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Torture Investigations Will Help Obama, Not Hurt Him

Monday's NY Times, in a story about the remote possibility of torture investigations by the Justice Department, describes the Obama administration's concerns: A series of investigations could exacerbate partisan divisions in Congress, just as the Obama administration is trying to push through the president's ambitious domestic plans and needs all the support it can muster. "He wants to dominate the discussion, and he wants the discussion to be about his domestic agenda -- health care, energy and education," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor of political science at Towson University who…

Will the Public Option Become Romneycare?

From Alegre's Corner: Karen Tumulty was on a press call with the HELP committee to hear about Kennedy's bill, and she just posted a tweet with the following... Senate HELP bill: If u hate ur employer's coverage, u have to keep it, unless it costs 12.5% of ur salary. No public plan 4 u. Looks like you were right ML - anyone above a certain income level is f*cked with this new reform bill. It's Mass-Care all over again :( Admittedly, this is a Tweet, but, if true, this sucks. I hate Romneycare. Yes, it led to a one-time reduction of about ten percent in healthcare costs, but since then,…

Will Mismanaging the Everglades Hurt Florida Gov. Charlie Crist?

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has been trying to run as a moderate in his re-election campaign (he's even toyed with running as an independent). He is to the left of the Republican Party on several issues: if nothing else, he thinks the stimulus was a good idea. He's also more gay-tolerant than the GOP as a whole. But Monday, The New York Times ran a story detailing how Crist really screwed up the Everglades restoration project by giving sweetheart deals to sugar cane growers. Said one critic: "To replace projects that were under way for a possibility of a project decades from now is…

Democrats Have Demobilized Their Rank-and-File

File this under "Democrats are the stupidest political party in recorded history." A recent poll asked, "In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?" The answer: This isn't just the 'liberal' base: the entire party has been demobilized. Only 56 percent of Democrats are likely to vote, versus 81 percent of Republicans. And now, some Democrats are talking about cutting Social Security benefits, even though there is no crisis. That's not going to rally the Democratic rank-and-file. Democrats, and Democratic-…

About That Anti-Pit Bull Legislaition, Can We...

...put down bad owners instead? From Boston's Universal Hub: Boston Police report seizing a pit bull on Talbot Avenue in Dorchester Tuesday morning after its owner allegedly tried to sic the animal on the young daughter of a neighbor with whom she's been feuding. Police say the dog may be the same one involved in an incident earlier this month, during which a woman on Talbot Avenue allegedly laughed as her pit bull attacked a girl waiting for a school bus. Police report on Tuesday's incident: While the officer spoke with the caller, a black female appeared with an un-muzzled pitbull. The…

AIG Bonuses: Why Incompetent Pseudo-Nationalization Is Worst Policy

Because AIG is paying bonuses to the division that created a lot of Big Shitpile (italics mine): The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year. Word of the bonuses last week stirred such deep consternation inside the Obama administration that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were unacceptable and demanded they be…

Merry Christmas to Me

I woke up this morning, feeling faint and ill, but I had to get to the library for free wireless so I could write on my blog. On my way there, I was walking on a sidewalk covered with 1-2 inches of ice (it was either that or walk in a very busy street filled with NYC taxis driven by pissed-off underemployed financial analysts), when a very strong wind came my way and blew me onto my ass. So, of course, I broke my left arm. The fracture is at the elbow on the ulna (olecranon process). My arm and fingers are numb, I cannot lift my arm, the elbow is a delightful shade of blue, red and purple,…

Mystery Bird: Blue Grosbeak, Passerina caerulea

tags: Blue Grosbeak, Passerina caerulea, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Blue Grosbeak, Passerina caerulea, photographed at High Island, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Joseph Kennedy, 11 April 2007 [larger view]. Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/500s f/8.0 at 500.0mm iso800. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: A blue bird. With a short, broad tail. And a huge bill. This is a male Blue Grosbeak in all his glory.…

Reptiles and Amphibians: Komodo Dragons Hunt Buffalo

tags: Life, Discovery Channel, Reptiles and Amphibians, Komodo Dragons Hunt Buffalo, animals, mammals, birds, BBC, television, streaming video Gail Weiswasser at the Discovery channel emailed a few days ago to tell me about the upcoming March 21 premiere on the Discovery Channel of BBC's LIFE, the 11-part follow up to PLANET EARTH (the most successful natural history documentary of all time). While PLANET EARTH told the story of the natural world through the framework of our planet's ecosystems and regions, LIFE takes us on a more intimate journey, introducing different animal and plant…

Challenges of Life: The Stalk-Eyed Fly

tags: Life, Discovery Channel, BBC, Challenges of Life, Stalk-Eyed Fly, animals, mammals, birds, television, streaming video Gail Weiswasser at the Discovery channel emailed a few days ago to tell me about the upcoming March 21 premiere of BBC's LIFE on the Discovery Channel. LIFE is the 11-part follow up to PLANET EARTH (the most successful natural history documentary of all time). While PLANET EARTH told the story of the natural world through the framework of our planet's ecosystems and regions, LIFE takes us on a more intimate journey, introducing different animal and plant groups, using…

Challenges of Life: Cheetas Hunting Ostrich

tags: Life, Discovery Channel, Challenges of Life, Cheetas Hunting Ostrich, animals, mammals, birds, television, BBC, streaming video Gail Weiswasser at the Discovery Channel emailed a few days ago to tell me about the upcoming March 21 premiere of BBC's LIFE, the 11-part follow up to PLANET EARTH (the most successful natural history documentary of all time). While PLANET EARTH told the story of the natural world through the framework of our planet's ecosystems and regions, LIFE takes us on a more intimate journey, introducing different animal and plant groups, using the latest in HD filming…

Like ripe fruit, ready for the picking

If you're going to build a massive con to defraud people out of $50 million, you want to pick your marks carefully. You want people who are gullible, don't demand a lot of evidence, and are willing to go along with you as long as it takes to milk them dry, as long as you promise bliss. Where would you go to find a large number of such people? It's obvious: go to church, like Tri Energy did. Like those caught up in other get-rich scams -- from Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme, which initially snared wealthy Jews, to an alleged $4.4 million fraud aimed at deaf people -- Tri Energy's…

DonorsChoose Update: A Great Way to Celebrate Nobel Prize Week!

tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty The first day of Nobel Prize week has started off wonderfully: Diana from Omaha, Nebraska donated enough money to complete one DonorsChoose project that I included in my DonorsChallenge! Appropriately enough, in this project, Please Pass Me the Scalpel, Nurse, the teacher was asking for funds to help her students in a high-poverty classroom in Washington state gain more knowledge of medicine through the purchase of dissecting kits. There are more proposals that need your help, so be sure to check them out by clicking on…

Bumblebee on my Hand

tags: bumblebee, Helsinki, Finland, cities, nature Bumblebee on my hand. Photographed in Helsinki, Finland. Image: GrrlScientist, 23 July 2009 [larger view]. (raw image) I am sure I must have looked like I was insane when, walking down the sidewalk, I spied this bumblebee sitting on the concrete. I plopped myself down onto my hands and knees on the sidewalk and spent a few minutes nose-to-nose with her, trying to figure out if she was dying because she was hurt or old (or maybe she was just resting?). She looked to be in good repair, so I got her onto my hand to photograph her. It's not…

Goodbye to Tallinn's Old Town

tags: Old Town, Tallinn, Estonia, cities Gates (from the inside). Photographed in Old Town, Tallinn, Estonia. Image: GrrlScientist, 22 July 2009 [larger view]. (raw image) Do you know how, when an amazing experience is coming to an end, and you just want it to last a little bit longer, you fill your eyes and your heart with as many memories as you can get in those parting moments? This is what I did, and I also snapped photographs of anything, just to preserve those last moments. The shadows were falling, it was time to return to Helsinki. Photographed in Old Town, Tallinn, Estonia.…

Taiwanese News Speculates about the 'Tiger Woods Incident'

tags: Tiger Woods, Taiwanese News, Apple-1 News, Taiwan, animation, streaming video This video is an interesting news report from Apple-1 News in Taiwan regarding what really happened to cause Tiger Woods to drive into a tree after bouncing off a fire hydrant in front of his Florida home. Part 1: Part 2: Are animations such as these legal for use by news organizations in the US? I suspect not; otherwise, they'd be making use of them many years ago. Anyway; there is precedent for making allegations of Domestic Violence against Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren, since her stories that she told…

Throw the teachers in jail...a poll

Greg Laden is entirely correct the case in question reference by this poll is about some teachers who are being tried for contempt of court, and this particular court case is not about separation of church and state. However, the poll is asking a more general question: Should educators be fined or jailed for offering prayer in public schools? Yes (12.6%) No (87.4%) I say yes: teachers who organize sectarian prayer in their classroom are betraying their trust and are in violation of the principle of separation of church and state. Imagine the outcry if a teacher were a Satanist and tried to…

I Get Books ..

I receive a fair number of books to review each month, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog. Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever (NYC: Little, Brown and Company; 2009). Review copy. Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World by Jeff Schweitzer and Giuseppe Notarbartolo-Di-Sciara (Jacquie Jordan Inc.; 2009). Review copy. Animal Investigators: How the World's First Wildlife…

Quackery…on Scienceblogs.de?

Look, I don't need this. It's been a rough weekend, with way too much travel for my mental and physical health, and I started off today with the Atheist Talk radio broadcast, which was good, but it was bracketed by those horrible woo-woo infomercials that always piss me off, and then I had to drive three hours to Minneapolis to send my son back to school, and then three hours back, and I haven't had time to sit down and eat yet, and the email piled up something fierce while I was away, and I still have lots of grading to do for tomorrow, and when my brain is burned out I forget how to end…

Around the Web: Cool linky stuff for science undergrads (6)

I have a son who's just finished his first year as a physics undergrad. As you can imagine, I occasionally pass along a link or two to him pointing to stuff on the web I think he might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps other science students might find those links interesting or useful as well. Hence, this series of posts here on the blog. By necessity and circumstance, the items I've chosen will be influenced by my son's choice of major and my own interest in the usefulness of computational approaches to science and of social media for…

Around the Web: Profs with tattoos, Supporting an open definition of Digital Humanities and more

The Inked Academic Body Why I Support an Open Definition of DH Bring It On! Why the Crisis in Academic Librarianship is the Best Thing Ever and What We Should Do About It. Administration as Academic Alternative In praise of the big old mess Ignore the Doomsayers: The Book Industry Is Actually Adapting Well Head of major university group weighs in on U-Va. (yeah, more on UVa) An Open Letter to E-Book Retailers: Let’s have a return to common sense From Master Plan to No Plan: The Slow Death of Public Higher Education The Role of Trust in the Open Access Ecosystem Open Access and its impact on…

Friday Fun: This Is Why Your Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You

I have to admit, opening a used bookstore has always been one of my romantic, "what if I won the lottery" idle musings. Communing with books and book people has always been one of my favourite pastimes. Of course, I've always known that the reality of owning and operating a used bookstore is a far cry from my idle fantasy, especially in the Internet age. This post more-or-less hits the nail on the head: This Is Why Your Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You. You Stole All Our Bukowski It's hard to keep Bukowski on the shelf when he keeps getting stuffed in the pants of street punks when no one is…

A little Jewish lunacy…

Only religion seems to have the power to give deranged nutbags credibility and influence in government. Latest case in point: Israel, where the Kadima Party has to negotiate with Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef to form a coalition…and the rabbi is one of those insane ultra-orthodox wackaloons who, in a rational world, would be some old coot shaking his fist from his porch, avoided by others in his neighborhood, and with absolutely no influence at all. But no, because he claims the voices in his head are a god talking to him, he gets to be consulted on affairs of state. A short taste of the wisdom of…

Best Science Books 2010: Wichita Eagle, The Daily Beast, Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel, The Express

Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. Wichita Eagle The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot The Daily Beast The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel (and here) The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum The…

Best Science Books 2010: Amazon.ca

Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant Packing For Mars by Mary Roach The Legacy by David Suzuki Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by James M. Tabor The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell Keeping…

Best Science Books 2010: The Washington Post

Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century by Michael Hiltzik Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean by Julia Whitty Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee The Gun by C.J. Chivers The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New…

The Journal of Electronic Publishing on Reimagining the University Press

A terrific new edition of The Journal of Electronic Publishing (v13i2), focusing on the future of university presses and, by extension, of scholarly publishing as a whole. A lot of terrific-looking articles: Editor's Note for Reimagining the University Press by Phil Pochoda Reimagining the University Press: A Checklist for Scholarly Publishers by Peter J. Doughtery Reimagining the University Press by Kate Wittenberg Stage Five Book Publishing by Joseph J. Esposito Next-Generation University Publishing: A Perspective from California by Daniel Greenstein What Might Be in Store for Universities…

Best Science Books 2010: Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Telegraph & Library Journal

A few lists with only a few relevant items each. Cleveland Plain Dealer The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant The Telegraph (History) Engines of War: How Wars Were Won and Lost on the Railways by Christian Wolmar Chasing the Sun: the Epic Story of the Star that Gives Us Life by Richard Cohen Library Journal (Notable books) & Top 10 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Valliant Packing for Mars: The Curious Science…

Tectonic Colonic

When Tungurahua erupted earlier this month, three hundred local people were forced to evacuate. Tungurahua is the most active volcano in Ecuador, which is itself a volcanically active region. This image, captured by NASA's Terra satellite on October 25, shows Tungurahua mid-eruption; a plume of dark, rather than white, volcanic ash blows westward from the summit, indicating that this blast was composed more of ash than steam. Eruptions like this serve as a reminder that geologic time includes now. More below the fold. The Andes were formed by eruptions like this one. The Andes lie at the…

Friday Fun: The five diseases of academic publishing

My library's Hackfest was yesterday so I'm feeling kind of burnt out today. Today's linked post cheers me immensely, in a side-eye, gallows humour kind of way. This recent Retraction Watch post is funny and you should read the whole thing: Got “significosis?” Here are the five diseases of academic publishing. Significosis Neophilia Theorrhea Arigorium Disjunctivitis is a disease that is about a collective proclivity to produce large quantities of redundant, trivial, and incoherent works. This happens because of several reasons, but primarily because quantity of publications is usually…

Friday Fun: Scooby Doo Team Expose Climate Change Tricksters

Somehow this post from News Biscuit seems even more relevant now than when it was intially published back in August. Of course, we all shudder to think who will be under that ghostly costume, orange hair, Alaska plaid, Brietbart ball cap and all. Scooby Doo Team Expose Climate Change Tricksters A two-man, two-woman, one-Great Dane team of young Americans has exposed the belief that the Earth is heading towards widespread famine and ecological disaster, as the work of a scheming fraudster. Team leader Fred explained that they were passing through Central London in their VW camper van when a…

December's Calendar Image -- Solar Battery

December's calendar photograph is a battery of five solar cells that also stores electricity in series. The cells were invented and developed at the Weizmann Institute in the late 1970s. These not only converted sunlight into electricity, but also could store some of that energy using a battery-type setup with electrodes in a chemical solution, so that they could provide electricity day and night. The idea of efficiently storing solar energy has taken more than one twist and turn since then - various forms of artificial photosynthesis, for example. Interestingly enough, one of the latest…

Asking the Right Questions

It goes without saying that questions are the basis of scientific research. But all too often, especially in the PR department, we focus on the findings and forget about the process that led to those findings. So it was a refreshing change for us to put out an annual report on the theme of questions. While the report takes as its premise the "big", even somewhat rhetorical questions, many of the featured scientists relate to the driving questions that keep them in the lab from morning to night. In his message, Institute President Prof. Daniel Zajfman wrote: Each new discovery leads to…

Canada and the Kyoto Protocol

Word is Canada will give the world a lump of coal tar for Christmas: Canada will announce next month that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, CTV News has learned. The Harper government has tentatively planned an announcement for a few days before Christmas, CTV's Roger Smith reported Sunday evening. Given the Canada was never on track to come anywhere close to achieving its Kyoto target of a 6% reduction in greenhouse gases relative to 1990 levels, the only consequence of the decision will be political rather than climatological. It's worth noting that it looks like the…

Obama, Beachy and Sustainable agriculture

Read Emily Waltz' interview with Roger Beachy, the new director for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the new research funding arm of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). What does Beachy's appoinment mean for researchers, farmers and consumers? Larger, longer grants with more money for education or extension, so the knowledge can reach from the lab to the food to the fork; a stonger focus on sustinable approaches; and a regulatory stucture that is science based We need to build enhanced capacity in the US to address urgent agricultural challenges such as sustainable…

Over 350,000 Attendees Celebrate Science at the 4th USA Science & Engineering Festival

Over the span of the Festival weekend (April 15-17), 365,000 people attended the FREE USA Science & Engineering Festival!  Our mission is to stimulate and sustain the interest of our nation’s youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by producing and presenting the most compelling, exciting, and educational Festival in the world. Once again, the largest celebration of STEM was a great success thanks to the Festival's amazing sponsors, exhibitors, volunteers, and performers! https://youtu.be/nH4yr-4yZPg Attendees had the opportunity to experience over 3,000 hands-on STEM…

Fifty Thousand Facebook Fans and Counting!

50,000 Fans and Counting!   We are so excited to share the news that the USA Science & Engineering Festival Facebook page now has over 50,000 fans!  Facebook serves as a wonderful medium for us to reach a population of STEM enthusiasts! Facebook is a platform for us to connect with our fans using humor and intellect to spread the word about the Festival! Our mission is to re-invigorate the interest of STEM in our nation and we are seeing an amazing response to our quickly growing social media sites. The positive feedback we receive from our STEM posts, photos, tweets and news stories  …

Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement: Lotfi Asker Zadeh -- Computer Scientist and Mathematician

--Famous for naming and advancing the scientific concept of “Fuzzy Logic” as well as “Fuzzy Sets” and “Fuzzy Systems” --These concrete principles have been applied to numerous fields – from computer technology to artificial intelligence You've likely heard of the term “Fuzzy Logic” or “Fuzzy Mathematics”.  But despite what their names may imply, there is nothing inexact about these scientific concepts. Based on precise formulas,  Fuzzy Logic, introduced in 1965 by Lotfi Asker Zadeh (a mathematician of Iranian-Russian descent), helps scientists, mathematicians and others to make accurate…

The Festival has reached the 100 Day Countdown

Last week marked the 100 day countdown for the 2nd Annual USA Science and Engineering Festival! The Festival is scheduled for the weekend of April 28th & 29th at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. With less than 100 days to go we are gearing up for quite an extraordinary Expo this year! The Expo is open to all ages and is free of charge! The Festival will feature over 2000 fun, interactive exhibits, more than 100 stage shows and 33 Author Presentations. Major Science Celebrities including Bill Nye the Science Guy and Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman from the…

Dawn of The Systems Age [Updated]

On Collective Imagination, Joe Salvo declares the Information Age is done for, writing: "a period of history can be characterized by the dominant technology that separates the leaders from the followers." He believes humanity has approached a tipping point where the separation between leaders and followers will cease to exist, as the internet democratizes the planet and good information becomes ubiquitous. So what's up next? Salvo calls it a "Systems Age," which involves "sensing, collecting, and manipulating data in near real-time with little to no human supervision." Sounds like a lot of…

The Buzz: Water, Water Everywhere?

On Friday, NASA scientists confirmed the discovery of water on the moon. Using spectral analysis to determine the composition of the plume resulting from last month's LCROSS rocket collision, they found more than 100 liters of water. Steinn Sigurðsson on Dynamics of Cats calls the presence of water on the moon "amazing," but cautions that at these concentrations, it's "dry by Earth standards." Razib Khan on Gene Expression considers the implications of water on the moon: "Since humans are mostly water by weight, this is very important when assessing the practical difficulties of…

The Buzz: Believe It or Not

Humans believe a lot of things, for a lot of reasons. Confronted by a student who had learned lions' manes are an expression of their testosterone level--and not just a bit of claw-catching fluff--Greg Laden observes that when someone finds you wrong on one count, they will assume you are wrong about everything. He calls this "a known feature of student thinking in early development," a true-or-false mentality which sooner or later must reconcile itself with the complexity of our universe. Elsewhere, Razib Khan theorizes on Gene Expression that organized religion arose to meet the needs of…

The Buzz: Facial Recognition and Society

How do we remember, collect, and recognize faces, and do sex and race have any role in how we process and treat faces, and ultimately people? On Collective Imagination, Peter Tu writes about how researchers can use differing theories of facial recognition to further developments in digital security technologies, citing that "this knowledge captured from this domain is so ancient and convoluted that it may not readily yield the practical insights that we seek." Over on Cognitive Daily, Dave Munger discusses a study looking at how we process masculine versus feminine faces, reporting that "sex…

The Buzz: The Ardi Bandwagon

On October 1, 2009 paleontologists announced the discovery of the oldest known primitive hominid fossil, Ardipithecus ramidus dubbed "Ardi," after 17 years of quietly studying its significance. Nearly a month after its grand unveiling to the media, biologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary anthropologists are still atwitter as scores of articles continue to be published around Ardi. ScienceBloggers are no exception this week, beginning with Razib Khan's compelling conversation on Ardi with John Hawks on Bloggingheads.tv, as seen on Gene Expression. On The Primate Diaries, Eric Michael…

The Buzz: ScienceBloggers by Land, Air, and Sea

As the long days of late summer grow shorter and darker, many of us are trying to eke out as much time outdoors as possible before fall's sweaters and yellowing leaves arrive. ScienceBloggers are no exception this week as they took to the natural world, focusing the lens of science on wildlife. Greg Laden's Blog looks to the skies, reporting on BirdLife International's efforts to "confirm the continued existence of 47 species of bird that have not been seen for up to 184 years." Photo Synthesis takes a dive into the deep, showcasing a photo essay on the sea's most fascinating camouflaged…

The Buzz: Leukemia Patient Blames Animal Research

In an opinion piece published in the Huffington Post Wednesday, a woman dying of leukemia vehemently spoke out against animal testing in medicine, positing that scientists might have found a cure for her condition by now if "they weren't sidetracked by misleading animal tests." While acknowledging the unfortunate nature of the woman's situation, ScienceBloggers are criticizing her stance that animal trials are not beneficial or are somehow to blame for the woman's sickness, asserting the necessity of using animal models for drug research and reinforcing that researchers must proceed in ways…

Rev your engines- ERV has arrived!

ScienceBlogs is proud to announce the newest member of our blogging community: ERV is the pseudonym of Abbie Smith, an Oklahoma-based graduate student who was bound for medical school until a summer internship turned her on to the research track. She now studies HIV and its evolution from a molecular and biochemical perspective. She also studies...wait for it...ERVs! What does ERV stand for? We'll give you a clue- it's not emergency response vehicle, English revised version, or expiratory reserve volume (get your mind out of the gutter). ERV, in this case, stands for endogenous…

That Whole Pseudonymity Thing

Of the 83 bloggers currently featured on ScienceBlogs.com, 20 write under pseudonyms. Since many of our bloggers frequently write about highly scientific and/or highly controversial topics, some wondered: But but...Can anonymous bloggers be trusted?! On a non-ScienceBlog (gasp!) Greg Laden commented that "The cost to the anonymous blogger is that they should expect to be taken less seriously than they may like under certain circumstances... Yes, arguments can stand on their own and in an ideal world that sometimes happens. But no, not in real life. We are cultural beings and interactive…

Martin Talks About Blogging Humanities

"You could nuke Sweden off the planet, and Japanese archeology would not suffer." -Martin Rundkvist I'm eating lunch now at the NC Science Blogging Conference after a great discussion, led by Martin, about blogging about the humanities and social sciences. Many topics were covered (including the difference between the definitions of "humanities" in America and Europe), but one that I thought might be especially interesting to 3.14 readers is Martin's definition of a blog carnival. (More below the fold.) Like a traveling carnival (in, you know, real life), blog carnivals are subject-specific…

A little comparison

This new movie, Religulous, is doing reasonably well on its opening weekend, bringing in about $3.5 million. This is comparable to what Expelled brought in (about $3.7 million). There are a few differences, though. Religulous hasn't had much of an advertising campaign. Remember all the Expelled commercials everywhere, including The Daily Show? Maher's movie has only relatively recently been getting plugged. It's ads are more intelligently targeted, though. Religulous only opened on 500 screens, compared to Expelled's 1000. Religulous is coming off its opening weekend with great word of…