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Interconnections everywhere

You really should take a closer look at this map of publication links between scientific disciplines. Here's the description: This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Links (curved black lines) were made between the paradigms that shared papers, then treated as rubber bands, holding similar paradigms nearer one another when a physical simulation forced every paradigm to repel every other; thus the layout derives…

Jesus Struck by Lightning, Burned to Ground, as Predicted in Bible

Pat Robertson, others, claim that this is a sign from god telling us that Christianity is not the true religion. Well, ok, Pat Robertson others, did not really say that. But they should, according to their modus operandi! The Jesus Statue located in Monroe Ohio is known as Touchdown Jesus because of the figure's position. Touchdown Jesus formerly sat aside a highway since 2004. But not just any highway. The highway is I-75. You do understand the significance of this, yes? Let me connect the dots for you. There is no Isaiah 75, so we can't refer to a bible passage such as the one…

Brian Flemming interview

Here's a good interview with Brian Flemming, the documentarian behind The God Who Wasn't There, who also irritated a lot of prissy reactionaries who have too-tight pants with his blasphemy challenge on youtube. Simon Owens: Do you think the "blasphemy project" is an effective way for atheists to come out of the closet? Brian Flemming: The Blasphemy Challenge has certainly encouraged quite a few godless folks to unequivocally state that they aren't afraid of Satan. I think it's hilarious that this is actually a controversial statement to make -- as if Satan were not a purely mythological…

Africa news items of interest

Kenya court rules Islamic courts are illegal Kenya's Islamic courts are illegal and discriminatory, a panel of judges has ruled. The three judges said the Islamic "Kadhi" courts favoured Islam over other faiths, and that this was unconstitutional as Kenya was a secular country. South Africa's Julius Malema defends his radical views The controversial leader of South Africa's youth league has defended his behaviour after being disciplined by the ruling ANC. Julius Malema had provoked anger with a series of outbursts about race, Zimbabwe and Jacob President Zuma. In a BBC interview, he efused…

Catching Up on the News

Harakat Al-Shabab is a militant Islamic youth movement engaged in the Somali war. Yesterdaythey mortared the presidential palace in Omgadishu, setting off a fight killing 14 people. A landslide caused by heavy rains and a flooding river on the slope of Nyiragongo killed over 50 people in the DR Congo. A gay couple in Malawi has been sentenced to 14 years (max) at hard labo for "gross indecency and unnatural acts." The judge said he wanted to protect the public from "people like you". Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, have been in jail since they were arrested in December…

Kids out of school? Consider "Freethought Summer Camp"

In Boy Scouts, a person must agree to sign a 'Declaration of Religious Belief,' in which he must agree that "only a person who acknowledges his duty to God can be the best kind of citizen". Freecamp thought is an alternative where you don't have to sell your soul ... which is good, because you don't have a soul... Camp Quest is crossing the Atlantic to Great Britain next summer. The residential summer camp for the children of freethinkers, skeptics and humanists, is planning on opening a site in the U.K. in July of 2009. ... Camp Quest was created in 1996 by the Free Inquiry Group, Inc. (…

Good News for Great Apes

The world's rarest great ape has found a safe haven in the mountains of the west central African nation of Cameroon. With guidance from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Cameroon's prime minister, Ephraim Inoni, has created the world's first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River gorilla. Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary spans only 19.5 square kilometers but contains an important segment of the Cross River gorilla population. The species' range consists of 11 scattered sites in Cameroon and Nigeria. Of the estimated 300 or fewer Cross River gorillas that remain, approximately 20 live in…

The sun is riz, the sun is set ... and we ain't outta Texas yet.

But plans for the Institute for Creation Research Masters Degree in Creationistic Biology for High School Teachers is out of Texas. Members of the Academic Excellence and Research Committee and the Participation and Success Committee voted unanimously to approve the recommendation of Raymund Paredes, the state's commissioner of higher education, not to approve the Institute's application. The full Coordinating Board will vote on the committees' recommendation on Thursday. "The issue before the Coordinating Board isn't about academic freedom or free speech. The issue is whether the state…

Saiga Saga

Take a deer's body, attach a camel's head, add a tapir's snout, and you have a saiga--Central Asia's odd-ball antelope with the enormous schnoz. Unfortunately, these animals are as endangered as they are strange looking. The problem is over-hunting. Now, according to a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) study, the saiga's migration routes are in jeopardy as well. Conservationists tracked saiga with GPS collars in Mongolia and discovered a "migration bottleneck"--a narrow corridor of habitat that connects two populations. Local people herding livestock and increased traffic from trucks and…

Charles Darwin - Finches

Darwin's finches are a classic and historically important example of a species radiation (sometimes called an "adaptive" radiation, but that implies a specific assertion about the cause of the radiation which may not be appropriate in all cases). During the five weeks that Darwin spent on the Galapagos in September, 1835, he made a number of observations of these birds, but they did not occupy his time or attention more than any other aspect of this remarkable archipelago of islands. It seems that Darwin did not recognize all of the finches as finches, thinking some were of an entirely…

No thanks, MPR

I often listen to Minnesota Public Radio on my drives to Minneapolis and back—I've got the 3 stations memorized (88.5, 88.9, and 91.1), and know where each one cuts out and I need to switch to the closer transmitter. My only complaint is the annoying, chirpy fund drives, which always drive me to fumble for some 'foreign' station…and that's difficult. Here in the western part of the state most of what you find are country western and gospel and horrid pop rock stuff. Now I have another reason to be irritated at those repetitive pleas for me to fork over a hundred bucks for a travel mug and the…

So that's what happened to that Dalek!

Damn, wouldn't it have been cool to have been the guy who found this? A Dalek, lost from Doctor Who since the 1970s or 1980s: Workers were baffled how the Dr Who relic ended up there, but it may have been in the murky water for more than 30 years after being dumped during location filming in the '70s. Marc Oakland, 42, who made the discovery, said: "I'd just shifted a tree branch with my foot when I noticed something dark and round slowly coming up to the surface. I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up in front of me. "It was covered in mould and weed, and had quite a bit of…

Bizarro Chez Myers

For a little context, you need to know that we had a foreign exchange student from Italy living with us for a year. If you've been reading this blog for long, you may also know that I have somewhat strong feelings about religion—OK, I'm one of those surly evil atheists your momma warned you to avoid. So now go read this story of a Polish foreign exchange student who came to the US…and found his host parents were Christian fundamentalists. Keep in mind that foreign exchange programs are often stressful, and sometimes the students and host families experience a little culture shock, but still…

No way!

Pam Spaulding suggests that this unbelievable speculation is a trial balloon: Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities. The candidate being floated to replace Dean? Harold Ford. Says James Carville, one of the anti-Deaniacs, "Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC? How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day. Now probably Harold Ford wants to stay in…

Valentine's Day is coming, but so is something else

It's clear from the treacly ads that are clogging the airwaves that Valentine's Day is near. For those of us who tend to find Valentine's Day (and, even worse, that knockoff holiday Sweetest Day) annoying, it's a bad time of the year, particularly since in these parts February is the most depressing time of the year anyway. Fortunately, if you're a skeptic, another "holiday" of sorts falls on the very same date as Valentine's Day. Yes, it's yet another Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, that blog carnival for skepticism and critical thinking. This time around, appropriately enough for Valentine…

A magic helmet to cure Alzheimer's disease?

Several readers have e-mailed me this story. It's about a device developed in the U.K.. Based on near infrared light (NIR), the device, it is claimed by its creator, will be a major step forward for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. He even made some very bold claims that it could not just slow the cognitive decline associated with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease but actually reverse it. Fortunately, a friend over at Science-Based Medicine has taken the time to separate the hype from the scientific basis behind this device. Suffice it to say that, although it's not totally…

All the way from Denmark: The 75th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle

It's hard to believe that two weeks have flown by once again. It's even harder to believe that the Skeptics' Circle has been around long enough to reach its 75th edition, which this time around comes straight out of Denmark, courtesy of longtime Respectful Insolence commenter and now blogger Kristjan Wager at Pro-Science. Kristjan's a just-the-facts kind of guy and he delivers a just-the-facts kind of Circle, chock full of skeptical bloggy goodness. Next up to host on December 20, just in time for Christmas (and what better Christmas gift than the gift of skepticism?) is fellow ScienceBlogger…

Good Electricity News from Iraq: the update

In February I linked to a detailed report in IEEE Spectrum that explained how billions of dollars had been wasted and electricity production in Iraq at 3,600 megawatts was still less than it was before the war. Glenn Reynolds felt that the report was "sort of good news". Now Reynolds reports more good news: The latest Brookings Institution data from Iraq look good. I wonder why these numbers don't get more attention? He links to Bill Crawford, who writes: Electrical output is almost at the pre-war level of 3,958 megawatts. April's production was 3,600 megawatts. In May of 2003,…

Lott in New Zealand

Terence is justifiably annoyed that his tax dollars are being spent on having John Lott give a keynote speech on firearms safety at a conference in New Zealand. Lott is going to claim that safe storage laws increase crime. I don't know if he will continue to misrepresent the research that contradicts his claims. We also have this disingenuous claim from Lott: The [Green Party] has described one of the speakers, John Lott, as the world's most controversial pro-gun researcher. But Lott says he is not sure how he gained such a title. He says that overall gun control usually causes more…

Brignell vs Source Watch

The Source Watch wiki page on John Brignell quotes extensively from some of my criticisms of Brignell. Rather than address this criticism, Brignell edited the page to add this comment: What follows is the work of an individual known as The Adhominator. You can recognise his style, as he never attacks the argument, only the arguer. You can identify him, because he is the only authority he quotes. Enjoy! This is classic Brignell. He can't bring himself to mention my name, he makes blatantly false claims (specifically, I do attack his arguments, and I do cite other authorities) and indulges…

Sock Puppet Guide

There have been a few people who have used href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet">sock puppets on this blog. Note that a sock puppet differs from a pseudonym in that sock puppets are used to deceitfully make it appear that there is more support for you postion than there really is. Here is a table to help you keep track of the socks that have been used here. Real Name Sock Puppets John Lott Mary Rosh, Washingtonian, Bob H, Tom H, Sam, Kevin H, Too bad Tim is not very accurate, Gregg David Bell Per, James Brown, M Mouse Joe Cambria Dave Curry, S Brid, Pessimist…

Kininmonth in the Australian

The Australian has published a piece by William Kinimonth arguing that global warming is a natural phenomenon. His argument in his book was that the models used by the IPCC were one dimensional and didn't account for the flow of energy from the tropics to the poles. This is, of course, wildly incorrect as anyone can find out in minutes on the net. So he's dropped that argument, but that means that all he has left is this: IPCC has made much of the apparent ability of computer models to simulate the climate system; computer models that have been tuned to reproduce the main statistical…

Tactical air support against reiki in trauma

About a week ago, I wrote about how the wooiest of woo, reiki, has infiltrated one of the best academic trauma centers in the U.S. In it, I lamented that I was feeling increasingly alone in being disturbed by this infiltration of religious pseudoscience into bastions of scientific medicine. Fortunately for me, Dr. RW is as dismayed as I am: Out here in the hinterlands I can only wonder what's going on in academic medicine these days. Is there anyone there for whom the standards of science mean anything at all? Well, there must be. There are plenty of people who teach and write about evidence…

One more swipe at CNN for its credulity towards alternative medicine

About a week ago, I posted about a truly execrably credulous article on alternative medicine published at CNN.com, which basically took a panel of true believers and asked them which five alternative medicine modalities had the best evidence to show that they "work." Now, Steve Novella weighs in. His key point, with which I agree, is that "alternative" medicine advocates (or "complementary and alternative medicine," or CAM) have been wildly successful in framing their favored woo as being on an equal footing with "conventional" medicine, all the while carving out a double standard that allows…

There is no separation of church and state

The NY Times has a long article that is basically a litany of the exemptions and privileges granted to religious organizations. A church-based daycare, for instance, has none of the licensing requirements of a private daycare, and doesn't have to meet any of the standards of a non-religious establishment, nor does it have to worry about civil rights requirements…and it's protected from lawsuits. The practice of granting churches ever more special rights is accelerating, too, since legislators are always willing to hand over more to the pious frauds. Wouldn't want to be thought disrespectful…

Fumento spits the dummy

Michael Fumento has been booted off Winds of Change because he misrepresented a scientific article. As usual he responded with abuse: I'm off to Ramadi again next month. Put that alongside the chickenhawks and chairborne rangers whose blogs you print. In short, I was doing you a great favor and you spat in my face. Well, the wind has changed and the spit has gone back into your face. Goodbye and good riddance. ... As to chicken hawks, that refers to "Armed Liberal," who never got closer to Iraq than watching CNN, and it refers to you personally. I don't see any leash keeping you from going…

Another dubious survey

One of factoids Alistair McFarquhar offered up trying to support his post that vanished down the memory hole was this: Among Economists almost twice as many believe that rising greenhouse gas levels will cause the economy to grow. Most think rising greenhouse gas levels will have virtually no impact on income per person. The vast majority (73.2%) predicts that the impact will be less than 5 percent one way or the other. His source was this article by Robert Whaples in Tech Central Station. When newspapers report survey results they give the sample size and confidence interval, but Whaples…

A Nerd's Progress

Shelley does the call as the nerds strut their stuff... And declares a winner: Although, without further ado, Mark Chu-Carrol hands-down wins the nerd-off (in my humble opinion of course). For one, his CURRENT picture trumps PZ's old one, and he reads programming language books for fun and has 30 tinwhistles which he plays. Come on guys, NO ONE can beat that. Mark, for those about to derive, I salute you! Not so fast. Mark's moves were impressive, but my motto is "Never give up, never surrender!" So, where's APL on the list of programming languages Mark knows? And I've got some nerd…

Need some inspiration to get fired up about science?

Listen to this episode of Point of Inquiry. It includes an interview with Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow, who cowrote Cosmos and Contact. That's good enough (although the sound quality of her connection is not so good), but what will really get you fired up is the last half of the podcast contains last public address for CSICOP, from its conference in Seattle in 1994. Entitled "Wonder and Skepticism," Sagan how he became interested in science and astronomy because of his sheer wonder at science and the stars, argues why science is the best way of looking at the world (his part about the…

More Virgin Mary pareidolia

This time, the Virgin Mary is on a tree: LOCKPORT -- A Harvey Street woman claimed on Wednesday that she heard the voice of the Virgin Mary and has seen visions of the Mother of God in the trimmed branches of a maple tree in front of her house. Antonia "Toni" Filipertis, 84, a devout Catholic, comes to tears when she relates the story which began about 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Her family firmly believes her. Neighborhood children and adults see and wonder. Several teachers from John Pound Elementary School came across the street to take a look. Principal Roberta Donovan could not swear to the…

CIS continues to promote greenhouse denial and delay

Australia's CIS (Centre for Independent Studies) has been promoting greenhouse denial and delay for a decade. Last year their "Big Ideas" forum featured some classic denialism from Arthur Herman. This year, on Monday 10 August in Sydney we have: Enemies of Progress? Cute title. Maybe I should have used "Enemies of Science?" as the title of this post. Where humanity once solved the world's problems, we are now viewed as the source. We no longer take pride in dynamic progress to benefit mankind; we bemoan the so-called carbon footprint that this progress will leave. What? "so-called carbon…

Maybe getting public policy advice from SF writers is not a good idea

Via Sadly No!, we find out the latest from the SF authors who helped bring us Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation. The group has the ear of Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, head of the science and technology directorate, who has said he likes their unconventional thinking. Members of the group recently offered a…

Bob Carter not entitled to his own facts

John Cook has already thoroughly demolished this Bob Carter opinion piece in The Age, but I just wanted to highlight the failure in the editing process that allowed Carter's piece to be published as it was. Amongst other false or misleading claims, Carter claimed as a "Fact" that CO2 acts as a valuable plant fertiliser. Extra carbon dioxide helps to shrink the Sahara Desert, Even someone with a little bit of common sense would notice that the difference between the Amazon and the Sahara isn't that there is a shortage of CO2 in the Sahara, but the editor at The Age didn't see any problem…

The Australian's War on Science 59: Quote Mining

The Australian's daily column called Cut and Paste should more properly be titled Quote Mining. Look at their latest effort: Re-insurers don't seem to think that climate change is causing an escalating number of catastrophes ... Peer-reviewed paper by Eric Neumayer and Fabian Barthe of London School of Economics and funded by re-insurers Munich Re in Global Environmental Change, November 18, 2010: Applying both [conventional and alternative] methods to the most comprehensive existing global dataset of natural disaster loss [provided by Munich Re], in general we find no significant upward…

Leakegate: Introducing the Jonathan Leake game

Here's a game you can play at home. All you need is a search engine. Take a Jonathan Leake science story with a dramatic headline. For example, Facebook fans do worse in exams. Then do a search on the headline. You win if you can find complaints by scientists that their research was misrepresented by Leake. Like this. However, researchers Aryn Karpinski, a doctoral student in education at Ohio State, and Adam Duberstein, an academic adviser at Ohio Dominican University, didn't examine the influence of Facebook on grades. Facebook may be a symptom of a big procrastination habit, not a…

Evidence doesn't seem to change Eric Raymond's mind

Eric Raymond (the one responsible for the botched analysis of the stolen CRU code) responds to my post on Essex and McKitrick's error in treating missing values as zeroes in a spreadsheet: The error described is so stupid that I have trouble believing a statistician actually made it. Whether McKittrick understood thermodynamics or not is red herring; even somebody with my non-specialist knowledge of statistics alone would have known better, let alone a pro like him. The most plausible theory I can think of is that the spreadsheet was expressing temperatures as deviation from mean, that the "…

Dubner falsely claims that ocean acidification is addressed in Superfreakonomics

Thingsbreak has been documenting the way Levitt and Dubner keeping digging the hole deeper, and Dubner has kept on digging with this whopper: we believe that anyone who reads our chapter without an agenda wouldn't even find it particularly controversial. They will see that we routinely address the concerns that critics accuse us of ignoring (the problem of ocean acidification, e.g., and the "excuse to pollute" that geoengineering solutions might afford), and that we neither "misrepresent" climate scientists nor flub the facts. Here is everything they say in chapter 5 about ocean…

From somewhere within the Bermuda Triangle: The 37th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle

Mysteriously appearing prematurely briefly last week deep in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle, only to disappear again in an equally mysterious manner, the 37th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has once again appeared, but this time as expected at the home of Autism Diva. However, the participants are a bit unusual this time, in that they're the denizens of the deep, holding the first underwater meeting ever. Check it out! Two weeks from now, the Skeptics' Circle will appear once again, this time at Skeptic Rant, where it was hosted once before in a most creative fashion. I'm looking for more…

A Message to One Who Mourns

"Can't you do something to make this pain go away?" No, my child, but understand that the greater is your pain, the greater was your love. Only passionate hearts can produce passionate grief. Such hearts use the gift of time not only to refill what has been emptied, but to reshape sorrow into something that honors the one who was loved and is now gone. "How can I go on with this agony inside of me?" No answer will satisfy you now, my child. I could say that if you were lost at sea, battered by the wind, cold, frightened, but unwilling to force yourself to slip beneath the waves, you would…

Memo from the Future: 2 P Hgb, Buy the Folks a Pack!

"Honey, what did you do with Mommy's lighter? Sweetie? Give it back to Mommy." A new British study shows that children exposed to second-hand smoke have a 40% increase in the risk of developing bladder cancer in adulthood: A team, partly funded by Cancer Research UK say their study into the link between smoking and bladder cancer adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests children and teenagers forced to breathe second-hand smoke are particularly at risk. Professor John Toy, Cancer Research UK's medical director, said the research justified the smoking ban. He said: "Although more…

What's that rumbling sound?

Is it distant thunder? A passing freight train? World Cup fans celebrating a goal? Nope...that's the sound of the ScienceBlogs Book Club becoming active again! It's been awhile since we hosted a Book Club discussion here on the blog - not since Paul Offitt's Autism's False Prophets back in 2008 - but we thought it was about time to get things going again. Luckily Mark Pendergrast, author of the recently published Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service agreed to lead a discussion of the book, and starting next week you can follow along…

On The Origin of Species: The Illustrated Edition

Originally posted by John Lynch On March 6, 2009, at 1:17 PM This being the bicentenary of Darwin's birth - and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterwork - many folks seem to have the goal of reading Origin for the first time. Generally speaking the first edition of 1859 (or the second of 1860) is taken as the best edition to begin with - in later editions Darwin muddies his ideas in response to critics and it becomes increasingly difficult to clearly delineate what "Darwinism" entails.  David Quammen has produced a very nice edition of Origin that relies on the first…

I hadn't planned on live-blogging the election returns...

...after all, I'm not a political blogger, except occasionally and maybe once every four years. If I'm still blogging four years from now, we'll see if I feel like morphing into a political blogger again, just for one day. However, I found this nifty little widget that does the job for me: There, you can just keep coming back to this page to follow election night returns. Of course, it is MSNBC; so its projections may or may not be accurate, but over time it will have to tell the story, as more and more returns come in. Now, I suppose I'll have to think about analyzing that study that…

The countdown to 100 continues...the 97th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle

The relentless march to Skeptics' Circle 100 continues, this time around with Evolved Rationalist over at Evolved and Rational. It's all for the lulz and the mudkip. What it in fact does is make me realize that I'm not as hip to the latest Internet stuff as I thought, because I had no idea what lulz meant or what a mudkip is. Oh, well. It's still a fantastic collection of the latest skepticism from around the blogosphere. In the meantime, next up is The Uncredible Hallq, who's a past host and did a great job then. I'm glad he's doing it again, and he'll be hosting on October 23. So get your…

In Memory: D. Louis Havelick

We laid my grandfather’s ashes to rest this weekend, at the Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis, SD. I’ve never attended a military service before, and figured it would be a fairly regimentary experience; certainly not an emotional one. Yet, when I heard "Taps" mournfully bleating, watched the rows of flags dancing in the breeze, and felt the startled air from fired rounds, tears filled my eyes. Grandpa Louie was always proud of his military record, having fought in the Korean war. According to my father, "he joined the first wave of US and UN forces that fought north all the way to…

Another Poem for Riding the Waves

I'm not sure why I write so many poems about the waves. They must be somewhat cathartic. I've been having trouble writing what I ought to be, and this one sort of spilled out. Please, pardon if the meter is a little rough... I have yet to polish it up. (Untitled) Who are they to think That you can battle a wave? Should you plunge a sword In translucent swirling depths? Or construct a mighty dam And form a defensive front? Force an attack Splashing back Make another wave Cancel that approaching swell Or will you increase its size? Be inclined to ride the surf To go with the flow Or be ripped…

Watching French Open

Watched the match between Soderling and Federer. Soderling is a brute, and he played a brilliant game. Distastefully aggressive play that never let Federer in the game. A quick tech note that may be of some interest to geeks. I am at a place where there is no TV and no broadband internet. I carry a vodaphone mobile internet dongle to use in such places. Unfortunately, the dongle does not have linux support (I run Ubuntu on my laptop). Still, it is possible to read the dongle in Ubuntu and work out the username, password and other details to make use of the dongle (it's just a mobile phone…

Teaching about pigeon's playing ping pong and other oddities of psychology

I'm going to be teaching Psych 100 next year and 200 or so lucky kids are going to luck out with me as an instructor. I'm just going to read them previously written blog posts all semester. Maybe I'll read out of a really crappy intro psych text book to them as well. Ok.. just kidding. I really want to make this upcoming year as entertaining as possible for them. There are so many great psychology experiments and stories about classic personalities to share. I think I need a little help with it from you guys though. If you have any suggestions about stories, experiments, or videos you…

Lott refuses to admit to a mistake in his Merced story

Lott has a new entry on his blog where he posts a transcript from Fox News that apparently has the father of the murdered children saying: "If a gun would have been here today, I'd have at least a daughter alive." I was mistaken when I suggested that the quote was a fabrication. The quote implies that all his daughters were murdered when they weren't, but perhaps it didn't imply this in its original context. In any case Lott has not responded to the rest of my post, instead concentrating on one minor point. In two blog postings now Lott has neither…

Remember your CPR

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a woman I met in the intensive care unit after she was successfully resuscitated with ACLS. Serendipitously, she ended up on the medicine service I switched to shortly thereafter, and I've been taking care of her on the general medicine floors for a few weeks. Today, on my way out of her room, I let on that I'd be switching services in a few days. "What?" she said. "You come back here." From her mouth poured forth a torrent of words, mostly good ones: "You're great, but you're a little rough around the edges. You're a go-getter. You know what needs to happen,…