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Antique Collectors In China Don't Care About Provenance Either

I've criticised Western museums for buying or accepting as gifts looted Chinese antiquities. This practice, in my opinion, stems from an outdated and irresponsible fine arts perspective where the exact provenance of a museum piece is not very important. When you're dealing with anonymous prehistoric or early historic art, you can't attribute it to any named artist, and so an art curator will quite happily settle for "Han dynasty, probably the Yellow River area" as a date and a provenance. As an archaeologist, I do not accept the category "fine art", and I claim precedence for the…

Proposed New Swedish Metal Detecting Law Misses Mark

As I've written before in a number of venues (e.g. Fornvännen and Antiquity), the current Swedish metal detector legislation needs to be changed. It is too restrictive in relation to honest amateur detectorists. It is keeping them from a) making valuable contributions to archaeological research, b) saving finds for scholarship that are slowly turning to a green verdigris powder in the country's ploughsoil, c) engaging constructively with their cultural heritage. We are decades behind the Danes on this. Metal detectors should be dealt with like hunting rifles: if a citizen passes a knowledge…

Hansen Has Been Wrong Before

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: In 1988 Hansen predicted dire warming over the next decade and he was off by 300%. Why in the world should we listen to the same doom and gloom from him today? Answer: While it may well be simply ignorant repetition of misinformation in some instances, at its source, this story is a plain and simple lie. In 1988, James Hansen testified before the US Senate on the danger of Anthropogenic Global Warming. As part of that testimony he…

Historically CO2 Never Causes Temperature Change

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: In the geological record it is clear that CO2 does not trigger climate changes. Why should it be any different now? Answer: Given the fact that the human species and our industrialization is rather unique in the history of planet Earth, do we really need to see some kind of historical precedent for CO2 triggered climate change before accepting what we observe today? Surely unprecedented consequences are not far fetched in the face of…

England's Free Speech Problem - Again

I swear, England is trying their damnedest to make anti-gay rhetoric sound rational and accurate. They're prosecuting a minister for handing out leaflets with Bible verses on them at a gay Mardi Gras event, for nothing other than handing them out: A police force was caught up in a freedom of speech row after its officers arrested an anti-gay campaigner for handing out leaflets at a homosexual rally. South Wales police admitted evangelical Christian Stephen Green was then charged purely because his pamphlets contained anti-gay quotations from the Bible. Mr Green faces a court appearance today…

UC Lawsuit Update

I've been scooped by my buddy Wes Elsberry, who has this post on Tuesday's hearings on the motion to dismiss in the ACSI's lawsuit against the University of California system. To refresh your memory, a group of Christian schools are suing the UC because they will not accept credit for certain specific courses those schools offer, courses that they say do not meet the minimum requirements for academic rigor to be considered core curriculum courses. I've been following this suit closely since it began. So yesterday the judge heard oral arguments on the UC's motion to dismiss the case. The judge…

Gay Marriage and the Romer Decision

Among the many silly arguments made by the religious right about gay rights, the one found in this article by Charles Colson may take the cake. He says that the court will mandate gay marriage within 2 years without a constitutional amendment, and he traces three cases that allegedly prove this - Casey, Romer and Lawrence. He complains that Kennedy based his opinion in Casey on "a sweeping definition of liberty as the right of a person to determine for himself the meaning of life." You know, as opposed to Colson's definition of liberty, the right of a person to determine what others may do…

Roy Moore's Historical Ignorance

The Wall Street Journal has an interview with former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore that contains some predictably absurd statements. Like this one: Roy Moore makes no apologies. "I'm not trying to dodge or get away from my past," he tells me over lunch at a Montgomery seafood restaurant. "I think what we stand for in this state is exactly what our motto is: 'We dare defend our rights.' And Alabamians have always dared defend our rights, whether it be Martin Luther King, or what I did, or the beginning of the Civil War. We dare defend our rights." Wow. It takes some serious chutzpah to…

Left or right, religion and politics don't mix

The thin-skinned Religious Left whimpers some more. What is it with Kevin Drum and his constant sucking up to the delusional fantasist wing of the Democratic party? Usually it's Amy Sullivan, but this time it's Steve Waldman who gets to be the representative pantywaist for poor oppressed Christianity. He wants to claim that liberals are hostile to evangelicals. I had been making a narrower point—that many liberals carry an elitist attitude toward evangelical Christians. Lerner's indictment is far more sweeping. Is he being unfair? I think a distinction should be made between the elites and…

Class Notes

I realize that I've been pretty bad about posting articles with explanatory physics content (even neglecting a couple of things that I promised to post a while back), but I have a good reason. All of my explanatory physics effort these days has been going into lecture writing, such as the two hours I spent Tuesday night writing up a lecture on the Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment. This Quantum Optics class is turning out to be a really interesting experience. It's a truism that you don't really find out what you know about a subject until you have to teach it to someone else. That's…

End of an Era

So, the big question in college basketball yesterday, "Can Syracuse sustain their Big East Tournament run through the NCAA's?" was answered with a resounding "No." They made a decent run at it, but Gerry McNamara didn't have any legs left, and went without a field goal for the first time in his career. Terrence Roberts played well, but he and Darryl "Flippers for Hands" Watkins were overmatched on the glass, and A&M pretty much controlled the game from start to finish. I feel terrible for McNamara, as he really couldn't play, and is kind of down on himself: "I feel great about it,"…

Zing! (Slightly Paraphrased)

While chasing links for a religion-in-politics post that may or may not get posted (my opinions on the subject are aggressively moderate, and while I could use the traffic, I don't know that I want the headache), I ran across the swear-to-uphold quote again. PZ cites an unsourced blog post for the story, reproduced in its entirety here: On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify. At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr…

Sea ice but mostly other stuff

Plenty of other people are talking about seaice, so I don't need to. Monthly means are more interesting the dailies, and since August is unlikely to beat September, we're unlikely to see a record monthly mean for a month yet. The bets are summarised here and in this, to which the former refers. I was a bit sad that the blog formerly known, rather gawkily, as "Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah" is now "Climate Asylum". mt is sad that The Way Scientists Try to Convince People Is Hopeless: "they present evidence, figures, tables, arguments, and so on. But that’s not how to convince people.…

Bad beekeeping, again

The peace of Sunday afternoon was disturbed when a friends children called to say, very politely, that err there was a swarm of bees in their garden and might they be mine? Possibly, I said, though you can't pin it on me guv, but I'll come and look anyway. If you're not used to looking at swarms of bees, its the dark blob just to the left of the point of the loppers, and the little specks in the sky to the left again are bees. For some faint idea of how heroic I'm being see how high the ladder is - bees delight in swarming into inaccessible locations. What I'm doing in the pic is cutting…

Aiiee, the stupid, it burns!

There is an absolutely classic WUWT piece of stupidity up from Joe Bastardi (h/t QS, who has been annoying me with ZOD nonsense recently). Sometimes, it is nice to find a small simple easily understood issue which demonstrates how clueless the septics are. And the quote is: Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like CO2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth's temperatures (bear in mind that isn't all that is wrong with the article, only the stupidest…

Stanage, youth

Climbing! Good grief, it was about time. So, dragged out by the irrepressible Howard, we left the house at the ungodly hour of 7:30 on a fine Sunday morning, picked up young Viv, and drove for 2:30 climate-destroying hours up to the Peaks. Where to? Stanage, youth, of course. Popular end, naturally. Persons of the party: Me, Miriam, Miranda (8), Vivien (9). Daniel (12) mostly climbed with Howard (antique) and Louise (lets not do any more shall we) and survived a fairly full-on day; also Carl and Marcus and a late arrival from Helen (not as-in-Viv). Howard happily had his magic bag of old…

Vote me

Too late now. I got 323 votes which is about twice Labour, but only a fifth of the Tories so I'm still safely kept away from the mighty levers of political power on the county council. Whew. Unlike Simon Sedgwick-Jell in the Abbey ward of the city who is now the first Cambridge Green councillor. Though astonishingly, in another place we seem to have managed to lose to Broon - truely an outstanding accomplishment in these dark days. Which brings me on to... no, not these dark days, not just yet. I mean our party policies. Apparently they are bad. Though I have to confess that I haven't read…

McCain on science

Belatedly, McCain answers the sciencedebate questions. Obama did that earlier; how does McCain fare? Its good to see that the tide of drivel hasn't dried up: I am uniquely qualified to lead our nation during this technological revolution. While in the Navy, I depended upon the technologies and information provided by our nation's scientists and engineers with during each mission... is particularly stupid. I flew in an aeroplane recently, so I fully understand jet engines? Apart from that, McCain says nothing terribly interesting, though its all worthy enough. He will focus on this, and on…

Is Being Smart a Political Liability?

There was a remarkable exchange on the MSNBC show Hardball yesterday, between host Chris Matthews, and commentators Roger Simon and Chris Cillizza: MATTHEWS: Yes, well, isn't it funny, Roger--and I love the way you cover politics. You get the richness of it. You have fish fry dinners with Jesse Jackson in the middle of the night and write about it. Here we are with a president--who most people who are honest about it would say came to the office pretty much unprepared to deal with the third world. He listened to a bunch of jughead neoconservatives who talked him into a war that doesn't…

Imaginary Syllabus: Science of Sports and Games

It's one of those days where none of the stuff I probably ought to be writing seems even slightly appealing, so instead I'm going to do something frivolous and morale-boosting, namely think out loud about an imaginary course. Despite being on sabbatical, I do still check my work email, and have caught the edges of a new round of arguments about whether we're providing enough "Gen Ed" science courses pitched at non-majors. The hardest part of this is always meeting the "science with lab" component, because those courses are pretty resource-instensive, and we have a limited set of them that we…

042/366: Distortion

For the 42nd installment of this photo-a-day thing, it seems appropriate to try to do some SCIENCE! to get an Answer. So, here's a composite of a bunch of images I took yesterday in order to investigate something: Graph paper shot with several different lenses, to look for distortion of the images. OK, this needs some explanation... So, I do a lot of shooting with moderately wide-angle lenses (either a 10-18mm zoom or the 24mm fixed "pancake" lens), because SteelyKid and The Pip tend to want to be right on top of me a lot of the time, and it's hard to get good pictures with them fully in…

2014 Was Just This Year, You Know?

So, it's January 1, which means a ton of social-media traffic commenting on the year just concluded, most of it very negative-- "Good riddance, 2014, don't let the door hit you on the way out, etc." I'm a little more ambivalent about the whole 2014 thing, and of course, being a good squishy liberal, I feel guilty about that. Because, of course, in a lot of ways, 2014 was very good for me, personally. This is probably exemplified by my current circumstances-- I'm typing this from the tail end of the Renaissance Weekend (actually, from a Starbucks across the street, because I thought that…

Weekend Diversion: How 'Before-and-After' Fools You

"There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody." -Adlai E. Stevenson One of the worst feelings that I've ever experienced is when I feel as though someone has played me for a fool, and fleeced me out of my time, my money, and my trust. The Dang-Its know what I'm talking about; have a listen to their song, Make A Fool Out Of Me. One of the most common ads I see on the internet is for these miraculous, weight-loss, muscle-building "solutions," usually accompanied by some spectacular before-and-after photos. Here are a couple of examples, all…

Bjorn Lomborg's Academic Credentials Examined

I don't care that the director or CEO of an advocacy organization concerned with poverty is an active academic. Indeed, my view of active academics is that many are largely incompetent in areas of life other than their specialized field. If that. So really, if you told me there is this great advocacy organization out there run by a well established active academic I'd figure you had that wrong, or I'd worry a little about the organization. On the other hand, everyone should care that university positions be given to active academics with credentials. So, when the University of Western…

Tomorrow's Remarkable Lunar Eclipse

"It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting." -Lemony Snicket Those of you who live basically anywhere other than North America are in for a treat this Wednesday. All over Earth, of course, the Moon is nearing its "full" phase, where the half of the Moon illuminated by the Sun is completely visible from Earth. And it will reach complete fullness on Wednesday night. Now, most times, when this happens, the full Moon is completely visible from everywhere on Earth. But every so often -- about twice a year on average -- the…

Weekend Diversion: For us to Remember, for the Kids to Discover

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are." -Kurt Cobain Back in the early 1990s, not only a new sound, but also a new attitude emerged in Rock 'n' Roll. One that was dark and heavy, one that expressed the frustration and malaise of youth, and one that -- perhaps surprisingly -- swept the nation. The most prominent of these bands, without a doubt, was Nirvana, and here's their opening track off of my favorite album of theirs (and easily one of the best of all time): About A Girl.Although it aired on MTV in December of 1993, I first heard that album about this time of year,…

The Deepest Shadows in our own Backyard

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -William Shakespeare Ahh, the glorious shadows of our Universe. Everywhere that sunlight is blocked gives us shadow. Image credit: Kaguya (Selene). For the Earth, of course, this results in night and day each time the Earth rotates. The Earth, though, is also tilted on its axis a significant amount, by about 23.5 degrees. When a pole tilts towards the Sun, it receives continuous daylight, while when…

Hubble for the Holidays: Have a Cigar!

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the Universe around him and calls the adventure Science." -Edwin Hubble I promised you, this week, we'd be taking a look at the power of the Hubble Space Telescope. Yesterday, we looked at Eta Carinae, but today, I decided to look a little farther. Have a listen to a little classic Pink Floyd as a treat today, and their hit, Have a Cigar. Sketch credit: Patrick Van Beeck. Yes, I know Hubble was a pipe man, but I'm talking about the Cigar Galaxy, otherwise known as M82. Visible with a small telescope or even good binoculars, M82 has been studied…

The Horror of the Higgs

"We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!" -Gollum, from the Hobbit Don't get me wrong. The Higgs is an absolutely wonderful mechanism, and I've very optimistic that the last particle of the standard model -- the Higgs Boson -- will be found over the next few years, either at the Large Hadron Collider or, if experimenters get very lucky, at Fermilab! As far as particle physics goes, the Higgs would be unlike any other fundamental particle we know of. While all the other particles have a spin, or an intrinsic angular momentum, the Higgs is predicted to be spin-0, or spinless. While all…

Clinton-Trump Gap in Key States

As you know, there is interest in doing a recount for the presidential balloting in three key states. The chance that a recount in these three states would change Trump's win (290 to 232 electoral votes) is small. But, it is possible that a recount could demonstrate irregularities that should be addressed. Also, there is the possibility again small, of so-called "faithless electors" giving Trump a pass. If something like that happens, from Clinton's perspective, it would be nice if even one of these states flipped (most likely Wisconsin). So, to keep track of the numbers, here are the…

The Mammals of Borneo

How do you judge a field guide? Phillipps' Field Guide to the Mammals of Borneo and Their Ecology: Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, and KalimantanSome field guides you leave on the shelf and rarely look at. Others you may put in the living room to spice up the coffee table, because they make great eye candy, but are otherwise not that useful. Others you take out, and at least have around in case you need them. Others you make sure you are never very far away from because you find yourself looking for them all the time. And, every once in a while, a field guide comes along that you want to take to…

How to Launch a Space Shuttle in 4 minutes!

"Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world; knowing they're going to light the bottom--and doesn't get a little worried--does not fully understand the situation." -John Young, after being asked if he was worried about making the first Space Shuttle flight (STS-1). It may be hard to believe, but the United States has been flying Space Shuttles since 1981: for 29 years. But what does it take to get a shuttle ready for launch? In real life, the Space Shuttles come down from a mission and get towed around the campus at Kennedy Space Center. Where do you…

Dark Energy: Gaining a Foothold (Part 2)

Last time, we talked about the discovery of dark energy. How did it happen? Well, there are certain kinds of Supernovae, type Ia supernovae, that are practically identical to one another all across the Universe. In fact, we had one happen in our own galaxy in 1572; it outshone everything besides the Moon in the night sky for weeks. How do type Ia supernovae work? Many solar systems out there are like our own, with one star dominating the system. Others, however, have two or more stars present in the system. Stars up to about four times the mass of our Sun, when they finish burning their…

The Moon is not Dehydrated!

When I was first learning about the science of the Moon, there were a few basic facts that everyone got right. The Moon has practically no atmosphere, as when sunlight hits the Moon, it very quickly can give individual molecules and atoms enough energy to achieve escape velocity. We thought the same thing was true for any water on the Moon; sunlight would kick the water molecules so hard and so often that the molecules wouldn't remain on the Moon for very long, and therefore it would be completely dry. A watery Moon? Possible at all? Well, there was one hope. You see, the Earth rotates on an…

How to Fake your own Moon Landing

Okay, so you've seen the famous photos from the Apollo Moon landings: And you've been around the block enough to know why we really landed on the Moon. But let's say you wanted, for some reason, to stage your own fake jaunt on the Moon. The band Rammstein did an excellent job with the first 30 seconds of their video, Amerika: So how do you do it? Well, first off, you need some nice, Moon-colored dirt. You've got two options here. One is to go someplace where you can see something like Craters of the Moon national monument in Idaho. After all, this will do nicely for an area to film: But…

The Last 100 Years: 1929, Hubble, and a Vast Universe

Amazing is an understatement when it comes to how much we've learned about our Universe in the last century. 90 years ago we confirmed general relativity, and got a whole new theory of gravity as a result. But, we still thought our Milky Way was the only galaxy in the Universe. There were a few types of weird objects we knew of in great detail, such as the original 103 Messier objects. There were weird, spherical clusters of stars, like M2: There were planetary nebulae, known to be the afterglows of dying or exploding stars, such as M27: And then there were the much-debated "spiral nebulae…

Could an Asteroid have Wiped Out the Dinos?

I recently got this comment of incredulity on my article about what wiped out the dinosaurs? I´m sorry. But i don´t believe this. In my opinion they were wiped out by a climatic changing. And I think it's worth -- with the help of a little math and physics -- looking at what this asteroid impact might have done. First off, we need to know how massive this asteroid was. This asteroid was about 10 to 12 km in diameter, which is large, but less than 0.2% the diameter of the Earth. It's pretty unremarkable, and makes it a pretty typical minor asteroid. For comparison, this makes it about half…

Liberty University #1 in Debate?

A friend sent me a link to this article in Newsweek about Jerry Falwell's Liberty University being the #1 debate team in the nation, knowing that I know the debate world pretty well and would find it interesting. My response to the article is: uh, no. Not even close. I'd love to know how this article came about; I suspect Falwell's people actively tried to get the story in there. But in fact, it's far from the truth and is actually a good example of how statistical rankings can be quite deceptive.The article says: The Liberty team is currently ranked No. 1 in the country, above Harvard (14th…

Religious Right Lowers Its Goals

Interesting article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle titled Culture war being reshaped; Conservatives lower expectations. It points out that in the debate over gay marriage, the religious right seems to have pretty much given up on stopping the trend toward civil unions for homosexual couples: Conservative activist William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, says he believes Bush's proposal for a constitutional amendment is a "cultural tipping point" that will restore a "culture of restraint and decency." The ban will not prevent the…

Great New Website to Learn About Evolution

There is a terrific new website designed to help teachers and students learn more about evolution that is finally up and available for public use. The Understanding Evolution site was an enormous project that has been under development for quite some time under the auspices of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), funded primarily by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Science Foundation. To quote from the site's opening announcement: The Understanding Evolution web site -- written for teachers but…

CNBC stands for Could Not Be Correct?

... or Climate Noobs Bork Climate-science? ... or Can't News Be Correct? (add your own below) The thing is, CNBC, which is supposed to be a news station, is fueling public misunderstanding of climate science. This is bad journalism, and virtually criminal given the importance of climate change and the need for good science based policy related to climate change. We are long past the point where we can tolerate false balance, astro-turfing, and rating mongering. We need to have a good public understanding of climate science, we need it now, and we need "news" organizations like CNBC to stop…

Bangladesh and Sea Level Rise

You've all heard about the horrible tragedy in Bangladesh, still unfolding. Not to distract from that event, or diminish its importance, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at that low lying country in relation to long term sea level rise caused by climate change. I am making no claim here about the maximum rate of sea level rise or about the timing of sea level rise. But the truth is, there have been times in the past when there was virtually no year round ice (glaciers) anywhere on this planet, and sea levels were much higher than they are now. During a time period not too…

Why, what a vile little man

I speak of Dinesh D'Souza, who seems to have noticed that his creepy and dishonest tirade against atheists won him some attention, so now he has upped the ante, and gotten even creepier and more dishonest. Start with the title: "Dawkins' Message to Mourners--Get Over It!". That sounds as if he is reporting that Dawkins has said something horribly callous directly to the grieving families, doesn't it? Well, no … all we actually have in this article from Richard Dawkins is a quote from his book, River Out of Eden(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), published in the mid-90s. The universe we observe has…

Born in Africa

Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life by Martin Meredith examines the history of human evolution studies, focusing on Africa, and provides a comprehensive overview of the conflict between different researchers, different points of view, and sometimes, different evidence. It is a good read. Meredith starts out with an examination of the Taung fossil, its discoverer, anatomy, and associated controversy. As you probably know, Taung was brought light by anatomist Raymond Dart, and had its initial impact on human evolutionary studies in the 1920s when the British Piltdown…

Lenora

... Continued ... When working with a personal trainer, the first thing you have to do is to calibrate. Then, if the trainer does not crank it up to a higher level, she's probably not worth her fee. Lenora is the best physical trainer that ever existed, bar none. By this time it had become clear that I was joining this gym with a life membership. I'd lay out a few hundred bucks and be a member for about $50 a year forever after. That may seem like a lot and these sorts of things are not always good deals. But part of my motivation for choosing the super-membership was to put the money down…

And the 2011 Friend of Darwin Award goes to ....

The Friend of Darwin Award, also known as the Chucky, honors NCSE members for outstanding effort to support NCSE and its goals. Here's what it looks like. And this year's award goes to .... Niles Eldredge!!! Congratulations Niles. From the NCSE: Niles Eldredge has been making the case for evolution--explaining, defending, and expanding the scientific account of the history of life--for over 40 years. A breakthrough researcher who formulated the idea of punctuated equilibria with Stephen Jay Gould, Eldredge has been an evolution advocate and communicator without peer. Eldredge has…

Aflatoxin found in pet food

I've been meaning to write something up about this for awhile, but keep forgetting. Anyhoo, because my own dog is currently ill and it's stressing me out watching her (not due to this, thankfully), I thought I'd do my own little part to get the word out to any dog owners who may not have heard of this recall. Diamond Pet Food Recalled Due to Aflatoxin Diamond Pet Food has discovered aflatoxin in a product manufactured at our facility in Gaston, South Carolina. Aflatoxin is a naturally occurring toxic chemical by-product from the growth of the fungus Aspergillus flavus,, on corn and other…

Aegypt

Aegypt is the name of a fantasy book by John Crowley, as well as the title of yet another non-climate-science post by me. I have loved several of Crowleys books - notably The Deep; Engine Summer; and Beasts. Which left me eager to read more, and totally baffled by Little, Big: a book with some ideas in it, a nice beginning, a turgid midsection and a pointless ending. Many people describe it as his masterwork. But onto Aegypt... Ostensibly Aegypt is about a chap who gives up his job teaching history and goes off to live in a small village in the hills. So far so boring, and indeed not a lot…

Immune system! SHUSH! The viruses are trying to get some work done!

Scientists all around the world are creating legions of genetically modified viruses to treat/cure human afflictions, from nicotine addiction to hemophilia (A and B). One disease a lot of folks are focused on in brain cancer.  Certainly not a monolithic entity-- but scientists are working on viruses against them all.  One of the viruses on the front lines against cancer is herpes. Good old fashioned cold sore viruses love to blow up brain cancers. But while HSV-1 has worked well in cell lines and some animal models, human trials have not worked out as well (sigh, sigh). WHY??? Maybe this is…

Bad words harm children

This is beyond absurd. A young woman in Oklahoma-- her class valedictorian, going to college this fall on a full ride-- is being denied her high school diploma because of this: Nootbaar says, “Her quote was, when she first started school she wanted to be a nurse, then a veterinarian and now that she was getting closer to graduation people would ask her what do you want to do and she said ‘How the h*** do I know? I’ve changed my mind so many times.” He says in the written script she gave to the school she said “heck,” but in the moment she said h*** instead. No, she is not being denied her…