Search Content

Displaying results 65951 - 66000 of 87947

Authorship, guests, and irony.

My favorite T-shirt says "I [heart] irony. It's a great shirt, because no one can be absolutely sure that I love irony. Maybe I'm ambivalent about irony and I'm wearing the shirt ... ironically. Despite what the Ethan Hawke character in Reality Bites may have said, irony is not as straightforward as meaning the opposite of the literal meaning of the words you are uttering. Rather, it's meaning something that is some distance from what those words mean -- a distance that some in your audience may be able to decipher, but that others may miss altogether. What, you may be asking yourself,…

We proud tyrants of the real

The last time I got a glimpse of the wretched new book from Marilynne Robinson, the review was sufficient to dissuade me from bothering to ever read it. Now we have a positive review from Karen Armstrong, and I am now convinced that if ever I am confronted with this work, the only appropriate response would be to unzip my fly and piss on it, on the spot. Only my deeply ingrained social conditioning would hinder me. Dammit, why can't I live freely and express my primal impulses without these nagging voices in my head? Once again, her thesis is that her own twisted version of science, which is…

Friday Sprog Blogging: book review of "Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age"

The offspring brought this book, Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age by Raymond Briggs, home from the library last night. Without even opening it, I agreed to read it for bedtime stories. Opening the book, I discovered that rather than being a straightforward picture book, it's laid out in comic book/graphic novel style, with lots of panels (and lots of words) per page. Had I taken a peek and seen how many words we were committing to, I might have postponed our first reading until a middle-of-the-day kind of moment. However, we got through the book, and the elder offspring was held rapt for…

Opinion pages

I stopped reading the New York Times op-ed page after they put it behind a paywall. It turned out that I could get smart economic commentary from Brad Delong without having to pay the fee to get Paul Krugman. I could get a diverse range of voices by reading other blogs, and never had to contend with Maureen Dowd's asinine gossipy commentary, David Brooks' simplistic conservatism, or the rotating cast of losers brought in to fill the void left by William Safire (Kristol and Douthat). So it's been interesting to note the enthusiasm for a piece in Monday's Times, an essay by Thomas Geoghegan…

Kevin in China #21 - Frustrating museum collections, eating eels and going home

Kevin is back from China and busy with school, work and herping in the Sandhills so it took him some time to put together this last installment, covering the last few days in China, the last-ditch efforts to ID some of the mysterious frogs, and the glorious return. We have yet to get together for a beer, but if he decides to continue writing on his own blog, I'll let you know. Conclusion 13 September We arrived back in Beijing around noon. It was a good two hours until we finally made it back to the institute of zoology. Emma wasn't getting off work (she was teaching English at an…

The Hannah Poling case: Autism rebranded again

Damn you, mercury militia. I had had another topic entirely in mind for this week's post, but, as happens far too often, news events have overtaken me in the form of a story that was widely reported towards the end of last week. It was all over the media on Thursday evening and Friday, showing up on CNN, Larry King Live, the New York Times, and NPR. It happens to be the story of a girl from Georgia named Hannah Poling whose case before the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which had originally part of a much larger proceeding known as the Autism Omnibus, was settled. This settlement…

The results of the unethical and misbegotten Trial to Asess Chelation Therapy (TACT) are finally revealed

Chelation therapy, in my somewhat Insolent opinion, is pure quackery. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most common quackeries out there, used by a wide variety of practitioners for a wide variety of ailments blamed on "heavy metal toxicity." Chelation therapy involves using chemicals that can bind to the metal ions and allow them to be excreted by the kidneys is standard therapy for certain types of acute heavy metal poisoning, such as iron overload due to transfusion, aluminum overload due to hemodialysis, copper toxicity due to Wilson's disease, acute heavy metal toxicity, and a handful…

Bush to City's Children: Drop Dead

At least Bush didn't tell the whole city to go screw itself, just the kids (from here) ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford describes why a family making $83,000 per year needs S-CHIP despite Little Lord Pontchartrain's claims to the contrary: After all of that [basic living expenses], the family of four has $17,550 left for insurance - assuming no unforeseen expenses, no savings, no college fund, etc. The absolute, rock-bottom, cheapest HMO rate that NY State lists for Queens comes in at a bit over $17,640 per year. The average comes in at over $28,000 per year. Even the cheapest plan puts our…

Abstinence-Only Sex Education: Knife at the Throat of the Enlightenment

Driftglass, in a post about Janice Shaw Crouse of the Beverly LaHaye Institute (yes, of the "Left Behind" tract series): Regardless of motive (and we have long since moved past the point where I care much about why the lunatics have a knife to the throat of the Enlightenment, and on to the part where we have to get the knife away from these people and make sure they are never, ever allowed to play with sharp objects again), denying people honest and accurate information about disease and pregnancy prevention because Jebus said they shouldna oughtna is the moral equivalent of.... ...designing…

Iraq: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

General Petraeus is bringing new meaning to the phrase 'head count': Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal." Which led to this assessment: "Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Gee, do ya think? So let's think about this 'metric'…

Some Sunday Links

Someone has to hold down the fort while the rest of my ScienceBloglings are frolicking in New York City. Here's some science: Here's why you should run controls. That zinc you're taking to stop colds? Erm, maybe not so much. Revere argues that too many people are playing with anthrax. Dan Quixote has a nice primer on evolution for the non-scientist. Quixote critiques movies on their science. The other stuff: Maha and I discuss conservatives. More from her here, and I have some more thoughts too. Paul Abrams gives the definitive reckoning of the Karl Rove era. An ob/gyn writes letters.…

War on Christmas, continued

There is a sign among the various holiday displays at the Illinois state capitol, set there by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds. I like it, but then I would. Somebody else didn't like it, which is his right, of course…but what he doesn't have the right to do is to try and tear the sign down. William Kelly, who is also a candidate for state comptroller (he got his…

Spotting the black hats among the climate change denialists

Jim Lippard has put up an excellent post identifying the major institutions behind climate change denial. They are almost uniformly conservative and populated with old and unqualified cranks, although Jim is too genteel to put it that way. It's useful information if you need a scorecard to keep track of the players. It's also amusing. Lippard makes this passing mention of a certain notorious crank in a discussion of the denialists with the best academic credentials: The top-cited scientist, Lubos Motl, has 150 citations for his fourth-most-cited paper, but he's a theoretical physicist with no…

The Need for Moonbat Welfare

Susan Madrak is dead on target: if the rightwing is willing to give its wingnuts cushy jobs (also known as 'wingnut welfare'), why can't the left provide its own moonbat welfare for leftwing moonbats? As Madrak writes: Someone from either the Democratic party or some liberal organization showed up a few years back at the Philadelphia chapter of Drinking Liberally to ask the question, "What do bloggers want? How can we help?" She had, of course, already answered the question: Free Lexis-Nexis access! One account to be shared by I don't know how many bloggers! I looked at her. I cleared my…

Poor Mitt: He Sacrifices Gay Children...

...and conservatives still don't like him. Boo fucking hoo. Here's how Straight-Talking, honest McCain is sliming the Mittster: "I'm calling with an urgent Mitt Romney [unintelligible]" "We care deeply about traditional values and protecting families. And we need someone who will not waver in the White House: Ending abortion, preserving the sanctity of marriage, stopping the trash on the airwaves and attempts to ban God from every corner of society. These issues are core to our being. "Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-…

Rep. Bachmann: Take Your Two Jobs and Shove It (or Is It Them?)

Republican Rep. Michelle Bachmann (MN) is trying to prove that she is more stupid than the Gingrich disciple who thought we could eliminate the National Weather Service because the Weather Channel had it covered (really). To wit: Today, Rep. Eric Cantor (VA), the chief deputy Republican whip in the House, unveiled his proposal to stimulate the economy. His legislation -- the so-called Middle Class Job Protection Act -- does nothing for the middle class. Instead, it reduces the corporate tax rate by 25 percent. At a press conference today unveiling the stimulus proposal, Rep. Michele Bachmann…

Our Turkey Overlords Are on the March!

A while back, I wrote about the full out assault by demonic flocks of turkeys on the good city of Boston. Now, I have personally witnessed the horror up close. Last weekend, I was in Kendall Square, Boston, about a block away from the Kendall Square T station around noon. And what did I see, but a rather large turkey wandering around (no doubt it was an advance scout for the rampaging turkey hordes). It was rather skittish around people--although that might be part of the master plan to soften we humans up in preparation for the onslaught. Seriously, this is an urban area. There are no…

What Would Jackie Robinson Do?

The right wing furor over vice-presidential daughter Mary Cheney's decision to get pregnant and (hopefully) have a baby with her lesbian partner led Cheney to issue the following statement (italics mine): This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child. And Jackie Robinson wanting to just play baseball in the majors wasn't a political statement. Or Muhammed Ali's boxing career wasn't a political statement either. But they both realized that what they did transcended…

What's the Matter With Virginia?

I grew up in Virginia, and unlike transplant George "Macacawitz" Allen, I've never been pollyanish about Virginians' attitudes on race and religion. But what VA Republican State Delegate Frank Hargrove said in a recent interview was shocking (italics mine): There were furious denunciations in the General Assembly after a Virginia legislator stated that black people "should get over" slavery. Hanover Delegate Frank Hargrove made the comment about slavery in an interview published Tuesday in The Daily Progress of Charlottesville. In the same interview about whether the state should apologize…

Some Sunday Links

Here are some links for you. First, the science stuff: Revere at Effect Measure discusses the "letter report" reviewing the scant information on effects from non-drug measures to slow or contain spread of an influenza pandemic. Revere describes another front in the Republican War on Science: the censorship front. Here's a good primer on plankton. There has been a norovirus outbreak in Boston. Here's a good public health idea: VRSA hospital insurance. Maybe antibiotics should be placed in a separate regulatory class? The other stuff: Maha details censorship of former government employees…

Beware of the Conservative Vampires

So Bush fired Rumsfeld. Big deal. He should have done it 2800+ lives ago. Lest you think this election will somehow make Bush wiser, consider whom El Jefe Supremo Maximo picked to replace him: Bob Fucking Gates. Who is Bob Gates? Oh, that Bob Gates: Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA's deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close…

Iraq: We Broke It

Apparently, the Iraqis have moved to "Plan B", which is the dissolution of the Iraqi state. From the Independent: The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable. A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20…

This New Neighbor Is Game

Dr. Free-Ride has a getting-acquainted exercise for us newbies. My answers are below. You'll notice I didn't use that awful word meme; here's why. 3 reasons you blog about science: 1. To inform scientists and non-scientists about evolution, public health, and microbiology. 2. To taunt creationist morons. 3. Related to #2, if I blog about evolution enough, Jerry Falwell's head might just explode (it's a longshot, but worth trying anyway). Point at which you would stop blogging: When you pry my keyboard out of my cold, dead hands... 1 thing you frequently blog besides science: Politics.…

One Mundane Reason Why I Like ScienceBlogs

It's not Blogger. From Joe at AmericaBlog: NOTE: Blogger is down AGAIN. We, like every other blog on Blogger, are only able to post intermittently - literally we're publishing each post a good 50 to 100 times before it shows up. We are frantically trying to launch the new blog, with a new non-Blogger server this week. And for any tech repoters out there, Blogger is lying to you. They're saying if we'd just switch to Blogger Beta everything would be fine. Well guess what - you have to be invited to join Blogger Beta, and haven't been invited, nor has anyone else I know. Not to mention, the…

Creationists: Liars For Jesus

I was reading this LA Times story about the quashing of intelligent design creationism in Michigan, and I was stunned by this (italics mine): Richard Thompson, leader of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, said intelligent design should have a home in science classes. The center describes its mission as defending the religious freedom of Christians. "It would make students more knowledgeable about science and more interested in science," he said in a phone interview. "Evolution is a theory. It's not a fact." Evolution is a theory--in the scientific sense of the word. I am certain…

Israel: "Not Sparta"

If there is one post about the recent Lebanon fiasco worth reading, it's Doron Rosenblum's "Not Sparta--and Just As Well" Rosenblum writes: But to both those who send us into battle in order to derive joy from our performance, and those among us who are thoroughly depressed by the results of the war, it must be said: Comfort, comfort, my people. With all the acute importance of military might, Israel cannot be solely a derivative of victories or tactical defeats on the battlefield. Its existence is far richer and far more meaningful and varied than that. If the Israeli mentality is "inferior…

Iranian President Ahmadinejad: Still Nutty Bonkers

Can we please have one leader in the Middle East who isn't thoroughly corrupt or nutty bonkers? Iranian President Ahmadinejad has now declared a war against foreign words: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday. The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the…

What Does Henneberger Want?

Scott LeMieux exposes the illogic of Melinda Henneberger's NY Times op-ed about abortion and Democrats. What I can't figure out is what does Henneberger want? Once again, we have a Democratic concern troll who fails to see even the basic contours of the landscape: Do you want abortion to be legal and safe, or illegal and unsafe? That is the issue. Unfortunately, there is no real compromise to be had*, and even if there were, it wouldn't matter to these 'moderate' [*cough*bullshit*cough*] voters. Sympathetic noises or compromises will not satisfy those voters Henneberger describes as…

Americans Seem Kinda Communist

Or socialist. Or maybe just Swedish. By way of Ezra Klein, I came across these polling data collected by Ruy Teixeira: If you hold both of these views (and arguably, even just one), you are an economic liberal. Not a moderate, but a liberal. I realize many people don't want to be called liberals, but these positions have historically been identified as liberal. And guess what? Liberals hold liberal positions. If you want to call yourself Martian, that's fine, but you're a liberal Martian. There seems to be more of us too (liberals, not Martians): the majority--not a plurality, a…

Sunday Sermon: Freeman Dyson on Total War

Many of you will know of Freeman Dyson as a world-class physicist. But he was also assigned to RAF Bomber Command during World War II. Here are his thoughts on bombing of urban areas, from Disturbing the Universe: At the beginning of the war, I believed fiercely in the brotherhood of man, called myself a follower of Gandhi, and was morally opposed to all violence. After a year of war, I retreated and said, Unfortunately nonviolent resistance against Hitler is impracticable, but I am still morally opposed to bombing. A couple of years later I said, Unfortunately it seems that bombing is…

Australian Aboriginals & Levantines separate subspecies?

OK, the title is somewhat of an exaggeration, but not much. Out of Africa, Not Once But Twice: Modern humans are known to have left Africa in a wave of migration around 50,000 years ago, but another, smaller group -- possibly a different subspecies -- left the continent 50,000 years earlier, suggests a new study. While all humans today are related to the second "out of Africa" group, it's likely that some populations native to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia retain genetic vestiges of the earlier migrants, according to the paper's author, Michael…

Jewish genes, Jewish history, Jewish identity

Commentary has a long piece, Jews and Their DNA, which covers the recent findings coming out of genetics in regards to the "Who is a Jew" question. It's a fair summary of the field, though I would note that the author relied heavily on uniparental lineages passed purely through males and females, and that autosomal studies which look at total genome content are now coming to the fore and fleshing out the picture. I suspect that the main result that will come out of these findings is that many, many, groups are going to be unhappy. Some will find that Jewish ancestry is admixed and that…

Vitamin D deficiency → reduced fitness?

25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels and the Risk of Mortality in the General Population: In cross-sectional multivariate analyses, increasing age, female sex, nonwhite race/ethnicity, diabetes, current smoking, and higher body mass index were all independently associated with higher odds of 25(OH)D deficiency...while greater physical activity, vitamin D supplementation, and nonwinter season were inversely associated. During a median 8.7 years of follow-up, there were 1806 deaths, including 777 from CVD. In multivariate models (adjusted for baseline demographics, season, and traditional and novel CVD…

Bobby Jindal: Creationist (???)...Politician!!!!

I have already posted on Creationism & Bobby Jindal. Here's more: As a parent, when my kids go to schools, when they go to public schools, I want them to be presented with the best thinking. I want them to be able to make decisions for themselves. I want them to see the best data. I personally think that the life, human life and the world we live in wasn't created accidentally. I do think that there's a creator. I'm a Christian. I do think that God played a role in creating not only earth, but mankind. Now, the way that he did it, I'd certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best…

Clash of freedoms

Beliefnet has a story about Opus Dei disavowing the publication of a cartoon by a local group which put Muhammad in Hell taking after Dante. The officials make it clear that the decision was in part driven by pragmatic concerns of violence after the Danish cartoon controversy, but I found this conclusion amusing: "The cartoon's publication is further framed by the current debate in many countries regarding the false and unjust depiction of the Christian faith in The Da Vinci Code," he said. "The issue at stake here is how to make compatible freedom of expression, a free market and respect…

"It's Craig's List"

Just to reinforce the "Live Journal" flavor of this weblog...I have to recount a Craig's List story. I was recently looking for an apartment to rent, and I was playing email/phone tag with a guy "Zeke" who was subletting his extra room. When I was looking at a different place "Zeke" called me, and the guy whose place I was looking at told me that he worked with the same "Zeke" (he heard me say his name) Anyway, there were time issues with the second place I visited, so I was late at my third place, and when I called "Zeke" to postpone, he was like, "OK, I'll do something else." Finally…

The problem with science journalism…

…is that too often newspapers think you don't need a science journalist to write it. Any ol' hack will do. Take this article on evolution in the Vancouver Sun, which distills modern evolutionary biology into 12 theories, which happens to include Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy as well as Intelligent Design creationism — which, at least, is pairing intellectual equals. The author, Douglas Todd, is speaking High Crackbrain and making stuff up. It's all garbage from a buffoon who knows nothing about the field. What, you have to wonder, qualifies him to be writing on science? Jerry Coyne has the…

Indigenous DNA

The Genographic Project is elicting a new round of objections from indigenous community leaders. Genetics and Health has a good post up highlighting the issues. Two prelim points: I am skeptical of the science that is going to come out of this. I believe that the "hot stuff" is going to be studying selection in the human genome, not trying to reconstruct phylogenies I also accept that "science" has been the tool of injustice and even barbarity against indigenous peoples I say "community leaders" because "indigenous peoples" aren't a monolith. Just as George W. Bush doesn't represent all…

Hey, Floridans, you aren't really going to vote for this jerk, are you?

Here's a personal account of how Charlie Crist deals with atheists: Last night as I was leaving a pizzeria in Downtown St. Pete, I ran into a small group of people around Florida Governor Charlie Crist who was campaigning for a US Senate run. So, I walked over waited a moment to gain his attention and shook his hand. As we were shaking hands I asked him if he really believes that the letters he sent to Jerusalem prevent hurricanes from hitting Florida. His smile immediately dropped and he replied "Who's more powerful than God." That wasn't really an answer so asked him again to which I got…

Population Genetics and Microevolutionary Theory, follow up

Just a note, as I've read most of it now I'm starting to think that Alan Templeton's Population Genetics and Microevolutionary Theory is an excellent complement to R.A. Fisher's classic The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Fisher's prose is dense, and sometimes it is a bit much to extract clarity from his somewhat turgid early 20th century style. The wordiness which I complained about earlier serves Templeton well in clarifying concepts Fisher introduced such as average excess, a, and average effect, α, but did not elaborate upon in great detail.1 Where Fisher might define a concept…

Alu and chimpanzees & humans

Alu Recombination-Mediated Structural Deletions in the Chimpanzee Genome: Here, by scanning the chimpanzee genome for such deletions, we determined the role of the Alu recombination-mediated deletion process in creating structural differences between the chimpanzee and human genomes. Using a combination of computational and experimental techniques, we identified 663 deletions, involving the removal of â¼771 kb of genomic sequence. Interestingly, about half of these deletions were located within known or predicted genes, and in several cases, the deletions removed coding exons from chimpanzee…

Getting a fix on those baby blues

I have posted before on recent work which seems to establish that the OCA2 locus is responsible for the majority of the variation within populations where both blue and brown eyes are extant. Well, now there's a massive paper out by Tony Frudakis, Multilocus OCA2 genotypes specify human iris colors, that adds even more detail in terms of the markers (SNPs) which can predict eye color: Human iris color is a quantitative, multifactorial phenotype that exhibits quasi-Mendelian inheritance....Herein, we describe an iris color score (C) for quantifying iris melanin content in-silico and undertake…

130,000 year old Mastodon DNA?

Science makes DNA breakthrough in the tooth of a mastodon: ...after finding DNA preserved in the fossilised tooth of a beast that died up to 130,000 years ago. ... Researchers were hoping its teeth might have preserved enough of the DNA for them to recover lengthy chunks of it, and this week they will publish research detailing how their hunch has paid off. The find has allowed them to reconstruct the entire sequence of the DNA found in the creature's mitochondria, the parts of cells concerned with energy production. It is thought to be the oldest DNA ever to have been recovered and decoded…

Super-tsunami 4,800 years ago?

Ancient Crash, Epic Wave is a story in The New York Times about an enormous impact 4,800 years which might have had world-wide repercussions: At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. ... The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world's population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami…

Tall, to short, to tall (again)

Dienekes reports on a paper which chronicles the change height of "Europeans" over the last 20,000 years ago. Anthropologist Henry Harpending once told me that when the first modern humans arrived in European 40-30 thousand years ago they were as slim and towering as modern Nilotic peoples, in other words, they were evolutionary reflections of the African environment. But soon enough the nouveau Europeans shape shifted and developed a more robust physiognomy, with a reduction in median height. As you can see from the graph which I generated the Neolithic Revolution and the introduction of…

Sunday Sermon: Building Surburbia Prediction

I recently finished Dolores Hayden's Building Suburbia, and I recommend it highly. Hayden describes how all of the arguments we have today about land use and transportation have been with us in one form or another for over 150 years. But what struck me was this section--and keep in mind, this book was published in 2003 (italics mine): In 2003, Americans have had almost two centuries of experience with suburban boosters and their growth machines. Living farther and farther from older city centers, Americans spend an increasing proportion of their income on home mortgages and car payments,…

Banishing the Monsters

Any time Democrats do well, there are claims that We Are Now All Centrists (although this never seems to happen when Republicans win...), and that partisanship is undesirable. With that in mind, it's worth remembering just how poisoned our national discourse has been by extremist Republicans (who lead the GOP): What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America's political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove,…

I feel sorry for this kid

His class was going to go on a field trip to a museum; his parents denied the trip and scrawled their reasons why on the note. Note: Just to let you it is not that we don't believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay…

Links 2/23/11

Graduate students rock! Why? Because they're organizing the clean up of the Wisconsin state capitol, along with an effort to get food and supplies to the protesters. Support them here. Now, onto the links comrades! Science: Boston British soldiers. Farm antibiotics, human illness and what connects them. (It has legs.) (I think the insect angle, while important, is a bit overplayed, but understanding the spread of resistance from the farm to the clinic is absolutely vital) NCBI Response to PLoS One 6(2): e16410 (about the potential DNA contamination in sequence databases) If we can put a…

Anti-Vaxxers and the Lizard Brain

Dave Noon makes a very cogent observation about resistance to vaccination: Advocates will have to explain why, if the risks are so minimal, the packaging inserts for commercially available vaccines all warn of horrifying potential complications (with no reference to their statistical unlikelihood); or they'll have to explain why the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System exists in the first place if vaccines are so uncontroversially "safe." There are, of course, strong and convincing responses to both of these detours among many others, but I can attest from personal experience at least that…