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Can music convey meaning in the same way as language?

Recently I attended a concert featuring the premier of an up-and-coming composer's work. She gave a brief talk before her piece was played, during which she explained the complex symbology of her work. The musical notes weren't just noises; they were intended to convey a meaning above and beyond a mere sequence of sounds. But if her music really did convey such deep meaning, why did she have to explain it to the audience beforehand? Can music ever express semantic meaning directly, without requiring a composer or someone else to "translate" for us? Certainly not all music is as difficult to…

Understanding the gender gap in science -- a personal perspective

In 1981, the economist Lester C. Thurow wrote an article for the New York Times entitled "Why women are paid less than men." If you have a subscription, you can still read it on the Times web site. My copy comes from an anthology I edited in 1992. Thurow's conclusion: The decade between 25 and 35 is when men either succeed or fail. It is the decade when lawyers become partners in good firms, when business managers make it onto the "fast track," when academics get tenure at good universities, and when blue collar workers find the job opportunities that will lead to training opportunities and…

The IPCC, Hurricanes, and Global Warming, Part II

Following the back-and-forth on this subject yesterday, there's much more to say today now that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (PDF) is actually out. (My apologies, incidentally, for not posting earlier--I've had a cold and tried sleeping in to deal with it; then when I woke up the Internet was down.....) First of all, the SPM doesn't say precisely what we had been led to think it would say yesterday. The difference is significant enough that Roger Pielke, Jr., for one, no longer thinks what it does say will be very controversial. I'm not quite so sure about that....but, let's see what…

More Bush Administration Science Abuse

[Blogged from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport!] Anyone concerned about how this administration has repeatedly distorted, undermined, and in some cases suppressed information about global warming should read this amicus brief (PDF). It was just filed by a distinguished group of climate scientists--including James Hansen and Nobel Laureates Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina--in the upcoming Supreme Court case over whether the EPA should be compelled to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. I have already observed how Judge A. Raymond Randolph, in his majority opinion in this case…

In defense of paleontology

Fossil fish from the Eocene age Green River Formation in Colorado. From Wikipedia. I am pretty tired of Richard Dawkins putting down paleontology. In his 2004 tome The Ancestor's Tale, as well as in his latest book The Greatest Show on Earth, Dawkins felt compelled to cast the fossil record as an unnecessary bonus when it comes to demonstrating the reality of evolution. "The evidence for evolution would be entirely secure," he asserts in the latter book, "even if not a single corpse had ever fossilized." While this statement contains a crumb of truth - we have learned much about evolution…

Darwin's Darkest Hour

Last month everyone was all a-twitter about the big screen Charles Darwin biopic, Creation. The film, based upon the biography Annie's Box, was released in England with great fanfare, but whether it would come to the United States was another question altogether. A U.S. distributor was hard to come by, and speculation was rife about why this was so. Was the popularity of creationism in America making distributors wary, or did they just think that the film was too boring? Fortunately for us Darwin fans on the other side of the Atlantic the film finally landed a distributor and should debut…

Have creationists tricked scientists yet again?

Update: I have released important new information about this story here. Creationists have made a habit out of tricking scientists and historians into appearing in pro-creationism films. Such "culture warriors" view their dishonest tactics as fully acceptable. They think their deceit is working for the greater good, and scientists must increasingly be aware of who they are being interviewed by. (For a relevant discussion of dishonesty among evangelicals see the chapters on conservative philanthropist Howard Ahmanson Jr. in Republican Gomorrah, particularly the portion about Ahmanson's…

Is Global Warming Leading to an Increase in the Total Number of Atlantic Storms? (Part II: Policy Implications)

In my previous post, I went into some detail about the intense argument between Greg Holland and Peter Webster on the one hand (PDF), and Chris Landsea on the other (PDF), over whether the total number of Atlantic storms is increasing. And I concluded, somewhat unsatisfyingly, that there may be limits placed upon the extent to which we can determine who's right and wrong in this debate. After all, we will never know for certain how many storms were missed in previous eras. However, that doesn't mean that we can't draw any conclusions about the current debate--it's just that they may not be…

What's moving? You? The background? Something inbetween?

When I was 12 years old, I sometimes got to ride the train from Seattle to my aunt's house in Portland. Staring at the countryside flashing past the train window, it seemed to me that the landscape was rotating in a giant circle: Nearby objects flashed past the train as expected -- they appeared to move the opposite way the train was going. But the mountains in the distance seemed to be moving forward, faster than the train. It was as if the land next to us was just a vast turntable, rotating rapidly as we stayed in the same place. This video (not my own) captures some of the effect: I knew…

Selection of Antidepressants: Wellbutrin -- bupropion

T face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">his is another post in a series detailing the selection of antidepressant medication.  Use the "Antidepressants" link in the "Categories" part of the sidebar to find the other posts in the series. In this post, I am sort of assuming that the reader has read the previous posts, or has an adequate fund of general knowledge on the subject. href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bupropion" rel="tag">Bupropion is not a member of a family.  Most antidepressants can be placed in a family of drugs that share similar properties, but there is no other drug…

Drug Safety in Perspective

Often, on this blog, I've ranted about the risks that our government, and our corporate citizens, e.g. pharmaceutical companies, expose us to on a daily basis.   Perhaps it would be good to put some of those risks in perspective.  That is, to compare the risks of various medications to others risks that we take on a routine basis.  In the May/June issue of the journal, Health Affairs, there is an article on the subject.  The full thing is behind a pay wall, but we'll get to the heart of the matter anyway. href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/3/636">What's…

Coping with the new operating parameters of my life

This post is for Scientiae's call to share what we did on our summer vacation. I've been fairly silent about my personal life the last few months, But I was hugely encouraged by all the wonderful comments that so many of you made in the getting to know you post a few weeks back, when you said that you were sticking around because you were interested in my story and want to hear how everything turns out for me. So I am feeling brave enough (or foolish enough) to let you have a bit of peek into what's going on in my life outside of the professional sphere. I'm not really sure how to right this…

The fish rots from the head, the tail, and every place in between

Here's an educational opportunity for everyone! The Community College of Rhode Island [CCRI] has proudly announced that this fall, a "reiki master" will be holding a seminar on "crystal and mineral healing" at the college. This, we're told, is …a type of alternative therapy that involves laying crystals or gemstones on the body. Each student will experience a crystal therapy session and get a really good idea about how it changes your energy and rebalances you. This instructor at CCRI also does "Cranio Sacral Therapy," and uses such advanced quackery as "Bio Magnets," "Light Life Tools," "…

Isle Royale Travelogue Day 5: Rock Harbour to Raspberry Island and Scoville Point, and return

This is another excerpt from our travel journal to Isle Royale. The first day is here; second day here; third day is here; fourth day is here. Photos by me, text by my husband. Thursday May 29 Rock Harbour to Raspberry Island and Scoville Point, and return It is the last full day on the island, and once again we had great hopes and plans for awaking early in order to go do much stuff. Atop the list was Raspberry Island, a one-mile canoe ride away over a not-very protected part of Rock Harbour. We had been foiled in our attempt of this trip by the wind on Wednesday, but were hoping that an…

Why Opting Out Isn't Really an Option

In the 15 February Science Magazine, Phyllis Moen reviews the book "Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home" by Pamela Stone. Stone examines the phenomenon of women leaving successful to stay home by actually interviewing the women who opt out. As Moen writes: Social scientists have documented the work and family pressures women experience, as well as the costs to women's careers of scaling back or leaving the workforce. But until now no one has systematically investigated the actual dropouts. Thus all the analyses of the stress experienced by employed women ...tend to…

Disclosing [obvious] biases in book reviews: were Nature and Jared Diamond wrong?

While I was on blogcation, I got an email from the watchdog group Stinky Journalism, complaining that prominent science author and professor Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel) was in the hot seat again. (You may remember that Stinky Journalism broke the story about the lawsuit against Diamond arising from his New Yorker piece on tribal violence in New Guinea; I blogged about the fallout of the controversy here and here.) Really? I thought; what has Diamond supposedly done this time? Here's the scoop from Stinky Journalism: [In] the February 18 issue of the journal Nature . . .…

Is C-section safer than vaginal delivery?

There is a big controversy among doctors and patients as to the wisdom of C-section vs. vaginal delivery. It is a complex issue. For the first birth, there is no evidence that I am aware of that C-section or vaginal delivery are superior to one another with respect to the child's health. Still, this is a point that is endlessly disputed in malpractice proceedings against obstetricians. You can always argue that the failure to do a C-section resulted in this or that problem in the baby. (We'll get back to that.) From the mother's point of view, C-section can have numerous and severe…

Sontagians vs. Kuhnians: what's a sciartist to do?

In a guest post at Scientific American, Rebecca Jablonsky says, Kuhn de-legitimized the understanding of science as implicitly including objective reality, leaving room for theory to de-stabilize rituals of practice and produce authentic innovation-something that is certainly prized in both artistic and scientific communities alike. Seriously - go read it and come back. It's short. I'll wait. So I don't get it. While Jablonsky's post is well-written and thoughtful, and I basically agree with everything she says, and find the concepts interesting, I can't figure out who the post is intended to…

The Meowmorphosis: blatant meme abuse?

Ok, what are the people at Quirk Books on? I have to say, I love the cover of the book, and the typographical trailer is cute - but isn't this just blatant meme abuse? Quirk explains The Meowmorphosis thus. . . "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten." Thus begins The Meowmorphosis--a bold, startling, and fuzzy-wuzzy new edition of Franz Kafka's classic nightmare tale, from the publishers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! Meet Gregor Samsa, a humble young man who works as a fabric salesman to support…

a book meme!

Woo hoo! I've been tagged with a book meme! The rules: boldface the books on this list that you've read, and italicize books you started but never finished. Okay. . . 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte~ 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee~ 6 The Bible - I think I've read over 75% of this, so I'm going with it. The begats don't count. 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte~ 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens~…

Combating Stereotype Threat in the Wild

As I believe I've said before, if anything good has come from the Larry Summers debacle of a few years ago, it's that it inspired some really interesting research on gender differences in math. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably guessed that one of my favorite topics in that research is stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is, according to Claude Steele(1, "the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype," and there's now a pretty substantial literature showing that…

Erasing an Invention

I'm in Italy. Over the past two weeks I've been reposting my entries on technology. Here is a related post on Le Corbusier and his conception of the modern city. Seed is disseminating questions to its bloggers (I guess a la www.edge.org) so this week the question is: If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why? The invention I would choose to uninvent? I spent the weekend asking some friends. Some answers were machine guns, the atomic bomb, spam, cars ... Cars did strike something deep in me. Along the lines of…

O brave new world that has such penises in't

I am getting quite impressed with the progress being made in organ reconstruction. New techniques have allowed amazing improvements in bioengineering that allow whole complex organs to be grown in a dish and then surgically reimplanted — and much of this research is being driven by our military ventures, which provide a steady supply of scarred, damaged, and mutilated veterans who need new body parts. There I read that scientists are developing procedures to regrow penises…how could I not look up that paper? So I did, and now I have the current recipe for building new penises — or at least,…

Students plagiarize, professor publicizes.

... and the university, in turn, fires the professor. You've probably already seen this story. Loye Young, an adjunct professor at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, warned his students (as we all do) against plagiarism. Indeed, as reported by Inside Higher Ed, he included this statement in his fall course syllabus for his management information systems course: No form of dishonesty is acceptable. I will promptly and publicly fail and humiliate anyone caught lying, cheating, or stealing. That includes academic dishonesty, copyright violations, software piracy, or any other…

Friday Sprog Blogging: field trip to the Exploratorium.

The evening before the Free-Ride offspring went with their day-camp on a field trip to the Exploratorium: Dr. Free-Ride: Do you want to look at the Exploratorium website tonight to get an idea what you might see on the field trip tomorrow? Elder offspring: No. Dr. Free-Ride: Why not? Elder offspring: I think field trips are more fun when I don't really remember the place we're going. That way, it's more of a surprise when we get there. Dr. Free-Ride: Oh. Younger offspring: The Exploratorium will be the most fun for me, because I've never been there so I can't remember any of it! Dr. Free-…

43rd Skeptics' Circle (sad puppy edition)

Welcome to the meeting of the 43rd Skeptics' Circle! Good logic and critical thinking never hurt anyone, but bad logic, gullibility, and uncritical acceptance of questionable claims causes distress to small, furry animals. I'm not kidding! As proof, please consider the above picture (provided to me by Fern). Can you bear to live in a world where this cute puppy is sad? Wouldn't you rather make the puppy happy? Me, too. UPDATE: I'm not going to say the dog ate my homework, but this morning I found a half dozen (lightly chewed) posts that should have gone into the carnival last night. I…

The science pipeline and the overabundance of Ph.D. scientists.

Chad has an interesting post about the scientific job market, in which he notes that his own experience training for and finding a job in academic science has left him with an impression significantly rosier than some circulating through cyberspace. Chad's discussion of the ways your field (and subfield) can influence what your prospects and experiences will be like is a must-read for anyone prepared to talk themselves out of pursuing science on the basis of the aerial view of science as a whole. Chad's assessment: So what's the real situation? Probably somewhere between his hyper-…

Sunday Sacrilege: One nation free of god

A strange thing has happened in this country: somehow, the United States of America has become a biblical entity. I know, the country didn't even exist for over a thousand years after the Bible was composed and assembled, and there isn't one word about the USA in the text, but you couldn't tell from the way some people have confused patriotism and piety. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel called "It Can't Happen Here," about an America taken over by a populist dictator. His hero explained how that could happen: Why, there's no country in the world that can get more hysterical—yes, or more…

A downside of the fact that faculty members are not fully interchangeable.

In response to my post yesterday considering some of the difficulties in restaffing a course when its professor falls ill, Leigh commented: Sometimes nothing can be done. Last winter I had to cancel my evolution course, which doubles as a laboratory in the philosophy of science, because of a serious illness. (I had already given the course in the fall; I voluntarily added the winter one because the fall course was doubly oversubscribed.) Fortunately this happened just after the course started, so the students were minimally lurchified. The course is quite idiosyncratic, with no actual…

Friday Sprog Blogging: scientific questions on summer vacation.

Yes, it's a day late. Dr. Free-Ride and Dr. Free-Ride's better half are currently engaged in sprog retrieval maneuvers at the home of the Grandparents Who Lurk But Seldom Comment. What follows is this morning's attempt to get the Free-Ride offspring to tell us something science-y. Dr. Free-Ride: Were there any things you noticed while you were away from us that you think might have to do with science? Younger offspring: I noticed that when I go in the ocean, the salt water makes my eyes red, and I wanted to know why. Dr. Free-Ride: That sounds like a reasonable matter for scientific…

Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Read this blog post ONLY IF YOU DARE!!!! I was just reading the latest edition of "Ripley's Believe It or Not! Enter If You Dare!" which was sent to me by the Ripley people to have a look at. Let me tell you right away that if you are a skeptic, you have to get a hold of this book and try to debunk every item in it. Well, not ever item, but many. Some of the strange things the book includes are not really all that strange, but are merely interesting, like certain geological formations and other phenomena. Others are simply physical abnormalities of humans or various non-human animals or…

Home Chemistry: A New Guide for Hobbyists and Home Schoolers

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture (DIY Science) is a new book by Robert Thompson. The premise is simple. The coolest thing in the world is a home chemistry set like this one from Gilbert, which combined both chemistry and microscopy: Chemistry Set Combine the sciences of Chemistry and Microscopy in one big laboratory set! Microscope has a magnification of 60 power, plus unique Polaroid device that shows the brilliant colors of specimens under the lens. Set includes "Fun With Gilbert Chemistry", "Gilbert Microscope", "Glass Blowing" manuals and dissecting…

Genie Scott Delivers Commencement Speech

Fearless Leader of NCSE, Eugenie Scott, gave the University of Missouri Commencement Speech on Saturday. I'm sure they gave her an honorary degree for the speech, and I believe this makes Genie a PhD eight times over, earning her the name "Octodoc." (And to think, I knew her when she had only one or two. Unidoc. Or Bidoc maybe.) "Show me" you say? OK, no problem: Graduates, parents, distinguished faculty and guests ... but especially graduates. Because a graduation should be all about you. The traditional ritual of a commencement speech is to give graduates advice: how to live your lives…

Home Chemistry: A New Guide for Hobbyists and Home Schoolers

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture (DIY Science) is a new book by Robert Thompson. The premise is simple. The coolest thing in the world is a home chemistry set like this one from Gilbert, which combined both chemistry and microscopy: Chemistry Set Combine the sciences of Chemistry and Microscopy in one big laboratory set! Microscope has a magnification of 60 power, plus unique Polaroid device that shows the brilliant colors of specimens under the lens. Set includes "Fun With Gilbert Chemistry", "Gilbert Microscope", "Glass Blowing" manuals and dissecting…

Democrats will be Democrats

The Party's rules committee has met, deliberated, and decided to seat Florida and Michigan, but with only half a vote each. This is an odd compromise that serves to preserve and ruin democracy at the same time. it is a nineteenth century compromise that may be viewed as an anti-Clinton move, but in the end may serve to save Clinton face. In the short term Obama may gain (indirectly) but in the longer term there will be a cost for him. And, the Democratic Party leadership of Florida and Michigan need to be ashamed of themselves. They have served their citizens very, very poorly. But first…

An embarrassment to Australian science

Matt Drudge recently linked to a web site claiming that climate experts disagreed with Al Gore about global warming. Hundreds of blogs uncritically swallowed the claim. One of the few skeptics was Bruce Perens who wrote We ran a pointer to a global-warming-doubter story this morning. Here's the link. I decided to pull the story after reviewing the author attribution (he's from a paid political PR agency), and the venue's other coverage on this issue. Sorry. Hey, I've got my doubts about global warming too. But it does seem that the "con" side of the argument often comes from people who are…

The hollow shell behind Berlinski's sneer

David Berlinski, that Prince of Pomposity and Lackey of the Discovery Institute, is trying to get a letter published in Science, complaining about the study that showed America's poor showing in understanding evolution. It's more of an opaque, cranky whine, something Berlinski specializes in, so I rather doubt it will ever get in—the editors there are going to be as respectful of creationist nonsense as I am. Of course, one thing I can do that the editors wouldn't is rip into his letter and tear it to pieces in public… "Human beings, as we know them," Miller, Scott and Okamoto write, "…

Flypaper for innumerates, part 2

It seems that war supporters with actual knowledge of statistics aren't willing to criticise the new Lancet study, leaving the field to folks who don't know what they are talking about. John Howard: Well, I don't believe that John Hopkins research, I don't. It's not plausible, it's not based on anything other than a house-to-house survey. I think that's absolutely precarious. It is a ... an unbelievably large number and it's out of whack with most of the other assessments that have been made. Surveys are the best way to measure these things. The other assessments that are lower such as IBC…

John Wilkins on eugenics and Darwin

John Wilkins over at Evolving Thoughts has posted an excellent brief summary of the history of the eugenics movement. In the process, he makes a strong argument that it was genetics far more than evolution that influenced eugenecists and that the entire eugenics movement was based on the concept that evolution was being thwarted by human society and thus needed "help" (a process that is far more like "intelligent design" than natural evolution). Moreover, he gives examples of scientists who pointed out that, for example, weeding out eugenics through selective sterilization was totally…

Africa is filled with people too dumb to live, according to the LSE

My university doesn't subscribe to the journal, but I'd really be interested in reading this paper by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics. Even better would be if someone else would critique it so I wouldn't have to waste my time on it. Mind the gap...in intelligence: Re-examining the relationship between inequality and health. Kanazawa S. Interdisciplinary Institute of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. Wilkinson contends that economic inequality reduces the health and life expectancy of the whole population but his argument does not make sense…

About them

Courtesy of the excellent bioephemera's Jess Palmer comes this item of news, which concerns photographs of patients taken at the University of New Mexico Hospital and posted to a website. The photographs were reportedly close-ups of injuries being treated--no faces or patient-identifying features were shown. The employees who took and posted the photos have been fired, and several others have been disciplined as a result of these events. My initial response to this was, "What's the big deal?" The implication of the firings is that taking someone's picture--even if it's not possible to…

Barack Obama: Health Care Is a Right

When I think back to the presidential debate last night, one moment stands out in my mind more than any other. And, no, it wasn't McCain calling Obama "that one". It was the discussion following Tom Brokaw's question "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?" Health care came up several times throughout the debate, but here I thought the answers were most telling. This is in spite of the fact that I took issue with the way the question was phrased. Specifically, I felt that the third choice ("responsibility") was unnecessary and just gave the candidates an easy…

Like Governor, Like Health Care Plan

What is big and flashy, capable of generating plenty of press, and claims to be the solution to all (or at least a sizeable chunk) of California's problems? (a) Arnold Schwarzenegger (b) his new health care proposal (c) all of the above You can decide for yourself, but from my perspective, the bold new semi-universal health care plan that Schwarzenegger is pushing for the state of California reminds me quite a bit of the Governator himself. And, like Schwarzenegger--whose policy agenda is largely shaped by external forces outside of his control due to the fact that he is a…

Airborne aircraft carriers take to the air

Some time back, I pitched a few editors the idea of doing something on a new breed of airborne aircraft carriers. Sadly it didn't stick, because no one had invented them yet. Such are the constraints of writing non-fiction. Reality has a way of catching up though, and New Scientist broke the news today about the latest in air tech: floating fortresses that dispense drones and guided missiles on command. The concept of an airborne aircraft carrier is not new. Almost as soon as we were in the air, we started trying to compound air power by sticking one craft on top of (or under, or alongside)…

Whither Adaptation?

In a post at the Panda's Thumb, Ian Musgrave cites this paper by Bakewell et al claiming that 154 genes out of 13,888 surveyed show evidence for adaptive evolution in humans since the divergence with chimps (this is the "chimps more evolved than humans" paper). Ian brings this up in a discussion of Haldane's dilemma -- which is only a dilemma to creationists (biologists are more interested in his sieve and his rule) -- but he cites the paper as an authority on the amount of adaptive evolution in humans. A discussion of adaptive evolution in human genes would be incomplete without mentioning…

Undergraduate research : a key (essential?) component of a college science education

Following Chad and Jake, I want to jump off from an article in Science about undergraduate research. It's always nice when some sort of survey confirms one's preexisting biases.... In short, the survey found that performing research increased undergraduates' interest in science and technology fields (so-annoyingly-called "STEM" disciplines, for Science Technology Engineering Mathematics). Such undergraduates were also more likely to go on to advanced degrees, although here the causality isn't necessarily clear. The survey did find that students with higher grades tended to be more likely…

Entropy (Basic Concepts)

This post was copied and slightly edited from a post I made a year or so ago at my blog's former location. More bullshit has been written about entropy than about any other physical quantity. —Prof. Dave Beeman, 1988 There is a popular-level understanding of entropy that is "randomness" or "disorder". This is not a bad way of looking at it, but brings along with it some associated concepts that are misleading. Creationists exploit this ambiguity by turning the argument around to information, where, even though ultimately we're talking about the same physical quantity, the implications…

What's next? Flat earth?

Regarding this whole skeptic thing, if there's one thing I've learned about pseudoscience and bizarre, unscientific beliefs, it's that, just when I think I've seen it all, the world slaps me in the face (facepalm, to be precise) to show me that I haven't seen it all after all. Such was what happened when a truly bizarre conference started popping up around the skeptical blogosphere at blogs like Pharyngula, Unreasonable Faith, and Starts With A Bang. If you think that one thing that kooks can't deny is that the earth revolves around the sun, you'd be wrong. Witness the Galileo Was Wrong…

Presidential Candidates on Science

Indeed, in science. The current issue of Science reviews the positions of each of the major presidential candidates in the area of science. Writing the overview to this collection of views, Jeffrey Mervis states: Many factors can make or break a U.S. presidential candidate in the 2008 race for his or her party's nomination. The ability to raise millions of dollars is key, as are positions on megaissues such as the Iraq war, immigration, and taxes. Voters also want to know if a candidate can be trusted to do the right thing in a crunch. Science and scientific issues? So far, with the…

Male vs. Female Brains

The male and female human brains are different. Some of the better documented differences are similar to differences seen in other mammals. They are hard to find, very small, and may or may not be of great significance. Obviously, some are very important because they probably relate to such things as the ability ... or lack thereof ... to bear offspring. But this is hardly ever considered in the parodies we see of these differences. [Repost from Gregladen.com] You have all seen the sometimes funny, sometimes not cartoon depictions of these differences, for example this one: Obviously,…