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AAI: Robert Richert

I walked into this talk a little late, and was initially unimpressed. Richert was an atheist who fought in Viet Nam, and a lot of the talk was a rather rambling reminiscence with photos of the war; I didn't quite see the point. At the end, though, it was very affecting. He talked about incidents that made an impression on him: a friend who survived a harrowing firefight, and attributed his survival to a beneficent god; and a few days later, an innocent Vietnamese baby who was killed by shrapnel from a grenade. He made the point that there was no loving god who could have so cruelly thrown…

It's culture time!

Let's hear it for the arts! The detestation of Genesis is universal, but hey you Brits! Instead of nagging on our creationist creepazoids, maybe you need to pick on the creationists in your backyard. Although, I have to say, the English creationists seem much less unpleasant than Ken Ham. It's time for some monkey music, composed from patterns in tamarin monkey calls. The 'fearful monkey music' is irritating to even this ape, and the 'happy monkey music' doesn't make me happy at all. Maybe we're not so related after all. Especially since the monkeys seem to like Metallica. I also can't…

TEDTalks: My Quest for the Dodo Bird, and Other Obsessions

tags: TEDTalks, ornithology, dodo bird, Adam Savage, streaming video Adam Savage talks about his fascination with the dodo bird, and how it led him on a strange and surprising double quest. It's an entertaining adventure through the mind of a creative obsessive. [15:39] TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas…

Mystery Bird: Lesser Goldfinch, Carduelis psaltria

tags: Lesser Goldfinch, Carduelis psaltria, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Lesser Goldfinch, Carduelis psaltria, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Richard Ditch, 15 May 2008 [larger view]. Date Time Original: 2008:05:15 08:07:26 Exposure Time: 1/45 F-Number: 5.60 ISO: 500 Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: Now comes a teeny, short-tailed, yellowish bird from Arizona. The short tail…

Friday Fun: University of Virginia Rector Dragas Aims to Remove God from Notre Dame

One thing you have got to give to the more-than-slightly unhinged staff at The Cronk of Higher Ed is that they have a bizarre and hilarious take on the most important issues in higher education. And sort of dead-on too. This is a case of So Funny It Hurts. U-Va. Rector Dragas Aims to Remove God from Notre Dame “Notre Dame has been operating like an exceptional university of higher learning,” said Dragas in her announcement. “Unfortunately the world has changed and colleges need CEO-minded leaders. God is a great motivator, but He’s no CEO.” As an example, Dragas explained that God had been…

Around the Web: Open access will bankrupt us, What data can and cannot do and more

Open access will bankrupt us, publishers’ report claims What data can and cannot do I Point To TED Talks and I Point to Kim Kardashian. That Is All. Why Library and eBooks Issues Matter Sports Subsidies and Library Spending Improving Research Skills RUK: The Maturing Threat of Open Access Letter from Books of Wonder to DOJ about ebooks lawsuit Let's Not Call It "Computer Science" If We Really Mean "Computer Programming" Reaching Out: Why are scientists trapped in the ivory tower and what can be done to escape? What the Forbes model of contributed content means for journalism Open Access:…

Not at your local SBC bookstore

It's not on my list of required reading, but if you tried to get a copy of the latest issue of Gospel Today at your local Southern Baptist bookstore, you might have a little difficulty: it's been yanked from circulation. The reason: it features a cover story on female pastors. "They basically treated it like pornography and put it behind the counter," said Hairston, according to AP. "Unless a person goes into the store and asks for it, they won't see it displayed." I'd suggest that perhaps it should be treated like pornography, as a literature that can warp impressionable minds in less than…

Around the Web: Plagiarism, Online communities, Conference tech and more

Let's talk about Plagiarism Who Is Punished for Plagiarism? NYU Prof Vows Never to Probe Cheating Again--and Faces a Backlash If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault What Tech Do You Bring to Conferences? Overeducated, Underemployed: How to fix humanities grad school Know Your Value "I graduated from a top library school." Yeah, so what? The role of Facebook and Twitter in scientific citations and impact factors Tweeting Science Google Plus and The Social Media Moonshot Does the Murdoch Hacking Scandal Signify the End of Privacy? You Stay Classy, Ivory Tower! Google Plus,…

Best Science Books: US News & World Report, WGBH/Harvard Book Store, Seattle Times

Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. US News & World Report Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot WGBH/Harvard Book Store The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee Seattle Times The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival" by John Vaillant I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If…

Best Science Books 2010: Toronto Star, Time, GalleyCat

Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. Toronto Star The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant Time The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light by Jane Brox You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier GalleyCat Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in…

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist: 9/18/2006

Welcome to the special ScienceBlogs version of Seed's Daily Zeitgeist! It's a lot like the seedmagazine.com version of Seed's Daily Zeitgeist, but it you can find it right here on Page 3.14. Feel our love for science on the web. Royal Society Publishing - Journals archive from 1665 There have been a few worthwhile papers since 1665. Read the classics here. (via Selva) CephaloPod Glory be! PZ, are you in love yet? Your Friday Dose of Woo: Acid, base, or woo? The woo is in your urine. You always knew it was there. Science Friday: Pale Blue Flame Love the methane. Fear the methane. Marry me,…

Dr. Charles Hosts the 100th Grand Rounds

ScienceBlogs' Dr. Charles hosts the 100th edition of the venerable weekly medical blog carnival, Grand Rounds, at The Examining Room or Dr. Charles. From the introduction: Grand Rounds Turns 100! Originally conceived by Dr. Nicholas Genes, the weekly linkfest celebrating the highlights of the medical blogosphere has reached its 100th edition. Intended to introduce the wider world to the growing medical blogosphere (doctors, nurses, students, administrators, EMTs, techs, and patients who blog), Grand Rounds has blossomed into a phenomenon noticed by The LA Times, Web MD, and Instapundit to…

Friday Fun: Trump To Require All Science Article Peer Review Reports to End with the Word “Sad!”

Or "LOve!" Or "Scooped!" One word peer review! A game you can play at home! Sad! Love! Changes! Scooped! Redo! Copied! Not! Even! Wrong! Cite! Me! One word peer review is going to be Huuuuugggggggeeeeee! Trump To Require Reviewers To End All Reviews With the Word “Sad!” Washington DC – President-Elect Mr. Donald Trump has tweeted that he will require all reviewers for all journals and grant agencies to end all reviews with the word “Sad!” Trump tweeted that all reviewers should be required to select the wording for their reviews from an approved list of words. The approved list of words…

Obama's speech

The most intelligent thing I've read so far about Obama's speech Tuesday night, the one that included not a single mention of climate change, comes from Ezra Klein at the Washington Post. He's talking about the assumption that fear doesn't motivation people, only inspiration does. But that strikes me as depressing evidence of how unlikely we are to succeed. I simply don't believe you could've passed health care if you couldn't have talked about covering the uninsured, and I don't think stimulus would've worked without the spur of the unemployed. It's not that people wanted to hear about…

Women Who Changed the World Through Science & Engineering: Samira Ibrahim Islam

Samira Ibrahim Islam -- Noted Saudi pharmacology researcher and professor First woman in Saudi Arabia to earn a Ph.D.; introduced formal university education for girls in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Recalling when she became the first woman from her country of Saudi Arabia to earn a Ph.D., noted pharmacology researcher and professor Samira Ibrahim Islam still wells up with pride and emotion: "It was big news in my country," she remembers. "There was a newspaper that asked my father to describe what he felt about me earning the Ph.D., and my father [with tears in his eyes] answered, 'Now, I can…

The Buzz: Ocean Plastification

As SciWo explained to daughter Minnow last week in a video on Sciencewomen, lakes, ponds, oceans and other natural bodies of water are as ecologically important as they are beautiful. But the ecological health of many is severely compromised due to widespread pollution, global warming, ocean acidification and other factors. GrrlScientist shed light on the origins of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating island of plastic debris covering an area twice that of Texas that has amassed by way of natural currents. She also shared a video that shows cell and molecular biologists how to reduce…

The Buzz: The Ins and Outs of Grant Writing

As any working scientist knows, writing grant proposals is a necessary skill to learn if your lab relies on government or other outside funding to operate. And ScienceBloggers know the process well: From how to allocate investigator effort across multiple grants, to who ought to be allowed access to grant proposals, to how many sleepless nights are involved in a single application, bloggers are delving into the nitty-gritty details of grant preparation. Isis the Scientist offers what is perhaps most needed for an overworked researcher--the perfect musical accompaniment to keep motivation…

The Buzz: Science Careers Outside Academia

"One of the difficulties with trying to broaden the usual definition of scientists is that there's not a lot of press for non-academic science," Chad Orzel wrote recently on Uncertain Principles. So he decided to give it some exposure himself. Chad's call for scientists with non-academic careers returned a wealth of responses, from the Chief Scientist of an Army laboratory to a communications specialist for the British government. Each of the participants holds a degree in science, but their interviews reveal broad differences in career paths, work environments, and daily routines. See the…

ScienceBlogs taking a short break...

Hi folks, ScienceBlogs has grown an incredible amount since we got started—our 75 bloggers have composed over 88,000 posts, and as a community we have generated over a million comments. With all this activity, we've been feeling some growing pains recently, so this weekend we will be upgrading the software that drives the site. Starting this afternoon (Friday, 1/9) at about 1pm Eastern time, we're going to shut down parts of the site for at least 24 hours (probably more like 36 hours)—specifically, the commenting and posting functions. This means that the site will still be browsable, but…

Poll: Hybrid Embryos in Scientific Research?

Monday night, the British Parliament voted on embryo science laws for the first time in nearly 20 years. After weeks of debate, the House of Commons voted 336 to 176 to reject a proposed ban on the use of human-animal hybrid embryos in scientific research. Human-animal hybrids were first created in 2003, by Chinese scientists who fused human cells with rabbit eggs. In 2004, researchers in Minnesota created pigs with pig-human blood cells. So far, this kind of research has been banned in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Italy. Do you agree with Parliament's decision? Click Here for…

Did An Inconvenient Truth Change Your Mind?

Despite An Inconvenient Truth's Oscar win and Al Gore's Nobel, public opinion of global warming has changed little since the film's release in 2006. As Matt Nisbet recently pointed out: "Conventional wisdom pegged Gore's film and media campaign as changing the nature of the debate in the public's mind, but unfortunately this interpretation doesn't hold up to the data." Even more surprising is that apparently the debate is most heated among the college educated. What about you guys? Did the film only tell you what you already knew? Did it change your mind? Did it bore you to tears? Click…

New Reader Poll: Computer Science?

This week, Jane of See Jane Compute considered the question: Is computer science really a science? She wrote: The more I thought about it, the more I realized how complex this question really is...Computer science is in many respects a tool. It's a discipline that has its reach into many other disciplines. And that's one of the coolest, most interesting things about it. But that's also what makes it so hard to classify, to quantify. Jane's further tackling the question in a series of posts. And we thought it would be a great question for this week's reader poll...so please weigh in! Click…

Sagan the Skeptic

Hot off the presses: Skeptical Inquirer magazine has a new rememberance of Carl Sagan by David Morrison, which highlights Sagan's sometimes-forgotten role as a skeptic. From the article: Throughout his career, Sagan devoted himself to the quest to improve public understanding of the nature of science. He wanted every citizen to have a "baloney detector" as defense against sham in commerce and politics as well as science. He felt that it was the duty of scientists to face these issues squarely and publicly. The Cosmic Connection (1973), which includes extensive discussions of extraterrestrial…

Kavli Video Contest Top 10 Finalist--Science is so FLY!

Entry "Science is so Fly" From the left to right, Jenny Chen, Elizabeth Dente, and Aishwarya Raja. Jenny Chen, 16 - Favorite subjects: Math, Biology, Chemistry Elizabeth Dente, 16 - Favorite subjects: Chemistry, English, Musical Performance Aishwarya Raja, 16 - Favorite subjects: English, Chemistry, Biology We are all juniors at the Bergen County Academies in the Academy for Medical Science Technology located in Hackensack, NJ. Our school focuses greatly on the sciences and we wanted to make a creative video that reflected these interests. We also wanted to have fun while making…

You all missed a very nice Cafe Scientifique

You never come when I invite you, anyway, but it was still very enlightening. We branched out a bit from nothing but science this time, and Michael Eble, an artist, talked about his connection to Louisiana and recent work on the disappearance of wetlands, in an exhibit titled Endangered Lands. We got to hear* about erosion and the natural and man-made forces that are destroying the Louisiana coastline at a prodigious rate, with Michael's efforts to capture it in a series of abstract paintings. *We also got to hear one extraordinarily rude couple's conversation about their finances — they sat…

Idaho State University to host USA Science Festival

Shout out to one of our Satellite Events in Idaho for a recent posting about their festival. You can read their full story here. POCATELLO - Idaho State University's Pocatello campus is hosting the 2010 Idaho Science and Engineering Festival on Oct 23 and is looking for additional groups to host scientific demonstration booths. The deadline for booth applications is Oct. 1. The Idaho festival is a satellite event that corresponds with the inaugural national USA Science and Engineering Festival being held in Washington, D.C., Oct. 10-24. The national festival ends with a two-day Expo on the…

What word is missing in this story?

I'm sure everyone has already heard about the plot to murder Obama and many others: Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday. In all, the two men whom officials described as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people - 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. It's a horrible and sordid story of idiots with guns, but in scanning the various news sources, there is…

An Exciting Announcement about the You CAN Do the Rubik's cube compeition

There is still lots of time to enter your team into the You CAN do the Rubik's cube competition and start practicing for the USA Science and Engineering Festival's competition this fall. Check out the video below about a recent You CAN do the Rubik's cube competition at the San Diego Science Festival. Pretty amazing watching those kids solve the puzzles! BUT we have an exciting announcement about the competition at the USA Science and Engineering Festival ...are you ready? Dr.Rubik, the inventor of the Rubik's cube, IS COMING TO THE FESTIVAL FOR HIS FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE AT A STUDENT…

Hey kids, want to sequence a bacterial genome?

Cofactor Genomics is offering to sequence a genome for a few classes for free using Next Generation DNA Sequencing technology (either Illumina GA or via AB SOLiD). Quoting from their site: Cofactor will ask course organizers for a 1 page description of how their ~700Mb sequencing project could be used as an effective teaching aid in their class. We will review and choose the best entries during the month of May. Those entries will be awarded a free sequencing project including project experimental design, sample QC, library construction, sequencing, and computational analysis. Those projects…

Not True Enough to Be Good?

On Pharyngula, PZ Myers criticizes a stirring new short film imagining humanity's presence on the far-flung worlds of our solar system. PZ writes, "There’s nothing in those exotic landscapes as lovely and rich as mossy and majestic cedars of the Olympic Peninsula, or the rocky sea stacks of the nearby coast." So let's not get ahead of ourselves in turning Earth into a dust bowl. On Respectful Insolence, Orac considers the demerits of a new monograph on 'integrative oncology,' saying it's a false dichotomy polarizing aspects of actual science and pure wishful thinking. And on Uncertain…

California Drought Feels Fine

On Significant Figures, Peter Gleick examines the rather relaxed attitudes of some Californians to an extreme drought fostered by three years of dry weather. Gleick writes “reservoirs are at record low levels. Deliveries of surface water to some farmers are lower than at any time in recent history. Streams are drying up and fisheries are being devastated.” Yet he and millions of other residents have been able to run water from their taps freely. Agriculture might only suffer losses of 4% (about .0008% of the state’s total economy). And an expectation of El Niño rains obscures the prospect of…

Implausible Cause

On Pharyngula, PZ Myers deconstructs the hypothesis of two physicists who show an undue enthusiasm for biology. They claim cancer is caused by cells regressing from their modern, multicellular functionality to a "proto-metazoan" lifestyle of largely uncoordinated growth. Myers says their is no plausible avenue for such atavism, writing "you can’t take one of your cells, switch off a few genes, and set it free in the ocean to swim off and follow its primitive lifestyle." Considering the factors that really contribute to cancer, Myers concludes "scientists shouldn’t be looking for optimism,…

Aesthetic Tech

On Universe, Claire L. Evans takes us all the way back to 1966, when an event called 9 Evenings happened in New York City. This "epic art salon" brought together ten artists with a bevy of engineers from Bell Laboratories, who "helped the artists with complex technical components to their pieces." FM transmitters, infrared cameras, amplifiers and photoelectric cells contributed to "performances, installations, and dances that blended technology with fine art to somewhat legendary effect." Claire has pictures and video of the event on Universe. And on Bioephemera, Jessica Palmer shows us…

The Energy and Climate Ministerial of the Americas begins tomorrow

At last summer's Summit of the Americas, President Obama announced the formation of a multinational organization aimed at increasing renewable energy usage, confronting climate change, and promoting tech transfer and sustainability practices amongst its members. The Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas is holding its first ministerial in DC tomorrow and Friday, and The Inter-American Development Bank is hosting a live webcast of it, which you can watch here. The event starts tomorrow at 8:30am Eastern, with Energy Secretary Stephen Chu speaking at 8:50. Hillary Clinton will also…

Useful Chemistry at the '07 NC Science Blogging Conference

Jean-Claude Bradley is the pioneer in the use of blogs in science in the way that too many of us are still too scared to do - posting on a daily basis the ideas, methods and data from the lab. He and his collaborators are using the blogs Useful Chemistry, Useful Chem Experiments 1 and Usefulchem-Molecules, as well as the UsefulChem Project wiki to exchange information, brainstorm and inform the public of their work. These sites serve as laboratory notebooks open for everyone to see. So, I am delighted to tell you that Jean-Claude will be coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging…

Link Between the Circadian and Cell Cycles

Interesting, if you are in the field: The Neurospora Checkpoint Kinase 2: A Regulatory Link Between the Circadian and Cell Cycles by António M. Pregueiro, Qiuyun Liu, Christopher L. Baker, Jay C. Dunlap, Jennifer J. Loros The clock gene period-4 (prd-4) in Neurospora was identified by a single allele displaying shortened circadian period and altered temperature compensation. Positional cloning followed by functional tests show that PRD-4 is an ortholog of mammalian checkpoint kinase 2 (Chk2). Expression of prd-4 is regulated by the circadian clock and, reciprocally, PRD-4 physically…

At least now you'll know what you are worth

Burger King is running a strange promotion on Facebook: for every 10 friends you drop from your list, they'll send you a coupon for a free hamburger, because you love the Whopper more than your friends. Let's see…I've got 3,747 friends on Facebook. That would mean I could get 374 free pieces of meat between slabs of bread, and each of you is worth what, about 30¢? By the way, I have discovered that when you have that many facebook friends, it has some very rough spots. There are a few places where you click on something, and it asks if you want to send something to any of your friends, and it…

The imposters among us

We're still on the road, but if all goes well we'll be pulling up to the old homestead later today. So this will be among the last of the links to previous posts and we'll be back in harness shortly, again masquerading as whoever we are masquerading as. You decide. But a propos of that thought, a little more than three years ago I wrote the post linked below, more as an idle reflection on a part of academic life that isn't discussed very often than anything else. It surprised me that since then rarely a week passes that I don't see on my referral log that someone has looked at it, usually via…

Brief hiatus during server upgrade! (no commenting or posting tonight)

We are hoping that the infuriating failure of the Scienceblogs servers to keep up with traffic leading to submission timeouts (just as aggravating for bloggers as commenters) will be cured by a server upgrade which is to begin shortly. We have just been informed by our Seed Overlords (a.k.a. the publishers) that Commenting will be turned off shortly (between 7 pm and 8 pm EST, July 21) to allow migration to the new server. The site will remain readable and the Comment Form visible but you won't be able to comment. This affects all of the Scienceblogs.com. We are told the entire process will…

Tycker du att skolor bör hålla sina avslutningar i kyrkan?

About half* my ancestry is Scandinavian — equally split between Sweden and Norway — and one of the nice things about the Christmas holidays is the reconnection with family and tradition, so it's only appropriate that I urge you all to crash a Swedish poll. It's asking, Do you think schools should hold their commencement ceremonies in church?. So far, I'm shocked to see that secular Sweden is answering 69% "Ja" — is there some sneaky plan to get in there and desanctify the church, is the poll being mobbed by a religious minority, or (more likely, from my experience growing up with swarms of…

Cool new Scienceblogs.com widgets

Having difficulties following the flood of blogging here on scienceblogs.com? Well, it just became much easier. Go to this page and find the widgets with all sorts of feeds: the Select feed, the Channels feeds and all the individual blog feeds. So, if you want my feed, you click on the Blogs (A-C) tab, find my blog, click on 'Share', click on the 'Install outside Netvibes' tab, then choose where you want to download it. Then pick the way you want it to look (there is a pull-down menu with several choices, as well as several colors to choose from), copy the widget code and paste it into your…

Do you intend to open your own science?

If so, go tell Bill: There must be more. Who else is doing, or planning to do, open science? And further, how can we help each other? My working hypothesis is that open, collaborative models should out-produce the current standard model of research, which involves a great deal of inefficiency in the form of secrecy and mistrust. Open science barely exists at the moment -- infancy would be an overly optimistic term for its developmental state. Right now, one of the most important things open science advocates can do is find and support each other (and remember, openness is inclusive of a range…

Is this Possible (and True)?

Criticize Congress go to jail? "In what sounds like a comedy sketch from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but isn't, the U. S. Senate would impose criminal penalties, even jail time, on grassroots causes and citizens who criticize Congress. "Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Africa's Least-known Carnivore In Tanzania: Mongoose Is One More Rare Find: The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced that a camera-trap study in the mountains of Southern Tanzania has now recorded Africa's least-known and probably rarest carnivore: Jackson's mongoose, known only from a few observations and museum specimens. Pet Owners Are Sick More Often And Exercise Less Than Other Working-aged People, Study Finds: A common perception is that pet owner is a young person who is full of action, exercises a lot, and actively plays with a pet, particularly with a dog.…

Coloradans are wimps!

We had a great time at Wynkoop's tonight, although I noticed that the other attendees at our Pharyngufest were fading out at 10:00 — I had to mention to quite a few people that they had no stamina at all. Although the fact that they started drinking at 5pm and Wynkoop's has a marvelous assortment of microbrews might have had something to do with it. Truth be told, I was starting to feel a little woozy myself. Anyway, if you weren't there, too bad. Here's a little panarama of the crowd. It turned out that Wynkoop's was an excellent venue for another reason: check out this amazing mural that…

Worth reading: West Virginia chemical release, antibiotics in agriculture, and using statistics to tackle substance abuse

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Ken Ward Jr. in the Charleston (WV) Gazette: Why wasn't there a plan? Key players knew of potential for Elk River spill and State ignored plan for tougher chemical oversight (also check out opinions on the West Virginia chemical release from Deborah Blum at Elemental and Tom O'Connor at National COSH) Jia Tolentino interviews MacArthur "Genius" Grant-winning statistician Susan Murphy at The Hairpin. ("Susan Murphy is a statistician developing new methodologies to evaluate treatments for chronic and relapsing disorders like depression and substance abuse…

Worth reading: Child agriculture deaths, SNAP reductions, and a post-antibiotics future

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Mariya Strauss in The Nation: Regulations Are Killed, and Kids Die: Under pressure, the Obama administration withdrew rules barring young laborers from dangerous work—a decision with grave consequences for several families. Maryn McKenna in Medium: Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future: After 85 years, antibiotics are growing impotent. So what will medicine, agriculture and everyday life look like if we lose these drugs entirely? Rachel Pearson in the Texas Observer: Texas' Other Death Penalty: A Galveston medical student describes life and death in the…

Catching up with old news

I have been very, very bad. I have been neglecting my obligations as a member of the blogosphere to share links to interesting stuff, all because I've been busy with travel and work. I missed the Carnival of the Liberals, the Accretionary Wedge, I and the Bird, the Carnival of Space, and even the Carnival of the Godless. I am wicked, the worthless scum of the earth, a footling twallop who deserves your scorn and needs to be demoted. But I'm trying to catch up! I promise I'll do better! I also overlooked Revere's Sunday Sermonette, which I usually catch: the latest is a tribute to George…

World Food Prices and the Price of Oil

From the UN FAO, we can see that world food prices remain extremely high. We also, I think, when we conjoin this with oil prices can see that there is at least a significant correlation. So much of what has been done in agriculture over the last 75 years has served to tie oil and food prices more tightly together, but it is increasingly clear that the world's poor cannot afford to have their access to food controlled by the price of energy on world markets. That kills people, to put it as bluntly as possible. This is one of the reasons I'm least convinced that improving agricultural…

Open Farm Days!!!

Ok, have you always wanted to come to see the farm? Here's your chance. On Sunday, May 22, we're having an open farm day from 10am to 4pm at our place at 43 Crow Hill Road Delanson, NY 12053. We're about 45 minutes west of Albany in rural upstate NY. We will have baby goats to pet, baby rabbits (hopefully), chicks and ducklings, milking and scything demos, some kid activities (if we can get them to do any activities, rather than just racing around and playing in the creek ;-)). I'll also have books, vegetable, herb and flower plants, eggs and herbs for sale, and maybe other stuff as well…