Search Content

Displaying results 68001 - 68050 of 87947

Ethics is for losers, and other fun misconceptions.

I posted a reply to a reply over at Janet's Adventures in Ethics and Science, but it had typos and I guess I'm supposed to traffic these things back to the home base here anyway. So, here's the non-typoed version of my reply to a reply to the topic: "reasons scientists give for not thinking about ethics." It's always fascinating to me when students -- engineers, mostly, for me -- use the "ethics is anti-individualist" response that Lab Lemming gives (to the original post, which I already gave you the link to, above): "The idea of group ethics requires assent to some sort of group-think,…

What Kind of Nerd/Geek/Dork are you?

Hells yeah: Modern, Cool Nerd 86 % Nerd, 56% Geek, 30% Dork You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd. Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent,…

Crazy Videos of Ants

Did you know that ants snap their mandibles together so fast that they can throw themselves in the air? Check out this (click on the video link to watch it): When trap-jaw ants need to get out quick, they use their heads, not their legs to escape. This large species of Costa Rican ant smashes its jaw into the ground, causing the ant to catapult up and away from danger. Videos of Odontomachus bauri show that this ant can propel itself 8 centimetres up into the air using jaws that snap shut at a speed of nearly 65 metres per second -- perhaps the fastest predatory strike measured. Brian Fisher…

Bigotry in the sunshine state

The only problem with Queensland, apart from the occasional severe storm, is that they filled it with Queenslanders. Here's a bunch of northern bigots protesting a Muslim school being built on the Gold Coast "because they won't integrate" with Australian society by being, I don't know, Christian or something. Resident's spokesman Tony Doherty said Muslim schools did not encourage multiculturalism. "It's segregation, not integration," he said. "They're not trying to integrate into the rest of society. "Since we have started protesting against this our churches have been covered in hate-…

The new Jews?

One of the enduringly evil things done by Hitler and the Nazis was to pick a minority - Jews - and blame them for all the evils that had occurred in German society. Of course, all these evils had causes quite unrelated to the Jews, mostly caused by the overweening ambitions of the German militarists and industrialists who pushed the German speaking nations into the Great War. As Hitler was of the same ilk as those who caused the problems, he obviously couldn't blame his own kind. So he blamed the Jews. Now, Ben Stein is doing exactly what Hitler did - picking a "minority" view and blaming…

E. coli engineered to product natural product drugs

Wasn't able to get off an original post today so I'll direct Terra Sig readers to an excellent interview written by Carl Zimmer. As Carl writes, Discover chose Jay Keasling as their scientist of the year and asked me to interview him. Keasling, who directs the Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology, is trying to get either E. coli or yeast to crank out a powerful malaria drug normally only made by the sweet wormwood plant. I had already been getting familiar with Keasling's work, since it is a great example of the sort of work that's being done on E coli, the subject of my book. So it was a…

A great holiday gift idea for the harried

Now here's a wreath that won't create controversy or get the homeowner's association after you! If you're agonizing over what to get for that hard-to-figure relative, how about a personalized gift wreath for the holidays? The idea: create your own memorWreath (PDF here). A nicely personalized holiday gift: supply up to 10 digital photo images and a theme (family vacation at the beach, new baby, etc.). A commercial graphic designer mounts the photos and theme on a lovely 16" wreath from Maine...all for $45 (plus $10 UPS ground shipping in the US). I saw something like this last year for…

Undeclared anchovies

My subscription to US Food and Drug Administration missives usually returns horrific or, at least, disturbing cases of food or drug recalls. However, I never knew 1) that processed, prepackaged turkey and cheese sandwiches normally contain anchovy flavoring and, more surprisingly, 2) that some people are allergic to anchovies. Fresh Grill Recalls Smoked Turkey & Jack Cheese Sandwiches Due to Undeclared Anchovies Contact: Fresh Grill 714-444-2126 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Santa Ana, CA -- November 21, 2006 -- On 10-12-2006 Fresh Grill of Santa Ana, California recalled 2056 units of SMOKED…

Artificial networks see illusions, too

You've seen this illusion before, right? The "grid" defining the light gray squares on the left side of this figure seems to get lighter where the lines intersect. The graph on the right shows that the actual reflectance (or brightness when depicted on a computer screen) of the figure does not change along the path marked by the blue line. But perceived brightness (indicated in red on the graph) does change. But what's really interesting about this graph is that the thing doing the perceiving isn't a human. It's an artificial neural network. Auntie Em has the details: The brain in question…

Talent: Does it always shine through?

This story in the Washington Post has been getting a lot of attention. The reporter convinced world-famous violin virtuoso Joshua Bell to play for 45 minutes in a busy Washington subway station, as an experiment to see if passersby would recognize his amazing talents and reward him appropriately. His take was a lowly $32, not counting $20 from a disgusted fan who recognized Bell and couldn't believe others weren't being more generous. But there are questions as to whether the experiment was a good one. Why play in a subway entrance, where people are rushing to catch trains or off to their…

The mother of all "in other news" posts

I've been accumulating "in other news" items all weekend and only just now had the time to post them all. Enjoy! Scientific American covers the stereotype threat (discussed on CogDaily last week). Is "reform" math responsible for declining math performance? This is more convincing than the last video, but someone should tell this guy to stop reading his talk directly from his PowerPoint slides. A guaranteed way to destroy public education. Doctors may have discovered a way to teach patients about probability. But can they teach long division? (For more on patients and probability, see here)…

Navigation without the hippocampus

Mind Hacks has an excellent review of a case study that appears to contradict some "common knowledge" about the brain: The hippocampus is thought to be essential for navigation. Surprisingly, a paper published last year reported that a London Taxi driver, who suffered hippocampus damage on both sides of the brain, could successfully navigate around much of London. If the hippocampus is required, than how can we navigate without it? The researchers believe they have an answer for that as well: They tested the driver in a complete computer simulation of London (pictured left) and discovered, to…

SAT Challenge update: Casual Friday postponed until Monday

We are nearly finished grading the 109 entries for the Blogger SAT Challenge. Chad Orzel has designed a way for our readers to view and rate the essays themselves, but it's not quite ready yet. We're going to take the weekend to make everything perfect (well, nearly perfect), and then we'll unveil the rating system and the official, professionally graded results. I think it will be worth the wait. Suffice it to say, this has been a larger undertaking than Chad and I could have imagined at the outset. We've had some amazing volunteer graders who went beyond the call of duty to make sure…

Last chance on the Blogger SAT Challenge

There are just over 24 hours remaining in the Blogger SAT Challenge. The challenge has gained substantial notice in the blogosphere, with dozens of blogs linking to it, including at least one top-20 blog. I expect that when we publish the results, there will be even more interest in it. So.... If you've been putting off participating, now is your chance. Be warned, however, that it truly is a challenge. Though we've now had nearly 400 people start the challenge by entering a name and clicking through to the essay question, at last count (back when there were just 259 survey views), only 78…

Does wearing a helmet increase your risk of accident?

A fascinating press release is starting to gain attention. Researcher Ian Walker equipped his bike with a precise sensor that measured exactly how much room British drivers gave him when they passed. After tracking thousands of motorists, he was able to make an astonishing claim: when he was wearing a helmet, drivers gave him significantly less room on the road -- over 8 centimeters less. He suspects the reason is that drivers make judgements about the competence of a cyclist based on whether or not he is wearing a helmet. Indeed, Walker was struck by cars twice during the experiment -- both…

Can you hear this now? (Yet another poll)

Yesterday's Can you hear this post attracted plenty of interest -- apparently nearly all of our readers can hear the ringtone that's supposedly only audible by kids. But two of our commenters noted that the sound published by the New York Times wasn't actually 17 kHz, the range studies have shown kids are sensitive to; it was closer to 15 kHz. So much for trusting the New York Times. To correct their (and our) error, we convinced our friend Dan Boye, a physicist and professional opera singer, to create a more accurate audio stimulus. The sound file he created has two tones: the first is at 17…

Carolina In My Memory

I have either been holed up writing somewhere, or on the road speaking, for quite a while now--and the speaking side of things doesn't let up until November 9. Here are the remaining public events: Tuesday, November 7 8:00-9:00 PM BOOKS & BOOKS 265 Aragon Ave Coral Gables, FL 33134 Thursday, November 9 7:30- 9:00 am The Westin Grand Bohemian for Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando Tickets available at www.ppgo.org Among my various trips, I just spent three days in North Carolina doing a series of talks and meeting the locals. And now, thankfully, we've got a picture from my blogger…

The Evacuation of Wake

It looks like Supertyphoon Ioke could completely overwash one of the U.S. possessions in the Pacific--the tiny Wake Island, which is comprised of 3 coral atolls and houses about 200 people who have now been evacuated. Apparently the whole thing could be entirely underwater from this massive and dangerous storm, currently posting maximum sustained winds of 130 knots, or almost 150 miles per hour, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (which also says Ioke is creating 46 foot waves). All of which means that nothing other than concrete could be left intact on Wake if this thing hits…

Bush Flip-Flops on Global Warming

Well, here's what he said yesterday: In the White House, only hours after that old elm had fallen, Bush was addressed by a reporter, thus: "I know that you are not planning to see Al Gore's new movie, but do you agree with the premise that global warming is a real and significant threat to the planet?" "I have said consistently," answered Bush, "that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary ... to be good stewards of the environment, become less…

There Will Always Be Fakers

As I've noted previously, there have been attempts to question the scientific peer review process following the Hwang Woo Suk scandal. But a Rick Weiss article in the Washington Post over the weekend helpfully explains why it's naive to think that peer reviewers can catch this kind of chicanery: Despite all the recent hand-wringing, there may be precious few new lessons to be learned from the Korean debacle, several experts said. Even the journal editors who promised to beef up their screening of submitted manuscripts say privately they doubt there is a practical way to intercept the small…

Pleased to meet you

"Worker Bee" by Motion City Soundtrack I have been writing here at ScienceBlogs.com for about two years and nine months now. Some of you have been reading my posts since I started here (thank you for sticking with me!), but readers come and go over time, and so I am jumping on board with the "Who are you?" meme recently restarted by DrugMonkey, Pal, Janet, Bora, and Jason. Everyone is asking different questions of their readers - some more detailed ones than others - but I think I'll keep it relatively simple: who are you (feel free to comment anonymously or under a pseud, and be as…

Cognitive Daily Joins the 9rules Network

One of our missions at Cognitive Daily has always been to get our message about the science of psychology out to as large and diverse an audience as possible. So far, the message has been passed along mainly by the Internet equivalent of word of mouth—blogs—and we've been amazed at the number of people who've taken the time to read and comment on our articles. And though Cognitive Daily has now had over 80,000 visitors, we'd like to extend our message even further. So naturally, we were thrilled when Mike Rundle of the 9rules Network invited us to join. 9rules is a consortium of dozens of…

George Will: A Conservative "Intellectual"? Not.

There is this strange idea out there that George Will is a smart person's conservative. Maybe it's the bow-tie. But if you read his latest, scandalously hackish global warming column, you realize that nothing could be further from the truth. Any person who respects thought, ideas, knowledge, or the contemplative life--any person, in short, who deserves to be called an "intellectual"--could not write such a column; because any such person would have undertaken to learn something real about climate science before writing about it. Yet this Will manifestly has not done, or he could not make the…

Name The DeSmogBlog Book

DeSmogBlog will be putting out a book and it sounds like the publisher is ready for a title. Our co-blogger there, Richard Littlemore is taking suggestions and I encourage Intersection readers to add your ideas to the mix... Head over to provide feedback on the titles already being considered, vote, rewrite, or submit your own contenders. The three top possibilities win one of the great climate science books from the DSB library. Here's the list so far*: Climate of Change A look into the world of global warming science and it's opposition Climate of Denial Climate Science Fiction Exposing…

Outbreak At Sb

Sometimes, the overlords at Seed have good ideas. Scienceblogs for example. The energy blog. Even the new life sciences site. And other times, they go a bit off the deep end trying to hype up traffic by scaring the bejebus out of readers. Like today. Right now on the Sb homepage related to the latest topic at the life science blog: What should humanity anticipate from WWIII? Okay. Now I get bioterrorism is a serious threat. Nearly everyone in my Senate office was on Cipro after anthrax was found in the elevator on our side of the building. But that said, come on... 'WWIII'? Alarmist…

Nature: Scientists Urged to Plan for the Next US President

A pause during a busy day at Duke to post this fantastic piece from Nature: Quit whining and get proactive. That's the message that policy experts gave scientists at the weekend [AAA conference]. They advised them to stop complaining that politicians don't take science seriously and instead prepare for the presidential changeover next January. Scientists were urged to organize now -- for instance, by coming up with a list of names for high-profile science positions in the new administration, no matter who runs it. Later the article discusses Saturday's Boston debate and ScienceDebate2008:…

Should We Still Trust McCain on Global Warming?

The winner of the Florida Republican primary has been the farthest thing from a straight talker lately.... but still, over at DeSmogBlog I argue that we should credit his record and realize that, while he's more moderate than the Dems, he definitely wants mandatory action to happen--and that's what centrally counts. To wit: There seem to me to be two fundamental points. One: Anyone who cares about global warming should want McCain to vanquish his Republican opponents in the primaries. If we get McCain versus one of the Democrats in the general election, we'll have two candidates who want…

Memo to James Hansen: Knock Off the Holocaust References

I am quite confident that most readers of this blog would agree that NASA's James Hansen is a pretty big hero. Nevertheless, he shouldn't be saying stuff like this: Recently, after giving a high school commencement talk in my hometown, Denison, Iowa, I drove from Denison to Dunlap, where my parents are buried. For most of 20 miles there were trains parked, engine to caboose, half of the cars being filled with coal. If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains - no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded…

Those Real Estate Developers in Mesa, Arizona Could Use a Geography Lesson

On the bookshelf of bad ideas, this one would be an epic: Developers Plan Massive Water Park in Arizona Desert Unfortunately, this seemingly absurd story is moving toward full blown project. My post on our freshwater crisis is now up over at Correlations. Here's an excerpt: Do we, uh, really need a new water park in Arizona? Because the idea just doesn't sit right with this conservation scientist. Actually, it shouldn't really sit right with anyone who has an interest in the future. Sure, water parks are fun for an afternoon - and lucrative for real estate developers. In fact, the one…

Cyclone Sidr: Starting to Contemplate the Impact

It seems 300 fishing boats and 1000 people are already missing in the storm. However, there's good news, too, according to Jeff Masters: The landfall point is a mangrove forest, not very populous. Still, the whole area has to expect a Katrina like storm surge upwards of 20 feet in some places. To quote Masters: The coast in western Bangladesh has the Sundarbans Forest, the world's largest forest of mangrove trees. This region is the least populated coastal area in the country, and has been part of a major reforestation effort in recent years. The portion of coast likely to receive the…

I get email

Sometimes, my email is a little disturbing. I AMI AM the "goddamned cracker" sir. This is a personal invitation. I am Karl Duane Anderson. I live at REDACTED in Fargo, North Dakota. If you want to desecrate the Body of Christ, please find out just what it is that you are desecrating. Come to my upstairs apartment and do it to me. What, a cracker is asking me to come to his apartment and nail him? I'm flattered, sir, but this is not Craig's List, I do not swing that way, and if I did, I would respond better to an invitation to dinner and a movie than to ordering me directly to your…

Even Darwin didn't like college

One of the most maddening aspects of my college education was that despite the dull and useless nature of many of my required courses I had no choice but to take them. You just can't buck tradition, everyone said, even if no one quite remembers why the tradition was started in the first place. Charles Darwin felt much the same during his time at the University of Edinburgh, and he too tried to only attend lectures that were of interest to him. Charles' father did not care for his son's lackadaisical attitude towards school, though, and in an 1826 letter Charles' sister Susan Elizabeth relayed…

Zombies are street legal in Minneapolis

A few years ago, a group of people dressed up as zombies for a protest march and got arrested for it. When arrested at the intersection of Hennepin Avenue and 6th Street N., most of them had thick white powder and fake blood on their faces and dark makeup around their eyes. They were walking in a stiff, lurching fashion and carrying four bags of sound equipment to amplify music from an iPod when they were arrested by police who said they were carrying equipment that simulated "weapons of mass destruction." I know. We're all on edge with the imminent threat of the zombie apocalypse, and it's…

Science, Sex, and Success

Can the federal government actually penalize universities that are not actively working to overcome subtle and unconscious gender bias by invoking Title IX of the Civil Rights Act? Step back and first consider these stats from Harvard on women in the life sciences: undergraduates: 57% doctoral students: 45% postdoctoral fellows: 37% assistant and associate professors: 31% full professors:13% Women in academia make less than our male counterparts, are promoted more slowly, and hold fewer leadership positions. So what's the big deal about examining gender bias? Cathy Young's Boston Globe…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Chris Mooney!

Today our very own Chris Mooney has officially been spinning around the sun for three decades! It's hard to imagine that's only a few revolutions more than me considering all he's accomplished... As Darth Vader once said, 'The Force is strong with this one.' In 30 years, my co-blogger's penned a couple books, made some folks uncomfy on Capitol Hill, and kept the blog going strong with higher traffic than ever. Now while most of us would agree that's quite a lot already, our favorite New Orleans native didn't stop there... His work is part of the Best American Science and Nature Writing…

"I want to grow oranges in the Arctic!"

The Bush administration climate "policy" is a sham and an embarrassment. The number of abuses against science--and of power--that we've seen on this topic over the past six years is overwhelming. Sometimes, though, one choice quote can capture it all far better than a laundry list of well-documented misbehaviors. A choice quote like, say, this one from a recent Rolling Stone expose on Bush and climate: One e-mail exchange about the study underscores just how many industry foxes were guarding the climate henhouse. When Matthew Koch (a White House energy adviser who today lobbies for API) saw…

Don't Look Now, But...

Sea surface temperatures in the North Indian tropical cyclone basin as of June 22, courtesy of Accuweather. Is a repeat of Cyclone Gonu--now estimated to have caused $ 6 billion in damage to Oman and Iran (actually much less than worst case scenarios would have predicted)--possible in the coming week? Over the past half week, a tropical cyclone known only as 03B developed in the Bay of Bengal and quickly moved ashore over the Indian subcontinent before it could intensify much. Still, meteorology blogger Margie Keiper writes that the associated precipitation contributed to the deaths of…

Greg Laden Owes Us an Apology and Retraction

From his blog: Camp 3, which is perhaps not as well defined, promotes the inclusion of theistic elements in evolutionary biology, in some cases explicitly in other cases as a kind of "fill in the blank," in order to provide a better approach to "framing" evolutionary biology. (Notice the closeness between the word "blank" and the word "gap.") Or at least, this is what they say. Explicit requests to ask them to clarify this key point have been left unanswered to my knowledge. Which is very worrisome, and sometimes makes me think Moran is right about the possibility that Nisbet and Mooney are…

When It Comes to Science Abuse, Don't Forget About Endangered Species

During the new Congress so far, we've seen multiple investigations related to the (mis)treatment of climate science by the Bush administration. These, I'm sure, will be ongoing. But as I've frequently said in public talks, perhaps the most pervasive abuses have occured on local endangered species issues, which have garnered less media coverage. Now it's time for the Democratic Congress to start digging around here as well. A new report from the Interior Department's inspector general, covered in the Times today, makes that clear. Substitute for Philip Cooney an Interior Department official…

The Sad Cyclone History of Antalaha

Antalaha, the namesake of this post, is a town on the northeastern coast of Madagascar. In 2000, according to CNN, Cyclone Hudah struck Antalaha and leveled "nearly every building." It appears that Hudah was a Category 4 storm at landfall. The United Nations added that the town was "approximately 95 perent destroyed," leaving three-quarters of the population, or 130,000 people, in need of emergency assistance. Four years later, Antalaha got hit again and it was--if that's possible--even worse. The storm was Cyclone Gafilo, and it was a full-fledged Category 5 at landfall. The hit on…

Casual Fridays: Are people with similar names more likely to pair up?

My grandfather's name was Vern, and he married a woman named Verna. They were together for more than 30 years until she died. Then he married Elvira. That's them (and great-granddaughter Nora) off to the right. They were together another 20 years. Yesterday we profiled a couple named Ben and Bernice. Is it a coincidence that these happily-married couples each had similar names? Are people more likely to marry others with first names similar to their own? If so, was this phenomenon something that was more common decades ago, or does it still happen today? We just might be able to find out. In…

Awww yeah...

I have spoken before of my fondness for book digitization projects, but there are still some improvements to be made. Many of the titles presently available via resources like Google Books are relatively low-quality and look no better than photocopies, but with the basic move towards digitization in place, there have been some movement towards enhancing the quality of rare, old books. Archive.org, for instance, has a number of titles available as high quality pdfs I had been unable to find on Google Books. Without it I would never have been able to see Arthur Keith's Antiquity of Man without…

Good news/Bad news

It's one of those days where it is now almost 4 pm and I have yet to get working on tomorrow morning's lecture. I'm also going to miss a self-imposed deadline to get a draft out to a collaborator. Instead, I spent the morning getting flu shots for Minnow and I and working with a student on a proposal to get a particular dataset for use on his/her thesis. There's a student-only RFP available and we're about 2/3 the way through the proposal. One of the pieces I was helping with involved contacting some other people who might be interested in having the same dataset for their own projects, and…

Alice chips in incentive to Donors Choose; and it's Annika's 8th birthday!

So the t-shirts mockups are being drafted, and the numbers of kids who are being helped are increasing based on your generosity, and I'm so psyched about our high number of donors compared to blogs with many more readers. Y'all rock! Therefore, it is high time for me to kick in my incentive. I will match ScienceWoman's 10% donation pledge. Based on the final amount of donations, which I hope will make at least $2000 from our blog readers and friends but not including SW's donation, I will add in 10% of the total, which I will add to whatever projects are closest to being funded. In…

Let them eat muffins

Domestic goddess, I am definitely not. But I do love to bake, though it is rare that I get the occasion. So when I saw a couple of bananas getting too brown on the counter, I seized the opportunity. Banana bread is too much work for a busy scientist-mama, but banana oatmeal muffins can easily be in the oven 10 minutes after you start. Even if you don't have quite all the right ingredients. Recipe and a photo below the fold. 1.5 cup flour 1 cup rolled oats 0.5 cup granulated sugar 2 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. baking soda 0.5 tsp salt 2 eggs 0.25 cup milk Ingredients as written in my cookbook…

The Virtual Lab Series

Bertalan has found the Virtual Labs Series, a fantastic educational resource produced for science teachers and students by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The series includes the Transgenic Fly Virtual Lab, the Bacterial Identification Lab, the Cardiology Lab, the Immunology Lab and - my favourite - the virtual Neurophysiology Lab. Each of the virtual labs has an interactive set of the appropriate apparatus, which comes complete with background information about the experimental setup to be used and the underlying biological concepts. At the virtual neurophysiology…

Senile old fool

James Watson and Francis Crick made the most significant discovery of the twentieth century: they elucidated of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953, and later shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their work. So Watson and Crick are very illustrious, to say the least. But when Watson continues to make racist statements such as this, he loses much of his credibility, and one finds it very difficult to take him seriously: [I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -…

Shyness is not a psychiatric condition

In an op-ed from yesterday's NY Times, Christopher Lane, a professor of English at Northwestern University, argues that shy kids are not mentally ill, and that they shouldn't be given medication. The piece brought to mind this critique of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), by L. J. Davis: Current among the many symptoms of the deranged mind are bad writing (315.2, and its associated symptom, poor handwriting); coffee drinking, including coffee nerves (305.90), bad coffee nerves (292.89), inability to sleep after drinking too much coffee (292.89), and…

Spikes & maps in the brain

This week, I've received three books which I'll be writing about in the near future: My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Dully was lobotomized at the age of 12 at the behest of his stepmother - that's him on the right, holding an instrument identical to the one he was lobotomized with; this book is his memoir. The Lobotomist, by Jack El-Hai, a biography of Walter Freeman, the psychiatrist who, in 1960, performed Dully's lobotomy. The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee. This is about the somatosensory cortex, that part of the brain on which the…

I'm going to wear Helium today!

Yesterday I alluded to the wonder cabinet aesthetic of retailer Anthropologie. I love that store, though I can't afford to patronize it (not that insolvency always stops me). But I'm sometimes ambivalent about their use of science as marketing tool. Here's a screenshot from their latest web ad campaign, "It's elemental": Ok. . . the "science behind our March outfits?" What does that even mean? And what do any of these outfits have to do with their respective elements? A few do use the "right" colors, but I feel like this collection was compiled by the contestants of Project Runway: "Your…