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Earthquake Triggering of Mud Volcanoes

A quick note for those of you interested in mud volcanoes (and I know there are many of you). From an article titled "Earthquake Triggering of Mud Volcanoes" by Magna et al we learn that ... Mud volcanoes sometimes erupt within days after nearby earthquakes. The number of such nearly coincident events is larger than would be expected by chance and the eruptions are thus assumed to be triggered by earthquakes. Here we compile observations of the response of mud volcanoes and other geologic systems (earthquakes, volcanoes, liquefaction, ground water, and geysers) to earthquakes. The…

Ingushetia Civil War Heats Up

I once read a novel by John Le Carre about Inguhetia (Our Game). For quite some time, if I mentioned Ingushetia to anyone they assumed I was making it up. But it is quite real. You've heard recently of the problems in Georgia vis-a-vis South Ossetia. Well, Ingushetia is nestled along side of North Ossetia. It is part of Russia. And now ... Human rights activists and opposition politicians in Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia have told the BBC that the predominantly Muslim region is now in a state of civil war. It is reported that more than 800 people have been killed in an…

Children Rescued from Evangelical Christian Church in Arkansas

It started out as a church. Then the children were taken away because, according to authorities, they were being held in some sort of hareem of young girls for the church leader's pleasure. Now, they will probably start calling it a 'cult.' But it isn't. It's just a church. State officials on Tuesday took into protective custody 21 children associated with an evangelical group whose founder faces federal child sex charges. The children, all younger than 18 and part of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, were taken while custody hearings were being held for six girls seized during a…

The hottest race in the US just got MUCH hotter

Kapow! ZLOTT!!!! Pow! That is what is going on in the Franken vs. Coleman race with some interesting recent developments that congealed in a Public Radio debate, a new ad by Norm Coleman, and ... wait for it ... a new ad from Al Franken that should be out tomorrow some time. Some real shit is truly hitting a very energetic fan, and people are sitting up and taking notice. What is currently a very close election is likely, I predict, to not be close at all by the time Tuesday comes along. But I'm not saying which way it is going to break, because I have no idea. Details here. Here is…

Kristen Ashburn: Heartrending pictures of AIDS

In this moving talk, documentary photographer Kristen Ashburn shares unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa. Kristen Ashburn's poignant photographs bring us into close contact with individuals in the midst of enormous hardship -- giving a human face to struggles that much of the world knows only as statistics and blurbs on the news. She has photographed the people of Iraq a year after the U.S. invasion, Jewish settlers in Gaza, suicide bombers, the penal system in Russia, victims of tuberculosis and the aftermath of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina in New…

Greg Hussein Laden says: "KAIIIIILIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!"

I know a man who is best friends with Huey Newton. I know a woman to who took a class from a professor who is suspected of building a bomb used to blow up (part of) a building in the 1960s. I am closely related to a person who shall remain nameless who was under investigation by the FBI for blowing up (part of) a building during the 1960s. I am part of a group of people who broke some government property at a Viet Nam War protest. Details withheld. When I was a young child I sent a threatenting letter to President Richard Nixon. I was once an active member of what in those days passed…

Hackers Hit Large Hadron Collider Computer System

According to a report in The Telegraph: ... as the first particles were circulating in the machine near Geneva, a Greek group had hacked into the facility and displayed a page with the headline "GST: Greek Security Team." The people responsible signed off: "We are 2600 - dont mess with us. (sic)" The website - cmsmon.cern.ch - can no longer be accessed by the public as a result of the attack. Scientists working at Cern, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge…

Michele, you ignorant slut...

OK, let's say it all together. Minnesota is the state. Minneapolis is a city in Minnesota. Saint Paul is the Capitol of Minnesota. The Republican National Convention will be in Saint Paul. Saint Paul Minnesota. Not Minneapolis. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is from a suburb of Saint Paul and who represents the sixth district to the US Congress in Minnesota (which is over on the other side of Minneapolis ... so she drives through both cities to visit her home town) should really know this. But she does not. U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has joined CBS anchor Katie Couric with mixing…

Norm Coleman Is a Hockeypuck.

From Andy Barr, Al Franken's Campaign: When we saw Norm Coleman's ad bragging about how he "brought hockey back" to Minnesota, our first thought was, "Hey, we like hockey, but wasn't that a long time ago?" And our second thought was, "Wait a minute...they left out the part where Norm spent six years selling out to George W. Bush and the special interests!" "A Few More Things" Highlighting Norm Coleman's terrible record on issues important to Minnesotans, the Al Franken for Senate campaign today released this web ad. Titled "A Few More Things," the ad features a man in a bowling alley…

Leonard Nimoy Has Died

Sad news: Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83. His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Leonard Nimoy has the distinction of having starred in two of the greatest television series ever. Let us recall that he went straight from Star Trek to…

Questioning Darwin

Blogging is likely to be light for the next week or so. I'm gearing up for some traveling, starting at the end of the week. On Thursday I'll leave for Chicago, to participate in the annual AAAS Conference. Over the weekend I will be in Parsippany, New Jersey to participate in the annual chess extravaganza known as the U. S. Amateur Team East. Me and my homeys are getting together for another, no doubt forlorn, go at the title. Then on Tuesday I'll be in Princeton to meet with an editor from Princeton University Press to discuss a new project. Stay tuned on that one! Sadly, because of…

Science Media: Why do I even bother...

Me, about three weeks ago: Super Awesome influenza antibodies: Slightly more helpful than Super Awesome HIV antibodies This morning: Scientists hail the prospect of a universal vaccine for flu One antibody to bind them all-- An antibody that recognizes all strains of influenza A could be a universal vaccine blueprint. Universal flu vaccine a 'step closer' Universal Flu Vaccine On The Horizon: Researchers Find 'Super Antibody' Flu "super antibody" may bring universal shot closer Weve had broadly neutralizing antibodies in HIV World for like, 20 years now. We still dont have an HIV-1…

Attn all researchers: How about we just not take work laptops home from work.

Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me?? Remember several months ago, the story about the PIs leaving their laptop in their car while they ate some Panera? And while they were NOMing someone broke into their car, stealing the laptop, and all their un-backed-up data? And we are all like "OMFGWTF?" "Who the hell leaves a laptop with that kind of information on it in their god damned car?? Who doesnt back up their data?? WAT??? ... Oh well, costly reminder for the rest of us." YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS. Okla. health department laptop stolen Nearly 133,000 people may have had personal…

HIV Denier FAIL

AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Know how a while back, when I let that 'House of Numbers' spam through for the lulz? Well, apparently that spam was sent by a real human, not a spambot. Like, a real breathing human with no life. Cause humanspambot took that comment going through as an opportunity to spam numerous other posts on ERV, sometimes the same post repeatedly. The exact, same, message. Since I approved the other spam, poor ERV thought it was supposed to let them all through, so I had to manually trash them all. I then sent a short polite email to the email address associated with the comments…

NOMNOMNOM!! Wells and Meyer coming to Oklahoma!

No, not Myers. Meyer. Stephen Meyer. Looks like John Edwards mutant cousin? You know him. Got some earth science degree so he for some reason writes about molecular biology? I dunno why, but I always get him confused with Paul Nelson. And Jonathan Wells. The HIV Denier? In that Moonie cult, but for some weird reason Evangelicals have a boner for him? Co-authored that book with DembskiTARD, where they tried to steal from 'Inner Life', AGAIN? Yah, theyre going to be here to show us the DI bukakke, 'Darwin's Dilemma', then squirt some Creationist spooge irl with a Q&A. And I guess…

Brad Pollit ensures special rights for Fundamentalists at Smith-Cotton

  Oh poor Brad Pollit. You all sent him emails (pollittb@sedalia.k12.mo.us) after he made some breathtakingly ignorant comments about public schools and evolution. The email in the video was perfectly nice-- but the poor babby Pollit didnt want his face on video. However he was happy to dig himself even further in a hole by stating that because Fundamentalist Christians are offended by EVILUTION, the band shirts artistic rendition of EVILUTION was unacceptable. Even though evolution is a basic scientific fact, we dont want to offend those poor persecuted Fundamentalist Christians, so now…

ERV on IG

Welp, Mooney chickened out. Again. I feel bad for Reggie, because this is totally my fault-- Reggie is a very congenial interviewer. Hes been earning street-cred since the internet was born, interviewing top dogs like Eugenie Scott, Richard Dawkins, Ken Miller, James Randi, Barbara Forrest... But after I alerted you all to Mooneys appearance, apparently the thought of answering questions critical of 'Unscientific America' from you all was too much for Mooney. Hes not going to be on IG anymore. I guess he has to wash his hair, or something. SOOOOOOOO Im going to be on tonight instead!…

Bort grows ERV and CytB trees!

As much as I make fun of IDiots, I have to say that they really do create great science education outreach opportunities. Stupid shit they say is a perfect place to start talking to your friends about weird shit you do everyday. For instance, we all know about Casey Luskins (aka 'Captain Nipple-Slip') inability to comprehend phylogenetic trees. Well, blogger Bort looked at a tree made almost 10 years ago with primate ERVs, and compared it to a tree he made 30 seconds ago with primate Cytochrome B as the input. SPOILER: Theyre the same. He also, accidentally, reminded us of why people laugh…

Blackford on Dawkins

In the comments to Jake's post from yesterday, Russell Blackford left a comment that perfectly summarizes my own views on Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion: This is what I find obnoxious about atheists who want to attack Dawkins for writing a book like The God Delusion, which is not actually strident and angry at all, but careful, fair, and good-humoured. Dawkins is not beyond specific criticism (e.g., I think he underestimates the force of the problem of evil and perhaps overestimates the force of the ultimate 747 gambit ... and a few specific sentences in The God Delusion could perhaps…

Porcine vengeance

You really don't want to know what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. That way, you'd never hear about toxic pig brain mist. In a rapid-fire process that is noisy, smelly and bloody, severed pigs' heads are cut up at the head table at a rate of more than 1,100 an hour. Workers slice off the cheek and snout meat, then insert a nozzle in the head and blast air inside until the light pink mush that is the brain tissue squirts out from the base of the skull. This is in the news right now because Minnesota slaughterhouse workers are coming down with an autoimmune disease, chronic inflammatory…

One Does Not Simply Science Into Mordor

I recently shot a bunch of video of myself in front of a green screen, for something that will be revealed in due time. Of course, if you have green-screen footage of yourself, you're pretty much obliged to do something silly with it, so here's a quick GIMP-ing of a still from the video (also visible as the "featured image" above...). One does not simply science into Mordor (I was going to try to put myself inside Mount Doom holding a Ring, but I couldn't find a suitable background image, and I've already spent too much time on this silliness. It's not the classic Boromir pose, but it'll…

The Pip, Balance Expert

Since SteelyKid got her own cute-photo post last night, it's only fair to give equal time to The Pip. This morning, for reasons that passeth adult understanding, the kids decided to balance teddy bears on their heads, SteelyKid using Bertha the Big Bear (who is just a little smaller than The Pip), while the Little Dude had a tiny neon green beanbag bear. Leading to the "featured image" above, which is my new favorite picture of Il Duderino. "Yeah, I got a bear on my head. And I make it look good." Lest you think his exceptional knowledge of forces in equlibrium is employed only for totally…

Favorite Quantum Physics in Science Fiction?

I'm doing a bit of work on an idea for physics outreach, which would involve tying a discussion of modern physics to science fiction stories. I have Opinions about this sort of thing, of course, but I also have readers who might think of things I don't. So, let me throw this out to you all: What is your favorite example of a science fiction story (here meaning print, movie, or television) making use of ideas from quantum physics? What's your least favorite? My favorite stories invoking QM ideas are probably Robert Charles Wilson's brilliant "Divided by Infinity" (which I will draw heavily on…

ERV makes Dembski not-backdown and not-cry

You all remember Dembski's recent faux pas — he was caught stealing a science video from Harvard/XVIVO for use in his Intelligent Design creationism lectures. Dembski has issued one of his patented not-pologies. He now declares that all of the allegations against him are false, but he now promises to no longer use the video. You see, he really didn't steal it. Here's his excuse. The video was so good that I wanted to use it in some of my public presentations, but when I tried to purchase a DVD of it (I sent several emails to relevant parties), I was informed it wasn't ready. Translation: He…

Oh Joy! Oh Happy Day!

Just finished teaching my last class for the term. Feels soooo goooood. Well, there are still finals to get through, and the extra-long office hours I generously hold on the days before the finals. And then comes the grading. Sooooo much grading. First the exams. Then the course grades. Then a lull of a few days. And then the inevitable complaints from a few disgruntled students. Graduation is in there somewhere which is actually kind of fun, except for the part about getting up way early on a Saturday. But then comes summer break. Yaaaay! Since I am not teaching any summer courses…

P.Z. Spreads the Gospel!

You've heard of those parasites that can invade other creatures and turn them into zombies, mindlessly doing the parasite's bidding? Well, if Ken Ham is is to be believed, that's pretty much what has happened to our own P.Z. Myers: As you watch this intriguing video exchange, please note that Dr. Purdom circles back from time to time to engage [Michael Shermer] in some of the more urgent aspects of the creation/evolution question, including how the gospel message is connected to Genesis. This video, by the way, has become somewhat popular on the web. It's been picked up by other…

CSI: Ambiguous Sentences

The New York Times yesterday had a story with the dramatic headline DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show, explaining that, well, there are nefarious tricks you can pull to falsify DNA evidence, provided you have access to a high-quality biochemical laboratory. The story is a great boon to conspiracy theorists everywhere, especially with this sentence: Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories. "See! They're selling fake DNA samples to…

Put the EmPHAYsis on the Right SyLABle

A thousand curses on Kevin Drum for making me read some idiocy from the National Review's attempts to find things wrong with Sonia Sotomayor: Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be…

Schrödinger's Dog: The Movie

The release date for the forthcoming How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is December 22, seven months from today, and I got a look at some sample pages yesterday, so things are moving right along. To mark the occasion, and give you something to entertain you while I'm spending another day at DAMOP, I thought I'd offer some video: This is me reading the dog conversation that goes with Chapter 3, on the Copenhagen Interpretation. The cheap computer microphone doesn't do that great a job picking up the Dog Voice, but it'll give you the basic idea. The images that go with it were mostly taken by…

What Should I Do in Charlottesville?

From Tuesday to Saturday, I will be at the 2009 DAMOP meeting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. I have been to Charlottesville three times before, and based on that experience, I know these things: The White Spot is worth a visit if you're a fan of greasy spoon diners. Getting stuck in an elevator with half a rugby team kind of sucks. It's damnably difficult to find good bagels in the South. Getting stuck in an elevator on your way to bed after a wedding reception really sucks. Yes, that's right, I have been stuck in an elevator in Charlottesville, VA not once, but twice…

Dorkiest Family Vacation Ever

Via Michael Nielsen, a page documenting what I really hope is the dorkiest family vacation ever: Project GREAT: General Relativity Einstein/Essen Anniversary Test Clocks, Kids, and General Relativity on Mt Rainier: In September 2005 (for the 50th anniversary of the atomic clock and 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity) we took several cesium clocks on a road trip to Mt Rainier; a family science experiment unlike anything you've seen before. By keeping the clocks at altitude for a weekend we were able to detect and measure the effects of relativistic time dilation compared to atomic…

Links for 2011-01-29

The 'scandal' of the kilogram (Blog) - physicsworld.com "That's the name of the game in metrology these days - finding a way of defining mass without just resorting embarrassingly, as we do now, to a lump of metal in the basement of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) outside Paris and saying "that's a kilogram". After all, periodic inspections of the lump have shown it's been changing its mass slowly over time. As laser physicist Bill Phillips from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) told delegates during one question-and-answer session on Monday…

Science on the Tree 2010: Literature

Continuing our series of science-themed Christmas tree ornaments, we have this cute pair of reading bears: "But wait," you say, "reading isn't a science!" Ah, but while reading itself may not be a science, science is nothing without the scientific literature. The really essential step in the process of science is the communication of scientific results to others. That's what allows future scientists to "stand on the shoulders of giants," to borrow a phrase from Newton, using past results as the basis for future experiments. Reading the results of others is absolutely essential to science.…

Thursday Toddler Blogging 110410

Welcome to this very-carefully-posed edition of Thursday Toddler Blogging: That's Kate and SteelyKid reading The Cat in the Hat,shot from a slightly odd angle so as to hide the wicked shiner that SteelyKid is sporting, thanks to a tumble down the stairs on Tuesday morning (while I was getting ready to take her to the doctor, no less-- Tuesday was Not A Good Day). She's doing just fine, but it's really a terrible look. This also continues the playing-with-the-camera trend of the last week or two, as this was shot without the flash. The angle is also chosen to put the lamp on the end table out…

Academic Poll: Exam Philosophy

I'm spending a good chunk of the morning grading the exam that I gave yesterday, so here's a poll on what you might call exam philosophy. Our classes are small, so the bulk of our exams are free-response problems, and we tend to break those problems into sub-parts (1a, 1b, 1c, etc.). There are two approaches to writing these questions that I have seen: one is to use the sub-parts to break a single problem into steps, thus leading students through the question; the other is to write questions where the sub-parts are independent, so that a student who has no clue how to answer part a can still…

Cheerful Kiss-Off Songs

The AV Club offers a list of 28 gleeful breakup songs, a category that includes some great tunes. The comments contain some good additional suggestions, and they still missed one of my all-time favorites, "Bye, Bye" by the Subdudes (if that link won't play, you can get a cell-phone camera live version on YouTube-- skip the first 0:50 or so). I'm sure there are plenty of other good ones missing as well. Of course, the real gem of the article is this charming little tune from Cee-Lo Green: That's spectacular. Apparently this was a viral Internet smash-- the sort of thing that gets a song…

Ode to a Rubber Dinosaur

Rubber dino, you're the one, You make bathtime lots of fun Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you Doo-doo doo-de-doo Rubber dino, fearsome roar, Good thing you're a herbivore Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you doo-doo doo-de-doo Every day when I, get undressed next to the sink, I find a Little fella who's, cute and yellow and extinct When I squeeze you, water squirts, Then I giggle, 'til it hurts Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you Doo-doo doo-de-doo You're my favorite bathtime toy, Watch out for that asteroid! Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of, Rubber dino…

Why I Hate Windows Update, Aleph-nought in a Series

Relevant to yesterday's discussion, I let Windows install its critical updates on my work computer last night. So far this morning, I have: 1) Spent five minutes looking at the blue Vista start-up screen, as the computer was hung up-- not a screen with a "Configuring updates" message, mind-- an otherwise blank blue screen with "Windows Vista" at the bottom, 2) Had Word inform me that it is unable to find the file I double-clicked to open Word, 3) Opened Word, opened the file from within Word, closed the file, tried to quit Word, and was told that I can't quit Word because it's in use by…

More Entropy, Less Spanking

I'm currently a bit less than halfway through Sean Carroll's From Eternity to Here, which has leaped to the top of the literary inbox because I'll be hosting a Book Salon at firedoglake next Saturday evening. If you want to see how my limited typing skills work in a live chat setting, be sure to stop by. (I plan to type out a bunch of questions in advance, and then cut-and-paste them as needed.) A little while back, somebody on Twitter referred to this as "Sean's arrow of time fetish book," which is a little unkind, but also funny and memorable. Sort of. My subconscious, trained by spending…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

Two new links for today's Obsessive Update: The first is a nice article from Union's press office, with the headline "You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but what about physics?". I spent half an hour or so talking with one of the staff writers (who has a science background, which is a nice bonus) on Wednesday, so it's a fast turnaround, too. The second is a passing mention in a possibly skeevy Russian site's article about the golden retriever physics video that went around a couple of months ago. Amazing what the vanity search turns up... The sales rank, for those who care, continues to…

Still in the Dark

As a physicist with a blog, I am contractually obligated to do a post on the CDMS almost-a-result. This is that post. The short version: they expected at most 0.8 events (that's total events, not events per day, or anything-- this is a whole community built on detecting nothing at all), and got 2, with maybe a third that was close to making the cut, but didn't. I think Joe Fitzsimons on Twitter summed it up best, writing: Isn't that the least informative number of events possible? It's more events than expected, but not enough to really be meaningful. The probability of this level of signal…

Congratulations to Lauren Uroff and tcmJOE

During this year's DonorsChoose fundraiser, I promised books as prizes to people who contributed to my challenge. Now that the finished books are ready, it's time to congratulate the winners. Lauren Uroff wins one copy for giving the largest individual donation of the people who forwarded me receipts (the largest overall contribution was from Hewlett Packard, but we're not giving books away to faceless corporations). The person who posts as tcmJOE was the winner of the random drawing (the person has a real name, but I'm not sure it's public. He also used an email address that may be a spam…

Links for 2009-10-26

Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt - NYTimes.com "Agincourt's status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history -- and a keystone of the English self-image -- has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers. " (tags: history humanities war) Swans on Tea » It ... Moves Boom de yada, boom de yada. (tags: video silly swans-on-tea xkcd comics) What the crappy…

Links for 2009-09-28

Smarter people go to college, so average university students less intelligent? : Gene Expression "Remember that a substantial proportion of college graduates are less intelligent than a substantial proportion of those without college degrees. While the proportion of the population with college degrees increased, and that increase was disproportionately from the higher end of the distribution, it was not such perfect sorting. " (tags: social-science education academia blogs) Sex, Drugs, Music, Mud "I was slightly disappointed to be missing Woodstock until the nightly news reported that it…

Talk Like a Physicist

One of last year's highest-traffic posts was, weirdly, Talk Like a Physicist. I say "weirdly" because it wasn't much more than a link to Tom at Swans On Tea. It's that time of year again, and Tom's back with an updated list of vocabulary for your physicist-talking needs. I don't have much to add, but one of Tom's items: We physicists quantify relationships -- something that is complicated is "nonlinear," or even "highly nonlinear." Opposites are "inversely proportional" reminded me of a great literary reference, from Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life": "So they can read a word with equal ease…

Icarus at the Edge of Time, by Brian Greene

Or, Brian Greene Writes a Kid's Book... This is a very odd book. It's printed on boards, like a book for very small children, but the story is a bit beyond what I would imagine reading to a normal kid of the age to want books of that format. It's too short and simple, though, to have much appeal to significantly older children, aside from the fact that the story is written over the top of 15 absolutely gorgeous reproductions of pictures of astronomical objects. This is probably one of those objects whose cool appearance is the only real reason for the thing to exist. The pictures really are…

links for 2008-07-01

What Would Jesus Do (in College)? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs A look at "challenges confronting a subset of religious colleges: Those looking to differentiate themselves from what's perceived as the prevailing norm - Christian colleges as bastions of social conservatism - without collapsing age-old faith tradi (tags: religion academia education society US) Report Critical of Math Teachers' Preparation :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs "The study attributes the inadequacy to a combination of low…

links for 2008-06-26

Annals of Medicine: The Itch: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker The neurobiology of itching. Sadly, it doesn't include a cure for hives. (tags: medicine psychology science) Swans on Tea » Ghostly Visages Video of laser-cooled atoms in a trap with the magnetic fields not balanced. I used to spend half an hour a day tweaking the Xenon MOT using this sort of picture. (tags: physics low-temperature atoms experiment science video youtube) Plenty to Go Around :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs "A new book from Stanford University Press called…

The Road to Woo is Paved with Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria

I've had recurring problems with hives for a couple of years now. I have, at times, jokingly attributed this to an allergic reaction to George W. Bush continuing to be President, but I really have no idea what, exactly, is causing the problem. My allergist says that it's most likely an autoimmune thing, and thus there isn't any cause to find, and I'll just drive myself crazy chasing false correlations. I can tell you, though, that the whole thing has given me some sympathy for people who seek solutions for their health problems in "alternative medicine." Because, really, if somebody told me…

Science Habitat Photo Contest

The Corporate Masters are holding a workspace photo contest: Now hard at work on the next issue, Seed editors want to see the typical or not-so-typical places where you do science. For the chance to get your scientific work space featured in Seed, please send a photo of it to art@seedmediagroup.com by Tuesday, May 13th at 5:00pm EST. Please write "Where I Do Science Photo Submission" in the subject line, and send as high a resolution image as you can. In the body of the email, please include: your name; what kind of science you do; and the location of the photo. My office is moderately…