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Now Andy Wakefield will prevail in his libel suit against Brian Deer because John Walker-Smith won his appeal? Not so fast there, pardner...

I don't know what it is about the beginning of a year. I don't know if it's confirmation bias or real, but it sure seems that something big happens early every year in the antivaccine world. Consider. As I pointed out back in February 2009, in rapid succession Brian Deer reported that Andrew Wakefield had not only had undisclosed conflicts of interest regarding the research that he did for his now infamous 1998 Lancet paper but that he had falsified data. Of course, in response Keith Olbermann was totally played by the antivaccine movement, resulting in some truly mind-numbingly dumb…

Brian Hooker proves Andrew Wakefield wrong about vaccines and autism

Here we go again. If there's anything that ignites the fevered brains (such as they are) of antivaccine activists, it's a good seeming conspiracy. Indeed, as we've seen before, if they can't find a legitimate one, they'll either exaggerate one or make one up out of whole cloth. This week, an "alleged" conspiracy has been brewing. It's really the damnedest thing in that it's hard to figure out exactly what's going on. Whatever is going on, though, I would recommend extreme skepticism because two people are involved whose word you would be very foolish to trust on any scientific matter…

Google's New Language: Go

I've been being peppered with questions about Go, the new programming language just released as open-source by Google. Yes, I know about it. And yes, I've used it. And yes, I've got some strong opinions about it. Go is an interesting language. I think that there are many fantastic things about it. I also think that there are some really dreadful things about it. A warning before I go on: this post is definitely a bit of a rush job. I wanted to get something out before my mailbox explodes :-). I'll probably try to do a couple of more polished posts about Go later. But this should give you a…

Restless In the Heartland

Here's what the mayor of Salt Lake City, UT said yesterday. You would think he's one of those Northeast liberal elitist, latte-drinkin' types... Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Jackson: A patriot is a person who loves his or her country. Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our world? And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth? Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!" Let no one deny we are patriots. We…

De-Debunking Evolutionary Algorithms

Just for fun, I've been doing a bit of poking around lately in evolutionary algorithms. It's really fascinating to experiment, and see what pops out - the results can be really surprising. There is one fascinating example for which, alas, I've lost the reference, but here's the summary. Several groups have been looking at using evolutionary algorithm techniques for hardware design. (A good example of this is [Alexander Nicholson's work](http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/nicholson00evolution.html) .) A year or so ago, I saw a talk given by a group which was doing some experiments with EA for…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 9

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 8 Table of Contents Chapter 10 Chapter 9 Henry, June 10, 2055 When Thursday rolled around, I rode my bike over to Fontaine Enterprises on Woodward. I arrived about a quarter to four. Matt and I sat in his office drinking coffee which wasn't ersatz. The room was bipolar; half administration, half draughting room. Rolls of paper and plans littered a work table at one end. A coffee machine sat on a counter beside a sink which marked the functional division of the room. Jon arrived at four on the nose and Matt pulled out another mug. We waited…

One More Round on Original Sin, Part One

Edward Feser has posted a reply to my previous post about original sin. I shall reply in two posts, but that will be it from my side. If Feser wants to reply to these posts then he can have the last word. The problem is this: Several lines of evidence tell us that there was never a time when the human population was exactly two. It also tells us that humanity is one endpoint of billions of years evolution by natural selection. This conflicts with religious accounts holding that Adam and Eve were created instantaneously and were the only humans on the planet at that time. Thus, if we…

Mammals and the KT Event

A very important and truly wonderful paper in Nature described a tour-de-force analysis of the Mammalian Evolutionary Record, and draws the following two important conclusions: The diversification of the major groups of mammals occurred millions of years prior to the KT boundary event; and The further diversification of these groups into the modern pattern of mammalian diversity occurred millions of years later than the KT boundary event. The KT boundary event is the moment in time when a ca. 10 km. diameter object going very fast hit the earth in the vicinity of the modern Yucatan,…

Tara Parker-Pope and the New York Times Well Blog: Acupuncture woo takes over

What the hell is going on with The New York Times' health reporting? I've had my share of disagreements with the way that the NYT has covered various health issues over the years that I've been blogging, but I don't recall ever having seen it embrace pseudoscience. I can recall being a bit miffed at some of the articles that the NYT has published about biomedical research and its various perceived failings. On the other hand, I've also praised the NYT reporting on various issues, such as medical radiation and the risks it can pose. But lately, it seems, the NYT has gone into the crapper with…

How not to discuss the role of alternative medicine during the Third Reich

I really hate to write this post, but I feel compelled. The reason I hate to write it is because someone I admire screwed up. The reason I feel compelled is because of my longstanding interest in World War II and Holocaust history, not to mention my longtime interest in refuting the lies of Holocaust deniers. I had meant to write about it the first time I came across it, but for some reason did not. I don't remember the reason, although it might very well be because of how much I respect the person who wrote it. Again, I don't remember, and today it really doesn't matter why. Whatever the…

Saunas and longevity: Another example of putting the preclinical cart before the horse

Among quacks, epigenetics is the new quantum theory. I know I've said that before, but it's worth saying again in response to a new quack I've just discovered, courtesy of an article in The Daily Mail Fail by one Dr. Sara Gottfried pimping her books and health empire, From taking a sauna to drinking pinot noir, a fascinating book by a hormone doctor reveals how to... switch off your bad genes and live longer. Epigenetics. She's talking about epigenetics. Of course, she keeps using that word. I do not think it means what she thinks it means. Indeed, if what's in this article is a taste of what…

Yet another woman with breast cancer lured into quackery by Ty Bollinger and "holistic" medicine advocates

To say that I, as a cancer surgeon, am not a fan of Ty Bollinger is a massive understatement. He’s not exactly one of my fans, either, but I view the hatred of a man like Bollinger directed at me as a badge of honor. Indeed, if a man like Bollinger didn’t detest me, I would view my efforts as a failure because I view him as a quack whose desperately deceptive film series The Truth About Cancer has been correctly dubbed untruthful about cancer by Harriet Hall and whose message has led cancer patients into rejecting conventional medicine in favor of treating deadly cancers with alternative…

"What Is The Real Beef With The Immigration Bill?"

So asks Oliver Willis about the Republican base: As I've noted before, I don't have a really strong position on immigration reform. As the child of immigrants who came here the legit way, I'm troubled by giving a pass of any sort to people who "cut" in line, but I also know it's kind of dumb to think we're going to deport all of those people. I do think its interesting that so much of the Republican elite really doesn't care what their grassroots think and instead are more interested in giving big industries the cheap labor they want. It's another version of their abortion and gay marriage…

What Rationalizing Progressives Need to Learn from Those Who Oppose Creationism

I'll get to creationism in a bit, but first... Last week, Yves Smith started a wee lil' ruckus among progressives with a post titled "Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name." In that post, she argued: Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now the gay rights organization is supporting the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. La Raza is mouthing the talking points of the Mortgage Bankers Association on down payments. The NAACP is fighting on debit card rules. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute supported…

Intervening in the Lives of Students Who Are Poor

Joe Nocera knocked it out of the park yesterday, in his column about education: [NYC Principal] González comes across as a skeptic, wary of the enthusiasm for, as the article puts it, "all of the educational experimentation" that took place on Klein's watch. At its core, the reform movement believes that great teachers and improved teaching methods are all that's required to improve student performance, so that's all the reformers focus on. But it takes a lot more than that. Which is where Saquan comes in. His part of the story represents difficult truths that the reform movement has yet to…

Comments, you can hold 'em if you are a retard

Since I will use vulgar language, this post will be mostly below the fold. This commenter asked me to justify a claim, to which I responded by calling him an asshole. The reason is simple, the question is a simple factual query which could have been answered by checking the source I cited. The reality is that adding links to my posts take time, but I do so on the theory that readers will take some time out of their day and follow the links to make sure they fulfill their obligation toward due diligence. Sure, I could have simply responded "check the link," but I didn't like the tone of the…

More complex than simple addition

A few months ago I posted Discrete continuity in genetics to show how the granular nature of genetic inheritance may still manifest to our perception as continuous variation (i.e., quantitative traits). I used skin color as a model trait because it is easy to relate to, and we are beginning to understand its genetics in detail as I write. To recap, it seems that 3-5 genetic loci control more than 90% of the intergroup variation across populations in complexion. That is, you have a small number of genes which generate the range between black and white skin. These genes come in various flavors…

Direct-to-Customer Genetic Testing: FDA Overreach and Industry Stupidity

What a fabulous combination. This week, Congress has held hearings on the direct-to-customer ('DTC') genetic testing industry. It appears, based on previous statements by FDA officials, that they have publicly contradicted themselves--or been willfully ignorant--about the larger scientific benefits from DTC testing. This week's hearings also seem to have attracted some serious hyperbolic anti-DTC testimony, even by my standards (these companies are "raping the human genome project"? The HGP was made public domain so everyone, including those who work at companies, could have access to the…

Obesity Makes People Stupid...About Heritability

Heritability: I do not think it means what you think it means. There's been a spate of posts about obesity, started by a post by Megan McArdle. In these posts, a high heritability for obesity is bandied about (0.9!!! ZOMG!! TEH GENEZ R MAKIN U FAT!). But this demonstrates a lack of understanding of what heritability estimates mean--and, more importantly, what they do not mean. A couple of years ago, the Three-Toed Sloth wrote a wonderful post about heritability, and I'll quote liberally from it here (instead of rephrasing it inelegantly) and add some additional commentary. I should…

Clarifying Commensals: Thoughts on Kristof's Superbugs Op-Ed

I'm conflicted about Nicholas Kristof's recent op-ed about antibiotic resistant organisms. On the one hand, Kristof is one of the only national columnists to raise this issue at all. On the other hand, I found his most recent column somewhat confusing--and I'm an expert in this area (I also think he's jumping to unfounded conclusions, but more about that later in the post). I think this is largely an effect similar to playing "telephone": information is being transferred multiple times from the primary source and finally conveyed by someone with no biological training. So what I'm going…

Regarding Genomics and the Ethics of Data Release, I Declare BLOGWAR!!

Well, someone at ScienceBlogs had to draw down on Scientopia, and it might as well be the Mad Biologist. I was going to respond to this post by proflikesubstance about genomics and data release in a calm, serious, and respectful manner, and, then, I thought, "Fuck that. I'm the Mad Biologist. I have a reputation to uphold." Anyway, onto genomics and data release. Proflikesubstance writes: I learned something interesting that I didn't know the sharing of genomic data: almost all major genomics centers are going to a zero-embargo data release policy. Essentially, once the sequencing is…

Nothing in Economics Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution?

To steal a phrase. By way of ScienceBlogling David Sloan Wilson, we come across an interesting white paper, "The Relevance of Evolutionary Science For Economic Theory and Policy" (pdf). Since I'm an evolutionary biologist, you would probably expect me to be partial to the white paper, but I'm not convinced. ZOMG!! TEH DARWINISMZ!! No, that's not why. I'll leave aside the focus on general equilibrium theory in economics* (I don't care for it either), and simply note that the current spate of problems really aren't theoretical in nature, but ideological and methodological. The latter,…

Birdbooker Report 111

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My piles of books are a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. ~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books. The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited…

Mysterious Deaths of Venezuelan Polo Horses Subject of Criminal Investigation

tags: polo horses, mysterious deaths polo ponies, florida, International Polo Club Palm Beach, Lechuza Caracas, Victor Vargas Polo horse. Image: orphaned, contact me for proper attribution [larger view]. By now, most of you have heard the tragic story of the twenty-one polo horses that died suddenly within a few hours of each other in Wellington, Palm Beach County, Florida. These horses, which comprised more than one-third of the 60-horse Venezuelan polo team, Lechuza Caracas, were scheduled to compete in the featured game in the 105th U.S. Open polo match on Sunday afternoon. Upon…

Cholera, bird flu and humility in science

The "father" of epidemiology is a nineteenth century doctor, John Snow. He had more than one disciplinary child, since he is also considered the "father" of anesthesiology, having popularized the use of chloroform in obstetrics by using it on Queen Victoria in the 1850s. That distinction aside, Snow is famous for his pioneering studies showing cholera was a waterborne disease. I've been thinking about this in relation to bird flu. Here's the connection. In Snow's Victorian London, the predominant scientific theory on cholera's etiology was from miasmas, a general term for noxious elements in…

Not all in our genes

Genes and bird flu are being talked about again. A WHO study is "stating" some kind of genetic factor may be at work, but it appears it is only an observation that in the notorious Indonesian Karo cluster of eight family members, only those "related by blood" were affected by the human-to-human spread: Only blood relatives were infected in the Karo district of North Sumatra, the largest cluster known to date worldwide, "despite multiple opportunities for the virus to spread to spouses or into the general community," it added. The theory - which it said merited further study - was contained in…

Mosquito spraying for West Nile Virus

In a post yesterday we talked about West Nile Virus. It causes a mosquito borne disease and most people will have mild or even asymptomatic infections. But you don't want to the be the exception for this one. So what to do? Here's the typical response in many urban environments: Yuba-Sutter's annual battle against mosquitoes and West Nile virus will hit the streets tonight as spraying begins in residential areas of Robbins and Meridian. The weekly spraying will begin tonight in Olivehurst, Live Oak, Linda, Plumas Lake, Marysville, Sutter, Tierra Buena and Wheatland, said Ron McBride, manager…

Around the Web: HarperCollins library ebook linkdump apocalypse (#hcod 'r us) (Updated!)

For my own purposes I've been collecting various ebook-related posts for a while now and in particular the whole HarperCollins/library/ebook/Overdrive thing is a valuable source of lots of speculation and information. What I have below no doubt only represents a fairly small percentage of the total number of posts and articles about the issue. My attention over the last few weeks has been a bit inconsistent too say the least so I'm sure I've missed a bunch of important posts. Please let me know in the comments about ones I should include. And I encourage people not to be modest and to let…

Felice Frankel on Seeing Science

Prismatic Soap Bubble ScienceBlogs fans will have surely noticed the stunning images featured on our Life Science, Physical Science (above), Environment, Humanities and Technology channels. They're taken from On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science, by Harvard organic chemist George Whitesides and photographer Felice Frankel. Frankel, who heads the Envisioning Science program at Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing, recently chatted with me about the role of design in scientific communication. Why do you call your work design, but not art? This is my…

Kavli Video Contest Top 10 Finalist

Entry: Science Knows it All Belén Mella What is your age? I am 13 years old. Where do you go to school? I go to school at Sunny Isles Beach Community School K-8, a public school in Miami-Dade County, Florida. What do you plan to study in college? At 13 years old, my mind changes faster than I can realize (science will probably have an explanation for why exactly that happens), even on matters as transcendental as what I want to study in college and ultimately what I want to do for the rest of my life! Nevertheless, precisely as I answer this question, I want to study communications or…

It's not the subject, it's the teaching

Over the summer, a few ScienceBloggers were pondering the question of why students disappear from science courses, never to return. James Hrynshyn wrote that we're teaching youngsters the wrong thing. Zuska boldy pointed out the things that many of us think but don't say out loud. Chad Orzel noted that science is hard and shared his thoughts about why students leave. Stein Sigurdsson, on the other other hand, proposed that students leave because science is not hard enough. Just this week, ScienceBlogger Mike Dunford provided part of the answer to the disappearing student question, when…

Scientist Rock Star!

In an interview in Time magazine, Morgan Spurlock said, among else (and you should go and read the "else"): We've started to make science and empirical evidence not nearly as important as punditry--people wusing p.r.-speak to push a corporate or political agenda. I think we need to turn scientists back into the rock stars they are. Chris brought this quote to the bloggers' attention and Shelley was the first to respond: I find this quote so refreshing (not just because it places us scientists up on a lofty pedestal), because it validates scientific authority figures as someone worth listening…

Science News in Brief

Elephants Avoid Costly Mountaineering: "Using global-positioning system data corresponding to the movements of elephants across the African savannah, researchers have found that elephants exhibit strong tendencies to avoid significantly sloped terrain, and that such land features likely represent a key influence on elephant movements and land use. On the basis of calculations of energy use associated with traversing sloped terrain by such large animals, the researchers found that this behavior is likely related to the fact that even minor hills represent a considerable energy barrier for…

Why Is Academia Liberal?

When I posted this originally (here and here) I quoted a much longer excerpt from the cited Chronicle article than what is deemed appropriate, so this time I urge you to actually go and read it first and then come back to read my response. From Dr.Munger's blog, an interesting article: Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual By MARK BAUERLEIN, The Chronicle Review Volume 51, Issue 12, Page B6 (that link is now dead, but you can find a copy here): Hmmmm, why was the poll conducted only in social science departments (e.g., sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, anthropology, perhaps…

The AIDS vaccine trial: science by press release is not enough

Vaccines is a topic I don't like writing about so much for many reasons. Vaccination programs are important to public health but we (all the Reveres, including this one) have always interested either in basic science or programs that are applied to the whole population at once, such as clean water, air or food or safe products in the marketplace. But vaccines keep coming up so we talk about them. Since this blog has spent a lot of time on flu, most of it has related to influenza vaccine, but not always. This is a "not always" post, and it is partially about the latest news that US Army and…

Swine flu: not a walk in the park

A kind reader directed my attention late yesterday to an article on the Boston Globe's web site about three schools closing in Boston because of absenteeism from flu-like illnesses. I was struck by a comment made by a freshman at Boston Latin that seemed to get it exactly right: The closing surprised freshman Wilhelmina Moen, who noted it was nice that authorities were concerned about the student's health. "I'm not that worried," said Moen, who lives in Brighton. "It's the same thing as the other kind of flu. That flu kills too." (Stephen Smith, Andrew Ryan, Elizabeth Cooneym Boston.com) So…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: whiplash warning

I've never read a column by Dan Gardner in the Ottawa Citizen before, but I think I've been missing something, at least judging by his recent observations on how three Ottawa city councillors (by name: Marianne Wilkinson, Rainer Bloess, and Doug Thompson) have done so much to advance the cause of atheism in the city. Ottawa public transit allows religious organizations to adorn the city's buses with their propaganda, but the "Sensitive Three," as Gardner calls the councillors, don't want the bland freethinker message, "There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" to be…

BPA, causation and scientific reasoning

Steve Novella at Science-Based Medicine, a level headed and judicious advocate of better use of scientific evidence in clinical medicine, has written his own view of the BPA issue we covered in a post the other day. Orac pointed to it in the comments as "another take" on the issue. We aren't sure if he meant it disagreed with the view we expressed or not. For the record, we have some differences, but not on the judgment about the BPA paper. Differences about that are mainly a matter of emphasis and that's pretty subjective. "Real but small effects" may be very important but we don't know that…

Basics: the death certificate

A couple of days ago we discussed the murky questions surrounding the death of accused anthrax attacker Dr. Bruce Ivins. At the center of stipulating the cause and manner of death were the procedures for filling out the state of Maryland's death certificate by the medical examiner. Determining and recording the cause of death is important for many other things besides the circumstances surrounding the unexplained deaths of anthrax attackers. In the US you can't legally dispose of a body without a properly recorded death certificate and it's a document survivors use for all manner of other…

Primer on greenhouse gases, I.

Objection to the scientific basis of greenhouse warming seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. That is, if you like getting the same gift over and over again and returning it because it's defective never works. Still, hope springs eternal that understanding something about it will make the disagreements clearer. So this will be the first post about the underlying science. There will be more. It's a primer, so if you know the science it's not for you. But understanding what's under the hood can be explained without requiring agreement on global warming. On the grounds that learning about…

It's in the air

Every once in a while Scienceblogs (through its publisher, Seed Magazine) gets a question from a reader that is circulated to see if one or more of the bloggers wants to take a crack at answering it. Recently a 9 year old wanted to know what is in the air we breathe (chemically speaking). On its face it seems like a pretty straightforward question, answerable by looking it up in a reference book, but it is not really so straightforward until you pin it down a little more. Let's parse the question so we can handle it better. First, what are we talking about when we talk about "the air"? In…

US health care's mini-cross roads: a long way to go, either way

The US House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on one of the many required, but in this case crucial, steps to beginning an overhaul of the chaotic situation of American health care. By all accounts the vote is close, which is really pathetic. What is being proposed in the US is a baby step in absolute terms, although it is huge in terms relative to the historically backwards and reactionary character medical care in the US. I hope it passes, since not passing it would leave tens of millions without insurance of any kind and most of the rest of us insecure about the coverage we have.…

DuPont is a “stickler” for safety, but what does that really mean?

(Updates made 11/26/15 appear in [ ]) The Houston Chronicle’s Lise Olsen and Mark Collette continue their reporting of the November 15 incident at DuPont’s La Porte, TX facility that killed four workers. Wade Baker, 60, Gilbert "Gibby" Tisnado, 48, Robert Tisnado, 39, and Crystle Rae Wise 53, were asphyxiated by a release of methyl mercaptan [related to a faulty valve . A faulty valve may have been part of the problem. Alexandra Berzon at the Wall Street Journal reported the trouble may have started with a blockage in the methyl mercaptan line, and that the operation was not properly vented…

Occupational Health News Roundup

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes moves toward a 2016 presidential run, it seems he can’t talk enough about the so-called “Texas Miracle." But upon closer inspection, it seems clear that a “miracle” based on small government, big business tax breaks and laissez-faire regulations is hardly a blessed event for Texas workers. In an in-depth article on workplace deaths published in the Dallas Morning News, reporter James Gordon writes that Texas workers face the highest workplace death rates in the nation. In fact, Gordon notes that a Texas worker is 12 percent more likely to be killed on the job…

Texas’ Workers Defense Project launches biggest campaign to date in support of construction workers

Last weekend, construction worker Jose Perez stood up and spoke about life as a construction worker in one of then nation’s most prosperous cities. In front of him were hundreds of supporters who had gathered in downtown Austin, Texas, to call on a local developer to treat its workers better. Looming behind him was the new Gables Park Tower, an unfinished luxury apartment complex where construction workers have reported dangerous working conditions and frequent wage violations. Austin’s Workers Defense Project, a worker-led nonprofit that helps low-income workers fight for better working…

Aiming at 40...

The first person to ever refer to me as middle-aged in print was my friend Rod Dreher.  On the one hand, I appreciated the publicity.  On the other hand, I was 34 at the time, and I may never entirely forgive him.  Still, the shock has waned, and I have come to terms with the fact that if I'm not middle aged now, I will officially be so on August 15 when I cross the line into my 40s. To be absolutely honest, hitting middle age bothers me not in the slightest - my feeling is that every year that takes me away from being 14 is a really, really good one - and the further the better.  I would go…

Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Power

The Oil Drum has a well-referenced, thoughtful summary of the present situation at Fukushima - bad and getting worse as it gets harder and harder for workers to get close to the facility. The word "entombment" has been mentioned - which may be the only viable outcome. More than a million Japanese people risk losing their homes for a very long time, if not for good. There are a lot of discussions of the future of nuclear power out there. Most of them don't assume declining other energy resources, however. The emerging assessment I see is that while modern nuclear plants are much safer,…

The Gentlemen's Club

(Stachys, at about 3 weeks) Today Stachys and Hemp enter the monastary. They are the youngest of the boys and at 8 weeks plus, it is time for them to leave their Moms. Stachys is just about 8 weeks, and at that point, could conceivably start breeding his sisters and his Mom (he's *huge* too - I need a current picture - he was a singleton and has gotten all of Mom's rich milk, plus Jessie's, ummm...circular physique). Hemp doesn't have that problem - he was wethered last week, but he'll be going home soon with a new family, along with Basil (who with brother Goldenrod moved up with the…

Drill, Baby...Oops!

The news from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is not good. If the NOAA estimates are right about the size of the spill it could dwarf Exxon Valdez: Over the last few days, estimates had held that the Gulf of Mexico oil spilling was leaking about 1,000 barrels, or 42,000 gallons, into the water each day--bad, but still not historically bad on a scale like the spill caused by the Exxon Valdez. Except now, after closer investigation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that oil company BP's estimate might in fact be five times too low. Rear Adm. Mary Landry, the Coast Guard's…

<rolls eyes> It's a cracker, people

Good grief, but this is tedious. I'm still getting piles of email every day from people 1) begging me not to abuse a cracker because it is so sacred to them, piles of email telling me to 2) abuse a book because it is so sacred to Muslims (I've even been sent two copies of the Koran!), and of course, the 3) bizarre complaint that I'm a coward, afraid to commit sacrilege. You can all stop now. 1) Your personal sense of the sacred in a piece of bread dough is absurd to me and imposes on me no sense of obligation. 2) Since I now own one entirely superfluous copy of the Koran, it will meet the…