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Information behavior of Zombies

  How do zombies seek and use information?  What are their information needs? Their information needs primarily consist of finding brains. They pretty much search by geographic proximity and pattern matching. The type of browsing they do doesn't seem to be well supported by information systems.   How should a reference interview with a Zombie go?  No studies have been published on walk-up reference, but there are some ideas on doing phone or virtual reference. The zombies aren't really good with a mouse, so in virtual reference it's best to send images. In telephone reference, screaming doesn…

Rant on: Partners, they say. We’re in this together, they say. Then stab you in the back.

In case you can't read this screenshot of an e-mail (source, via), I'll quote it for you: "Are you on a first name basis with the librarian? If so, chances are, you're spending too much time at the library. What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office. An all it takes is West(tr)." This is so much B.S. glasses and all. West, is of course, part of Thomson Reuters (the real evil empire is revealed) and they and Reed Elsevier's Lexis-Nexis divide up most of the legal information money. Chemistry vendors are known for trying an end-run around the librarian, but…

Borges on Writers and Readers

From the preface of his Collected Fictions translated by Andrew Hurley. Reading is an activity subsequent to writing--more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. (1935) The learned doctors of the Great Vehicle teach us that the essential characteristic of the universe is its emptiness. They are certainly correct with respect to the tiny part of the universe that is this book. Gallows and pirates fill its pages, and the word iniquity strikes awe in its title, but under all the storm and lightning, there is nothing. It is all just appearence, a surface of images--which is why readers may,…

What a writer needs

Sympathy, help, and a positive engagement. - Robert Louis Stevenson. That partial quote is from a fascinating essay called My First Book by the same author. A must read for all young writers. Here's a bit more: The accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot. Not so the beginner. Human nature has certain rights; instinct--the instinct of self-preservation--forbids that any man (cheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil…

MP expenses scandal in UK

One of the occasional political posts. You're probably full of this news already, if you live in the UK. It on the TV for 24 hrs. Anyway, let me unload before my head explodes. The motherload. There's an article in guardian that's worth a read to understand how deeply fucked-up many MPs heads are. The political class loves public data - to protect the public, of course - but, oh no, MPs expenses are private. WTF. A few days back Stephen Fry offered his opinion that everyone fudges their expenses: we should move on, there are bigger things at stake to get hung up on small fry (unintended pun…

LHC and blackholes

[text updated] Questions about the validity of previously calculated blackhole creation probabilities at LHC are discussed in this New Scientist article. The conclusion? We don't have a clue of what the range of probabilities are. It is however still small compared to, say, getting hit by a car or dying in a plane crash. Questions about the validity of calculations are legitimate. However, I am not sure if I will enjoy thinking about the implications of this particular question (especially if it leads to more wailing from those who are scared of blackholes). How do you arrive at a decision…

The rhetoric of modern politics

I found the below from historian and writer Ramachandra Guha's book India After Gandhi to be of interest given the current US election campaign (Note that Mr Guha was talking within the context of Partition). "The world over, the rhetoric of modern democratic politics has been marked by two rather opposed rhetorical styles. The first appeals to hope, to popular aspirations for economic prosperity and social peace. The second appeals to fear, to sectional worries about being worsted or swamped by one's historic enemies." India has, I think, held up pretty well with Mr Guha's observation over…

On Flounder Fish and Software

There are numerous occasions when one has to consider the lifetime of the software one is using or developing (or maintaining, that awful dark side of software). Fortunately or unfortunately, business considerations (budget, in other words) dictate what problems get solved and what's left ugly or forgotten, and how existing software gets repackaged into grotesque forms (isn't this is exactly how a Flounder evolved!). The parallels between software and biological evolution are obvious (and as you would expect, there is an academic area of study - Genetic Programming). It seems we are we at…

Pim van Muers : illegal foreign agent ? What to do about it ?

Richard A. De Castro writes: So, in addition to getting the (perhaps, perhaps not) Dr. Van Meurs thrown out of the country png (persona non gratia), which means that he would probably never (ever) be allowed back in, another tactic would be to get him banned from the NSF-net side of the internet. The possibilities are endless. All right!! Someone else who prepared to publicly come out against free speech in order to preserve our liberties. Dennis, you've started a movement! I suggest we call ourselves CREEP - Club to REmovE Pim. Dennis can be president. I came up with a club song: Who's…

The Joy of Questioning by Sunil

The first essay in a series of science essays to be published at TheScian.com is out. It is titled The Joy of Questioning and is written by Sunil of balancing life blog. Yours truly imagines that he has improved his reading skills. Give it a listen. An excerpt: ...Even the most educated seem to hold on dearly to some of these beliefs. We would consult with astrologers to know blessed times (the moments when stars, planets and the moon are in fantastic positions bringing us fame and fortune). We would change the spelling of a name in the hopes of nominative prosperity. We would sit tight…

Mmm... Coffee good....

How can I not point out a study that says coffee is good for the liver. Read this in a New Scientist article on Liver troubles: "Doctors have a saying that everything you enjoy is either illegal, immoral or bad for you, so it's nice to discover that coffee is good for you," says Arthur Klatsky, an epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California. His team has found that drinking four cups of coffee a day reduces the risk of non-alcoholic cirrhosis by 30 per cent and of alcoholic cirrhosis by 80 per cent. The research, published last year, is the latest in a string of studies showing…

Ponvandu: A Peacock among the insects

The little boy went to the corner of the hut and fished out a matchbox from his school bag. He had not told anyone about his secret pet: A Ponvandu*. The colorful insect emerged out of the matchbox when he slid the lid off; its body iridescent as it reflected the morning sunlight in myriad colors in a thousand angles. A bonsai version of an impossible aurora borealis. The wings covered a heavy body. It would have to think twice before flying. A peacock among the insects. The wings resembled - indeed more than just resembled - the shields of an ancient warrior. The wings defended the ponvandu…

Swiss gun ownership rates

Steve Kao said: Perhaps someone from Switzerland can enlighten us. Are not all males between the ages of 18 and 55 issued rifles? No. All male Swiss citizens between 20 and 50 who are in the army are issued rifles. Roughly 15% of Swiss residents are not citizens, and 20% of the citizens called up do not serve in the army. So, very roughly, that's (50-20)/70x0.8x0.85 = 15% of the population. I would guess that >90% of the households in Switzerland have males between the ages of 18 and 55 in them, implying that >90% of the households have a gun in them. In the Encyclopedia of the…

The Christmas Sneer

Warning. Rant ahead. As Christmas approaches the advertisements on TV, radio, roadside banners, underarms and butts get more violent and desperate. I saw an ad for a big catalogue ordering company in the UK. It ends with a cheerful and very welcoming sales-counter girl servicing a very satisfied customer. Happiness all over the place. A sight to behold. Like the phone that rings in the cinema hall, a thought occurs to me at this evidently wonderful moment of christmas cheer. It is this: "I have never met a cheerful salesperson in that company's sales counter. What the heck! This is bullshit…

Where did the time go?

The semester is finally winding down. Kudos to Scicurious for holding down the fort. After teaching 3 courses on top of my 40+ hour-a-week lab job, I'm rather grateful. No wait, I'm frakkin' ecstatic. Possibly rapturous. Don't get me wrong, I had a blast being an instructor. Most notably my Basic Concepts students told me they really appreciated my efforts, and a number of them did pass their departmental exams to enter their respective programs. That made me feel great. My Human Bio course was a bit of a sleeper, however, since almost every single person was there to fill a credit.…

Cornel West on Gates' Arrest in "Post-Racial" Era of Obama

Cambridge authorities are now dropping the disorderly conduct charge against the country's leading African-American scholar, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (see right), after he was arrested in his own home when police confused him with a burglar. This was after Gates showed both his Harvard ID and Driver's License that gave proof of address. Probably the best reaction to this story came from Al Sharpton who stated: I've heard of driving while black, and I've heard of shopping while black. But I've never heard of living in a home while black. Gates is asking for a formal apology…

On this Independence Day

Danny Schecter asks, how independent are we? "This isn't just about Madoff. This is about the system in which Madoff's scam took place. This is about systemic fraud and malpractice, the cultural trade of due diligence for easy profit. It's about conflicts of interest where companies paid ratings agencies for their ratings. It's about ideological blinders that let regulators and the Federal Reserve look the other way while banks turned into betting parlors." Amy Goodman looks into the overthrow of independence in Honduras. The first coup d'etat in Central America in more than a quarter-century…

David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists

David Sloan Wilson, an atheist himself, has a few things to relate to 'angry atheists' like Richard Dawkins. I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist. One of the things that infuriates me about the newest crop of angry atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, is their denial of the beneficial aspects of religion. Their beef is not just that there is no evidence for God. They also insist that religion "poisons everything", as Christopher Hitchens subtitled his book. They are ignoring the scientific theory and evidence for the "secular utility" of religion, as Ãmile…

Quick dip: Schizophrenia genes, dark nighties of the soul, et alia

I must keep my nose on the not-beta, hidden-till-last-minute, writing-Not-For-FREE grindstone, where it's getting shredded to bits -- but in the meantime, wanted to pass on these worthy web distractions, worthy of full engagement if you've the time: Vaughan Bell peeks at The long dark nightie of the soul and wonders "why mentally distressed women are always portrayed in their nighties." Separately, he considers some strange security concerns raised by the growing use of brain implants. Much interesting attention to schizophrenia this week: A big study parsing the genetics of schizophrenia,…

Darwin, Dartmouth, and undergrad science journals

My Darwin talk at Dartmouth on Thursday went well, and while there I had the privilege of meeting with editors of the Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, or DUJS -- which is, at 11 years, the oldest extant undergrad journal in the U.S., as far as its editors can tell. I knew from writing about scientific research that more universities are (wisely) involving undergraduates in serious research. But I hadn't known of any serious undergrad science journals publishing and commenting on research until the DUJS staff invited me over to Dartmouth to talk about Darwin and coral reefs. The…

Pfizer employee to new colleagues: Buckle up

Pharma giant Pfizer got bigger on Monday, purchasing Wyeth Pharamceuticals for $65 billion in one of the few big business moves to get funding lately. This comes after several years of aggressive cost-cutting and huge layoffs at Pfizer, and was announced as the company released an annual report revealing a $2.3 billion settlement for offl-label marketing. At least one Pfizer employee feels that Wyeth employees should be warned. I feel sorry for the good people of Wyeth. You didn't ask to be gobbled up by this monster. As for myself, I was just to lazy/stupid/complacent to leave. I got…

Who's smarter - You or an NFL quarterback?

Find out right here via the Christian Science Monitor: For many years, the National Football League has given the Wonderlic aptitude test to rookie players. The test has 50 questions with a 12-minute time limit. Put three minutes on the clock and try our shortened version of the test, created with sample questions from espn.com and testprepreview.com. Multiply the number of right answers you get by 3.85 to compare with full test results. Can you do better than NFL quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers (35) or Tom Brady (33) or Peyton Manning (28)? The average NFL quarterback scores 24 on the test,…

Clowns in uproar over new study

I'm sure it's a rough life being a clown, you know... driving a clown car with 18 other passengers in the driver seat alone, walking and tripping around with those really big shoes, and hours of makeup application. But their job is about to get a lot harder, a new study in a nursing journal shows that kids are terrified of clowns. A poll by researchers looking at what decor to put in hospital children's wards found that youngsters do not like clowns on the walls and even older ones think they are scary. "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite…

You don't have to be smart to be rich (or go bankrupt afterwards)

Overall people with higher IQ's tend to earn a bit more income (1 IQ pt. = $202-$616 more per year) but when you factor in total wealth (I believe that how much bling you have was the measure) and how likely people were to have financial difficulties the correlations fell apart. The smart and the dumb were both equally as inept at managing their own finances. I can think of countless examples of both sides of the coin. For the idiots we have: MC Hammer, Vanilla ICE, Mike Tyson and many other entertainers (ok ok ... I know entertainers aren't necessarily idiots - but they're the easiest to…

The Toughness of Playboy Playmates

The new Mini-AIR brought this wonderful article to my attention: James K. Beggan, Scott T. Allison (2005) Tough Women in the Unlikeliest of Places: The Unexpected Toughness of the Playboy Playmate The Journal of Popular Culture 38 (5), 796-818. Here's an excerpt: The contradiction created by the juxtaposition of the nude imagery and "tough" background is the basis for the present article. Our analysis of centerfold pictorials for the past two decades suggests that it is a mistake to view Playboy Playmates exclusively through a lens of sexuality. Although our culture most often conceptualizes…

Cows, Growth Hormones, and Global Warming

Here's one for you, just in case you weren't confused enough about which foods you should eat. The diary industry is known for its use of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST), a protein hormone that boosts milk production. You may have noticed it on your pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia: "No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from recombinant bovine growth hormone treated and non recombinant bovine growth hormone treated cows". Its use is controversial, as are its potential human impacts. The product has one seller: Monsanto. It is banned in Canada, and parts…

Pork Fins

Holy Shifting Tastebuds! For a story right up there with deer meat sushi comes this little article about fake shark fins made from pork. The artificial fins were developed due to the high price of real fins (the rising price being a market response to scarcity--i.e., overfishing). The price of the pig gelatin fins are one-tenth that of the real deal. For more than 400 million years, sharks have survived the world's seas. But over the last couple decades, the wasteful practice of shark finning has become a global concern, particularly as shark populations show declines and the demand…

Shifting Fur Seals

The shifting baseline of northern fur seal ecology in the northeast Pacific Ocean was recently published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the authors discuss using baseline information as a way to understand fur seal distributions. Northern fur seals range from southern California to the Aleutian Islands. Today they breed almost exclusively on offshore islands at high latitudes (two-thirds on the Pribilof Islands alone) but in the past there were large populations off of California. The California population appears to have collapsed between 800 and 1000 years ago…

The Galapagos Marine Reserve

It is first worth noting that all Galapagos fishers operate within the boundaries of the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). In 1998 the Ecuadorian government extended the GMR from its 15-mile radius to a 40-mile radius surrounding the archipelago. The reserve now encompasses 133,000 square kilometers of ocean and 1,300 square kilometers of coastline, inflating the reserve's status to the third largest marine reserve in the world. With this expansion also came the complete ban of industrial fishing though the GMR does allow for artisanal fishing and thus is not considered part of the National…

The Great Beyond: Far East top in science subjects

From The Great Beyond Far East top in science subjects Researchers in the US have released the latest figures comparing the maths and science abilities of 4th- and 8th-grade students in countries across the globe. Far Eastern countries dominate the top tens, with Singapore top for science in both 4th and 8th grade. In maths, Hong Kong tops the 4th grade scores, with ‘Chinese Taipei’ leading the 8th. (Image right shows the percentage of fourth-grade students who reached the TIMSS advanced international benchmark in science in the top ten countries. See full graph.) As the New York Times…

Pebble collection

A few that keep slipping out of my hands: It's All in Your Head -- Sally Satel, in the Wall St Journal, on a recent study showing about half of American doctors use placebos in practice. Satel, who wrote an interesting piece NY Times Magazine piece a while back on her search for a kidney donor, also has an interesting piece on a Senate bill designed to allow states to reward organ donors. PhamaLot on Pharma's Influence on the Media. On a related note, a Columbia Journalism Review piece on Science Reporting by Press Release Andrew Sullivan on The AP's Cowardice. Hospitals Fail to Take Basic…

You paid for this research, now you get to read it

The public will soon start getting quicker access to research results it sponsors. From BioMed Central Blog : NIH Public Access Policy to become mandatory: NIH Public Access Policy to become mandatory Many open access advocates will already have heard that NIH's Public Access Policy, until now voluntary, is set to become mandatory following President Bush's approval on Dec 26th 2007 of the latest NIH appropriations bill, which includes the following wording: "The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted…

Why the Mona Lisa's smile vanishes

Stumbled across this early this morning: Why the Mona Lisa's smile is so strangely alluring, and seems to come and go. From the website of Harvard neuroscientist Margaret LIvingstone: The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, and so is seen best by your peripheral vision (Science, 290, 1299). These three images show her face filtered to show selectively lowest (left) low (middle) and high (right) spatial frequencies. So when you look at her eyes or the background, you see a smile like the one on the…

Conservapedia Tonight: The No True Scotsman Edition

Tonight's episode in the Conservapedia Follies comes in the form of their page on the "Religion of Barack Obama". Specifically, it comes from a section of the article that attempts to "correct" what the Conservapediots perceive to be "errors" in an article about Obama and religion that appeared in the "liberal magazine Newsweek." The whole article is, typically enough, amusingly bad, but there are two entries that are particularly enchanting: Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother [correction: mother who abandoned Christianity] and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father [correction:…

Finally!

If you've been following Richard Hoppe's coverage of the John Freshwater trial on the Panda's Thumb, you know this event has been dragging along like the OJ trial, only with less media pandemonium and now, at last, a less unsatisfying outcome. Freshwater, you may recall, is the bible-thumping public school science teacher who was more interested in promoting Christianity than science in the classroom, and whose most egregious error was using a gadget to burn crosses into students' arms. He'll be getting his sadistic Christian jollies at the expense of students no more: John Freshwater has…

Stuff I Read and Thought You'd Like

Some great posts on other blogs you may have missed reading: Language Log has a great critique of the new PBS show WordGirl, which I found via Fairer Science. If that's not enough to make you grind your teeth, then read Pat's roundup on the Bionic Woman, Ubisoft's Imagine video games, and Barbie Girls. Bleah. Female Science Professor ran into Dr. Troll this week upon coming out of a committee meeting. Dr. Troll asked her if she was taking a class from the other committee members. I am not making this up. You can read about it here. I mean, really. You have to work at being that much…

Order of the Science Scouts

It's Girl Scout cookie season, and maybe that's why this appeals to me even more than I thought it would. Scouts, badges - what's not to love? Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique Read the launch announcement over at the World's Fair. It's open to anybody who considers themselves to be any sort of a science communicator, broadly defined: For the propogation of an ideal where science communicators can meet firstly, for drinks; secondly, for communicating; and ultimately, for networking. It's not yet clear how "Above Average Physique" is to be…

Let's hear it for un-American nonsense!!

Apparently, the Virginia Republican Party has been getting nostalgic for the good old days at the end of the Cold War. You remember those days, right? Ronald Reagan was saying things like, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" and "we begin bombing in five minutes" . Ollie North was sitting in front of Congress and claiming to have the memory of a repeatedly concussed goldfish. And the Republicans looked likely to hold onto the White House forever. Given present circumstances, it's easy to see why the Virginia GOP might be getting a wee bit nostalgic. Unfortunately, in their enthusiasm to…

DonorsChoose update:

This week's DonorsChoose update is a short one. We're still doing well here - $2278 has been donated, which puts us well on our way to meeting our goal for the third time. I've added new proposals, again mostly from the Bronx, most of which are looking to fill basic classroom needs. (One request is for a copy machine and toner, because the entire school currently has one machine and no service contract. Another is for play-dough for a kindergarten classroom. A third is another request for pencils, crayons, and markers.) In related news, Seed Media Group (the parent company of Scienceblogs…

Friday Random Ten - The Feelin' Political Edition

It's been a few weeks since I've done a Friday Random Ten, but I got up early and felt like listening to a little music today. As per the rules of the game, I selected my entire iTunes library and went to the Party Shuffle to see what the randomizer wants me to listen to. Today, it's a heavy dose from the political wing of my library. With both Arlo Guthrie and Leonard Cohen in the mix, it's also not the quickest playlist ever. (I was thinking about pulling the Arlo track as seasonally unsuitable, but what the hell - with Christmas decorations going up, I probably just blinked at the wrong…

Bee aware

Every so often, whether by design or random chance*, a number of research items get released on or about the same topic. Today's topic is bees. First off, an amberised fossil bee that shows similarities with wasps (thereby confirming a prediction made by phylogenetic classifications) has been found. It is 100 million years old. Second, the honeybee genome has been fully sequenced. From this it is concluded that bees evolved in Africa, and like a certain group of hominids, have moved out of Africa into other continents several times. The genetic differences between "Africanised" bees and…

Mnemonics

"King Phillip Came Over From German Soil" - anyone remember that? It's a mnemonic, designed to make it easier to recall the Linnean ranks: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. Unfortunately, ranks change (Phylum and Family were inserted in the 1870s at an international meeting in Paris), and a new one has been proposed (and hotly debated): Domain. So what should the mnemonic now be? "Dumb King Phillip..."? There are a host of mnemonics for biology (and even more for medicine). Jason Grossman, sometime commentator and fulltime good guy, sent me this suggestion: I needed a…

Once more on Hilali

This is Australian parochial politics - pass by if you have no interest. The PM, the minister for Immigration, and the minister for Foreign Affairs, the leader of the Opposition and various other pollies have called for the mufti of Australia, Sheik al Hilali, to leave Australia. Look, the man's a weed, a slug and a racist, and probably supports the use of terrorist violence. But exiling people from their home nation - and he is now an Australian resident if not a citizen - is not the Australian way. It is not democratic, and it is not the act of the leaders of a free country. Start by…

Friday List Bonanza: Science, Engineering, and Dr. Phil

How about a sampling of the lists over at McSweeney's, the perfect Friday activity. Here are a bunch that are either science-related, engineering-related, invention-related, or plain unrelated. I'd be interested in any kind of ranking people have, the bests of the links, that is. We'll do these in reverse chronological order... Failed NASA Sapce Programs, by Jonathan Shipley Hoover Dam Fast-Fact Pamphlet If Hoover Dam Were a Scale Model Made of Legos, by Orr Goehring Dr. Phil's Inventions, by Scott Smith Unpublished Sequels to Famous Science-Fiction Novels, by Steve Rushmore Terrifying…

Conservationists discover new "punk" bird

Conservationists have discovered a new species of bird in the cloud forests of Colombia: A colorful new bird has been discovered in a previously unexplored Andean cloud forest, spurring efforts to protect the area, conservation groups said Monday. The bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch was named for the indigenous tribe that once inhabited the mountainous area where it was discovered. For conservationists the discovery of the species came at a crucial time -- the government has decided to set aside 500 acres of the pristine cloud forest where the bird lives to create a…

Biometric Soda Machine?

Some students at UCSD have too much time on their hands: A group of grad students at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are in the process of creating what one of the students calls the "most over-designed soda machine in the world." Right now, the machine has attached to it a barcode scanner, a fingerprint reader, and a web cam for facial recognition. Want a Coke? Stick your thumb on the reader so the machine recognizes you as having an account, take out the drink, then walk way, never having had to reach into your pocket for change. The project, called SodaVision (sodavision.com…

Einstein, Scientific Pimp

Who says that being smart hurts your reproductive success? Albert Einstein had half a dozen girlfriends and told his wife they showered him with "unwanted" affection, according to letters released on Monday that shed light on his extramarital affairs. The wild-haired Jewish-German scientist, renowned for his theory of relativity, spent little time at home. He lectured in Europe and in the United States, where he died in 1955 at age 76. But Einstein wrote hundreds of letters to his family. Previously released letters suggested his marriage in 1903 to his first wife Mileva Maric, mother of his…

Darwinian gardening, again

I'm not a gardener, really I'm not. I once killed a cactus plant by underwatering it. I found it on the window sill one day three years after I last took note of it and it was black. I don't believe in the concept "weed". If a plant survives my tender ministrations, it deserves to be there. I call it survival of the fittest, or Darwinian gardening. This simple idea has saved me from hours of drudgery. I think it ought to be a moral precept, or a commandment of God, for all of us who find the notion of trying to make the unsuited thrive in conditions that are resource hungry and basically a…

Make a smart decision, Illinois

In the governor's race in Illinois, just the fact that he's Republican is sufficient that I would discourage you from voting for Bill Brady. There's also this video in which he claims to believe in both creation and evolution, but I have to say I found the interviewer more annoying than the wanna-be governor. There's a point where he's hectoring Brady, telling him there are only two sides, he's either got to be in favor of some garbled version of young earth creationism/intelligent design creationism, or he's in favor of evolution. The interviewer insists on this despite Brady stating that he…

The Amazing Meeting: London

Do you expect a full report? TAM London is over, I have no sense of time left, I just got back from a late and very entertaining dinner with the ferocious Rebecca Watson and the fabulous Richard Wiseman, and I think I need to pass out. It looks like you can get a video feed of the various talks at the live feed — they're playing back the recorded events right now. You can read the #TAMLondon hashtag to get an idea of the audience reaction, and Martin Robbins has liveblogged the whole weekend. Or if you'd rather, you can read few short sound bites. My talk went fine, I think, although it's…