Affymetrix (AFFX) following the Illumina announcement (both normalised to 0 at the start of the graph): This comes in the context of long-term stagnation of AFFX stock, while Illumina has exploded over the last five years. Illumina made plenty…

Sheep Cloner To Be BeKnighted?

Sir Ian Wilmut earned his knighthood for his major role in cloning a sheep (Dolly). (In the old days, you had to duel kill infidels and stuff to earn a knighthood, but whatever...). There is now a move, possibly quite justified, asking Queen Elizabeth II to take away the honor. The petition originates from fromer employees of the institute where the cloning was carried out, the Roslin Institute of Scotland. Some time last year, Wilmut admitted that his colleague, Keith Campbell, played a much greater role in the cloning experiment than he did. The petition includes this language: "The…

Some Sick Atheist Demeans Kids ... Photographic Evidence Destroyed

This is a repost of an item from my old blog. The Twin Cities Creation Science Fair association usually posts "random" photographs of the children's exhibits on their web site after the fair is over. You can go and see them for the last few years. (Don't look for a place to click on this post, I don't provide it here.) But this year, something different happened, and if you go to the site where the photographs are supposed to be posted, you get this: Interesting, huh? Now, to really get the context of this, you may need to read at least the blog post and the last six or so comments in…

Another Public School Teacher Goes Over the Line

I have great respect for public school teachers. Hey, I married one! Mainly, of course, because I respect her. But they are not all good. Some of them are bad... From the Internet Infidels Discussion Board: My son just told me that his seventh grade teacher showed his public school class...the movie "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." It is blatantly pro-Christian ... My son just told me that in the movie the bad kids had NEVER read the bible and had never heard the Christmas story,... Those horrible non-believers turned completely straight and moral once they were told about Jesus. My…

Student identifies enormous new dinosaur

Fossils representing on of one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs known, the African Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, were identified by Steve Brusatte, a student working at the University of Bristol. The fossils were originally located in Niger. Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, a new species, was about 13 to 14 meters long, with a skull about 1.75 meters long. It is said that its teeth were the size of bananas. So think about that next time you are eating a banana. Bits and pieces of this dinosaur genus have been previously located, some of those fossils (from Egypt) having been…

Wikileaks Hackers Bring Down Zimbabwe Websites

Hacktivists have struck a blow against the regime in Zimbabwe by attacking a number of government websites. The cyber-assault appears to have been in support of newspapers who published secret cables in the ongoing WikiLeaks saga, to the annoyance of the-powers-that-be in the country. Grace Mugabe, wife of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, was recently reported to be suing a newspaper for $15 million after it published a WikiLeaks cable that claimed she has benefited from illegal diamond trading. As news spread amongst the loosely-knit group of Anonymous hackers who support WikiLeaks,…

Nature on Climate Gate

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial 'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.... Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming…

For everyone other than Sean Henry, this one is for you

Gaaa...stop chattering on the Sean Henry thread! I set that up as a finely focused exercise in politely discussing his criticism of evolution, not for all that ongoing discussion about whether this is good or bad or complaining at each other about whether your answer is appropriate or chatting about how old he is. About 50% of the replies in that thread have been tossed out because you aren't paying attention. So talk about all that meta stuff here, not there, and stop cluttering up the thread, OK? Except for you, Charlie Wagner. You've finally worn out your welcome. Goodbye, and good…

A chiropractor for President?

Apparently there's a chiropracter named Billy Sticker running for President. His platform: My platform: To increase your patient count by 200% during my first term To increase your income by 200% Pass legislation designating Chiropractic the Official Health Care of America Reduce our dependency on pharmaceuticals (because Chiropractic would be the official health care!) He even has his own video coverage: Say it ain't so! A woo-meister for President. That'd be a step down even from our current President! It's even worse than that, though. He's apparently a guy who sells marketing…

WisconsinView converts to CC0

Just a quick hit - I'm digging out after a wonderful break from work - but this deserves notice... Since 2004, WisconsinView has made aerial photography and satellite imagery of Wisconsin available to the public for free over the web. As part of the AmericaView consortium, WisconsinView supports access and use of these imagery collections through education, workforce development, and research. Starting June 30, 2009, WisconsinView is making available all of its more than 6 Terabytes of imagery data under the new CC0 Protocol provided by Creative Commons. The CC0 (pronounced CC-Zero) Protocol…

India to account for 60% of global heart disease cases

India will account for approximately 60% of heart disease cases worldwide within two years, according to new research published in the journal Lancet. The study, led by Dr Denis Xavier of St John's National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore and other researchers from Canada says one major problem is that Indians are unable to reach hospitals quickly in an emergency. Other risk factors in India were the same as elsewhere including tobacco use, high levels of lipids in the blood due to diets rich in saturated fat, and hypertension. "As the Indian economy grows, there is a possibility…

Dino Death Trap!

National Geographic's Dino Death Trap is premiering Sunday December 9th at 8:00 pm. As part of generating publicity for the series they have set up this fun micro site where you can play the game "Dino Central Park" Dino Death Trap chronicles paleontologists in China's western Gobi desert uncovering what they believe to be the aftermath of this prehistoric cataclysm-pits of dinosaur fossils stacked four and five deep. Nothing like this has ever been seen before-a mass grave site of predatory dinos, including what scientists believe is the precursor to the most "terrible lizard" of them…

Why Do We Hesitate To Use Generic Drugs?

In this blog post from Trusted.MD Network Keshav Chander MD asks "Why Do We Hesitate To Use Generic Drugs?" Among the responses he heard are: -Concerns about generic drug quality -Lower familiarity with generic drugs due to less marketing of such drugs -Association of drug quality with drug price According to the FDA a generic drug is identical, or bioequivalent to a brand name drug in dosage form, safety, strength, route of administration, quality, performance characteristics and intended use. Generic drugs are cheaper, however, because the manufacturers do not have the investment costs of…

All 2008 US Nobel Laureates in Science Endorse Obama!

In yesterday's YouTube video posted by Marty Chalfie, he referred to the fact that all three science Laureates for 2008 had endorsed Obama. Now it is official. From the Obama campaign; "With one voice, 65 of the nation's greatest minds, the largest number of Nobel Laureates to ever endorse a political candidate for office, have encouraged the American public to vote Obama on November 4th." Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien won the prize in Chemistry with for their pioneering work on the use of green fluorescent protein. Yoichiro Nambu won the prize in Physics for his mathematical model, which…

Hello from Scotland!

I'm just back from lunch, after giving my UKSG talk first thing this morning. Here are slides plus notes: Who owns our work? (notes) I'm aware that some of the notes are cut off owing to font size; I'll fix that as soon as I have a free minute. I also have slides only up, but this deck is a little more gnomic than some I've done, so I don't know how useful that'll be. I'm having a wonderful time, and am very grateful to UKSG for the invitation (as well as their wonderful hospitality). You can follow the sessions via a cadre of brilliant livebloggers at UKSG's LiveSerials blog. Next Monday I'…

Penguins 24-7!

I loved the movie "March of the Penguins." Now, thanks to the California Academy of Sciences, I can watch penguins live anytime I want on one of their three webcams! I find myself watching the penguins just to relax in the middle of the day. I highly recommend you check out this website and watch the penguins, too...we can watch them together. Although I would not recommend watching them at night, as it can be rather boring. The website is really neat and also has information on what it is like to be a penguin wrangler. Yes, someone actually gets paid to wrangle penguins. There is also a…

We're Back, With a Funny

It's been more than 3 weeks, 6 flights, 4 states, 2 presentations, 1 AAAS meeting, 1 new nephew, and more than 1500 new e-mail messages since our last post. Sorry 'bout the lapse. It's a busy time in the world of scientific integrity, but we hope to be back up to pace shortly. In the meantime, here's a nugget from last week's This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow. You can view the full cartoon over at Working for Change. It's a little ham-fisted, sure, but we love our weekly Tom Tomorrow fix, and we'll take his rants on science politicization any way we can get them. Given all predicted hub…

If you try hard enough, all things are poisonous

Ofran Y, Lavi D, Opher D, Weiss TA, Elinav E. Fatal voluntary salt intake resulting in the highest ever documented sodium plasma level in adults (255 mmol L-1): a disorder linked to female gender and psychiatric disorders. J Intern Med. 2004 Dec;256(6):525-8. Review. A 20-year-old woman suffering from postpartum depression reportedly drank six glasses of a 1 kg/L table salt solution as part of an exorcism ceremony to make her better. That's an absolutely brutal amount of salt. Tragically, the woman had just started taking fluoxetine (Prozac), but decided to try the exorcism approach as well.…

Donors Choose: a new project

The last project I was trying to fund---a netbook for a classroom--is finished. The netbook is on the way. This one is really cool. It's from an inner city chemistry teacher. As the husband of a teacher (and briefly a teacher myself) I can only imagine the struggles of this teacher and her kids---most are poor, class sizes are outrageous, and there's no money for anything. The teacher wants some chemistry kits. That's it. Remember your first chemistry kit, playing with the phenolphalein? The tart smell of the weak acids? The colors? These kits are probably a bit more sophisticated,…

BMI TMI---new perspectives

I'm finding my "diet" remarkably tolerable. I'm still losing weight, albeit slowly, and enjoying what I eat. And aside from the weight loss, I'm eating better---lots of fruits and veggies, fewer simple carbohydrates. But I'm also noticing things that I hadn't before. I'm noticing just how much everyone eats. Sure, it's not like it isn't obvious, when you see commercials for restaurant chains the the huge fat and sugar laden meals they serve. But just watching people out to eat or in the hospital cafeteria, seeing how they may eat an appetizer, main dish, sides, desert---meals that add up…

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 22

Now that my technical problems have resolved, it's time to do what I do every week and plug the latest edition of Grand Rounds. It's a blog carnival that's like Grand Rounds for medical blogging (hence the name), and it collects the best of the medical blogosphere from the last week. I'm a regular contributor and have even hosted in the past. This week, Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 22 is hosted by Dr. Andy, and a fine collection of medblogging he's gathered (including my first submission since moving to ScienceBlogs). Next week the carnival is being hosted by a fellow surgeon at at the aptly…

Next Talk: Center for American Progress, June 19

In our last major talk of the summer here in DC, on Tues. June 19 we will be delivering our Speaking Science 2.0 presentation at the Center for American Progress. Breakfast is served at 830am. The talk and discussion follows from 10 to 1130am. The Center has all the details here. CAP senior fellow and former assistant Energy secretary Joseph Romm will be hosting the event. He's the author of the terrific new book Hell and High Water: Global Warming-The Solution and the Politics and also contributes the popular Climate Progress blog. As was the case earlier this month at the New York…

At Fox News, Anna Nicole Smith is the #2 Story for 2007

As we argue in the Nisbet & Mooney Framing Science thesis, infotainment dominates science as a news narrative. Despite record amounts of media attention, climate change still routinely falls short of a top news agenda item, making it exceedingly difficult to engage a broader American audience by way of traditional science communication efforts. In my latest blog entry at Framing Science, I detail the latest from the Pew Media Index, which finds that while climate change failed to crack the top 10 issues covered by the media during the first quarter of 2007, Anna Nicole Smith did quite…

WNS Update

Following up on the previous white-nose syndrome blog, WNS has now been confirmed in Missouri. The article is about their monitoring program and does not mention the find, but our sources tell us there was recent PCR-confirmation of Geomyces destructans in samples taken from suspect bats in Missouri as part of this monitoring program. One way you can help save our bats is to look into getting a bat house. Bat Conservation International and the Organization for Bat Conservation both have great information about bat houses, and here is a wonderful homeowner's guide to bats. Bat houses are…

Dracula Fish Discovered

A new kind of fish with Dracula style fangs has been discovered...in a fish tank that researchers had been keeping for a year. The fish had been living at the London Museum of Natural History for almost 12 months before scientists realized that they were a new species. They had been collected in Burma. Which is your favorite movie in the Underworld trilogy? Ours is the latest, Rise of the Lychans. The pointy fangs seen in the picture are actually not true teeth, but only bony protrusions coming from the fish's jaws. Furthermore researchers don't believe that the fangs are used for feeding…

Genome For An Endosymbiont

Fig. 1. A circular representation of the R. magnifica genome. The innermost circle highlights genes of special interest: cbb (Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle, red), sox (sulfur oxidation, green), dsr (dissimilatory sulfite reductase, blue), and rnf (NADH dehydrogenase). The second and third circles show GC skew and %G+C, respectively. The distribution of genes is depicted on the two outer rings (fourth and fifth, forward and reverse, respectively) colored by role category. [View Larger Version of this Image (273K JPEG file)] From Newton and colleagues... The Calyptogena magnifica (Bivalvia:…

For those interested in the organization of trust in the scientific establishment

Two great interviews with Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, two philosophers of science. CBC Ideas - Interview with Simon Schaffer on Leviathan and the Air Pump CBC Ideas - Interview with Steven Shapin on how science and truth are derived from social interactions within the scientific community If you like these interviews, visit CBC Ideas - How to think about science although I must say that some shows are better than others. Also for anyone who is interested in the history and philosophy of science and is ready to go beyond Kuhn and Popper, I highly recommend Leviathan and the Air Pump.…

Living At Sea Under Self Rule

By now you probably realize that Peter, Kevin, and I are more than ready to burn our terrestrial dwellings down in favor of living among sea creatures in some oceanic utopia. Peter and I have discussed several options for this. To our list of potential inhabitable salty structures comes a new venture from Peter Thiel. Thiel is founder of PayPal, a Google Engineer, and a former programmer for Sun Microsystems. With $500,000 of his money, The Seasteading Institute has been launched dedicated to "creating experimental ocean communities with diverse social, political, and legal systems." As…

Just One Thing Challenge #5

So how did going organic affect your pocketbook? I imagine for many of you it didn't add as much as you thought it would. This weeks will be a little easier and that is why I will ask you to continue it through the year. The request:Go to the Seafood Watch and download a chart for your wallet or purse. Carry it everywhere you go from now on. Adhere to it and harass others to to the same. The reason:Again, I could lay out a well-reasoned argument for why you should do this, but you know all the reasons. The good news is that I've moaned about all this before, again, and again, and again…

Ask a Scienceblogger - What to do with free money

This weeks question: Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why? Tough question. I've got lots of ideas about what I'd do with limitless funding within my own area, but until the question came through, I hadn't thought too much about alternative careers. I guess my answer depends on "outside of your own discipline" means. If it means that the shift has to be to an entirely different discipline, I'd have to go with astronomy, and look at the geological history of other planets. If I…

Olympic Broadcast Acoustics

There had been reports of the usual last-minute rush to complete facility construction at the Beijing Olympics. Now I wonder if they completed the main broadcast center. While watching the coverage yesterday, at one point NBC went to Bob Costas at the center and I noticed something strange. It was apparent that Mr. Costas was close-mic'ed, but it was also obvious that there was an inordinately large amount of room reverberation leaking in. The RT60 seemed long enough that it appeared Bob was speaking from inside of an airplane hangar. I wonder if they had time to install any acoustic…

Seasons Greetings from the Chimp Refuge

This past weekend found a denizen of the Chimp Refuge brachiating, feeding and feeding yet again, grooming, being groomed and otherwise socializing in the home of its grizzled old matriarch. The photo below the fold illustrates one way in which godless atheists (and bonobos) celebrate Christmas - or Saturnalia or whatever one wishes to call the holiday surrounding the solstice; Festivus works, too. Yes, they decorate a Christmas tree. Here is erstwhile co-blogger Kevin fondling Betty Boop's butt. Kevin sends his regards to the Refuge readers. Due to a couple of writing projects that…

New Year's Eve party at my house…cancelled

Sorry, gang, I know you were all counting on coming out to cheer me up in my lonely isolation — my wife is away, visiting relatives — but there was that nasty wet storm yesterday, and I just spent a couple of hours digging out the driveway and sidewalks from that (-20°C! A four foot high pile in front of the driveway!) and my face is numb and my fingers are burning and my feet are frozen. Now I learn that there is an even bigger blizzard on the way today. So this is one of those days when you discover that Western Minnesota is not fit for human habitation. I'll be celebrating the New Year by…

Playboy, paragon of journalism

A reader sent in a quote from this month's Playboy. They understand. As politics go, we're surprised so many readers expect us or any publication to provide "balance," which reflects a belief in the fallacy that there are two equally valid sides to every story. You see this in the debate over global warming and evolution. Thousands of scientists stand on one side of the issue, recognizing that global warming is a problem and that evolution is firmly established, while only a few detractors stand on the other. Move over, NY Times. Playboy has a more principled journalistic philosophy than you…

Phish @ Camden 6/25/2010: A Brief Review

Phish, you were fabulously jamtastic, and I dearly loved that sweet cover of Joni Mitchell's "Free Man In Paris", but I swear there were times when your light show made me feel like I was strapped in a chair next to Karl in Room 23. What can I say? I freely bought my own ticket. Also: I neglected to bring along a hardhat, which would have come in handy for the glow stick hailstorm during your version of the opening movement of Also Sprach Zarathustra. Everybody looked like they were having fun and the glow stick tossing was random and joyous, so it was all cool. Thanks for the show. Oh…

See You In A Few Days

Folks, I had expected to surely have my next Gender Knot post up by now but life isn't working out that way. Too much craptastic stuff going on. Meanwhile, Mr. Z and I are taking off for a few days. They have wireless internet where we're going but...we're not taking a computer with us. There, I said it. It's possible I may put a hold on my Unscientific America review, too, until I get back from a trip to DC the last week of July. The book authors will be speaking at Politics and Prose during the time I'll be there and I'm planning to stop in and listen. Probably won't post my review…

Read These Lessons For Girls!

Everybody needs to read the eight posts on Historiann's list of Lessons for Girls. I really mean that. Go NOW and read. If you don't have time for all eight, please at least read about anger. If I wish I had learned one lesson earlier in life, it's this: it's okay to be angry, it's okay to make other people angry, and anger can work for you. (Well, that might be three lessons, but I find it hard to disentangle them, so bear with me.) I found this link to Historiann's goodness from a comment on a post over at Dr. Isis's pad, but unfortunately I did not pay attention as to where. If…