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Rule #2: No Jeans

I have a confession to make. I would wear a pair of jeans any day over something more formal. I just find it more comfortable, and I maintain that you can look just as good in the right pair of jeans as in a pair of, for example, black slacks. As a result, I often try to justify the wearing of jeans in times that, if really pressed, I would probably admit it wasn't entirely appropriate or proper. But then again, jeans can be nice. Jeans can be professional-looking. Obviously I wouldn't wear jeans during the days of a conference in which I'm presenting my work - but what about the other days?…

Science and the European Elections: Chemical Safety

This entry is part of the Science and the European Election series, a collaboration between SciencePunk and the Lay Scientist blog to encourage public discussion of the science policies of the major parties standing at the forthcoming European elections. In 2007, The REACH act came into force, addressing the potential harm to humans and the environment of all chemicals imported to and manufactured in the EU. Critics point out that this will require a significant increase in animal testing. How will you balance these concerns with the need to assess the safety of chemicals in our food and…

Send In The (Abstinence) Clowns

For the last few weeks, community action site Amplify Your Voice have been chronicling the extraordinary vestiges of the Bush administration's disastrous policies on sexual health and education: Derek Dye, the Abstinence Clown. Derek Dye is supported by Elizabeth's New Life Center, a Christian-orientated organisation that received a federal grant of $800,000 in 2007. Dye appears to be a little more reticent to wear these religious overtones during his talks, preferring instead to compare pre-marital sex to juggling with machetes. For a person whose success depends upon popularity, it was…

A Great Opportunity to Support Science Education

The ScienceBlogs bloggers, led by Janet, are trying to raise money to fund in class projects for math and science teachers. To donate to the evolgen pledge drive, click here and choose one of listed proposals to partially fund. I have also posted a link to the DonorsChoose website on my sidebar (on your left), and it will remain there until July 1, when we end our push for donations. More information can be found below. The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon! Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth…

Quote-mined by Casey Luskin!

Once again, Casey Luskin demonstrates that he's a biological ignoramus. He is much buoyed by a science report that chloroquinone resistance in the malaria parasite requires two mutations, claims that Michael Behe has been vindicated because that's exactly what he said, and demands an apology from all of Behe's critics. Will Ken Miller, Jerry Coyne, Paul Gross, Nick Matzke, Sean Carroll, Richard Dawkins, and PZ Myers Now Apologize to Michael Behe? No. Here's what his critics actually said. We have no problem with the idea that a particular functional phenotype requires a couple of mutations;…

Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them

This post is a bitch-fest. Don't read any further if you have no interest in hearing me complain. The only reason I'm posting this is because I figure some of the people who read this blog find themselves in the same boat as me. This summer, I will be attending the Society for the Study of Evolution annual meeting for the first time. I figured the meeting is in Long Island, New York so I may as well check it out when it's in my neck of the woods (last year it was in Alaska and next year it will be in New Zealand). The Evolution Meeting has a reputation of being less work and more play than…

What Makes a Conference Good?

There's a fun article in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology on what distinguishes a good scientific meeting from a not so good one. The author advocates attending small meetings or workshops (under 100 people), which is tough for a young scientist. Small workshops are usually either not well advertised or difficult to get to. The only small meetings that I attend are local meetings, and the only workshops I go to are the workshops that are hosted at larger meetings. For a young scientist, large nation/international meetings allow for the most interaction with the most people in your…

Copy Number Polymorphism

I have a little bit of an infatuation with copy number polymorphism (CNP), which describes the fact that individuals within a population can differ from each other in gene content. Some genes, such as olfactory receptors (ORs), have many different related variants in any animal genome. New copies spring up via duplication events (a type of mutation), so one could imagine that individuals from a single population differ in the number of copies of these genes. In fact, this is the case with any gene or gene family (a group of related genes) in the genome -- there may be duplications…

Help ScienceBlogs Raise Money for Science Classrooms

OK, people, here's your chance to help out science and math classrooms with much needed funding and to show everybody here at ScienceBlogs that The Scientific Activist has the best damn readers around! To donate to a worthy cause, click here. The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon! Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading the blogs here, chances are you feel the same way. A lot of us fell in love with science because of early experiences in school -- teachers who made science…

Steve Steve has the Smarch of his Life -- Volume 3: 12 Drosophila Genomes

This post is part of a series documenting Professor Steve Steve's recent visit to Philadelphia for the Drosophila Research Conference (aka, the Fly Meeting). In the previous two installments of Steve Steve in Philly, we finally managed to meet up despite the best efforts of the staff at the Marriott to prevent our rendezvous, and we got Steve Steve up to date on the newest developments in fly pushing and Drosophila genetics. It had been quite a tiring day, so we ventured down to the hotel bar for a few drinks. Some of us were ready to hit the sack, but Steve Steve would have none if it; he…

Robot Does Monkey's Bidding

Two hundred pound robot lumbering along on tread mill, doing the bidding of a monkey several thousand miles away.An international and interdisciplinary team of scientists have developed a robot that will carry out physical activities in imitation of the activities of a monkey. The monkey and the robot are hooked together via the internet. The monkey has a brain-machine interface. When the monkey moves along on a treadmill, the robot mirrors those movements. The monkey and the robot need not be anywhere near each other, of course. In fact, it is probably a good idea to keep them in…

The Origin of Syphilis

Syphilis is first clearly seen in Europe in 1495, when it appeared as a plague (though it was not "the blague" ... Yersinia pestis) among Charles VIII's troops. When these troops went home shortly after the fall of Naples, they brought this disease with them, staring an epidemic. The level of mortality in Europe was truly devastating. Is it the case that syphilis was brought to Europe by Columbus and his men just prior to the plague-like outbreak of 1495? The origin of syphilis has been debated for years, really since the actual 1495 event itself. Some researchers have asserted that…

Linking increased mortality to carbon dioxide emissions

A Stanford scientist has spelled out for the first time the direct links between increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increases in human mortality, using a state-of-the-art computer model of the atmosphere that incorporates scores of physical and chemical environmental processes.... The new findings, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, come to light just after the Environmental Protection Agency's recent ruling against states setting specific emission standards for this greenhouse gas based in part on the lack of data showing the link between carbon dioxide…

Sunlight makes a vicious strain of bacteria even more dangerous

A team of researchers has figured out that that certain bacteria can tell the difference between light and dark, and become ten times more virulent when exposed to sunlight... This not a really new story, but i think it might interest you. This is the first time light has been shown to change the course of a bacterial disease. And these particular bacteria are probably not alone: As many as one-third of other bacterial species may react to light by producing physiological or chemical changes. Brucella, the bacteria that cause the infectious disease brucellosis, and more than 100 other kinds…

How to make homeopathy work

Homeopathy involves the acquisition of a substance often chosen because of its harmful nature (but sometimes for other reasons) followed by the dilution of that substance, or an extract of it, in water numerous times until the substance itself is essentially gone, but the memory of the substance is retained by the water. This water, with the memory, is then considered by homeopathic practitioners to be an effective treatment for various conditions. The basic principle of using a harmful substance to produce a sort of counter-reaction, or a beneficial reaction, is interesting. And, the idea…

How To Use Linux ~ 03 Files

This is the third in our six or seven part series on how to use Linux if you are a regular smart person who needs a functioning computer but is not a geek. Today, a few items to know about files. All computer systems keep your data and stuff in file, and you probably know that "programs" (applications) can be files (or sets of files) and that there are configuration files, etc. There are a few things about the Linux system, regarding files, that you should probably know, or at least, have a place to look up in case you need to. This is more of a list than a coherent story, so here's the…

A True Ghost Story Part 4: I see dead people. Hey, It's my job!

I wrote earlier about the graves that were dug daily to receive the dead. In truth, the details of this procedure are still being worked out by archaeologists at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, but when we were there on this particular trip, part of the grave yard to which I refer had been just discovered, accidentally uncovered during a public works drainage project. I've never seen anything quite like it in all my years as an archaeologist. It should not have been terribly surprising that there were graves in this particular patch of land, just across a small road from an existing…

Raymond Finney asks questions, I got answers

State senatory Raymond Finney of Tennessee (a retired physician—hey, we've been making Orac squirm uncomfortably a lot lately) has just filed a resolution that asks a few questions. Actually, he's demanding that the Tennessee Department of Education answer these questions within a year or … well, I don't know what. He might stamp his foot and have a snit. (1) Is the Universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator? Understand that this question does not ask that the Creator be given a name. To…

A former animal researcher speaks out

Dario Ringach used animals in his research in neuroscience. When extremist animal rights activists tried to blow up his house in 2006, and accidentally almost blew up the wrong person's house (in characteristic fashion, they got the address wrong, and the bomb did not function) Ringach got spooked and quit using the animals. Recently, Ringach has been speaking out regarding this issue, and the current Nature News has a write up. After three years of keeping a low profile, Ringach is now trying to raise public support for the use of animals in research. This month, he published a commentary…

How to live trap a squirrel

It is not recommended that you trap and move squirrels. It may be illegal in your state, and since squirrels have teeth and may carry disease, it could be dangerous. But if you MUST trap a squirrel to move it, say, to a point a few blocks away, I suggest using a Havahart trap. Havahart traps can also be used to trap other animals such as mice, or larger critters, depending on the size of the trap. The best way to trap a squirrel is to use the proper bait and a modicum of patience. Also, you must be diligent if you plan to trap the animal live. therefore, place the trap in an area where…

From Fit to Fat to Fit: Funny haha, funny strange

Funny Thing Two and Funny Thing Three. ...... continued Second funny thing: BFF Stephanie and I were working in the free weight area of the Kimberly gym one evening. There were a lot of people there. Then these two meaty looking guys came in and tossed a big rubber thingie on a bench. One of the guys then proceeded to unpack the rubber thingie, and it was some kind of shirt or jacket, much like (yet different from) a wet suit. So Guy One starts to put the jacket thing on, and Guy Two is helping him, but it seems to be several sizes too small. These two guys struggled and struggled and…

Summer Reading

It utterly shocks me every time I make a reference to plastic alligators, Macy's bags with poisonous snakes in them, a guy named Skink or my favorite Bass Lure .... the Double Whammy .... and people look back at me with blank stares. Like, don't you get it? "To be or not to be" jokes or allusions to Sherlock Holmes are always understood. Or at least, people pretend to get them. But does no one read contemporary literature? It is impossible, actually, to explain Carl Hiaasen's novels to anyone without sounding like a fool. All such attempts, made by anybody, start out with an honest…

Reclaiming vicious dogs

Given all the heartbreaking stuff that's going on with our dog this week, I'm rather grateful to John Lehrer for pointing me to this uplifting article about the dogs abused by the evil and despicable Michael Vick. It turns out that that bastard didn't end up leaving all his dogs so vicious that euthanasia is the only option or too vicious to be reclaimed. Through love and hard work, most of the dogs have been saved: Of the 49 pit bulls animal behavior experts evaluated in the fall, only one was deemed too vicious to warrant saving and was euthanized. (Another was euthanized because it was…

Stuff I didn't have time to blog about...

I'm not normally one to do link roundups or Instapundit-style one sentence "link and comment" posts. Sure, I do them occasionally, but I think the reason that I don't is that to me blogging is a way to express my views, not just to point to the views at others (in other words, because I'm just too enamored of my own prose). However, because of a bizarre confluence of my being at the AACR meeting and a bunch of good stuff showing up, there were some items that I just didn't have the chance to comment on, even though I wanted to. Moreover, because I want to do a couple of posts on the AACR…

John McCain panders to antivaccination zealots

Well, now I'm really in a pickle as far as the 2008 Presidential election goes. I really don't like Hillary Clinton and consider Barack Obama not ready for prime time; i.e., he's too inexperienced and too liberal for my liking. On the other hand, I used to like John McCain--at least until he started pandering to the religious right and became a cheerleader for the Iraq war. Now I have another reason not to vote for John McCain, which leaves me with not a single Presidential candidate that I can see myself voting for right now. John McCain has credulously fallen for the blandishments of…

Economical Numbers and the Bailout

Richard Feynman once said of large numbers that "astronomical" was no longer the best adjective. "Economical" was. There are more dollars in the national debt than there are miles in a lightyear. Today we're getting a some exposure to one of those numbers: $700 billion. It's the size of the bailout of the various failing banks. People like to trot out the Iraq war (if I may link to an anti-war site so you can be sure the cost is not biased downward) when discussing how federal money could be better spent, so let me do the same thing. The five years of the Iraq war have cost more than $…

Dishwashing in the Gulf

Let's start with some slightly, okay, more than slightly depressing numbers: Since the devastating explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig almost three weeks ago, more than 1.7 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and more than 250,000 gallons of chemical dispersant have been sprayed onto that spill in an effort to contain the damage. Everyone agrees that it's the enormous slick of oil that we should really worry. But in the last week, questions have also been raised about the cleaning chemicals flooding into the Gulf. Although the amount pales, as they say,…

Like the shining dawn

The chemical symbol for the metallic element gold is Au, taken from the Latin word aurum meaning 'shining dawn'. In the Periodic Table of Elements it occupies a companionable neighborhood of other metals, tucked neatly between platinum (Pt) and mercury (Hg). But as origin of its chemical symbol indicates, we've long found difficult to be prosaic about an element that possesses such a sunlit beauty. People have been creating ornaments of gold for more than 5,000 years; whole myths have been created about it, such as the ancient Greek tale of King Midas, who loved gold so much that he persuaded…

Remembering mustard gas

Last week, the U.S. Army announced that its excavation old chemical munitions dump - unfortunately located in one of Washington D.C.'s more elegant neighborhoods - had turned up remnants of two of the ugliest weapons developed in World War I. By which I mean compounds used in the production of mustard gas and the arsenic-laced blistering agent Lewisite. In fact - this is my favorite part - the glassware used in Lewisite production started smoking as workers exposed it, halting the excavation for safety reasons. The 1920s nickname for Lewisite, by the way, was "dew of death." But despite the…

The Queen of Poisons

The poison, according to Greek mythology, could be traced to the gates of hell. It dripped from the jaws of Cerberus, the hulking three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld. For centuries, it's carried the  taint of dark magic. The ancient Greeks called it the Queen of Poisons, the deadliest of all. People called it wolfsbane, dogsbane, even - rather horrifyingly - wifesbane. The poison's reputation has intrigued writers over the years. Oscar Wilde used it in his story of a determined murderer, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime. It was used  by a character in James Joyce's…

Serious apologies, and a proposition

Another reason it's been quiet around here is that comments haven't been appearing. This was my fault (though I am innocent of any ill intent), and I apologize with all my heart. What happened was this: I was getting quite a bit of the particularly obnoxious kind of spam that copies other comments to appear legitimate. I cranked up the behind-the-scenes spam filter, which cheerfully snaffled every single comment and then bitbucketed them after a few days. I didn't notice this (except to wonder why nobody was commenting! I figured it was me…) until one gentleman asked me in gmail today whether…

Making author authority easier

I wrote last week about name authority control for authors. I hinted that systems are coming. I hope that journals, databases, catalogues, and repositories adopt them when they emerge, the sooner the better. Even when they do, though, there's an immense problem to solve, in the form of the millions (billions? I shouldn't wonder) of articles that will have to be retrofitted into the system. It's work not unlike what I'm doing at the moment, so I can say with authority (sorry, sorry) that it's often not easily accomplished. Researchers, institutions, others, you can do some things to make the…

Drink to your health?

We've all noted the fickleness of the nutritional standards. One week we're told that eating eggs is tantamount to courting death; the next week, they're deemed safe in moderation. One second eating pasta is called the Mediterranean Diet; the next second, enjoying a spaghetti dinner is the equivalent of mainlining lard. First coffee is good for you; and then it's bad for you. We all switch to decaf only to find out that it's even worse for you. Up until about three months ago, I was as bewildered as everyone else. But now that I spend a good chunk of my time perusing scientific journals, I'm…

Deciding the conclusion ahead of time

Mark Thoma links to a report by Michael Shear on a leaked memo from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama's health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation's economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a top Chamber official. The e-mail ... proposes spending $50,000 to hire a "respected economist" to study the impact of health-care legislation ... would have on jobs and the…

Bookstore market failure

For a webzine that has "Where free markets meet technology" in its masthead, Tech Central Station sure seems to have little faith in the ability of free markets to provide consumers with what they want. Consider this column by Glenn Reynolds. Reynolds reckons that bookstore employees are driving customers away: Even my hard-core lefty colleagues have noticed the wall of Bush-bashing books that are prominently displayed at the entrance to every bookstore in town, and to my surprise, one of them told me the other day that it was turning him off.…

Medicine is still hard

I'm passionate about medicine. I love practicing it, teaching it, learning it...everything about it. It's also damned scary sometimes. Knowledge changes; patients don't walk in with textbook diseases; and you have to be able to doubt yourself without drowning in indecision. Every time a patient brings me an article or monograph that looks relevant to their care, and it's new to me, I have to go through it and see if there really is something to it. For example, there has been some data recently about popular medications for acid reflux (called PPIs, including such medications as…

I do not think it means what you think it means

By now, we all know that the Huffington Post represents the zombification of medical news---interesting ideas are taken, eviscerated of any real meaning, their innards replaced with pablum, and the reanimated creature set loose on the world. Reanimation of the undead is, it would seem, a rather addictive behavior, because HuffPo just keeps at it. Another one of their fake experts is "Dr" John Neustadt. The scare quotes indicate that John is not a doctor in any recognized sense: he's a "naturopathic doctor", representing a fringe, vitalistic health cult. But that fact isn't made clear.…

Raise your hand if you just don't get it

I love my commenters. Some of them are really, really smart. I'd like to share an exchange with you, but first the context. Morgellons syndrome is a label created by an American woman to describe a group of people who all believe they have mysterious fibers coming out of their skin. I've posted a bit on this before, but basically, there is not evidence of a discrete disease entity here, other than, perhaps delusions of parasitosis. When these fibers and sores are examined by reputable medical authorities, they are invariably bits of environmental fluff, such as clothing fibers. There are…

It's never going to end

Deepak Chopra is still blathering on. I'm afraid that while he can't shut up, I can ignore him, and this will be my last response to his drivel; it's also the last time I'll be linking to the Huffington Post. Arianna Huffington's exercise in indiscriminate narcissism is not the direction I want to see liberals taking, and while my voice isn't a significant one, I can at least deny the kook wing of the Left my tiny bit of support. This time the obsessive small-minded mystic is still whining against science and reason, still railing against his own idiotic imaginings. But how can anyone…

It's all OK if you are a Christian

Our country, with the approval and encouragement of George W. Bush, has been carrying out a program of religious indoctrination and the unconstitutional endorsement of evangelical Christianity. Federal money has been funneled into "faith-based" programs that make religious dogmatists prosper, and have no other actual, real-world value. The clearest examples are the prisons, where con artists like Chuck Colson have been engaged in a kind of ministry that is actually religious extortion and bribery. The cells in Unit E had real wooden doors and doorknobs, with locks. More books and computers…

The Best Parts of Science

(Again from the archives) After having written about the worst, why not write about the best things about science? Here goes: 1 - Discovery. One of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a researcher was peering down at the microscope and seeing something that I know has never been seen in the history of mankind. It's funny, the first thing you want to do is ... tell somebody. When my thesis advisor discovered that cells have different types of microtubules (a truly unexpected finding) it was the middle of the night. Apparently, he rushed off to explain the big discovery to the only other…

Are Phosphoinositides "the center of the universe"?

(This is an intro to a n upcoming entry.) When I was an undergrad, working in a lab at McGill, my then boss Morag Park would joke that Phosphoinositides were at the center of the universe. What did she mean by that? Well inositol metabolism seemed to be involved in everything, including oncogenesis and cell migration the only two important cellular activities. So what the hell is inositol, phosphoinositides and all those inositol metabolites? I'll make this simple and then overload your neocortex. Inositol is a sugar polyalcoholcyclohexane molecule. It's hydroxyl groups can be phosphorylated…

Nomenclature

Everyone is all up in arms about whether Pluto (+ other massive objects at the far end of our solar system) is a planet. It would seem like every ScienceBlog blogger expounded his/her opinion on the subject. I thought this would be a one day affair in our ADD world, but again this morning I pick up the NYTimes and there is an Editorial entitled "Dissing Pluto and other Plutons". (The NYTimes used the word Dissing???) The trouble is, the new definition of a planet will include an awful mélange of icy rocks found on the outer fringes of the solar system. It would be far better to expel Pluto…

The Best Parts of the Scientific Life

(From a previous entry on my old blog) After having written about the worst, why not write about the best things about science? Here goes: 1 - Discovery. One of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a researcher was peering down at the microscope and seeing something that I know has never been seen in the history of mankind. It's funny, the first thing you want to do is ... tell somebody. When my thesis advisor discovered that cells have different types of microtubules (a truly unexpected finding) it was the middle of the night. Apparently, he rushed off to explain the big discovery to the…

Glass Menagerie

No that's not real and neither are the others in the post! Argonauta Argo, National Museum& Gallery, Cardiff Spending time at the Museum Comparative Zoology at Harvard (MCZ), a Museum of a Museum, I realize the potential for items to get lost in unvisited cabinets. This happens regularly in my own brainoffice. Eureka! Paula Holahan, a curator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Zoological Museum, noting a series of keyholes under the exhibit cases decided to explore. After excavating the keys, she was quite surprised to find several boxes of glass sculptures of marine…

The first day of the rest of my summer!

It's going to be a good season, I can tell already. It's finals week, so I'll still have an abrupt pile of grading to do on Thursday, but otherwise, my teaching obligations are done for the semester. Now I'm trapped, trapped I tell you, in Morris for almost (I do have two quick trips to Europe planned) the entire summer with a collection of administrative responsibilities, but the good part of that is that I have ambitious plans for what I'll be doing in the lab. I'm also going to be living the good life. So this morning I slept in to 7:00. I know, it's slothful of me, but I have the freedom…

A Curve Ball From the NZ Seafood Industry

Greenpeace map suggesting that areas proposed for clousre by the NZ Seafood Industry are unfishable and thus not under threat. Back in over a year ago the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council proposed the establishment of 30 Benthic Protection Areas (BPAs). The combined area of these would be 1.2 million sq km (4x the size of New Zealand) and 30% of NZ Exclusive Economic Zone. What does a BPA mean? These areas would be off limits to trawling by fishing companies. Marine biologist Dr Steve O'Shea [of giant squid fame] said he was blown away by the proposal, the likes of which he…

OceansWide

[OceansWide is a new nonprofit based in Maine dedicated to giving the opportunity of deep-sea exploration to youth. The program brings together students, the community, research scientists, and ROV pilots to educate youth through actual ongoing research. A wonderful program that is looking for donations for the purchase of equipment for the program (picture above and below). The statement below is from OceanWide's President, Buzz Scott. PLEASE LINK TO THIS POST ON YOUR BLOG TO HELP SPREAD THE WORD!] We've done it now!  We started an educational/scientific program called OceansWide and it is…

ARCHIVE: 25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea: #4 The Deep Sea Has Extremely High Species Diversity

It had been assumed for a century before that the deep-sea fauna was depauperate, and prior to then that the great depths were essentially sterile. These ideas were largely a carry over from Edward Forbes in the late 1800's, who proposed the azoic hypothesis for the deep sea. Interestingly, his idea was largely based on samples from the Aegean Sea now known to have relatively low densities of organisms compared to other deep-sea areas. The lack of deep-sea life was overturned by several later reports of deep-sea species attached to sounding lines and the dredging cruises of the H.M.S.…

Rock Drummers = Top Athletes?

So says the BBC. Researchers tested oxygen uptake and heart rate for rock drummers, including Blondie's Clem Burke. They concluded: "It is clear that their fitness levels need to be outstanding - through monitoring Clem's performance in controlled conditions, we have been able to map the extraordinary stamina required by professional drummers." and further, "It is hoped that the results could help develop outreach programmes for overweight children who are not interested in sport." Hey, a study aimed right at the intersection of my avocations. Wonderful! I've been drumming for about 40 years…