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Linkfest Monday

I am not feeling well today, so here is a low-overhead (for me) set of links.  Anything thoughtful that goes up here yesterday, today, or tomorrow was written ahead of time, and scheduled.  Anyway, here goes: Stem Cell Transplantation Safely Improves Heart Failure in Humans (Medscape; free registration required)  Shows a real therapeutic effect from stem cells.  It does not, however, address the controversy about embryonic stem cells, because autologous stem cells are used.   href="http://www.psychiatrysource.com/NewsItem/Transdermal-nicotine-attenuates-depression-symptom.aspx?l1=3&…

Up close with a drone fly

Eristalis, the drone fly Urbana, Illinois Easily mistaken for a bee, Eristalis is in fact a clever mimic capable of luring many an unsuspecting observer into the land of amusing taxonomy fail. But the structure of the antennae, the broad attachment of the abdomen to the thorax, and the presence of only a single pair of wings mark it as a fly. I took this photo in bright sunlight, although it doesn't look that way from the black backdrop. This dramatic lighting effect is achieved by using such a small aperture (f/13) and a fast shutter speed (1/250 sec) that almost no ambient light reaches…

Specimen Request I: Solenopsidini

Rachelle Adams writes: I have begun a one year postdoc molecular project focusing on the species in the Solenopsidini tribe with Ted Schultz and Seán Brady at the Smithsonian, Washington DC. Due to the vastness of this tribe and its taxonomic challenges, I want to thoroughly sample each genus currently classified in the tribe as well as those that were historically classified as solenopsidines.  ANY samples that belong in the genera listed below are needed.  I have also included a species âwish listâ that will complement a morphological study done by Juanita Rodriguez and my dissertation…

Friday Beetle Blogging: The Other Bombardiers

Metrius contractus Oregon, USA Many biologists are familiar with the Bombardier Beetles in the ground beetle tribe Brachinini, as their defensive tactic of aiming an explosive spray has been studied extensively.  The Brachinini are even celebrated by creationists as animals that couldn't possibly evolve. As it turns out, though, bombardiers have evolved at least twice. The second, less known radiation comprises the subfamily Paussinae, also in the Carabidae, and as we'd expect from an independent origin the spray dispersing mechanism is different, using a flange instead of a nozzle. …

The New Digs

Our yard here in Champaign is about the size of a postage stamp, but it is in an older part of town and the ant fauna isnât half bad. In moving up from Tucson Iâve traded my desert harvester ants for a more midwestern fauna. Hereâs what I uncovered yesterday in a few minutes of looking around: Camponotus pennsylvanicus Camponotus nearcticus Lasius neoniger Formica pallidefulva group sp. Paratrechina sp. Tapinoma sessile Myrmecina americana Tetramorium âsp. Eâ Ponera pennsylvanica As a rule of thumb, older parts of town are better for ant diversity than newer developments. Iâve found this…

Into the woods

I'm heading off line today and won't have any internet access for a few days. After that I should have access again, but life has conspired to hand me the "Weeks of DOOOOM" leading up to September 1st-ish. You know, the usual start of classes (with a new prep), two grant proposals (with a third a few weeks later), my reappointment dossier and statement due, starting Minnow in a new preschool, revaccinating her because apparently all the shots she received prior to 6 months old are "potentially subpotent", etc., etc., etc. So things are going to get pretty quiet here for a while. Hopefully…

For Posterity

(to the tune of "Hush, little baby") Speak little child, and make lots of sounds And keep growing in leaps and bounds We'll be busy as bumblebees We'll catch the waves that crash on the seas We'll go for strolls and walks in the park We'll draw lots of sidewalk art We'll run through sprinklers on days when it's hot We'll sing songs and laugh a lot We'll climb a mountain to touch the sky We'll bake you a blueberry pie I'd give you the stars above For you are my one true love. These days Minnow would rather have a story at bedtime than a lullaby, but this lullaby was sung multiple times daily…

A volcano for Erik

Fantastic volcano blogger, and all around cool guy, Erik Klemetti has put out a call for volcano pictures that he can use on his Eruptions blog. I'd love to be able to send him some fantastic shot of a plinian eruption, but I live in a pretty tectonically quiet part of the world. So this weekend, while Minnow was making spaghetti out of playdough, I decided to craft an offering for Erik: Of course, as I was feeling all smug about my depiction of a Hawaiian shield volcano, complete with lava entering the ocean and creating hydroclastic fragments, NASA's Earth Observatory posted an image of…

Cancer Research Blog Carnival #13

It wasn't triskaidekaphobia that kept me from submitting to the Cancer Research Blog Carnival - I just thought I hadn't written a useful cancer post in quite some time. But thanks to Walter at Highlight Health, our discussion on the relevance of an article on in vitro antileukaemic activity of methadone was included in the proceedings. Walter also has a very timely message to kick off the carnival: Everyone knows that cancer is a devastating disease. What many people don't know is that cancer kills more than 1,500 people a day; that's one person every minute. Tonight, Stand Up To Cancer, a…

I Am Naughty - Grand Rounds 4.31

So says Dr Val Jones at Dr Val's Revolution Health Blog, host of this week's Grand Rounds medical blog carnival. The good doctor classified the posts as follows: [:-)] = A post that demonstrates literary excellence [{] = Early bird - an author who got his/her submission in early, which is really convenient for the host(ess) [:-/] = Naughty - an author who forgot to submit an entry to Grand Rounds but who was included nonetheless Hence, Val classifies me as naughty because she was kind enough to include my post, "Must people die before DSHEA is repealed?," even though I was so inconsiderate…

Anabolic steroids in fitness supplements: no news to us

Yet another example in today's press about dietary supplements contaminated, intentionally or accidentally, with prescription or unapproved drugs - in this case, anabolic steroids showing up in about 20% of supplements tested. I was asked by a major news organization if this is the first time that anabolic steroids have been found in supplements. Nope, look at this FDA action from March 2004 or March 2006. Ugggh, this is a very old story that I've discussed here many times, mostly relative to erectile dysfunction supplements: Potentially life-threatening adulteration of erectile dysfunction…

Passionate scientific imagination, fatherhood, and Google voice search

While working on a science-rich post and writing an exam, something came across Twitter that is, well, too good to just be seen only on Twitter. Fullsteam is the name of the plow-to-pint Southern microbrewery in Durham, NC, no-longer-in-planning-but-not-quite-done and I have written about the tweeter several times. The imagination behind brewing a beer with sweet potatoes (it's awesome, btw) or kudzu comes from the very same mind that burped into his iPhone for the benefit of shared education with his daughters. The result: I use Google voice search all the time and have been very…

Getting rid an environmental scourge: unwanted catalogs

I've just come across a wonderful concept thanks to Grist. I have no idea if it will work, but it seems worth trying: Run by the Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and the Ecology Center, Catalog Choice can, they claim, "put a stop to all those unwanted catalogs clogging your mailbox." Since its debut last week, some 20,000 people have signed up for the service, already halting over 50,000 unwanted catalogs. That's a small fraction of the 19 billion catalogs mailed in the U.S. each year (made out of 53 million trees), but it's a start. Did we mention it's free?…

Stem cell debate casualty in western North Carolina

When former Redskins quarterback Heath Shuler managed to bump off incumbent congressman Charles Taylor in November, there was much rejoicing here in western North Carolina. Many Democrats kept their hopes modest, however, as Shuler got elected campaigning on "mountain values," a not so subtle code phrase for the Christian fundamentalism that pervades the Blue Ridge Mountains. We didn't have to wait long for those fears to be realized. Yesterday, Shuler voted against a bill to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Fifteen other Democrats did the same. Why? "I want…

Mountain of evidence

Climate change has been blamed for a lot of things, sometimes not entirely based on the scientific evidence. But this is a first, at least to me: From today's Guardian: A vast chunk of Europe's most ill-famed mountain threatens to break loose and crash down in the next few days, a geologist monitoring the situation told the Guardian yesterday. Hans-Rudolf Keusen said 2 m[illion] cubic metres of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland - twice the volume of the Empire State Building - was rapidly working its way loose. He said the mountain appeared to have cracked open as an indirect result…

Christchurch struck by Poe?

After the serious earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, a website popped up that blamed the event on gays and lesbians, prostitution, and baby seal clubbing, a website that has been rightfully denounced by the media and gay and lesbian groups. But I'm suspicious. There are a couple of things that make me doubt; one is that the site is a little too free in flaunting photos of naked people from gay events in New Zealand, which is not typical of conservative religious sites. Another problem is the excess — it is clearly trying to be sensationalist. And yet there is no one, no church taking…

Speculation Without Evidence

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment. - S. Holmes Built on Facts is going on a brief (2 day) semi-hiatus as I've got a classical mechanics exam this Friday. It's not a total break though. The posts will be there, but they'll just be short. With all respect to Mr. Holmes, why don't we ignore him just for the moment and make today a bit of a survey day? Specifically, a survey about what we think about physics for which we have no (or very little) experimental data! Short answer format: Does each exist or not? 1. A way for a massive…

Phelps v. Anonymous? Or Phelps v. Phelps?

I saw the open letter from Anonymous threatening to shut down the Phelps gang and the Westboro Baptist Church. It didn't sound right. WBC is not at all reliant on the web, but they are always on the lookout for more opportunities at promoting themselves through the media…so it seemed to me like a futile exercise, with any damage Anonymous might do being entirely tangential to the operation of the GodHatesFags gang, and actually gaining them more notoriety and news. Cory Doctorow has a more plausible angle. This is WBC itself playing games to draw more attention. He also suggests that the WBC…

Danged dirty hippies!

The fine folks at Answers in Genesis are working themselves into a good lather over the fact that they were expelled from homeschool conferences for being too obnoxious and intolerant. Recall that the the Christians doing the banning are also young earth creationist/evangelical/fundamentalist crazies when you read this characterization by Nathan Ham, Ken's son: Some Christians today are like the hippies of 50 years ago who used the word "love" to justify their fornications and sins against the word of God. The hippie culture is often pictured as a group of drug-addicted, fornicating drunks…

Welcome, welcome, our interns!

Well, we're finally pleased to announce that we have, indeed, acquired the services of three excellent interns (see our original call here). This, after our somewhat disappointing Ultraman experience, and some studio pressure to go with George Lucas (in the end, our people ran into scheduling problems with his people, and though we still really want to work on a project together, it'll have to wait till early '09, maybe '10), but we were suitably pleased with the response we got from the ad. In the end, we have selected our three best applicants - they are Jacqui, Laura, and Kate. We'll…

God = Shout in Street

With the ease of post-industrial quotation, he notes: - That is God. Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! - What? Mr Deasy asked. - A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. And what is more, to make the miscellany just that prescient... It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and…

Misguided Science of the Day

Our very own Seed Magazine reports: "US researchers have created genetically-modified mosquitoes resistant to a malaria parasite, raising the possibility of one day stopping the spread of the disease, a new study says." Perhaps doing so isn't such a good idea. Perhaps ecological awareness would suggest that the consequences of such a move are not entirely understandable by us. The problem may not be solvable with strictly technical means. Just an observation. Why are they working on a genetic fix? Because the problem is significant: Each year 350 to 500 million people are infected with…

Trends, figures and the like, for this thing we call the Truth

O.K. people - it's got legs, this thing called the truth. Look at the trend so far: The day after this thing was started, we were at a rank of #310. Then 307 the next day, and then the site actually dissappeared for a day or so from Google itself. Two days ago, we returned and had jumped to #173, and today - today we are at #36! Here it is in glorious graph form. What I'm saying, is that we still need folks to play for us to hit the number one spot. Which, I think, is now potentially within reach. As well, what about posts of your own that discuss the validity of the points addressed…

400 posts! Many more to come...

As of yesterday, I have written 400 proper articles for this blog. Woo, and I might add, hoo. That's excluding random announcements, navel-gazing, chatter or the odd journalistic take-down. Four hundred summaries, each covering one or more new pieces of research. Each one probably represents about 2.5 hours of work, and it's taken about 2.5 years to accumulate all of them. But it's been worth it, for me certainly and I hope for people reading too. If you're new to Not Exactly Rocket Science, you can find the entire back catalogue in "The Full Works".  Or if you want a taster, have a look…

Physics and Relationships

Yesterday I spend a tremendous amount of time in a very snazzy lab shooting lasers through pyridine. Cool stuff, tempered by the fact that pyridine smells like what Dr. Frankenstein's lab would have smelled like if Dr. Frankenstein used organic chemistry instead of electricity, and also the thing he was trying to bring back to life was a dead fish. Science waits for no man - not at least if you have a sensitive nose. Anyway, it resulted in my super-cool post about gravity not being done yet. Blarg! With any luck I'll have it up Monday. So as something cool for the Built on Facts show…

Television news is killing America

While most media commentators obsess over the "news" that Diane Sawyer will be replacing Charlie Gibson on ABC World News, there are at least some observers who remain more concerned with content. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne weighs in this morning on the sensationalism that has dominated coverage of public participation in the health care insurance reform debate. What we learn about the role of television is not surprising, but it does help remind us why things are going the way they are: The most disturbing account came from Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who spoke with a stringer…

Short shorts

Been busy here. Classes start on Tuesday so there has been a lot of administrivia to do with that. It’s also a mad scramble to get some projects finished before next week. My buddie PalMD has come out from under the feet of the Hoofnagles and has shiny new premises (“White Coat Underground”) all of his own here at Scienceblogs. Wander over and say “hi”! “High caffeine consumption could be linked to a greater tendency to hallucinate.” What? Who said that? I’ll be under the table. With my coffee [link]. Another shoutout to Zooborns bringer of much good cheer and much beloved by my daughter.…

Ben Stein and the Shoah

From Evolved and Rational: You only start to feel insulted when Ben Stein decides that the Holocaust is his "personal" reason for "investigating" evolution, and trust me, you feel really insulted. No, Ben Stein, your movie is not a personal crusade on behalf of your lost ancestors. No, Ben Stein, periodically putting your head in your hands while walking around Dachau at inappropriate points in a conversation does not endear you to an audience that you’ve already openly belittled, bored, and been dishonest with. NO, Ben Stein, you’re not poignantly reflecting on the dangers of…

Dangers of Discussing Quantum Theory in Public

An old friend from my undergrad days sent me a link to Physics discussion ends in skateboard attack: A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today. Jason Everett Keller, 40, allegedly accosted another homeless man, Stephan Fava, on the 200 block of Grand Avenue in South San Francisco at about 1:45 p.m. March 30. At the time, Fava was chatting with an acquaintance, who is also homeless, about "quantum physics and the splitting of…

Starting iPhone Programming Tips

A few small tips for what to do when starting up programming for the iPhone. Just a few tips from my experience in learning to program apps for the iPhone. Don't begin by using Interface Builder. Interface Builder may be a great tool once you understand what is going on, but it obscures a lot of the basics when you are starting up. As a corollary, tutorials which use Interface Builder aren't as useful as those that don't. Right click is your friend for looking up documentation in Xcode. Want to remember more about UIViewController? Simply right click on "UIViewController" and pull up a…

Ode to Self-Correcting Quantum Computers

With apologies to Radiohead's "There, there": in pitch dark i go walking in your codespace. broken errors trip me as i speak. just 'cause you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. just 'cause you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. There's always decoherence Singing you to shipwreck (Don't reach out, don't reach out Don't reach out, don't reach out) Steer away from these errors We'd be a decohering disaster (Don't reach out, don't reach out Don't reach out, don't reach out) just 'cause you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. (there's information on your shoulder) (there's…

Large Earth Collider

Oh noes: Scientists Warn Large Earth Collider May Destroy Earth: BATAVIA, IL--In October, Fermilab scientists joined a growing number of physicists around the world in warning that the Very Large Earth Collider--a $117 billion electromagnetic particle accelerator built to study astronomical phenomena by colliding Earth into various heavenly bodies--could potentially destroy Earth when it sends the planet careening headlong into Mars, Jupiter, or even the sun. ... Physicists at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory, who underwrote the VLEC's construction with donations from the Bill and…

Hours

Observations on time. One hour of exercise is much more important for my well being than one hour of sleep. Why does the physics department at the University of Washington have a sundial on the building? I mean, yes it is very cool, but no there are not many opportunities to use it! Michael Nielsen blogs about Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers: The Story of Success and about the 10000 hour rule. Supposedly one needs 10000 hours of practice to truly master a subject. That's over a year in time! That's like seven years straight if I work four hours a day with no breaks. That doesn't…

11th Annual SQuInT Conference, February 19-22, 2009

The 11th Annual SQuInT Conference (dude that makes me feel old) will be held in Seattle this year. Seattle is in the southwest because Southwest airline flies here (quick book the direct flights from Albuquerque!) In conjunction with this there will also be a satellite meeting, the Workshop on Integrated Atomic Systems II. Invited speakers for this years SqUiNt conference include Andrew Childs (Waterloo) Luming Duan (Michigan) Jack Harris (Yale) Chris Monroe (Maryland) Barbara Terhal (IBM) David Weiss (Penn. State) Yes, for those of you unawares of the SqUinT tradition, that is a list…

London Eye Is Falling Down Illusion

The London Eye is a gigantic tourist trap rotating wheel, which you can ride to get a great view of London. The trip takes about 30 minutes. While riding it the other day, I noticed an odd illusion. The London Eye is made up of pods which are attached to the wheel in such a way that each pod is always horizontal. What I noticed was that if you were going up on Eye and looked up and toward the top of the Eye, it felt as if the entire contraption was falling over (i.e. the top of the wheel seemed as if it was falling over.) Anyone have any idea what causes this disorienting effect? (I…

Lies, Damn Lies, and New York Times Graphics

The New York Times has a policy on anonymous sources. Great! But do they have a policy on statistics? They certainly need it. I mean, take a look at the graphic from an article on women and smart phones: I mean, sure the numbers on the right hand side could be used to support the caption "women are more concerned with price, size and design" (and keyboards by their same reasoning) but the hell if I'm going to believe that without knowing what a reasonable estimate of the margin of error is in the survey being reported on. I mean, without such data, the graphic displayed has absolutely…

Back to Back Statistics

Two fans in Dodger stadium caught back to back fouls during a Mets game (and, almost as importantly, the Dodgers lost, woohoo!) From the article: But USC mathematics professor Kenneth Alexander used Wednesday's Dodger Stadium crowd size and game statistics -- 40,696 in attendance and a foul ball count of 48 -- to postulate the odds against Walker and Castro catching back-to-back fouls. Calculating that only one of 18 pitches were fouled into the stands (other fouls stayed on the playing field) and factoring in the six fans sitting close by the pair, Alexander fielded the problem. "One in…

Darwin on the Palouse

Time is whipping by, I can tell — Darwin Day is next week! I'm going to have to whip up a talk for this event real soon, I think: it's Darwin on the Palouse, and I'll be talking at Washington State University in Pullman, WA a week from Thursday. They've paired me up with Dan Dennett that evening…which is daunting, since I know which of us people will be lining up to see. On Friday, it'll be Jen McCreight and Fred Edwords speaking, so even more competition. It should be a couple of good evenings of diverse and interesting talks, so all you folk in Eastern Washington and Idaho should make the…

Google Code University

Last year, Google announced a set of resource to help students and faculty with CS education. They've revamped the set of resources and redesigned the web page and all the jazzy stuff to produce: Google Code University. Marty Stepp, whose courses are featured in the Google code university, has his office just down the hall from me. His name plate says "Marty Stepp++" Being someone who teaches (pay no attention to the "research assistant professor" title), I often wonder about how the web and technology is going to change our educational system. While I certainly am sympathetic to the…

I'd been wondering about that

I don't know about where you are, but this has been a strange winter here in Minnesota. We've had two snow "storms" so far, that did little more than dust the place with snow that melted away in these bizarrely odd warm days we've had. It's cold, windy, and snowing lightly today, but otherwise, this was the first Christmas of Color I've experienced since moving to Minnesota. There's a meteorological explanation, though, and it's not global warming. It's a La Nina year, and the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation have been coincidentally conspiring to allow air to flow across…

Buy Joe Wilson a Beer

I understand as well as anyone, that the health care finance reform process has been dispiriting so far.  Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina has href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6165489/Barack-Obama-health-care-speech-Republican-calls-president-a-liar.html">brought the process to a new low.  So low, in fact, that his href="http://www.joewilson.house.gov/">website is down for maintenance (at the moment, anyway), and the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addison_G._Wilson">WIkipedia page about him has been locked, due to vandalism.  When the…

Fire Up The Tivo

Three weeks ago, I gave a talk at Stanford University about my new book Soul Made Flesh. A wonderful crowd turned out and peppered me with excellent questions afterwards, each of which could have become new talks of their own. CSPAN was there to film it, and they'll be broadcasting the talk this Saturday, March 20, at 9 am EST on BookTV. You may want to check out this little RSS a commenter forwarded to me that converts the BookTV schedule to any time zone. Also, if you miss the talk, it will probably repeated on another weekend, so check back to their site. Here's an added incentive to…

Texas GOP Leader on Why She Supports Creationism

Palin has put support for creationism among GOP leaders on the media and public agenda. Everywhere in the news, GOP officials are being asked their position on the matter and in their replies they are sending the strongest of signals to a partisan public that support for creationism is part of the GOP DNA. From a Washington Post article on how Palin is energizing the Evangelical base, Cathie Adams, the Texas GOP national committeewoman describes why she thinks Palin is so exciting: Cathie Adams, Texas's incoming national committeewoman, said she is elated to have someone like herself running…

We're breaking Hoffmann

He's melting down fast. So I wrote this piece criticizing R. Joseph Hoffmann's weird praise of martyrs, and today I wondered if maybe he had notice, so I checked his blog. I think he noticed. His response is ironic and unreflective, however…and amusing. I wrote that we ought to reject the whole concepty of martyrdom, and that it isn't just gods we should reject, but also these peculiar notions of the agonizing death as a virtue that are really born out of an Iron Age morality. Hoffmann's latest comment is a rant about atheist tantrums, calls the New Atheists "negative," "abrasive," "…

Can Something Be True and Also Socially Constructed?

In a recent episode (podcast) of the CBC series "How to Think About Science," here's how Harvard historian of science Steven Shapin answers that question: I believe of course that there are facts of the matter, independent of our culture, independent of our social order, independent of our language, but I believe that at the same time when we make statements of fact, those statements of fact, belong to our culture. So I believe completely that there is a world independent of our thoughts, but when we start to represent that world, we are talking about cultural entities, what else could they…

It's the 7th annual Paul Nelson Day!

How could I forget? Easy, actually, it's a rather forgettable event in which nothing happens. Seven years ago, Paul Nelson invented a creationist metric, ontogenetic depth, which purportedly measures the complexity of developmental processes and somehow implies that evolution is impossible. At that time, he wasn't able to tell us exactly what it was or how to measure it, but he promised to explain it…tomorrow. A tomorrow which has so far stretched out to seven long years, and we now annually note the anniversary. I really don't care anymore if Nelson ever comes up with a nonsensical…

Good science (education) - It takes an (online) village.

@dnghub Twitter Feed This video of a talk I gave at Northern Voice got completed whilst I was away. Anyway, if I remember (I'm one of those people who can't stand seeing themselves on video or hearing themselves on audio!), it's a pretty decent overview of what the Phylo project is all about, as well as general thoughts on things of that nature worth pursuing. Here's the byline that was given with my speaker profile: David Ng describes Phylo, a cool trading card game to teach biodiversity. A study showed that children could easily identify and describe a large number of Pokemon characters…

Did you know Karl Popper? (or do you know someone who knew Karl Popper)

Just curious - the other day I gave a talk on the scientific method, and I was going over some of the icons that shaped the principles behind how science is done (like Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and good old Karl Popper). I actually tried to paint a bit of a picture by imagining going for drinks with these three fellows, having read that Bacon was a bit of a know-it-all, Hobbes could be quite brash, and that Popper was very much about helping others (a socialist through and through). I thought those three would make the perfect "drinking buddy" companions. And then, a grad student said…

Vancouver ScienceBlogger meetup - the home movies.

Although Jennifer and I had our 1,000,000th comment party a few weeks back, I only just had an opportunity to get the video footage on to YouTube. It was funny, but the "having to video" bit was a little surprising, and of course, us Canadians can be a shy group by default. Anyway, we had a decent turnout, with a few notables in joining us for drinks. These included Joanne Fox (who co runs the AMBL lab with me), Nicola Jones (UBC Science Journalist in Residence and Nature Editor), Rosie Redfield (Zoology prof and blogger), Dave Semeniuk (Bake For A Change founder and blogger), Simon Donner…

Six word stories - your turn...

A new book just (or just about to be) released called "Not what I was planning: Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure" has been on the media blitz lately. It stems from a great anecdote about Ernest Hemingway once writing a story with only six words, and coming up with an eloquent: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Anyway, this new book is a collection of such short short stories. Here's the nice trailer for it - you'll note some pretty well known names in the mix: It also occurred to me that for most of our readers, the thought of already writing a memoir is kind of a…