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Quantum Summer Schools + Fault-Tolerant Workshop

With fast approaching deadlines: The 2009 Asher Peres International Physics School: Title: "The Edge, twixt quantum and classical phenomena" 30 Nov - 4 Dec, Sydney, Australia http://web.mac.com/quests/PeresSchool2009/Welcome.html The 2009 Asher Peres school provides senior undergraduates and junior postgraduates with a pedagogical introduction from internationally leading scientists on topics ranging from the interface between quantum and classical phenomena through to the role of quantum science in biology and nanomechanics. The international lecturers for 2009 are Prof Wojciech Zurek: Los…

Human-Neanderthal Hybridization (here we go again ... again)

A day or so back, I posted on an AP article which declared that "skull found in a cave in Romania includes features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, possibly suggesting that the two may have interbred thousands of years ago." The original research article is now online. Let's look at the abstract, shall we? Between 2003 and 2005, the Pestera cu Oase, Romania yielded a largely complete early modern human cranium, Oase 2, scattered on the surface of a Late Pleistocene hydraulically displaced bone bed containing principally the remains of Ursus spelaeus. Multiple lines of evidence…

Watching the ripples of the #HItsunami

I was over at my friend Kira's house last night, having some wine and pizza and helping her relax before her PhD defense this afternoon. There was nothing abnormal about the evening at that point, though soon enough, that would change. Within the hour, we would first hear reports of a tsunami warning, the results of the fifth largest quake in recorded history off the coast of Japan. We would turn on the news and watch as the 13 foot waves rushed across Japanese crop fields. We'd watch in horror as cars were thrown about in raging floods and fires broke out in the water's wake. We'd look at…

Fake videos lead to real confessions

In case you missed them, here are my selections from the psychology and neuroscience posts on ResearchBlogging.org for the past week: Confronted with fake video evidence, nearly everyone confesses. In a simulated "crime," researchers were able to induce false confessions -- but fewer people were willing to rat out others. Second language changes the way bilinguals read in their native tongue. Learning a new language makes you read differently in the old one, suggesting you don't just "switch on" a different language. Children with autism do understand emotions. While autism does seem to…

Blogging about Tweets and the Realm of Influencers

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, announced the top ten Tweets of 2010 - yes, it's that annual ritual of lists. Anyone whom might doubt the influence of Twitter might consider that in 2010, so far, more than 25 billion Tweets have been sent. The number one Tweet was written by NBC's Ann Curry: In the wake of the Haiti earthquake last January, the U.S. military took control of Haiti's airfield. A Doctors Without Borders plane carrying much-needed supplies and medical aid wasn't given clearance to land -- depriving the wounded of help from its team of physicians. Jason Cone, the organization'…

Twelve Months of The Thoughtful Animal (2010)

King of all blogmemery Drugmonkey has started another one this week. The rules for this blog meme are quite simple. Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year. Seems easy enough. Instead of just choosing the first blog entry this month, however, I'm going rogue and just randomly choosing a blog entry from each month. I've been blogging The Thoughtful Animal for exactly a year, so I'll have something for each month (my one-year bloggiversary will be during Science Online). Without further ado: January: As promised, here is the beginning of a…

Mapping the Brain

I've got a new feature in Wired Magazine on the Allen Brain Institute and their heroic attempts to construct a gene expression map of the human brain. I was most impressed by the way the Institute has "industrialized" the scientific process, as it transforms the artisan model of lab benchwork - post docs playing with micropipettes - into a high-throughput model, in which massive robots execute most of the actual "science". The article is now online, but the photographs are pretty stunning (in a gruesome sort of way), so be sure to pick up a copy of the magazine. The human brain is…

Pat Barker, PTSD, Regeneration

Kennedy Fraser had an illuminating profile of the novelist Pat Barker in a recent New Yorker (not online): Barker grew up with silent, wounded men. "And with talkative women, spinning stories," she said. "Stories with bits missing." She is a true war baby. "My mother was in the Wrems" - the Women's Royal Navy Service - "and her stories about World War Two were always quite interesting. She used to run home through an air rad, because she knew her mother would be worried. It was a very dangerous thing to do, but I'm afraid that wouldn't occur to my mother. She really adored the war. She was…

A stealth librarianship manifesto

Stealth librarianship is a way of being. This particular edition of the manifesto applies to academic libraries. The principles of stealth librarianship apply to all branches of the profession, each in particular ways. Other manifestos could exist for, say, public or corporate librarians. However the core is the same: to thrive and survive in a challenging environment, we must subtly and not-so-subtly insinuate ourselves into the lives of our patrons. We must concentrate on becoming part of their world, part of their landscape. Our two core patron communities as academic librarians are…

Let the Pandemic Games begin!

This is a public health blog run by an old geezer (or geezers, depending upon how many of us there are), but if you are a crazed gamer with an age in the low double digits (or not), this post is for you. The part for you is below the fold, at the end. But first some background. Despite my age, I'm always looking for new and interesting ways to do public health and a year or two ago I started to look at the virtual reality "game" Second Life. I posted about it, noting that CDC had a tiny outpost there, NOAA had a spiffy island set-up, and several notables had avatars there, too: Richard Posner…

Weekend Diversion: Axe Cop

"I'll chop your head off!" -Axe Cop What games did you play with your imagination as a little kid? Did you make up stories involving muppets? Horses? Cartoon characters? Cowboys and... native americans? Or, as the Hoosiers would sing, Cops And Robbers? Well, if ever any of that amused you, have I got a discovery for you. Image credit: Ethan Nicolle and Malachai Nicolle. A cartoon created, literally, by the imagination of a (then) five-year-old! When Ethan Nicolle, an animator/graphic artist in his late 20s, went to his parents house in 2009 to visit his little brother Malachai, the…

Ecological Validity in Prospective Memory Tasks: The Effects of Delayed-Execution and Aging

Findings in the laboratory do not always apply to the real-world - a myriad of factors can influence real-world phenomena, and scientists actively seek to eliminate many of them in their laboratories. But ecological validity can be particularly difficult to establish in cognitive science, where real-world levels of motivation, stress, and memory load can not always be practically (or ethically) simulated in the laboratory. Ecological validity may be particularly important in tests of prospective memory - the ability to remember to perform a planned future action. One salient example: young…

Rebooting science journalism -mixed-metaphor notes on the upcoming yakfest

Tomorrow I fly to North Carolina for the ScienceOnline 2010 conference, or unconference, where on Saturday I will sit down with Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, John Timmer, and anyone else who squeezes into the room, to talk about rebooting science journalism. The obvious assumption behind the topic (if I can return to the titular metaphor) is that science journalism is such a mess that it needs not just cleaning up, but a wholesale restart. But "rebooting" is probably too mild a term for what most people think is needed; if we're to stick with digital metaphors, I'd to say the assumption is more that…

Scientific realism and inference to the best explanation

A major argument for the existence of the entities in scientific theories is that if these entities did not, on the whole, exist, the empirical adequacy of the theories would be miraculous. In other words, positing the reality of these entities, and the truth of the theories, is an inference to the best explanation, or IBE as it's abbreviated. Alan Musgrave has a new paper out in the online Rutherford Journal (which is of very high quality for an online journal) entitled "The 'Miracle Argument for Scientific Realism" which canvasses these issues. IBE is also called "abduction", after C. S…

Going above and beyond (or below) the call of duty for medical research

I've heard of physicians using themselves as guinea pigs for their own research before, but this is ridiculous. Yesterday, my copy of General Surgery News arrived at my office. As I was whiffling through it to see if there were any articles worth reading, I came across a tale of a Japanese doctor who was truly dedicated to his research, so much so that that I had to hand it to him. Well, sort of. Yes, on p. 22 of the June issue of General Surgery News (sadly, not yet online as of this writing, so you'll have to take my word for this--or check up on me in a couple of weeks when they'll…

I Have A Blog; I Don't Need To Read Your "Dead-Tree Format" To Have An Opinion!

Everybody's talking about Unscientific America 'round these parts lately. I've almost finished reading it and will post a review of my own sometime soon. In the meantime...Isis has a post up where she makes note of ERV's displeasure with the book. In response, ERV comments thusly on Isis's blog: Isis-- I havent read Unscientific America. I called foul on some shit Mooney wrote in 2006 he has yet to address, I would have been shocked if he sent me a copy. My issue with Mooney initially had nothing to do with atheism, nor does my problem with him today have anything to do with atheism. PZ…

Who are the science journalists?

At Science Online 2010, due to begin in a few weeks, I will be chairing a panel of veteran bloggers/journalists in a discussion on rebooting science journalism in the age of the web. Joining me will be Carl Zimmer, John Timmer and David Dobbs. We'll be chatting about how science journalism and science journalists will survive in the new media ecosystem, which traits are adaptive in this environment, and which are not. Dave's already got the ball rolling with some thought-provoking posts on the topic and over the next couple of weeks, I'll be doing the same. This first post will go back to…

Links 12/7/10

Links for you. Science: Congress Critters enlist the taxpayers in the war on NSF funded science Another reason to avoid visiting Answers in Genesis Polluted Air Increases Obesity Risk in Young Animals: Exposure to polluted air early in life led to an accumulation of abdominal fat and insulin resistance in mice even if they ate a normal diet, according to new research. Citizens Against Peer Review Eric Cantor Wants Our Grandmas to Decide Science Funding Other: Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans' Credit Cards in Real Time No Free Parking Web bug reveals browsing history: Porn sites are…

Around the Web: Potternomics, PeterSuberNomics, #ScholPubNomics and more

WSJ explains the economics behind lending Harry Potter ebooks by Amazon Money Talks — How Audience Priorities and Publishing Incentives Can Lead to Unusual OA Behaviors #scholpub, PeerJ and Tim O’Reilly The coming revolution in STM #scholpub Why doesn’t Moore’s law apply to #scholpub? Who is the Steve Jobs of #scholarlypub? Whence comes the needed disruption? Top 10 reasons why professors leave: elephant in the lab series Whose Intellectual Property? Conflicted: Faculty and Online Education, 2012 Mending Fences (university presses & librarians in wake of GSU decision) Penguin, 3M Test…

Around the Web: It doesn't matter what e-books cost to make, Harvard & MIT's edX and more

It doesn't matter what e-books cost to make EdX: A Platform for More MOOCs and an Opportunity for More Research about Teaching and Learning Online The Problem With EdX How Should Your University Respond to edX? Resisting the Robo-Assignment The Immersion Method -- I & II (intensive "great books" courses) Reconsidering Academic Careers Libraries as Indoctrination Mills The Virtues of Blogging as Scholarly Activity Pay up, Yochai Benkler (the Benkler-Carr wager on the nature of the web) The economics of digital sharecropping Open letter to college graduates A revolutionary new approach…

Around the Web: Promise & perils of Pinterest, Abundance vs disruption, Beyond the textbook and more

Promise & Perils of Pinterest Abundance vs disruption: dramatically different views of the future Beyond the Textbook My Experience With eBooks: Yea or Nay? Of dead trees, living networks, and encyclopedic ambition Ask the Administrator: If I Become a Dean, Will My Faculty Colleagues Shun Me? Killing the Story (Apple & Daisey) The Prison-House of Data (digital humanities) Nicholas Carr on the evolution of communication technology and our compulsive consumption of information Counterintuitive digital media assignments Making Sense of the Digital Transition: Are Textbooks Dead? Know…

Seven New Wonders

Can you name the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World? (Neither could I. To refresh your memory, they are, in chronological order: The Great Pyramids of Giza, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Phew!) The famous list was composed by Philon of Byzantium in 200 B.C. Could it be time for an update? The New7Wonders foundation thinks so. In 2001, Swiss-born Canadian filmmaker, museum curator, aviator, and explorer Bernard Weber…

Celebrate Darwin Day by writing an essay!

Yes, yes, I know Darwin Day was Februrary 12th. Nevertheless, the Alliance for Science is sponsoring an essay contest in Darwin's honor and, if you're a high school student you can still celebrate by writing an essay. And if you're a high school teacher, and your student wins, you win $$ for buying lab supplies.  Okay, I suppose it's only us geeky bloggers who consider writing an essay to be a kind of celebration. If the sheer joy of celebrating Darwin Day by writing an essay, doesn't pique your interest, there are prizes. Write an essay on the topic: "Why would you want your…

How Pink Are You?

I ran across an online quiz today that claims it can identify if you tend to be more of a socialist or capitalist. I think I am more of a capitalist than a socialist, despite my score (below the fold) so I think this quiz just used the wrong statements or made the statements too black-and-white for a realist, such as myself, to answer in any way other than "gee, that depends upon the circumstances, so therefore, I will disagree with this statement as written." What were your scores and what did you think of the way the statements were written? You Are 24% Capitalist, 76% Socialist You…

Red Dust Rising

The Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society is underway in Texas... ...and due to UnForeseen Circumstances, I am not there. Strangely enough I can't find the program on-line, but I gather I am there virtually, although I just realised I have no idea if I am on more than one poster at the AAS. But dozens of press releases are, so I start with one of the most interesting, which strangely enough did not come out with the AAS meeting, but came out last week. Astronomers at the Carnegie Institution have found the first indications of highly complex organic molecules in the disk of red…

Free Avian Anatomy Handbook

tags: online books, ornithology, birds, anatomyAvian Anatomy Handbook, Julian Baumel I know several of my overseas readers have wanted a free PDF of Julian Baumel's celebrated Handbook of Avian Anatomy: Nomina Anatomica Avium, 2nd Edition, published in 1993 by the Nuttal Ornithological Club, but I have been unable to email it to you due to its large size (400 pages; 49MB). Thanks to the suggestion of one of my readers, I uploaded a copy of this PDF to RapidShare, which hosts large files of up to 100 MB. Now, you can download this PDF to your computer -- but the file must be downloaded at…

Free Avian Anatomy Handbook

tags: online books, ornithology, birds, anatomyAvian Anatomy Handbook, Julian Baumel For those of you who study birds or who like to look at them, Julian Baumel's celebrated Handbook of Avian Anatomy: Nomina Anatomica Avium, 2nd Edition, published in 1993 by the Nuttal Ornithological Club, is now available as a free PDF download. It's a big file (400 pages; 49MB), so it might take some time to download, but it is free (shall I add that even though Julian Baumel was retired at the time, he came out of retirement for a short time to guest lecture the anatomy lab portion of my Ornithology course…

Fornvännen's Spring Issue On-Line

True to the rules of Open Access publishing, the April issue of Fornvännen has come on-line in all its full-text glory less than six months after paper publication. Katharina Hammarstrand Dehman reports on the kind of hardcore wetland archaeology you can get to do when somebody wants to dig a huge tunnel under a coastal city. Helena Günther launches a merciless attack on the shamanic model of interpretation that has coloured much Scandy rock-art research in recent years. Maria Lingström reports on her fieldwork on a 1361 battlefield. Unusually early battlefield archaeology on a site where…

Fornvännen's Summer Issue On-Line

Shortly after Fornvännen 2012:1 reached subscribers on paper, issue 2011:2 has now been published on-line. Get thee there, Dear Reader, and read for free (not dearly)! Joakim Wehlin on why some of Gotland's mightiest Bronze Age monuments were built next to the island's single megalithic tomb of the Early Neolithic. Karl-Magnus Melin on ancient wells. Torun Zachrisson makes an interesting suggestion as to where the church of Birka may have been located. Jürgen Beyer tries to make sense of some semi-literate 16th century epigraphy in Plattdeutsch on Gotland. Tryggve Siltberg criticises…

The virus hunters

Radio Open Source, after a number of requests, has done a program on avian influenza. You can listen to the broadcast here. The guests on the program include: William Karesh Veterinarian Head of the Field Veterinary Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society David Swayne Veterinarian Director of the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Lab Edward Dubovi Microbiologist Director of the Viral Section of the Diagnostic Lab at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine Rubin Donis Chief of Molecular Genetics at the Influenza Branch of the CDC They also have a A Complete Guide to…

The Onion Knows the Archaeological Worldview

Archaeologists have an extremely strange worldview. We never simply see what's going on around us right now: we keep thinking about what a place would have looked like hundreds of years ago, or what it will look like in the far future. The Onion has a great piece on-line about just that: "Crime Scene Investigators Find Arrowhead". "Their bodies showed signs of blunt force trauma to the head, as well as several postmortem stab wounds, although no indications of sexual abuse were present. A steel pipe bearing human blood and tissue matter was found at the scene but did not appear to be related…

Antiquity's Spring Issue (With Polish Flint Babes)

The spring issue of Antiquity, a journal for which I am proud to act as a correspondent, has come on-line and is being distributed on paper as well. It has a lot to offer those interested in Northern European archaeology: papers on the construction date of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, England; on the late-1st Millennium temple at Uppåkra, Scania, Sweden; on mid-to-late 1st Millennium research as historical archaeology; on the Viking Period towns and trade network around the Baltic; and (as illustrated above) on voluptuous Late Magdalenian female silhouettes knapped in flint and found at…

Skepchickcon is this weekend!

Skepchickcon is a Track at Convergence 2009. Convergence 2009 is one of those science fiction conventions where everyone dresses up as Klingons and such. I've never been to one but I've sure seen plenty of them on TV and in the movies. Skepchickcon is a "Track," which means it is a series of panels and stuff integrated with systematic planned partying parallel to other "Tracks" at the convention. Personally, I'm on three of the panels: Blogging Skeptically; Science Online, and Evolution 101. Plus I'll try to attend some of the parties. Here is my schedule: I'm less sure about the…

Teaching low-income women math to help them get better jobs

There's an article on the New York Times Online about Allannah Thomas, founder of Helicon, a non-profit that helps low-income women learn math skills they need for better jobs. Thomas's courses are called "math boot camp" because of their focus on fundamental skills, and she works with women to help them develop those skills you need for business, quantitative reasoning, scaling, or technical work. The article reminds me a bit of the philosophy of Bob Moses, founder of the Algebra Project -- somehow, we live in a culture where it is somehow okay for adults to say to kids asking for help on…

The world in 1989

The Beloit College Class of 2011 Mindset list has been released. It features aspects of the worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2007, i.e. those born in 1989. Some things that make me feel old: What Berlin wall? They never "rolled down" a car window. They have grown up with bottled water. Russia has always had a multi-party political system. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre. MTV has never featured music videos. The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were…

Do Cellphones Brings Us Together or Pull Us Apart?

Are you an information technology optimist or skeptic? Chances are, if you are a regular blog reader or poster, you fall in the former category. Yet ever feel like all that time you spend online might be displacing time spent in more meaningful face-to-face interactions? Are the social relationships forged via Web 2.0 and various mobile phone innovations really as quality as real world conversations? At American University, it's a question I ask my sophomore-level class on Communication & Society to research and debate every semester. (This past semester's debate is available here.) On…

Dance Your Ph.D. - 2013 Winners Announced!

It's time again for John Bohannon's annual "Dance Your Ph.D." contest. This year, in my opinion, there are even more high quality entries than in previous years! (I was one of the judges who did the first round of choices...the "winners" were then chosen by a panel that includes several professional dancers (for several years it has been members of Pilobulus)).  And they are all now posted online ("winners" at the link above - all the videos are posted here - because really they are ALL winners in my opinion. And if you can come up with more difficult ways to try to explain science - we could…

Toxoplasma, a mind-boggling parasite

Toxoplasma must be one of the most mind-boggling (oh! sweet pun!) parasite. Maggie Wittlin has a fascinating report about this parasite at Seed Magazine. "In a paper published in the online edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society, United States Geological Survey researcher Kevin Lafferty argues that a significant factor in why some countries exhibit higher levels of neuroticism than others may be the prevalence of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The study also indicates that it may influence a society's preference for strict laws, an expression of uncertainty avoidance, and its valuation…

TSZ is Rated R!!!

It seems all the Science Bloggers are doing it... ...submitting their blogs for rating at this site. I am so proud to say TSZ came up with an R rating. Mingle2 - Online Dating Bora has an NC-17 but he's the only one. He's the only one in lots of ways, though, you know?? (I mean that in a good way, Bora!) My rating was based on the presence of the following words: sex (8x) pain (3x) poop (2x) puke (1x) Now, I am absolutely sure that the word "puke" appears more than one time on this blog, so maybe I really should have an NC-17. But, whatever. I'm no "G" blogger like PZ, Doc…

Revisionist historian walks free, rightly so

Frederick Toben is an awful man, who denies the plain fact that the Nazis killed six million Jews and between nine and eleven million Jews, Slavs, Romany, homosexuals, Soviets (civilians and POWs), Poles, disabled, and so on. But what he thinks is not a crime, either in Australia, where he lives, or in the United Kingdom, where he was arrested on a German warrant for breaking German laws. And it was right that he was released by the British courts. If people can be arrested and charged for breaking laws online in jurisdictions where they do not reside, no matter how awful their views are,…

Lusi Lecture

I vaguely knew that the U.S. Geological Survey's Menlo Park office runs a series of public lectures, but I didn't realize they were all videotaped and archived online for my blogging convenience. Ace! Now we just need to chop them up into bits and put them on YouTube. Anyway, Thursday night's lecture was about the ongoing eruption of the Lusi mud volcano in Indonesia (which Chris has covered in the past). You can watch it here. It's a little long, but quite suitable to put on as background material for your weekend housecleaning. The good science bits start about 15 minutes in. Now, I've got…

The Best Google Maps Hack

For all you runners and cyclists out there, I give you a toy you're sure to enjoy: Gmaps Pedometer. Ever had a ride or run you wanted to do, but weren't sure how long it was or the elevation change? Enter Gmaps Pedometer. It works with the Google Maps interface, by far the best online maps application. You tell it where you want to start, enter checkpoints by double clicking, and that's it. It tells you mileage, elevation change, and you can save your routes. There is a website that has good information on local rides in my area, but it gets boring doing the same routes every time. I started…

Help me nominate a non-profit

Move On Dot Org will be transferring funds to various non-profits, or otherwise be supporting them. Unfortunately, I don't think Moveon has a rule against religious non-profis. But I do, and so do you. Please suggest a non-profit or two for me to nominate. If you area member of moveon as well, you can do this too. Here are the guidelines: Nominated organizations must be non-profit groups focused on causes, consequences, and solutions relating to the economic crisis. They may provide direct services such as homeless assistance, jobless help, child services, food assistance, etc., or they…

Julie MacDonald quits

The civil engineer who saw fit to rewrite the conclusions of Interior Department scientists, and who sent confidential documents to a virtual friend on an online role-playing game, has resigned. This was part of her clever ploy to escape Congressional questioning. They can't over see her work if she isn't working for the government anymore! Ms. MacDonald was deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, giving her responsibilities for overseeing implementation of the Endangered Species Act, among other things. In that capacity, she altered the scientific conclusions of agency…

Oklahoma…you have left me speechless

They're considering a new law to keep women ignorant and ashamed. The governor of Oklahoma is considering tough new abortion bills that would allow doctors to withhold test results showing foetal defects and require women to answer intrusive questions. The results of the questionnaires would be posted online. Women would also be required to have a vaginal ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the embryo or foetus in a third bill passed by the legislature on Monday. So let me get this straight. If a woman in Oklahoma thinks she is pregnant, she can go in for "testing"…but she…

Stupid poll

So, Greta Van Susteren, Fox News babbler, got some hate mail telling her how stupid she is. Instead of just chucking it in the trash, or simply making fun of it (the guy made a spelling error, of course), she had to go out of her way to demonstrate that maybe the fellow was right. How? She turned it into an online poll, asking who was dumber, Brian or Greta. The fact that she used a poll made the answer obvious. Who is dumber? Greta? 73% Brian for spending his time watching someone he thinks is dumb 27% You can see how it is going. Pile on if you want. I can't believe she did that. I know…

Penguin ebooks & The Research Works Act: Publishers gain, communities lose

I was really angry riding home on the bus last Friday night. Not angry because the transit system here in Toronto is royally fudged in general or that transit to York University is fudged in particular. No, it wasn't that particular aspect of the public sphere that had me upset. It was the growing tendency of publishers of all sorts to try and take their works out of the public cultural commons and place them exclusively behind pay walls. It's their desire to monetize every reading transaction that had me hot under the collar. Here's what I tweeted standing on the bus, altered a bit for…

More Evidence that Universal Health Care Would be Less Expensive

We've written quite a bit about single payer health care systems as well as other models that are a mixture of public and private spending. We've also analyzed some of the sources of excess cost of US healthcare to other countries. What is uniformly true about universal health care systems is that they all spend less on medical care per capita than the US. The next nearest country in spending to us, France, spends 50% of what we do per capita while providing top notch care, possibly the best in the world. And while the cause of our excess costs are multifactorial, one of the greatest…

Why no one should take Nexium and it should never have been approved

As Chris discussed Saturday the WSJ had a silly article in which a woman demands a prescription drug from a flight attendant, asking for the wrong drug to treat her problem acutely, and then shockingly was refused this service. Worse, Nexium is mentioned by name, multiple times, and Nexium is actually a drug which should never have even been approved by the FDA. It really is only prescribed because of intense marketing because, logically, it has no business on the market and is no different than an existing drug, prilosec. Why would doctors irrationally prescribe this drug then? Because…

Vaccination Considered in Haiti as Cholera's Spread Slows

Cholera has killed roughly 3,800 people in Haiti and sickened another 189,000, and it will continue to circulate in the population for the foreseeable future. The good news is that the number of new cases per week has dropped from 12,000, which it reached in November, to about 4,700, and the mortality rate has also decreased. Intensive treatment and prevention efforts (including provision of clean water and educational campaigns) have saved thousands of lives, and will have to continue even as the attention of the international community wanes. David Cyranoski of Nature News points out that…