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Fumento: still no denial

Fumento has now made three posts on his blog and a whole pile of comments on other blogs in response to my revealing his use of a sock puppet. He has called me a liar, claimed that I am insane and falsely accused me of using sock puppets myself. What he hasn't done is deny that Tracy Spenser was his sock puppet. I wonder why not? This comment from Fumento is pretty funny: Meanwhile, since I made my first post on Lambert's Vendetta.com my site has been swamped with vile fake trackbacks for non-existent pornographic URLs. None before that posting; about 40 a day now. Coincidence? I find it…

Mark Steyn, Creationist

Mark Steyn gets this email : ARE YOU A CREATIONIST? I enjoy your various articles in the Speccie, torygraph etc and agree with most of what you say and your support for Right views. But I am concerned with your right-wing mates in the US and UK who seem to be on the intelligent-design rubbish bandwagon. I hope you will distance yourself from them in future articles on this subject as there is no evidence for their views at all whereas evolution is supported by enormous volumes of evidence. You don't strike me as a creationist irrationalist. And responds with: The fact is that this is a…

LA Times publishes Lott

Kevin Drum is not pleased that the LA Times has yet again published a piece by John Lott. You generally expect some dodgy statistics from Lott and he duly delivers: Well, more than nine months have passed [since the assault weapons ban ended] and the first crime numbers are in. Last week, the FBI announced that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6% last year, the first drop since 1999. The trend was consistent; murders kept on declining after the assault weapons ban ended. Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assault weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders…

What's he got that I haven't?

In all the confusion, work, and excitement of the last week, including an NIH study section and a trip to give a talk, you may have thought that I've forgotten about a monthly feature that has been ongoing here since the very beginning and that will likely continue as long as (1) this blog exists and (2) Fleet keeps sending me calendars. If you're in college, as apparently our intrepid blog mascot and promoter of colon health is, March is usually the month during which your spring break appears. Of course, when I was in college at the University of Michigan, spring break used to be at the…

Vacation's end

Sadly, for many, today marks the end of their vacation (or at least of their long weekend). Fortunately, I was smart enough (as well as able) to take one last precious day off tomorrow to head into the city and check out an exhibit at the Met that my wife and I want to see. As I prepared to take a week and a half off just before Christmas, I had been concerned that I had not heard anything from my intrepid blog mascot (no, not the Hitler Zombie). Would 2007 be a year without him? Fortunately, the answer is a resounding "No!" He's back, and badder than ever. In fact, you might even say he's…

Poor old David Irving, he must be kicking himself

Heh (I can't resist one last tweek): Poor old David Irving, he must be kicking himself after being released early by the Austrian authorities. Had the discredited Holocaust denier been set free just a few days earlier, he would have been able to shoot off for a few days to sunny Iran, in the company of David Duke and an assorted rag-bag of other dangerously deranged Jew-haters. Of course, whether the anti-semitic revisionist would have taken centre stage or would have been forced into the shadows by the arguably more abhorrent Aaron Cohen of the Neturei Karta is a moot point. But don't worry…

The David Irving bet

With the impending release of David Irving, my mind turned to wondering about what he'll do when he gets out. His finances are a ruin. He's ticked off his fellow Holocaust deniers by saying that there were indeed homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. This discussion led to a question, which led to some prognosticating by me and others on a discussion board: When will Irving show up in the U.S. to give speeches before far right wing groups to try to replenish his depleted bank account? Current favorites range from around two weeks after his release to around a month after his release. What do…

On The Secret

Via Angry Toxicologist, John Gravois on The Secret: Oprah, I don't think you've done quite enough to make up for turning the Law of Attraction into the biggest thing since TomKat. Since you gave it your endorsement, The Secret has become one of the fastest-selling books and probably the most successful infomercial in history. The gaggle of gurus who peddle The Secret's message all over the world are still out there, arguing that it is the answer to every atrocity and tragedy. One went so far as to blame the suffering in Darfur on stinkin' thinkin'. That's a lot to answer for. But don't worry…

Riyadh Lafta to speak at SFU

The Globe and Mail has more details about Lafta's visit to Simon Fraser: A highly regarded Iraqi epidemiologist who wants to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children will come to Canada instead because he couldn't get a visa to the United States. Unable to travel to the University of Washington, Riyadh Lafta -- best known for a controversial study that estimated Iraq's body count in the U.S.-led war in Iraq at more than half a million -- will arrive at Simon Fraser University in B.C. this month to give a lecture and meet with research associates. Dr. Lafta…

Climate Fraudit

The graph below shows the predictions of James Hansen's 1988 climate model overlaid (in blue) with observed temperatures. Hansen's scenarios B and C have turned out to be very good predictions of what actually happened. Of course, it is an article of faith amongst the global warming skeptics that the models are wrong, so what do they do? Well, there are only two things you can do to make Hansen look bad -- you can misrepresent the results of his model, or you can misrepresent the instrumental record. The first approach is the one taken by Pat Michaels, who dishonestly erased scenarios B…

Fred Barnes caught making it up

Zachary Roth was intrigued by this passage from a Fred Barnes column in the Weakly Standard: Democrats couldn't hide their self-consciousness about the excesses of their own bill. Supporters made few TV appearances to defend it and rarely talked about specific spending items. Obama sounded like Al Gore on global warming. The more the case for man-made warming falls apart, the more hysterical Gore gets about an imminent catastrophe. The more public support his bill loses, the more Obama embraces fear-mongering. So he asked Barnes to provide details on how the case for AGW was falling apart:…

97% of active climatologists agree that human activity is causing global warming

Eos has just published the results of a survey of 3146 Earth Scientists conducted by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman. The graph below shows the results for this question: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? The 97% of active climatologists is 75 out of the 77 in the survey. Doran and Zimmermann say: While respondents' names are kept private, the authors noted that the survey included participants with well-documented dissenting opinions on global warming theory. I'm guessing that Lindzen and Spencer are the two…

Remember when right-wingers didn't trust Pravda?

John Quiggin suggests some reasons why the anti-science position on climate change has become an orthodoxy on the Right: There are many explanations, perhaps so many that the outcome was overdetermined - powerful economic interests such as ExxonMobil, the hubris associated with victories in economic policy and in the Cold War, tribal dislike of environmentalists which translated easily to scientists as a group, and the immunisation to unwelcome evidence associated with the construction of the rightwing intellectual apparatus of thinktanks, talk-radio, Fox News, blogs and so on. And…

They write poems about me

There seems to have been an outbreak of poetry about me from Right Wing Death Poets (RWDPs). Tim Blair: He was a hero to the blogosphere Across this wide brown land Tim Lambert of Scienceblogs.com With his clue stick in his hand The mighty throbbing clue stick! Tim gripped it like a lance And stroked and loved and cared for it He housed it in his pants Then the clue stick ceased to function Its mojo all was spent Tim whipped it out and waved it 'round But what had been had ... went Tim needed inspiration It came one day in class "Hey, fatso!" yelled a student "Shove your clue stick up…

Adam Shand update

Adam Shand's claim that it is just an assumption that summer is warmer than winter has achieved international fame. Shand removed any remaining doubt about where he stood with the classic move of copying a long list of papers that he reckoned questioned global warming from a AGW denial website. However, it seems he hadn't read any of them since he included Annan and Hargreaves "Can we believe in high climate sensitivity?, which supports the consensus that climate sensitivity is 3K per doubling of CO2. But no matter how ridiculous a claim is, you can always find someone in blogspace to defend…

Andrew Bolt goes quote mining

In his latest column, which is about polar bears or something, Andrew Bolt quote mines the NSIDC: And ssshhh. Don't mention that the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre says the extent of Arctic ice is in fact "greater than this time last year". That quote was brutally ripped from its context on this page, which says: Arctic sea ice still on track for extreme melt ... Although ice extent is slightly greater than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of May was 8,000 square kilometers per day (3,000 square miles per day) faster than last May. Ice extent as the month…

Banning Trolls

I don't like banning people from commenting here. To make sure this is transparent I keep a list here of everyone who is banned. Inspired by the example of John Quiggin, I've added a third name to the list, the poster who calls himself "Reality Check". Incidently, if you've missed the writings of JC (Joe Cambria) who I banned in January, he's obsessively commenting on postings here over at Catallaxy. Most recent rant: Another day, another smear attempt at the little fellas site. This time Tim Worstall gets a smearing because he dared not to accept Lambert's line which is that we must re-…

Schapira on malaria eradication

Allan Schapira is skeptical about the new call for malaria eradication: As much as I would like to point to progress in 2007 comparable to last year's advances, I feel compelled to point out that in international health, a development is taking place that may lead to wastage of resources, disillusionment, and ultimately loss of human life. A number of global leaders have now turned their eyes to elimination and eradication of malaria,[1] and malaria control is once again becoming a dirty word as it was in the 1950s, when malaria experts had convinced themselves and political leaders that the…

Veterans' Day 2006

In the U.S., today is Veterans' Day; elsewhere it's Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, marking 88 years since the truce that ended World War I. Whatever you're doing, please take a moment to reflect on the sacrifices our men and women in arms have made throughout history to protect our nation. Regardless of your views on the war, remember the sacrifices our troops are making now in Iraq. I happened to come across this video on YouTube; It's one man's tribute to his parents' service during World War II, and I think including it here is appropriate: And, finally, a poem that encapsulates the…

The Australian's War on Science 77

Michael Asten continues The Australian's war on science. In his latest piece (Google "Science hijacked at school level") Asten complains that secondary science education is not paying attention to the views of Ian Plimer on climate change. Perusal of the resources for secondary school physics students provided by the Australian Institute of Physics (Vic) Education Committee suggests some of our science educators have indeed lost the ability to teach objective and open-minded scientific inquiry. Web resources relating to climate science provided by this committee contain at least three…

It sure ain't the Lorax or the Grinch

Whoa…faux-Seussian poetry, fairly nice animation, all in the service of a dumb, dead idea: The Watchmaker. It's a rather elaborate setup for Paley's watchmaker argument that starts with an imaginary animated analogy of glass and metal condensing to spontaneously form a watch, and then compares the absurdity of that argument with cells, which contain "assembly lines, robots, electrical cable", and argues that it's silly to claim that cells could just happen from dirt and warm water…as if anyone has argued such a thing. Isn't it enough to simply point out that watches need watchmakers because…

Oxburgh refuted

Andrew Bolt comes up a killer argument to refute the findings of Oxburgh's committee: Oxburgh's "choice of transport to the press conference". You see, Oxburgh drove there in an enormous SUV, so obviously he doesn't really believe that the CRU scientists' work is sound, else he would have come on a bicycle or something. Oh wait, Oxburgh did arrive on a bicycle, so Bolt deploys a slightly different argument: Surely Oxburgh's choice of transport to the press conference on his Climategate findings should have made some journalists there wonder about his impartiality: ... You see ... Lord…

Organic farming better for yields?

A study done at the University of Michigan found that organic crops produced yields no different than conventional farming in developed countries and may actually increase the yields in developing countries. This could be for a couple of reasons including "narrow row spacings, environmentally friendly soil conservation practices and natural insect control" but also the general fact that organic farmers give a lot of though on how to get the most out of their land (possibly because the CW is that organic yields are less?). An MSU extension guy says that this doesn't jive with his experience,…

The Wells of Patience

patience (definition no. 1): the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. Some are just born with it. Some never are able to acquire it, reminding observers of a copperhead immediately after being stepped on. Some wield it with apparent ease, hiding the scars that bear witness to the recalcitrance in learning it. Some have it land on their shoulder like a butterfly, only to see it flutter away before leaving any of its magic. Some can produce it continuously, as if from a limitless…

Everybody cool it—this is a party, not a brawl

We seem to have some fresh meat new creationists coming by. It's been a while since we had such an opportunity—they seem to run away so quickly—so I'm going to remind everyone of the 3 comment rule. Please give people a chance to explain themselves before you decide to pound on them, OK? Abuse is a few doors down the hall, this is supposed to be Argument. Along those same lines, we have a few persistent trolls who keep coming back. I kill them as I see them (these are a few so far gone that they don't get disemvowelled, just junked), but please don't engage them. I'm going to start trashing…

No Apple computers for me

I had been a apple computer user for the past 5 years and immensely enjoyed the hardware and the software. But, all good things come at a price. Apple's price for a polished user experience has lately turned out to be user freedom. The inability to take out and use the content stored in apple's walled garden is stultifying. I understand that those who are not too keen to learn the innards of computer hardware and software may find apple's products liberating (that is why, Ramya still uses the mac for all her needs and I am fine with it). However, apple has broken faith with those who promoted…

Links from the MinuteMan

Tom Maguire has an interesting post which collects some links to blogspace discussion about the Appalachian Law School shootings. One interesting thing is that Lott and Kopel independently made the same error---they both claimed that the New York Times did not mention the defender's gun when it did. Both errors were particularly egregious. Kopel quoted a sentence from the article but did not notice that the gun was mentioned in the very next sentence. Lott counted the New York Times story as one of the four that mentioned the gun, but also claimed that…

For those of you new

For those of you new to Signout, I'm a first-year resident (i.e., an intern) in a medical residency program in the United States. Medical education is different all over the world. In the U.S., we spend four years getting a bachelor's degree (which doesn't need to be science-related); four years getting a medical degree (in which we take a standardized group of courses in medically related sciences and clinical medicine); anywhere from three to seven years training as a resident (all clinical, all the time, and standardized according to the requirements of the field in which the training is…

Accretionary Wedge: August is up, Sept is looking for posts

I almost missed the lastest Accretionary Wedge! In my defense, I was doing work related to the Wedge's theme - I was frantically getting ready for classes to start today, and I swore not to go through the accumulation in my RSS reader until I was ready to go. So, 13 hours after my first class began today, I'm finally catching up. If you're already as far behind as I am, maybe you'll be inspired by this month's Wedge, hosted at Dino Jim's Musings. The theme is "teaching out of the box," and the wedge is organized around the five senses. So if you want to know how you can use smell to teach…

Let the Flamewar Begin, Ben Stein

Here we go again, folks: Evolution is flawed because it can't tell us where life came from. The cell is too complex to have evolved by itself. Secularists are persecuting scientists who believe in God. Spin. Spin. Spin. Vacuous, vicious propaganda. Again. Let's not forget that Intelligent Design is not merely the belief that God created the universe, it is an attempt to displace science by allowing a hazy philosophical freedom of inquiry sans the scientific method. This is not about God or religion or freedom of speech, it's all about power plays and politics. My dislike of Stein has been…

Georgia Ecologist Announces Candidacy for Senate

It's true. Ecosystem analyst Dr. Rand Knight is running for senate in Georgia: From 2004 - 2006 Dr. Knight served as a Scientist for the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and received a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). Dr. Knight was part of a team that worked with the National Science Foundation and Congress to develop a continental-scale research platform for discovering, understanding and predicting the impacts of climate change, land-use change, and invasive species in urban and wild ecosystems. Rand Knight is a member of the…

CITES Rejects Bluefin Tuna Ban: Another Failure to See Fish as Wildlife

The UN has rejected the proposal that Atlantic bluefin tuna be listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, which is currently in session. CITES regulates the international trade of threatened species. All imports, exports and re-exports of species included in CITES must be authorized by a licensing system that is administered by the individual parties of the convention. Japan, which imports 80 percent of Atlantic bluefin and has led the opposition to the ban, reiterated its arguments that CITES should have no role in regulating tuna and other marine…

Civetone (Goofy-looking animal, nice-smelling ketone)

Hmmm, people don't like being told not to leave certain comments. Thanks for the snark and corrections of the chemical formula. I am off banned drug-related entries for a long while again, they're just not worth the hassle, and there's plenty of worthy molecules out there. Sorry to anyone who felt snubbed; let's talk about a giant ketone! Civetone is a macrocyclic ketone expressed by an animal that looks photoshopped: the African Civet. It is used in perfumery. "Macrocycles" are tricky to make - Nature loves five- and six-sided rings, but larger ones, such as civetone, are nearly as hard to…

Dess-Martin Reagent (Our iodine goes up to eleven! Or at least five...)

Normally, iodine just makes one bond, as you'd expect from a halogen. Some compounds, though, force it into lively higher oxidation states (hopefully without the tendency to explode, as some highly oxidized iodine reagents worryingly exhibit). There is a whole field of "hypervalent iodine" chemistry. A major use is to get something that is a good oxidizing agent, soluble in organic solvent, and milder than the time-honored usual suspects: things like permanganate or dichromate, which work a treat, but often too well, chewing your stuff up a bit more than you'd like. I (V) reagents tend to be…

Saccharin (Sweet, sweet amination)

Saccharin, like so many sweeteners, was discovered by accident. From the Wikipedia article: Saccharin's sweetness was accidentally discovered by Ira Remsen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Constantin Fahlberg, a research fellow working in Remsen's lab. In 1879, while working with coal tar derivatives (toluene), Remsen discovered saccharin's sweetness at dinner after not thoroughly washing his hands, as did Fahlberg during lunch. Remsen and Fahlberg jointly published their discovery in 1880 (Fahlberg, C.; Remsen, I. Ãber die Oxydation des Orthotoluolsulfamids. Chem. Ber. 1879, 12…

A reward well deserved

Jad Abumrad, co-host of the amazing "Radiolab" just won a McArthur genius grant - a $500,000 prize with almost no limits on how to spend it. If you've never listened to Radiolab, stop reading blogs, go download an episode sit back with a good pair of headphones. It's beautifully produced, a joy to listen to, and tells great science stories to boot. Many of my stock cocktail-party (or more often bar) stories should come with the disclaimer "I learned this on Radiolab." The last episode on "Games," was fantastic, especially since I listened to it just after doing this year's fantasy football…

Science gets under my skin

In my first year of graduate school, Professor Sam Behar was giving us a lecture about phagocytes, a group of cells that includes macrophages, neutrophils, and a number of other immune cells that tend to gobble things up. These cells are all over the place, and some can stay in the same place for many years. "How long?" he asked, and then clicked to a slide that had a picture of my back. To be fair, he didn't know it was my back - but all of my classmates did, and it was kind of awkward. The point he was trying to make is that phagocytes take up tattoo ink, but aren't able to break it down…

Why must you use that word, "Profit?"

I'm in the process of reading All the Devils are Here, and just got The Big Short for my birthday. It would seem that the story of the financial crisis, the resulting economic slump, and the battles over how to fix it are stories of human greed, striving for self-interest and reckless (self-imposed) ignorance. Why? Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang. The king said, "Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a distance of a thousand li, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?" Mencius replied, "Why must your Majesty use that word 'profit…

Ant-hunting from low earth orbit

A screen capture in Google Earth reveals a pattern of pasture freckles in Entre Rios, Argentina. How about a closer look? I drove past the site last week, and the landscape at ground level sports an array of domed mounds, each about half a meter in height: And the little engineer behind the mounds? Camponotus termitarius, the tacurú ant. This perky Argentinian native (often misidentified as C. punctulatus) frequently invades land degraded by agriculture and is an excellent example of how human land-use changes can convert an innocuous local species into a pest. In this case, the…

Research subjects should have access to their own data

My contribution to Genomics Law Report's superb "What ELSI is New" series is up now. The gist of my argument: as we move into an era of large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies and the utility of genomic information grows, researchers will increasingly frequently be faced with the discovery of highly medically relevant information within their subjects' genomes. Yet under the consent procedures established for most modern genetic research projects the anonymised subjects would never have a chance to learn about this information. As such, people will die from breast cancer and other…

ScienceBlogs One Millionth Comment Party in London

As ScienceBlogs prepares to receive its one millionth reader comment, ScienceBloggers are planning parties around the globe in celebration of the event. For our readers in London, Mo Costandi (Neurophilosophy), Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science), Selvakumar Ganesan (The Scientific Indian), Kara Contreary (Pure Pedantry), and I have planned a party on Saturday, 20 September. So, if you are in the area, please come and join us at the Calthorpe Arms, a pub near Russell Square and King's Cross (see details here,) from 7:00 pm until close. ScienceBlogs has given us $100 per blogger ($500…

House Passes CHIP Expansion

Here's some good news from Congress, where the House of Representatives yesterday passed HR 3162, the Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007. This is the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP or SCHIP) that I've been blogging about recently. For more information on CHIP check out these previous entries. CHIP expires this year and Congress has now voted to renew and expand the program. The Senate is expected to vote on (and pass) its version today or tomorrow, although President Bush has absurdly and preemptively promised to veto the expansion. The…

Using art to teach mathematics

Annalisa Crannel has written an interesting article for Inside Higher Ed on using art to teach mathematics. Of particular interest is how artists and mathematicians approach problems differently - the former willing to stumble toward the answer while the latter hold off until they're sure they have the right one. We all know and can parody the dreaded two-trains problems. A simpler question is this: If you sketch a picture of the rails of the train track going into the distance, and you know where the first two railroad ties go, where do you put the next one? In our class, we change the…

Science fun in the Big Freeze

The UK is currently in the grip of the longest period of sub-zero weather in thirty years, and it looks set to stay cold for another week. Rather than get hysterical about the lack of grit on our roads, I thought about all the fun science opportunities the arctic weather has on offer! Supercooling Everyone knows that water freezes at zero degrees celsius, but not many people know that ice crystals need a small imperfection or "seed" to grow from. This can be impurities in the water or microscopic imperfections in the container holding them. Without these, water will stay liquid well below…

More Mandelson on Science and Education

Lord Mandelson is insisting science and education won't suffer under the Department for Business, rubbishing the idea that business-led investment and curiosity-led research are exclusive options. Zoe Corbyn speaks to Mandelson for Times Higher Education: Told by Times Higher Education that universities had reacted with "horror" to news that the business department would take over responsibility for higher education policy, Lord Mandelson claimed that this was "absolutely untrue"."I spoke yesterday to [Universities UK president] Rick Trainor who expressed no horror whatsoever," he said. "And…

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "Why are they trying to gag a top British science writer?"

Nick Cohen has a great article in the Observer discussing the British Chiropractic Association's legal action against science writer and producer Simon Singh: Reputable medical authorities could test the evidence and decide whether the treatments work or not. Instead of arguing before the court of informed opinion, however, the BCA went to the libel courts and secured a ruling from Mr Justice Eady that made Singh's desire to test chiropractors' claims next to impossible. Because Singh used the word "bogus", the judge said he had to prove that chiropractors knew they were worthless but "…

From the Annals of the Strange: Dog Telepathy

Most dog owners think that their dogs can tell what they're thinking. Or at least, in some sense, they will insist that their pet pooches can sense their emotions, and respond accordingly. Indeed, a man by the name of Karl Krall (say that three times fast) thought that there exist some sort of psychic connections between man and animal. And he thought he could prove it. In this telepathy experiment between human and dog Karl Krall (on the right) tried to detect the thinking radiation he assumed to flow between the two. Krall was a rich dealer in diamonds who had founded his very own…

Francis Collins Joins the Dark Side

Pharyngula tells us that Francis "Human Genome" Collins is scheduled to appear in a TV special entitled Darwin's Deadly Legacy. You may remember Frank from such stories as humans have stopped evolving. The extremist religious zealots behind the program claim that "Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project will show why evolution is a bad idea that should be discarded into the dustbin of history." Let's assume that Frankie got duped into appearing in this special. Maybe the wack jobs evangelicals requested that he talk about his faith and his science. With the wonders of video…

10 Assertions about Evolution

Razib wants us to come up with 10 assertions of 10 words or less which we believe that the public should know about evolutionary science. He also wants us to come up with our list before looking at his list, which means we're left to figure out what the hell he means without seeing any examples. My stab at this is below the fold, but you should come up with your own list before reading Razib's or mine (according to Razib). 10 Assertions about Evolution, in no particular order: Common ancestry is supported by multiple, independent lines of evidence. Evolution is not an entirely random…

Molecular Evolution for the Masses

Jacob at Salamander Candy has written the post that I have been meaning to write. With so much freely available sequence data in GenBank and loads of free software with which to analyze it, we should encourage the general public to start looking for 'interesting things' (building phylogenies, comparing rates of evolution along lineages, testing for natural selection, etc). There are tons of armchair astronomers, so why not develop a community of armchair molecular genetics data miners? Here's a taste of Jacob's essay: The more non-professionals we have doing science, the better, because not…