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Minneapolis Event: "Sim Simmer Latino"

Emetrece Productions invites you to come 'sim simmer' with us! "Sim Simmer Latino" A special 'private party' free show to thank our friends and fans! Featuring Maria Isa, The Kamillion and Omari Omari on the 1s & 2s. FREE // 9PM - 12AM // 21+ Thursday, April 3, 2008 600 Washington Avenue North "Sim Simmer Latino" presented by Emetrece Productions and hosted by Camel Beast House, is a special 'private party' free show to thank our friends and fans celebrating Emetrece's birthday. Hip-Hop, R&B, and reggaetón artist Maria Isa headlines with her live band along with rising Latin…

The 107th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: OMG! A podcast!

Well, here's a new way of hosting a Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. What we have this time is the combination of a minimalist presentation of the relevant links with a maximalist bit of podcast blather from Theo Clark of The Skeptics' Field Guide. Go check it out! Next up is PodBlack Cat on March 26. Start firing up your skeptical keyboards and be sure to give her the material she needs for yet another awesome carnival! In the meantime, we're always--and I do mean always--on the lookout for hosts, both those who've hosted before and newbie skeptical bloggers who want their chance to make a…

Submit! Submit to the Skeptics' Circle

Well, now. With the long four day weekend that many of us here in the U.S. have enjoyed finally over, it's time to get back to serious business. Serious, but fun. I'm referring to the upcoming 125th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which will be held at Effort Sisyphus on Thursday, December 3. That means there are less than three days for you to get your submissions of skepticism, science, and critical thinking over to Techskeptic according to his instructions here. For more specific guidelines of what we're looking for in the Skeptics' Circle, go here. And don't let Techskeptic down!…

We gave Deutsch too much credit

This political hack who was dictating the interpretation of science to scientists was a college dropout. His sole qualification for his job was his enthusiasm for George W. Bush—where have we heard that before? The story has been confirmed in the most emphatic way: Deutsch has resigned. It's not quite over, though, and it's clear that James Hansen is going to keep pushing. Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information. "He's only a bit player," Dr.…

Plan B

Glenn Reynolds: Of course, if we seized the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. Yeah, because that's pretty much the way it worked out in Iraq. Update: Rob Sama on the same Reynolds post: Was just listening to Rush. As usual, it sounded like a regurgitation of the best that the blogosphere has to offer. He quoted this newspaper column by Max Boot, which was also quoted by Instapundit this morning. Rush read the same quote that Instapundit cited, but then he went on,…

Inhofe on DDT

Senator Inhofe comes in for some well-deserved mocking for inviting novelist Michael Crichton to testify on global warming science. RealClimate has a detailed dissection of Crichton's testimony. I watched the proceedings and learned that as well as believing that global warming is a big hoax, Inhofe believes that the 1972 US ban on DDT has caused millions to die from malaria. He had Donald Roberts up to testify about it and Roberts presented the usual misleading arguments about this non-existent ban. Testimony like that of Roberts is pernicious. Malaria really is a solvable problem, but…

One year as a ScienceBlogger...

One year ago today, Orac was assimilated--I mean welcomed--into the ScienceBlogs collective. it's been a wild ride, a fantastic opportunity to reach more readers than I ever did on my old Blogspot blog. (My traffic has roughly doubled since I joined up.) I didn't show up with the first crop of ScienceBloggers mainly because of my hesitation due to my concern about getting permission for "outside employment" from my University. Fortunately, I overcame that, and the rest is history. I want to take this opportunity to thank my readers for reading and the Seed Media Group for liking what I was…

I bet he'd have opposed the Peace of Westphalia

There is the "Anti (this) War (now)" position. And there is the "Anti-Most Wars Most of the Time" position. And there is Tim Blair's "Pro War All the Time" position: now right-wing monks are launching themselves at Sri Lankan peaceniks: A scuffle broke out Thursday between saffron-robed monks and anti-war demonstrators at peace rally in Sri Lankan capital. About six or seven monks from a right-wing Buddhist faction had stormed the stage during a peace rally attended by about 1,000 people in the capital, Colombo, shouting pro-war slogans, an AP reporter at the scene said. It's as though…

JFK: Pandering to the Hispanic vote?

Well here's an interesting tidbit. Check out this campaign ad for John F. Kennedy from 1960: It kind of puts the whole English-only issue into new perspective, doesn't it? Here's a video of Jackie Kennedy, "pandering" to the Hispanic vote" for her husband 46 years ago! Did the Kennedy campaign's outreach to Hispanic voters cause an uproar then? The fact is, the U.S. has always been a polyglot nation, particularly beginning in the late 1800's and early 1900's, when a huge wave of immigrants arrived. English is the official language, but many other languages were commonly spoken. In many…

Do not cite or quote

Clif at Sadly No mocks some blogger who thinks that because the draft report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States used a photoshopped picture of flood to illustrate a flood, rather than a picture of a real flood, this casts doubt on the science. Following the links I get to Anthony Watts who reckons that it was photoshopped "for better impact" -- I guess he thinks beautiful clean fake water has a better impact than the disgusting brown water you get in a real flood. From Watts I find, surprise surprise, that this story originated at Climate "mountains out of molehills" Audit…

The Australian's War on Science X

The Australian front pages an article on "eminent historian" Don Aitkin who attacks the "quasi-religious" scientists of the IPCC for advocating that some action to combat global arming should be taken. Aitkin deploys the argument from incredulity He says an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide over the past century is agreed, some of it due to fossil fuels, cement-making and agriculture. However, normal production of CO2 is not known, and it makes up only a tiny part of the atmosphere. "How does a small increase in a very small component have such a large apparent effect? The…

Michael Moore vs. Fred Phelps

These days, I tend to detest Michael Moore almost as much as I detest Ann Coulter. However, as they say, a stopped watch is correct twice a day, and occasionally Moore can come up with something that's so spot on funny and appropriate that even I have to give him props. (This used to happen more often several years ago and happens far less often now.) In this case, it's a segment from his old show in which he took on the "Reverend" (and I use the term loosely, given Phelps' vicious and hateful spin on Christianity) Fred Phelps over his picketing of gay funerals. The video below was made well…

Another one jumps ship

Getting back to politics one last time, founder and fellow RINO The Commissar is jumping ship from the Republican Party this fall. Read why here. Although I'm a fair bit closer to the center than The Commissar, his thoughts echo mine to a large extent. Personally, I'm a big fan of divided government. The checks and balances work far better when no one party is in control of the legislative and executive branches, and legislation has to have broad bipartisan support to pass. Whenever one party controls both Houses of Congress for too long, it inevitably becomes corrupt, leading to the…

Camille Paglia is an idiot

The Editors report Camille Paglia, professor of humanities, worries about "a landscape of death in the humanities." I would agree with that, had it actually made any sense, although probably for different reasons: This whole thing about global warming - I am absolutely incredulous at the gullibility of people. What is this hysteria over drowning polar bears? And finally I realized, people don't know polar bears can swim! For me, the answer is always more facts, more basic information, presented without sentimentality and without drama. Take that, marine biologists! Update: More Paglia…

It is so on

I will be debating Christopher Monckton this Friday. John Smeed emails: The Grand Ballroom at the Sydney Hilton Hotel is booked for 12.30pm to 2.30pm on Friday 12 February 2010 where it was planned that Alan Jones would MC a Lord Monckton lecture. I have now rearranged this function to become a 'Presidential Style' debate (like the format used in the USA Presidential elections) on DOES ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING ENDANGER MANKIND ? with Alan Jones as the Moderator. Each speaker will present a 10-15 minute Synopsis of his argument The Moderator, Alan Jones, will ask a sequence of say four (4…

Welcome to the Age of Ignorance

Everyone knows that the quackery-friendly, antivaccine blog Age of Autism has a rather--shall we say?--hypocritical stance when it comes to free speech. For one thing, for all their complaints about censorship and not being heard by the government, its denizens frequently confuse freedom of speech with freedom from criticism. For another thing, they also ruthlessly censor comments that they do not like on their blog itself. Worst of all, they tacitly support the "outing" of pseudonymous commenters if such commenters annoy them enough. Someone's finally gotten tired of it. Indeed, someone has…

President Bush's Underwater Retreat

Remember the ol’ Bush compound on Walker’s Point, in Kennebunkport, Maine? Check out this map, indicating the effects of sea level rise: A one meter rise of sea level is shown in red, while the yellow indicates a six meter rise. That might make the storm they had in 1991 look like a mild shower: Debris and rubble left by 20-foot waves striking Walker’s Point on November 2, 1991 Shouldn’t the president be a little worried about the house his family has occupied for more than 100 years? Oh... wait... that’s right. He prefers to spend his vacations in Crawford, Texas. I wonder why? View…

Lott/Mustard Study

[Originally posted to firearmreg on Aug 15 1996] Daniel Polsby writes: Lott's results are highly plausible and internally consistent. Highly plausible? Lets look at Dade county: Lott reckons that the carry law caused a reduction of 8% in murders, 5% in rapes, 7% in aggravated assaults and 2% in robberies. For Dade county that translates to 1,500 fewer aggravated assaults, 450 fewer robberies, 65 fewer rapes and 30 fewer murders each year. From Cramer and Kopel's paper on CCW (TN Law Review v 62p733) one learns that "the police kept track of every known incident involving [Dade] county's…

More Schopenhauer

Lack of understanding [is] called stupidity; deficiency in the application of the faculty of reason to what is practical we [recognize] as foolishness; deficiency in power of judgement as silliness; finally, partial or even complete lack of memory as madness... That which is correctly known through the faculty of reason is truth. -From The World as Will and Representation, First Book, Section 6. As moralizing as it sounds, Schopenhauer is not being so here. This is his way of defining the terms of discussion. As I continue reading, it is remarkable to notice how he uses the Principle of…

Another promising idea in HIV prevention dies

There's sad news from the HIV prevention front: trials of an experimental vaccine against HIV have been suspended in the wake of an interim data analysis suggesting it's not really effective. Per the NIH's press release, the vaccine hasn't been shown to alter either the predisposition to or course of HIV infection in human subjects. There's no mention of any harm to participants, and it's worth noting that the vaccine itself is formed of synthetically produced bits of HIV-like viral material incapable of causing actual HIV infection. Vaccine development has long been one of the holy grails…

Mitch Berg attempts to defend Lott, fails

Meanwhile, CNSNews.com seems to be blissfully unaware of the Lott affair, with this story reporting: "Surveys Lott conducted in January 1997 indicated that guns are used more than two million times a year in self-defense, either by threatening to use a gun, brandishing it, firing a warning shot or actually shooting a criminal." Mitch Berg defends Lott against Laura Billing's criticism: For instance, critics of his have long wondered where he came across a "national survey" cited in his book claiming that "98 percent of the time people use guns…

Recent Encounters with Modernity

Sometimes, something makes you stop and give pause to modernity. Or humanity. Or both. I have had a few such moments lately, like when I saw one of these Mobile Gyms in Vancouver for the first time the other day. Talk about a band-aid on a bullet wound: And then I came across a book to read so you can talk about books you haven't read: This Office Depot advertisement is shockingly perverse, given how many small stationary businesses it has probably put out of business: And this was no biggie, except that it is posted on the door of a public library in Aiken, South Carolina: And I'll…

Do Scientists Want to Bridge Science and Society?

So much of what the scientists do is less relevant than it could be. This was the motivation behind the theme at the 2010 AAAS annual meeting, Bridging Science and Society. Our panel discussed non-regulatory means of enhancing cooperation - namely through reputation and shame. Ralf Sommerfeld, a recent graduate who worked with the Max Planck Institute, presented several of his new game theoretical studies showing that gossip and reputation can lead to increases in overall cooperation [1, 2]. This is the theory that underpinned my presentation proposing that we migrate away from guilt-based…

The Duel for Cool: Monotremes v. Syngnathidae

So, I have been thinking about the brainy echidna since its debut a couple weeks ago in the NYTimes. Bestowed upon it, was probably one of the nicest descriptions about an animal ever written: ...an immaculately private nocturnalist with a surprisingly well-endowed brain. It seems to me that monotremes (egg laying mammals) are as cool as Syngnathidae (the family of fishes that include the seahorse and the unique feature of male pregnancy). In the case of the echidna, "they lay leathery eggs, as reptiles do, but then feed the so-called puggles that hatch with milk." For seahorses and…

Levamisole (That's not cocaine)

Levamisole is one of those drugs that was discovered quite awhile ago, when we had even less idea what target things were hitting. It's not used often in people these days. What's interesting about it is that it is occasionally found as an adulterant in cocaine (PDF) - and it popped up again recently. It is truly bizzare what people use to cut drugs. I once heard of a chemistry professor who told his class about how he walked into a head shop and saw a big sack of mannitol behind the counter (which is used as a cutting or bulking agent for street drugs as well). He marvelled that he had just…

N-Cyanoimidazole (It's hard in water!)

All of life links up biomolecules effortlessly, from the august readers of this blog, to the humble bacteria that colonize the half-eaten food on their desks. It makes it frustrating for scientists who are trying to synthesize them. We have methods, but they're inefficient. (It gets even worse for DNA.). It gets even worse when you try and work on a biomolecule you already have in water. Most of our chemical tricks rely on us avoiding water like the plague - a lot of what we use will react with it. It doesn't help matters that a biological reaction might have 10 million times more water…

Methyl Salicylate (Tasty toxic aspirin analogues)

Methyl salicylate, much like aspirin (ASS to the Germans) is an analgesic drug. It's structurally quite similar to aspirin, but less polar and doesn't ionize in water. This affords it some vapor pressure (it smells of wintergreen, and is actually used as a flavoring agent in low concentration!). However, it's quite toxic, and it is only used as an analgesic in creams (as far as I know). Stuff like Ben-Gay. Earlier this year, a young athlete actually absorbed a lethal dose from topical methyl salicylate cream. It looks like she was drastically overusing the stuff. Creams may seem like "lesser…

Palladium on Carbon (Have you realized I'm sans drawing software yet?)

Palladium is really neat stuff. It has an almost absurd affinity for hydrogen - it's one of a few metals we can use as something other than a salt or complex (i.e., just the metal). Pd on C is just carbon dust covered with 5 or 10% Pd metal (you can't see it - it's very expensive copier toner looking stuff). Pd can transfer H2 to unsaturated functional groups. It can also break down molecules without actually "burning" them - your catalytic converter actually has a good deal of Pd in it. Ford lost a load of money some time back investing in Pd expecting to need to stock up (when cats were…

Welcome!

Welcome to ScienceBlogs' new photo blog, Photo Synthesis. While doing our usual browsing of the blogosphere, we've become aware of the vast number of excellent blogs featuring science imagery, from neural networks captured with a light microscope to images of supernovae billions of light-years away. To take advantage of this wealth of visual content, we've decided to host our favorites here on ScienceBlogs, with a rotating line-up of photobloggers we'll select monthly. To start us off, we've selected a photoblogger whose subjects are small but magnificent: The members of the class Insecta.…

Are Geophysicists Geologists?

Or, less generally, am I a geologist? I have a B.S. in geophysics and an M.S. in earth and planetary science with a funky geophysics/geohydrology emphasis. I took some intro physical geology and earth history as a sophomore, but I have never taken formal courses in mineralogy, petrology, structural geology, sedimentology, or stratigraphy. However, I've picked up the basics of these fields from older kids on the street corner and make use of them in my work. Please assume while you are answering the poll that my work involves using my knowledge of the Earth's history, processes, and…

Science in the News

The new season of Science in the News starts next week with a great schedule of science lectures by Harvard grad students free and open to the public. If you're in the Boston area, definitely check it out! Here's the schedule: September 22: Evidence-based Medicine: A Case Study of Vaccines and Autism September 29: Bots That Mimic Bugs: Flying, Crawling, and Squishy Robots October 6: You Are What Your Mother Ate: The New Science of Epigenetics October 13: Beyond Agribusiness: New and Old Ways to Grow Food October 20: The Laser Turns 50: A Brief History and New Frontiers October 27: Forget-Me-…

Statistics on next-generation sequencing platforms

David Dooling from PolITiGenomics has put together a handy little table for genomics nerds like me: statistics on the output of the various iterations of the three major competing second-generation DNA sequencing platforms (Roche's 454, Illumina's Solexa/Genome Analyzer and ABI's SOLiD). It's a little inscrutable for non-genomicists, but it helps to provide some insight into the sheer scale of the DNA sequence data currently being produced by large-scale sequencing facilities. A single Illumina GA II machine, for instance, churns out at least 8 gigabases of sequence (that's almost three human…

Call for Valinetines!

As the Holiday That Will Not Be Named approaches rapidly, I have a little request for my readers and the blogosphere at large. Two years ago, The Scientific Activist introduced the blogosphere to valinetines, scientifically-themed valentines named after the amino acid valine. Here's a classic example from my friend Josh Siepel: You've wounded me, dear; And how can it be? You've reached in and disabled My p53. Something is growing, You've heard the rumour Love grows in my heart And it isn't a tumor. Get the picture? Good, now it's your turn to write your own valinetines. Get those…

Questions for a Rocket Scientist Congressman

Photo source. By Tom Briglia. Dr. Eric Brown from IBM Research preps four members of congress - Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Jim Himes (D-Conn.), Rush Holt (D-N.J.) - for an exhibition game against IBM's Watson on Monday. If you had a chance to sit down with Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), referred to as the "rocket scientist Congressman," what would you ask? I will be doing exactly that in a few weeks and am looking forward to my discussion with him on a range of topics, including science education. Rep. Holt is not a typical Congressman. He earned academic degrees in Physics,…

"'Cult' class slid under radar" - NY Post

The NY Post reported yesterday that a brain-training type programme had been taken up by dozens of schools in New York, despite its connections to the Dahn Yoga cult. A controversial teaching program linked to an alleged cult leader managed to slip into 44 New York City public schools because it didn't cost enough to trigger detailed background checks, school officials said yesterday.Fees for the Brain Power program, developed by Seung Huen Lee, founder of Dahn Yoga -- said to help kids improve their focus -- were well under the $25,000 cutoff, said Education Department spokesman David…

Nine days of 9 (part 8): Design a monster machine!

Welcome to the penultimate chance to win an exclusive coffee table book filled with high-quality prints from the Tim Burton-produced Shane-Acker created animation 9. As far as I know, it can't be bought in shops, and your best chance to win one of the highly limited (999) copies is here at SciencePunk. We've already had plenty of winners, maybe the next one will be you? After discussing the morality of the mechanical monsters that pursue the stitchpunks throughout the film, I thought that maybe some of you didn't want to be a stitchpunk at all. Perhaps you are a fierce and forceful soul,…

Mary's Monday Metazoan: We've got company

We've been invaded by a pair of groundhogs who have taken up residence under our deck, and are apparently dining grandly on our weedy overgrown backyard. They're evasive, though, and I've only got this one poor shot of one of them resting in the dappled shade. OK, here's a clearer shot of what they look like from the web. These two are big beasts, and they probably outweigh our cat, who claws frantically at the door to the deck when they make an appearance. I have mixed feelings about their presence -- on the one hand, they have gnawed on things in the past, and now we've got a mating pair…

Dispatches from the Lab

After spending the last couple of years in front of a computer or in the fly room, I finally returned to the wet lab last week. The occasion: DNA isolation. Now, this isn't any ole' DNA isolation protocol. That would be too easy. Instead, I need some high molecular weight DNA, which means it takes a few days from start to finish with lots of centrifugation throughout. Because I need lots of high quality DNA, I need a fair bit of tissue. This wouldn't be much of a problem if I were working with an organism with a substantial body mass. Alas, I work with Drosophila, and they're tiny. That means…

Blame Canada

I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with the Canadian funding agency that rejected Brian Alters proposal to study the effects of intelligent design on the teaching of evolution. I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said already, but I will point you to EvolDir which has posted the summary of the grant proposal. In case you were wondering, here is the purpose of the study from the horse's mouth: The purpose of this study is to measure the extent to which the recent large-scale popularization of Intelligent Design is detrimentally affecting Canadians' teaching and learning of…

UCLA Wins the National Championship

Following my Sweet 16 optimism, my bracket was blown to shit. I am currently sitting in fourth place in the ScienceBlogs pool, but I last earned points when UCLA made it to the Final Four. Teutonic Thunder (whomever that may be) has won the pool regardless of who wins tonight (we think). He or she can step forward and claim the prize of absolutely nothing. As for the title to this post, see below the fold. Why would I title my post "UCLA Wins the National Championship"? Let's just say it has something to do with this email I received from Amazon: And, yeah, I would love to see UCLA get…

Phylogeny Friday - 13 April 2006

Today's password is coevolution. First of all, here is a pair of phylogenies. The one on the left shows the relationships of a bunch of dove species, and the one on the right shows a bunch of lice that parasitize the doves. The lines connecting doves and lice indicate lice that parasitize each dove species.. Notice that parts of the tree mirror each other. We see that closely related dove species are infected by closely related lice. But that tree is nowhere as clean as this one: On the left is an aphid phylogeny, and the tree on the right is from their obligate symbionts (speaking of…

Mary Jane gets out of jail.

In the ongoing battle between the DEA, farmers, patients, and scientists there has been nothing but contradictory information. It looks like with a couple new pieces of news that the pro-marijuana (the medical kind) people might be coming out ahead. For researchers studying marijuana, it's been a very good week. In one of the most careful studies to date, marijuana was found to relieve pain. And a judge ruled in favor of an agronomist who has has been trying for six years to overcome one of the problems of marijuana research: the lack of an adequate supply of the drug for experiments. The…

Dr. Who to save science studies

Hmm.... I don't know about this: Schools should use episodes from Doctor Who to teach children about science rather than technical and "boring" textbooks, according to the new science minister. Malcolm Wicks, who was appointed in November following the resignation of Lord Sainsbury, believes that too many pupils are put off science during school. He claims that popular television shows such as the hit BBC science fiction series and the Star Wars films provide children with an insight into real science that teachers can use to kick-start lessons. Science education campaign groups have warned,…

Sleep positions and personality.

Ahh... more silliness from the old blog: "Scientists believe the position in which a person goes to sleep provides an important clue about the kind of person they are." I really enjoy the different position names: The Foetus Log The yearner Soldier Freefall Starfish Farting Buffalo Ok.. I'm lying about the farting buffalo. Well I know this whole thing is a little retarded but I think I may be: The yearner (13%): People who sleep on their side with both arms out in front are said to have an open nature, but can be suspicious, cynical. They are slow to make up…

Why women aren't funny....

Hmm... I know plenty of funny women.... so don't whine to me ;) "What makes the female so much deadlier than the male? With assists from Fran Lebowitz, Nora Ephron, and a recent Stanford-medical-school study, the author investigates the reasons for the humor gap." The article also goes on to say how men are more stupid than women... And this... If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and…

Perhaps there is a god

A town full of crazy people in Louisanna got fed up with having their telephone exchange be "666" because of the link between this sequence of numbers and the devil. So they got their exchanged changed to 749. This is very funny. 7:49 is the Bible verse from Luke Johnthat says "But this multitude that knoweth not the law are accursed." in reference to the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the crazy people in the bible ... the fundamentalists ... who Jesus warns about, because, well, their multitude knoweth'd not the law and were accursed. This came up again more recently in the Democratic…

Health Care Business Switch to Linux

McKesson Provider Technologies is a health care industry software vendor. A few years ago, they began to search for ways to cut costs for the hospitals and medical offices that make up their customer base. Switching to Linux was the obvious solution. Today, McKesson, a San Francisco-based company, offers the majority of its health-care related software applications on Linux, which significantly reduces costs for these medical offices and hospitals. The move was solidified in February, when McKesson partnered with Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. to unveil the Red Hat Enterprise Healthcare…

And if you thought licking toads was bad...

While smoking toad venom might sound extreme, an even more disturbing method to get high possibly includes sniffing fermented human waste. Vicky Ward, manager of prevention services at Tri-County Mental Health Services in Kansas City, said she has read e-mail warnings about a drug called jenkem. The drug is made from fermented feces and urine. "We work with a lot of youths and we ask them whether anyone has tried it and they said no," Ward said. "They (the youths) have heard about it because of the Internet." But whether people actually use of jenkem has not been determined, Ward said,…

Get Your Own Genome Sequenced

Today, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their consumer genotyping service, deCODEme. deCODEme is the first personal genomics company to launch, and will provide sequencing information about 1 million SNPs for the introductory price of $985. The service has two components: [source] From deCODEme (Man, I'm siCK of these miXEDcase companynames.): "Through your subscription to deCODEme, you can learn what your DNA says about your ancestry, your body -traits such as hair and eye color- as well as whether you may have genetic variants that have been associated with higher or lower than…

"Ultraspirituality"?

Last night I had an evening meeting for a CQI (continuous quality initiative) collaborative that I'm heavily involved in; so I didn't get home until late. Unfortunately, that means I didn't have the time to dish out the usual insolence for today. Fortunately, I do have a video lying around that made me chuckle and is relevant to skepticism and critical thinking. Even though JP Sears does appear to be a real holistic life coach of some sort promoting "healing" and a bit woo-ey, I have to admit, this video of his, at least, amused me greatly. Hmmm. Am I getting squishy that I find a guy like…