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Drugs that work against each other could fight resistant bacteria

When normal bacteria are exposed to a drug, those that become resistant gain a huge and obvious advantage. Bacteria are notoriously quick to seize upon such evolutionary advantages and resistant strains rapidly outgrow the normal ones. Drug-resistant bacteria pose an enormous potential threat to public health and their numbers are increasing. MRSA for example, has become a bit of a media darling in Britain's scare-mongering tabloids. More worryingly, researchers have recently discovered a strain of tuberculosis resistant to all the drugs used to treat the disease. New antibiotics are…

Quantifying the "Ouch" of heading in soccer

I'm not normally much of a soccer fan, but the World Cup doesn't happen every day and it's pretty interesting to see all the excitement and high level of play. I personally think the rules need a little tweaking to reduce the tendency toward 0-0 and 1-1 ties, but I suppose the sport couldn't have so many billions of fans without doing something right. In honor of the World Cup, let's do a quick example of just how tough the game can be. In soccer of course the players are generally prohibited from touching the ball with their hands - hence, football in most of the world. But in fact the…

Blackbodies and Black Bodies

Alas for Michael Jackson. Talented musician, deeply broken human being. Most of my knowledge of him was through cultural osmosis rather than his actual music, and I'm young enough so that I can't really remember the time before he was a punchline about changing skin color, disastrous plastic surgery, and child molestation. Well, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. His death reminds me of my undergrad thermodynamics book, of all things. As you know, an object at a particular temperature will radiate light with a particular spectrum depending on the material. Heat something up enough, and it will…

The Physics of Rapunzel

Our excellent physics blogger Chad Orzel has a post up about the thermodynamics of Goldilocks. Seems it's a little questionable to have the porridge configured as it was in the old tale. A few wags in the comments complain that in a story with talking bears physics is the least of the concerns, but I think that misses the point. Suspension of disbelief requires that we grant the story the ability to say wild things so long as it does so in an internally consistent way. Don't, for instance, make time-travel commonplace enough so that a 13-year-old girl can use it to rearrange her school…

Once more into the breach

How do I put this politely? It is not possible for a reasonable person equipped with a secondary education to read the material George F. Will cites in his columns arguing against the scientific evidence for global warming and come to the conclusions that Will reaches. It's been less than a day, but already the mountain of criticism written in response to a new column, leaked yesterday and published today in the Washington Post, in which American's leading conservative columns defends his previous column on the subject, is astounding. Carl Zimmer's is among the best, as usual. There's also…

Al Gore vs. George F. Will

My apologies if you're weary of posts revolving around George F. Will and his inability to accept responsibility for getting climate science completely wrong. But the contrast between that sorry episode in one non-scientist's efforts to communicate science with those of Al Gore's is too stark to pass up. This week Al Gore accepted that it had been a mistake to include a series of animated slides in the latest version of his climate change presentation. The images accurately record a dramatic spike in weather-related damages around the world in recent years, with the U.S. suffering more than…

What to do with the pseudoskeptics?

For the last four years, I've spent a fair bit of time trying to do my bit to undermine the pseudoskeptical claptrap that passes for criticism of the idea that humans are responsible for global warming. And I'm getting tired. It doesn't seem to matter how many bloggers and journalists who understand the science of climate change point out the facts as climate science understands them, pernicious long-debunked ideas (it's all the sun's fault, the hockey stick is a fraud, water vapor is a forcing, etc.) refuse to die. Is there any point? For example, over the holidays, Jeremy Jacquot at…

Alan Moore at Cheltenham

Last night at the Cheltenham Science Festival, I attended a Q&A between Robin Ince and Alan Moore; Robin had stumbled onto the easiest job in the universe, because all you have to do is tickle Moore a little bit and deep rumbly and heavily accented weirdness comes pouring out. Much of the talk was about Moore's belief in magic — in a science festival, you say? Yes, and it actually made a lot of sense. Moore has an affinity for a 2nd century oracular sock puppet, but he doesn't worship it. He believes in magic, but he doesn't believe in the supernatural. He also doesn't like religion. I…

TQC 2010 First Announcement

The 5th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography has put up its first announcement. It will be held at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, from 13th - 15th April 2010. The first upcoming deadline to be aware of is the submission deadline of Monday January 4, 2010: The 5th Conference on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptography ---- TQC 2010 ---- University of Leeds, UK 13 - 15 April 2009 http://tqc2010.leeds.ac.uk ==================================================================== Quantum computation, quantum communication,…

QIP 2009 Day 1 Liveblogging continued

Having some glitches publishing, so am trying to split up the posts. Continuing on the quantum information theory beat: John Smolin (speaker) and Graeme Smith, "Can non-private channels transmit quantum information?" John began by explaining the stages of grief and how this relates to the demolishing of the two additivity questions (described above.) He also showed a picture of a certain interesting way to achieve computer privacy...similar to those found here: The work John talked about is described in arXiv:0810.0276. The private channel capacity is the capacity of a quantum channel to…

Nature on El Naschie

Nature article on El Naschie. (See also The Case of M.S. El Naschie, Continued.) Opening scene from the Nature article, the greatest of all euphemisms, "retirement" starts off the show The editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself, is set to retire early next year. Scene two, the story so far: Five of the 36 papers in the December issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals alone were written by its editor-in-chief, Mohamed El Naschie. And the year to date has seen nearly 60 papers written by him…

Predicting Antidepressant-related Suicidality

The article describes a technique that it said to show a priori which patients are at risk for developing suicidal thoughts after starting an antidepressant.  Of course the usual interpretive caveats apply: it is a small study, needs to be replicated, etc. href="http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25171/?a=f">Brain Waves Predict Suicide Risk A new technique might help doctors foresee suicidal thoughts before a patient even has them. Over the past five years, an increasing number of studies have pointed to the rare but serious risk of suicidal thoughts that can accompany new…

Reading on the Radar

Books have been bubbling up from the comments cauldron. Jim Harrison has asked what I think of Simon Conway Morris's Life's Solution. Web Webster says Cosmos was his first favorite science book and asks for suggestions. Humboldt and Feyerband make an appearance too. It's ironic that two forms of reading that are competing furiously these days for my free time--books and blogs--meet at this crossroads. Let me just say that I have four books on my desk, that I am trying to dig into. They're either just out or about to come out. For the most part, I can't tell you that they're great or lousy,…

The Psychology of Black Stereotypes in White America

Psychology buffs are probably familiar with the Implicit Association Test. In laboratory experiments testing for racial prejudice, subjects are timed in their matching of positive and negative words with either white or black faces. In these tests, whites overwhelmingly react more positively to whites and more negatively towards blacks (take the test here). The reason is that many whites lack personal "real world" experience with blacks and instead much of their perception of blacks is colored by unfair media portrayals (see this report I authored last year.) The torrent of media images of…

Obama Tied Among Evangelicals and Leads Other Faith Groups

The Barna Group is known for its precision in tracking the preferences of religious groups, especially Evangelicals. The organization today released its latest election survey, finding that Obama is within the margin of error with McCain among self-described Evangelicals and leads across other major faith groups, though this lead has slipped somewhat over the past few months. As I've noted, McCain appears to be using strong religious imagery in his advertisements as a "Left Behind" strategy to shore up his support among Evangelicals. Obama's faith based strategy likely aims to capture a…

Two Images of Atheism: Hate versus Community

The dominant image of atheism: Blogger PZ Myers wearing a scarlet letter "A" for atheism T-shirt. Atheists have a major image problem. There's a reason that when people ask me what I believe I have to say with a smile: "I'm an atheist...but a friendly atheist." For sure, atheists for a long time have been unfairly stereotyped in the mainstream media and in popular culture. But we also have a lot of lousy self-proclaimed spokespeople who do damage to our public image. They're usually angry, grumpy, uncharismatic male loners with a passion for attacking and ridiculing religious believers. Any…

Barbara Boxer on Managing James Inhofe and the Frame that Turned John Warner into a Climate Advocate

Barbara Boxer appeared on Bill Moyers last week, providing fresh insight into her relationship with James Inhofe as well as the strategic appeal that turned GOP Senator John Warner into a climate change advocate. In describing her reaction to Inhofe's theatrics during Al Gore's testimony earlier this year, here's what she had to say (full transcript of the interview): BARBARA BOXER: I was a little stunned because here I had taken the gavel after a tough, you know, election season. We came in. We got power finally, albeit very small margin. But I was the chairman of the committee now. And Jim…

Questions Posed at the Cal Tech Framing Science Seminar

I'm back in DC after a week long tour of southern California. On Monday night, an audience of close to 100 scientists, students, and staff turned out at Cal Tech for our latest Framing Science lecture. We followed on Tuesday with a day long science communication seminar (syllabus) that included 30 PhD students, post-docs, and Cal Tech staff. (Read one blogger's summary.) I ended my morning session by posing the following issues and questions to the participants, with these issues arising from what I see as major changes in the political and media system that are generating new demands for…

How do folks react when you say, "I'm a scientist..."

@dnghub Twitter Feed I recently read this great post on the Terry blog, whereby Elysa talks about preconceived notions of success and how a person's profession may relate to that. In particular, she used the example of Anne Wintour, the celebrated editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, who by any measure is "successful," but because that success is rooted in "fashion," there are many who may not acknowledge her work as significant. "they find what I do very amusing." Anna goes on to describe her siblings and their respected career paths- a brother who works to find housing for those who can't…

Democrat vs. Republican: a one gene trait?

Too much listening to Tea Baggers (their most appropriate name?), and the 100% Republican opposition to the Health Care Bill that just passed the House (hooray!!!), and fear of violence in the streets of Haiti as justification for the slow US response there, and the many bizarre responses to what I thought was a really excellent "State of the Union" address a couple of months ago- all of these things colluded to make me wonder if the basic difference between Democrats and Republicans is the dosage of their altruism gene(s). It would also help explain why neither side can really understand…

Celebrity culture versus, you know, actual important stuff (or #AIS)

Not specifically about science literacy, but more about just what inhabits a person's brain space at a given moment, and how that can lead to a sad degree of ignorance in world affairs. I was mulling over this, when watching a television program called the "Long Way Down" about two motorcyclists (Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman) touring from the northern tip of Scotland to the southern tip of South Africa. It's a great show, where a lot of the focus of the programming was on their experiences in the African countries they rode through. There was one segment in particular that was…

Engineers as Authors: Technology, Nature, and Sustainable Communities

I had the fortune to be a bit experimental in the classroom this semester. Curricular innovation, they call it. More precisely, in one of my courses (called "STS 200: Technology, Nature, and Sustainable Communities"), the students wrote an entire book. These are engineering students. All engineers. They wrote a book. A book about relationships between technology and nature as exemplified in a local UVA sustainable housing project called ecoMOD. A full, cohesive, compelling, well-argued, well-researched book. We were glad to see a nice write-up of the project linked from the university…

Internet addiction?

Mind Hacks discusses an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry that argues that the DSM-IV -- the diagnostic manual that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders -- should include internet addiction. Vaughan is quite legitimately skeptical: Rather curiously, the editorial mentions the figure that 86% of people with 'internet addiction' have another mental illness. What this suggests is that heavy use of the internet is not the major problem that brings people into treatment. In fact, 'internet addiction', however it is defined, is associated with depression and anxiety but no-…

Why is there no birth control pill for men?

This question came down the pipeline from the SEED overlords: Why don't they make a birth control pill for men? The short answer is that they do make various methods of contraception for men, but most of the more effective ones are surgical rather than pharmacological. Also, given the early difficulties in making a pill for men similar to the birth control pill for women, most of the pharmacological forms of male contraception are still in clinical trials to determine that they are safe and effective. The history of a male birth control is filled with many false starts. For example, the…

The Golden Compass was not a very good movie

I guess I suspected that Golden Compass might not be good, but I went to see it last night if for no other reason than to see why thousands of people would attempt to boycott it on Facebook. The Catholic League is also organizing a boycott. I haven't read the books that this movie was based on, but apparently the primary objection to the film was from Christian groups to the atheist imagery in the books. The author of the books, Philip Pullman, has also enunciated his desire to create a sort of anti-C.S. Lewis, secular trilogy. Listen, maybe the books are substantially better, but if this…

Abortion needs to be taught in our medical schools

Read this horror story of a failed pregnancy. I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started while my toddler napped in his room when I woke up to find blood gushing upward from my body. Though I didn't know it at the time, I was experiencing a placental abruption, a complication my doctor had told me was a possibility. My husband was at work, so I had to do my best to take care of me and my toddler on my own. I managed to get to the phone and make arrangements for both of my children before going to a Chicago hospital. Everyone knew the pregnancy wasn't viable, that it couldn'…

Montpellier Day 2 Nuit: I Party Like a Rockstar

So I'll start with last night (actually Montpellier Day 2....). After making that post yesterday, I mustered up the courage to go walk around at night and find some place to get a much-needed drink. As I pass the main square, my ears happen to perk up to the sounds of English! A group of kids, about my age, seem to be discussing what to do for the night. So, I walk right up to them, introduce myself and ask if they know of any good bars in the area. Well, one thing led to another and they ended up "adopting" me for the night. Turns out they were all American exchange students studying French…

Traditional African Potion As AIDS "Cure"? (No, just Woo)

Orac of Respectful Insolence is on vacation this week, and in the hiatus is posting some "classic" Insolence from the old blog. In his absence, I feel the need to continue the fight against woo (and also, I happened to receive this story via email---Hat tip Darkman). The 35-year-old high school teacher named Bheki was lucky to be alive, thanks to the free antiretroviral pills that kept his HIV in check. He felt strong and had no side effects. Life was normal, as normal as it gets with an incurable disease. Then in February, he ditched the pills and started taking a mystery potion sold here…

No Incentive for a Cure?: What Really Scares Me About AIDS

We SciBloggers were posed with this question: To what extent do you worry about AIDS, either with respect to yourself, your children, or the world at large? Here's what really worries me about AIDS (from the old Retrospectacle): The Federal Chief of AIDS research recently said that he believed that drug companies don't have an incentive to create a vaccine for HIV and are likely going to wait for the government to develop the vaccine and then profit from it. "They're dropping out like flies because there's no real incentive for them to do it. We have to do it." The UN also recently…

Ask A Scienceblogger: To Protect and Serve

As a newly-minted ScienceBlogger, now I get to chime-in on all the fun "Ask A ScienceBlogger" questions. This week's question is: "Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?" As an undergrad, I had a pretty hard time choosing a major. This wasn't due to my lack of finding something I liked to do, I just didn't want to choose between a lot of fascinating fields. Finally I settled on what I considered the "final fronteir" in medical science: neuroscience, and neither time nor money (…

The harmonic duets of mosquitoes in love

The familiar buzzing sound made by a mosquito may be irritating to us humans, but it is an important mating signal. The sound, produced by the beats of the insect's wings, has a characteristic frequency called the "flight tone"; when produced by a female, it signals her presence to nearby males, thereby attracting potential mates. Attraction is not simply a matter of the male hearing and homing in on the female's flight tone. Females were long believed to be deaf, but two years ago, it was found that courting pairs interact acoustically to create a duet: both male and female modulate the…

Phrenological analysis of Ned Kelly's death mask

The notorious Australian bushranger Edward "Ned" Kelly was apprehended in 1878, following a confrontation during which he and his gang killed three policemen. Upon his arrest, Kelly was thus described by the police: 5'10" tall, weight 11st 4lbs, medium build, sallow complexion, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, scar on top of head, two scars on crown, scar on front of head. Eyebrows meeting, two natural marks between shoulder blades. Two freckles lower left arm, scar on ball of left thumb, scar on back of right hand and three scars on left thumb. Kelly was convicted of robbery and murder and…

It's the Economy, Stupid! Framing Propels Major Science Bill

As Science reports, the big news this week is that Congress passed a bill that adopts almost all of the recommendations of the 2005 National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America. The bill was signed this morning by President Bush. The unprecedented success at translating expert recommendations into a policy victory is in no small part due to the strategic framing of the initiative. The complexities of this bill were put in terms that policymakers and the public could understand, value, and support. As one backer described: "We quit talking…

Jesus' Tomb: When Journalists, Archeologists, and Statisticians Collide

Last week's Discovery Channel documentary on Jesus' family tomb represents a leading example of how science, journalism, and theology often arrive at different answers based on competing assumptions, incentives, and imperatives. Disregard for the moment how this important debate was immediately dismissed by conservative interest groups like Fox News, with calls to ban the the Discovery Channel program because it might be "deeply offensive to Christians" (see the clip above). What's really at issue is the statistical estimate by UToronto's Andrey Feuerverger that there is only "a one in…

Return of Mad Cow Memories

How long can an idea stay tantalizing? Back in 2003, I blogged about an experiment that suggested, incredibly enough, that our long-term memories are encoded by prions the misfolded proteins that are generally accepted to be the cause of mad cow disease. The evidence came from studies of a protein (known as CPEB) that plays a key role in laying down memories in neurons. Scientists found that it had a structure much like prions. When a normal protein misfolds and becomes a prion, it acquires the ability to lock onto other proteins and force them to misfold in the same way. The misfolding can…

Nice take down

A while back I mentioned Dan Ely, the University of Akron physiologist who seems to be unsure about the age of the earth. According to Red State Rabble, three of his departmental colleagues have written to the Kansas BoE to fix two of Ely's "misrepresentations". Their first correction ultimately attacks the modus operandi of the Discovery Institute in supporting the likes of Ely, Philip Skell, and other know-nothings. Dr. Ely implies in his testimony that he has background in evolutionary biology, and that his current research is related to evolutionary biology. Both of these notions are…

Reactions from Kamloops

The Kamloops News has obligingly published a couple of reactions to my appearance in their fair city. There is a very abbreviated summary of what I discussed on Friday: Prof shoots holes in creationism. Yes, that's about right. I specifically addressed the fallacies of Intelligent Design creationism. Now, though, the editor of the newspaper, Mel Rothenburger, has responded: Name callers are just stupid. He begins with this: I didn't take in the presentation by American associate professor Paul "PZ" Myers, and I'm glad. Gosh, I'm chastened already. He objects to the fact that I said…

Alzheimer's Disease and risky sexual behavior: not quite a false alarm?

Abel over at Terra Sigillata got is writ in a tinger over bad grammar and was concerned that Alzheimer's Disease had been tied to risky sexual behavior. His conclusion was that he got a poorly worded email notice about two separate problems that were linked inappropriately by a semicolon. So everything's fine, all clear, right? He's free to engage in risky sexual behavior without fear of getting Alzheimer's Disease (AD) later in life! That's not entirely true. We've known that inflammation plays a huge role in the Alzheimer's disease process. Unfortunately, inflammation is caused by a…

From the Archives: Science is not a Popularity Contest

Last weekend there was an article in the Wichita Eagle on the situation with the Kansas BoE. Since creationists can't get their tripe published in real science journals, but instead have to rely on popularity contests elections in order to pass their shit off as reality to our kids, I thought I'd dig up one of my old posts. Here's the a grand example of why science is not determined by consensus. If you live in Kansas, The TruthTM which your children are taught in school is decided based upon the ideology of the current Board of Elections. This coming year, for example, Intelligent Design…

Book Review: Kluge - The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

Guest Post by Seth Herd. I disagree with many of Gary Marcus's theories, but I think that his book Kluge is important, entertaining, and even accurate. The book's main thesis is that if God had designed the human mind, He would've done a better job. I'm not all that interested in arguments about intelligent design, but Kluge also has a lot to say about the human brain/mind and even the human condition. I've frequently baffled and offended my students by saying "people are stupid!" Kluge is about how, exactly, we are stupid. In large part the book echoes introductory cognitive…

Action without Intention: Parietal Damage Alters Intention Awareness

Is it possible to form and execute motor intentions without being aware of when those intentions were formed? Precisely this pattern was observed by among (ha!) patients with parietal damage, as reported by Sirigu et al. They showed that patients with parietal damage are specifically impaired at estimating the time they formed the intention to commit a voluntary action, although they are unimpaired on other visual and temporal aspects to the task relative to healthy controls and to patients with cerebellar damage. The authors argue that intentions formed in prefrontal cortex may be used…

Reversing Time By Crossing Your Hands

In 2001, Yamamoto and Kitazawa showed that the perception of temporal order can be reversed when subjects cross their hands. Subjects closed their eyes and had their hands mechanically touched in quick succession (with stimuli separated in time by a variable amount - from 1500 ms to 0 ms). Subjects were asked to raise the finger of the hand that was first stimulated. The results showed that subjects were accurate in reporting the temporal order of these stimuli when separated by as little as 70ms - but when their arms were crossed, subjects showed a tendency to reverse the temporal order…

Discovering the Future: Development of the Mind's Time Machine

When do we learn to imagine the future, and how is that capacity based on imagining the past? How does this kind of "mental time travel" develop? Lagatutta's recent article in Child Development tracks the development of this impressive feat, thought by some to be uniquely human. At 3 years of age, a variety of mental processes seem to undergo rapid development, including task-switching, theory of mind, linguistic generalization, and an understanding of time. Previous work by Lagatutta and colleagues showed that up to 39% of 3 year olds could attribute sadness in a story's character to that…

AP: "Thirty Dead Monkeys Were Essentially Cooked Alive"

    Image Source: Monkeys in the NewsMonkeys In the News has alerted me to an Associated Press story today about a Nevada research lab, part of Charles River Laboratories, that is one of the world's largest suppliers of clinical and laboratory research services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The company was fined after thirty monkeys died as the result of not following proper procedures. While it is clear that there are necessary medical reasons for using primates in invasive experiments, I think everyone can agree that strict regulations need to be put in place to prevent…

Friday Rant: "Militant" Atheists and Freedom From Religion

The website Atheism Exposed claims that religion is under attack and that an all out counterinsurgency campaign is needed to defend the godly: Militant atheism should concern all believers. It is a form of fanaticism on a par with extreme religious movements. Like religious extremism it is characterized by intensity and arrogance. Like religious extremism it tears at, and ridicules opposite viewpoints. It is often aggressive, disrespectful, sarcastic, intolerant and, most of all, blasphemous. Its aim to kill faith and hope and to leave as many victims as possible with a psychological vacuum…

Unhinged---the Michael Egnor story

If someone were to write a biography of the Creationist neurosurgeon, "Unhinged" would be an apt title. He used to content himself with rants against philosophical materialism, and evangelize for dualism with a zealous religiosity. But that wasn't enough. The "forces of secularism" seemed to keep growing, despite his desire to see some heavenly smiting. In his latest rants, the gloves are off---it's scalpels at twenty paces. Let's see what's got Egnor so exercised. First came the announcement by Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) that they would boycott Louisiana…

Sleepless

It's really early, but I've been up for a while. The leg pain caused by the disk pushing into my L5 nerve root is turning me into a cranky insomniac. So this morning I'm giving in. I'm giving up on tossing and turning, grinding some good coffee beans, boiling some water, combining them in a coffee press, and sitting by the computer. My wife's office downstairs is a peaceful room. (Hold on, time to press the coffee---that reminds me. A couple of years ago, I was pressing the coffee and I accidentally sent the press flying, coffee and grounds painting the family room. My 4 year old…

Paternialism is not patriarchy

I keep pandagon.net on my google reader. I don't agree with everything I read there, which is a good thing, but I do respect Amanda Marcotte's opinions (and they are always well-written). I must take some exception with her recent analysis of the octuplet fiasco. It's not just that I have a problem with blaming everything bad on Teh Patriarchy (which I do), but I think that sometimes dealing with patriarchy distracts from other real issues. Yes, sexism and patriarchy are important in society, but not everything is that simple. Let's take a look (emphasis mine): At this point in time, I…

Fear the clowns

As I sit in my (very narrow) seat on a DC-9 heading for North Carolina, one thing in particular strikes me: I'm really, really pleased that there is no such thing as "alternative engineering". It's not that "allopathic" or "mainstream" engineers never make mistakes---bridges collapse, cars break, computers die---but most of the time, our buildings, tools, and machines work. In fact, they work so well that we rarely think about all the work that has gone into creating them. Still, even when our houses fall down or our toys break, we don't go running for a "new kind" of engineering. We…

Moon Arts, Part One: Moon Museum

This is the first in a series of posts about art, the moon, and art on the moon. You would think this would be a fairly limited subject, but... Art on the moon has been happening for a long time. In 1969, a coterie of American contemporary artists devised a plan to put an art museum on the Moon. When NASA's official channels proved too dauntingly bureaucratic, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, Forrest "Frosty" Myers, Claes Oldenburg, and John Chamberlain weren't deterred. Instead, they managed to sneak their "museum" -- in reality a minuscule enamel wafer inscribed with six…