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Bob Costas’s pink eye and state paid-sick-days campaigns

After having delivered prime-time telecasts from the Olympic Games since 1988, NBC’s Bob Costas had to step aside due to a pink eye infection. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff opined that Bob Costas did the right thing, noting, “People turning up to work sick is actually a vexing problem for employers that could, by some estimates, cost them as much as $150 billion a year.” Sick employees showing up to work can more easily spread their diseases to co-workers and customers, as well as fellow carpoolers or transit riders. In Costsas’ case, his initial reluctance to stay home (or in his hotel room) to…

Chipotle's "Food with Integrity" ignores tomato pickers

The Chipotle restaurant chain's corporate philosophy is "Food with Integrity": "we can always do better in terms of the food we buy.  And ...we mean better in every sense of the word---better tasting, coming from better sources, better for the environment, better for the animals, and better for the farmers who raise the animals and grow the produce." The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and others wants to know how Chiptole's philosophy translates to the farmworkers who pick the tomatoes used in the restaurant's burritos.  CIW offers this snapshot into the workday of a Florida …

Where Old Computers Go to Die

The latest issue of National Geographic includes a story on e-waste thatâs worth reading â especially if you got a new computer, TV, or other electronic gift over the holidays and now need to figure out how to get rid of the old one. Discarded electronic goods often contain a few useful bits â drives, memory chips, copper used in wiring â along with toxic substances like lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and beryllium. For an impoverished family, breaking down old computers can be a reliable way to earn much-needed cash, but the job is hazardous. Chris Carroll reports: June is the wet season…

I went to college in Connecticut. Deal with it.

Perhaps because it's college graduation and reunion time, L.V. Anderson at Slate has written a column entitled "People Still Say They 'Went to College in Boston,' Meaning Harvard? Please Stop Doing This." She claims that by giving such an evasive answer, one "buy[s] into the overblown mythos of Harvard and the presumption of Ivy League superiority." Or worse, it "functions as an elitist dog whistle," and that those who may "react inelegantly" upon hearing one went to Harvard/Yale/Princeton and others are "insecure people who perhaps have not yet learned that Ivy League schools confer degrees…

Bronze Age Mortuary Cult In Viborg

Yesterday I went to Jutish Viborg by train, plane and bus. This took a bit less than eight hours. Exiting Aalborg airport into the icy sleet I managed to walk straight into the glass wind breaker outside the turnstile, banging my forehead and knee. Everybody around studiously avoided noticing my antics. On arriving in Viborg I found the museum, met some colleagues and received a key for the visiting scholars' building at Asmild that I'm staying in. Then to the city library where there is warmth and (flaky) wifi, and where I am now sitting again. Wednesday ended in good company with…

Travels with dopamine - the chemical that affects how much pleasure we expect

How would you fancy a holiday to Greece or Thailand? Would you like to buy an iPhone or a new pair of shoes? Would you be keen to accept that enticing job offer? Our lives are riddled with choices that force us to imagine our future state of mind. The decisions we make hinge upon this act of time travel and a new study suggests that our mental simulations of our future happiness are strongly affected by the chemical dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries signals within the brain. Among its many duties is a crucial role in signalling the feelings of enjoyment we…

Book review: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some god's arse. Which god's arse, though? There are so many choices. See, the Muslims have one god. The Christians have three gods. And we Hindus have three 36,000,000 gods. Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to choose from. -Balram Halwai alais Munna What a fucking joke. -Pinky Madam India is a land of chicken coops. The chicken coops have been in existence since Manu wrote that kings and priests came out of god's prettiest and purest body parts while shit-eating lowly men and women came out of his holy…

Update on the chip supply rumour from the FDA

Two days ago I reported a rumour that the FDA might have convinced genotyping chip provider Illumina to stop providing its products to direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies - a move that would effectively prevent these companies from being able to operate. The rumour seemed plausible at the time, based on two pieces of evidence. Firstly, a letter sent to Illumina by the FDA in June warned the company that the use of its chips by personal genomics companies appeared to violate FDA regulations: Although Illumina, Inc. has received FDA clearance or approval for several of its devices,…

The stupids

Blogging has been scant here of late for two reasons. First, I've got enough going on that blogging time is limited, and I don't have a lot I need to get off my chest. Second, the world is currently utterly dominated by the stupids. The climate change treaty negotiations at Copenhagen, which should be a serious event where scientists and policymakers hash out the most important global issue of our day, is instead a circus for douchebags and privacy-invading pricks. And, you know, douchebags and privacy-invading pricks are kinda my professional bread and butter at NCSE, so it's not a…

A Coturnix Sampler...

The Big Blogging Gurus suggest that one should often link back to old posts. I do that, actually, quite often, but now that I have moved my blog here, all the old posts are elsewhere. Over the next few months I will re-publish some of my best posts here so they get archived on this blog. In the meantime it is nice to have the permalinks of the best (and most likely to be linked) posts, or at least most interesting posts all in one place. I noticed that, when they moved to their new digs at SEED, several science bloggers posted their lists of "best of" posts. I found those lists very…

Indonesian Megavolcano Provides Rare Peek into Global Warming

tags: South Pacific Islands, Indonesia, Sumatra, geology, nature, volcano, global warming, Lake Toba, PBS, NOVA, television Sixty-two-mile-long Lake Toba, seen in the center of this satellite image, was created by the largest explosive volcanic eruption of the past 100,000 years -- an eruption whose aftermath holds important clues for us today about rapid climate change, Drew Shindell says. Image: NASA. Wow, there are days when I wish I had a television, and today is one of them. Why? Tonight, PBS is showing a really fascinating program; a NOVA show entitled Mystery of the Megavolcano that…

Around the Web: Apps = CD ROMS, Open Access saves lives, Questioning Clay Shirky and more

Apps are too much like 1990's CD-ROMs and not enough like the Web Open Access to Scientific Research Can Save Lives The OA Interviews: Harvard’s Stuart Shieber (Pay special note to the comment by Sandy Thatcher and the devastating fisking of it by Stuart Shieber. And by devastating, I mean dev. a. sta. ting.) Questioning Clay Shirky Shirky, Bady and For-Profit Higher Ed Unlikely Pairing? (liberal arts schools get into moocs) A New (Kind of) Scholarly Press (An open access university press) Can researchers protect their open data? Visualizing the Uniqueness, and Conformity, of Libraries (cool…

Around the Web: Music industry business models, Silicon values, Disruptive innovation and more

I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With What Filesharing Studies Really Say – Conclusions and Links IS STEALING MUSIC REALLY THE PROBLEM? Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered. What Happened to Silicon Values? A call for disruptive innovation in science publishing what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger Two big mistakes in thinking about technology in education What's Wrong With Almost Every Old Media-Inspired New Media Startup What Is Digital Humanities and What’s it Doing in the Library? Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books? So Shiny! Lest We Not Forget, iPads Require Purpose…

Open Access Week

This week - 19th-23rd October 2009 - is the Open Access week around the world - fitting nicely with the 5th birthday of PLoS Medicine. And when I say 'around the world' I really mean it. Just check out all the global events happening this week. The OA Week is co-organized by Open Access Directory, PLoS, SPARC, Students for Free Culture, eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) and OASIS. Many countries are participating this year, including some with numerous events all around the country. See, for example, all the events in Germany (there are 67 events in that country alone!),…

Feminism101

You know how on comment threads on blogposts about evolution you, sooner or later, get a commenter saying something that reveals complete lack of understanding of even the basics of evolutionary biology? It is usually accompanied by some creationist canard as well. What do you do? If you stop to explain the basics, the thread gets derailed. You REALLY want to discuss that latest study, not go back to basics over and over again. So, instead of explaining the basics, you post a link to the appropriate page on the TalkOrigins FAQ or Index of Creationist Claims and move on with the…

Scott vs. Comfort

You've probably all heard by now that Ray Comfort is coming out with his own butchered version of Darwin's Origin, with big chunks cut out of it, and a deeply stupid introduction slapped on. It's within his rights to do that, since the book is in the public domain now (as is, say, the KJV Bible), but it's also a metaphor for the sleaziness of creationism. They have no original ideas, so all they can do is steal the work of real scientists; their ideas are contradicted by the evidence, so their only strategy is to delete the parts that make them uncomfortable, and put a false spin on what's…

Inside Duke Medicine

If you came to either the first or the second Science Blogging Conference (or both) you may remember that, among other goodies in your swag bag, you also got a copy or two of Inside Duke Medicine, the employee publication for the Duke University Health System. And, you may remember it looked kind of....soooo last century ;-) Furthermore, it had its publishing model backwards - it was Print-to-Web, i.e., the well-crafted articles were first printed in hardcopy and then posted online almost as an after-thought. Well, that model does not work, so Duke got smart and hired a visionary - Anton…

Homepage, yeah!

Drumroll, please*.... Check out my brand new and unique HOMEPAGE!!!! I never had a homepage before. I never made a static web-page in my life. I made blogs. I made many, many blogs. And I always used my main blog (this one since summer of 2006) as my homepage. But now that I am all over the place, on various social networks, while reserving the blog for Most Important Stuff only, it makes sense to have a homepage that links to everywhere I am on the Web. It makes it easy to tell people in person how to find me. It makes it easy to make Moo.com business cards. It removes the need for a dozen…

Science 2.0 article in Scientific American

M. Mitchell Waldrop (author of the delightful book Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos) interviewed me and a bunch of others back in August about the changing ways of science communication. I completely forgot about it, but was reminded yesterday when he e-mailed me to say that the draft of the article is now online on the Scientific American site: Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk? The idea is that the draft will be improved by commentary by readers - and sure enough, there are already 19 comments there - before it goes to print in a future issue of the…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (SciBlings)

There are 103 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already many registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Here are some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. My Scibling and dear friend, Suzanne Franks, aka Zuska describes herself as...well, go and read how she describes herself. If you write something sexist, Super-Zuska…

A Really Challenging Geography Challenge

To join the Geography Challenge in support of your country, you simply need to select which country you will be representing and take the quiz. This quiz consists of trying to locate 10 randomly selected countries on a map of the world. It is different every time. You may take this quiz up to 3 times per day, but no cheating. It is a timed quiz. This is a really difficult geography quiz (or do I just think it is difficult because I don't know my geography very well?). Give it a go and tell me how you did. My scores; 3, 5, 7 correct out of ten possible (it takes a little while to figure…

Scientist Future Markets Spike on UK News

Grauniad reports Britain is in danger of running out of scientists: commoditity markets in Europe spiked sharply on the news, with the ten year future contract on physicists rising 20% in early morning trading; spot markets also rose sharply, with PhD chemists leading the rally to $274.18 per hour in early morning trading (for the benchmark liberal educated physical chemists favoured by industry). In the US after an initial spike in morning trading, the early gains were erased by the announcement that India was releasing some of its strategic stockpile of computer scientists, and news that…

Bora leaves ScienceBlogs, ground shifts under our feet

The fallout of the Pepsigate scandal continues. Bora's recent relative blogging silence left me with a bad feeling, an ominous feeling. A feeling like the other shoe was about to drop. Well, it did. Bora is leaving ScienceBlogs. As with most of Bora's giant summary zeitgeist posts, you just have to read the whole thing yourself. The comments too are incredibly heartfelt. For me, Bora always epitomized ScienceBlogs. He was always the ultimate SciBling and I was so thrilled to be blogging her next to him when I joined. Bora's also always really epitomized science blogging as a whole to…

Not an “accident”: Harold Felton, 36, suffers fatal work-related injury in Seattle, WA

Harold Felton, 36, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, January 26 while working at a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. Mr. Felton’s employer was Alki Construction. Q13Fox reports: Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes. King5.com reports: “…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.” “For about 20 minutes, it was a rescue operation, but it became clear the man wouldn't make it.” Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that the Washington State OSHA program has…

Not an “accident”: Justin 'J.D.' Jorgensen, 30, suffers fatal work-related injury in Altoona, Iowa

Justin “J.D.” Jorgensen, 30 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, January 6 while working at an excavation project in Altoona, IA. His employer was JRS Excavating. WHOTV reports: the project was in a residential area where workers were “digging water and sewer lines.” the incident occurred about 8 am local time. an Altoona police spokesperson said that Mr. Jorgensen was working inside a trench that was “10 to 12 feet deep” and the “dirt caved in.” "family friends say he worked with his brother.” Using OSHA’s on-line database, it does not appear that Iowa OSHA has conducted any…

Poker Blogs!

Well how do you like that, there are poker bloggers! And I just had to discover them 2 days too late to participate in the the Grublog Poker Classic, an online tournament for poker bloggers. Oh well, better late than never, right? That's right, in addition to being a heathen infidel who promotes gay marriage and godless EVILution, I'm also a degenerate gambler. Well, a degenerate poker player anyway. Up till now I've not blogged much about poker, other than to congratulate Paul Phillips on winning the Bellagio Five Diamond Classic. Poker is suddenly the hottest thing on television. The…

Student Post: Mirror-Touch Synesthesia. I Feel Your Pain

For this week's in-class "NeuroSlam" I spoke about a paper on mirror-touch synesthesia-- a condition in which an individual reports feeling an actual tactile sensation in response to seeing someone else touched. For example, this synesthete would feel as if someone touched their arm if they saw someone touching another's arm. Inspired by an fMRI of a mirror-touch synesthete that showed hyperactivity of mirror-touch network neurons (mirror neurons we all have in the somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, and parts of the temporal lobe that fire in response to touch and viewing touch),…

Late Medieval Seal Matrix

When someone dies their ID card and on-line banking code-dongle are destroyed to prevent identity theft. Their signature dies with them, so that's not a problem. In the past, people with a bit of money and influence had seal matrices filling the function of all these things. They "signed" documents by affixing wax seals to them, stamped with their unique design. And when the owner of a seal died, the matrix was generally destroyed and then molten for scrap or buried with him. For this reason, Medieval seal matrices are rare finds, and when they do turn up they tend to be in pieces. But…

Discussing Kelo on the Radio

It appears that I will be a guest on the Jim Babka show again tonight. He has asked me to come on along with Herb Titus again, this time to discuss the Supreme Court's Kelo decision the other day. I'll be curious to hear what position Titus takes. On the one hand, I know that he is a staunch defender of property rights. On the other hand, he did say the last time we appeared together that the 14th amendment only incorporated the first 3 amendments against the states, and Kelo involved state and local laws, not a Federal law. We will only be on for part of the show this time, not the whole…

What will it mean if LIGO detects gravitational waves? (Synopsis)

"Einstein's gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea." -Richard Feynman When we look out into the Universe, we normally gain information about it by gathering light of various wavelengths. However, there are other possibilities for astronomy, including by looking for the neutrinos emitted by astrophysical sources -- first detected in the supernova explosion of 1987 -- and in the gravitational waves emitted by…

Great. It Just Had To Be An Atheist Math Professor.

Here's a charming story: A math professor at Michigan State University allegedly stripped naked, ran naked through his classroom and screamed “There is no f*cking God!” before police apprehended him, according to several reports. The professor's name has not yet been released, but online, students said he was “eccentric,” and that they “could probably have seen this coming.” A Redditor shared a grainy cell phone picture of the man in a hallway at the university as authorities restrained him. Another user, TheCookieKing shared more details: Background story: I was in Calc 1 at Michigan State…

Help a graduate student, take some time for a survey

Can you spare 50 minutes to help out a graduate student desperate for research participants? If so, please read below: Dear all, Within the context of my PhD project at Philips Research and Eindhoven University of Technology, I am developing a questionnaire that will help me to look at the relation between multimedia and feelings about the content. I would like to invite you to help me in validating this questionnaire. The goal of this questionnaire is to gain further insight in the relation between multimedia and feelings, mostly with regard to how your feelings about the shown multimedia is…

I must be doing it wrong

I'm teaching human physiology this term, and those of you who have done it or taken it know that this kind of course is a strain to get through the huge volume of material. I think I must simply be a horrible teacher, though, because here's an online physiology course that does a much better job than I do. Here's Your Chance To Skip The Struggle and Master Human Anatomy & Physiology In 3 Days Or Less... 100% Guaranteed Wow. And guess what…it's a $1985.00 value, available now for a limited-time only for the low, low price of only $37. And it's been shown on the Martha Stewart show! If…

Organic Food Is Better For Us -- So Why Don't We All Eat It?

Peter Melchett writes in The Guardian (on-line) that the scientific evidence for organic food's healthier claims is clear and persuasive. (Melchett is "policy director of the Soil Association, a UK organic food and farming organisation.") But will that sway governments to encourage organic over their preferred GMO or pesticide-based ag systems? Probably not. It's a commentary on the relationship between macro-political influence and agricultural habits. More closely it's a commentary on food and politics, and science and politics, and science and food. But to say it's just "politics…

Google Polarizes America?

The techno wonder pundits say that the internet revolutionizes democracy by leveling the playing field (everyone can be an ass online, oh yeah!) But what I find more fascinating about the internet and politics is the role that search plays in polarizing politics. I mean, sure there are dissenting voices all over the internet, but google "John McCain" or "Obama" or "Sarah Palin" or "Joe Biden" and you won't discover a single dissenting opinion about any of these candidates on the front page of the search results (the exceptions to this rule are probably the small news items that Google…

Re-Imagining the Future of University Research Magazines

Next week the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will be hosting the annual conference of the University Research Magazine Association (URMA). The association is comprised of editors and staffers at magazines that cover the research and scholarly activities of universities, nonprofit research centers, and institutes in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Europe. Depending on your field and professional background, you may or may not be familiar with publications such as Yale Medicine, UNC's Endeavors, the HHMI Bulletin, Florida State's Research in Review, and Arizona State's Research Stories and…

Neuroscience Boot Camp

Professor Martha J. Farah emailed me recently to ask if I'd help spread the word about Neuroscience Boot Camp, which will take place at the University of Pennsylvania in August of next year: What happens at Neuroscience Boot Camp? Through a combination of lectures, break-out groups, panel discussions and laboratory visits, participants will gain an understanding of the methods of neuroscience and key findings on the cognitive and social-emotional functions of the brain, lifespan development and disorders of brain function. Each lecture will be followed by extensive Q&A. Break-out…

Blood, guts & brains

The BBC has produced an interesting series called Blood and Guts about the modern history of surgery and the first episode, which is about neurosurgery, is now available online at the BBC iPlayer website. (For those outside the U.K., it is also available as a torrent.) Presented by surgeon Michael Mosley, the program begins with the pioneering work of Harvey Cushing, then continues with a discussion of Phineas Gage, the Yale physiologist Jose Delgado and the lobotomist Walter Freeman. Mosley also meets Howard Dully, who was lobotomized at the age of 12 by Freeman. In one particularly…

The NY Times Makes the Agenda Pitch on Global Warming

Back in February, I described how the first release of the IPCC was a massive communication failure, never really landing on the wider media or public agenda. In a column at Skeptical Inquirer Online, I described alternative strategies for reaching Americans. As the next IPCC release arrives on Friday, the New York Times has marshaled its journalistic resources in its best attempt to make sure that global warming places third behind the war and the 2008 horse race in terms of media and public attention. For the second time in three days, the Times leads with news about the issue. On…

America's Religious Landscape

The Week in Review section of the New York Times had a piece on evangelicals in this country in which it details the tension between tradiationalist, centrists and modernists (available online here). The article appears to be prompted by the latest Pew Forum National Survey of Religion and Politcs. In brief, 26.3% of Americans are evangelicals who can be broken down into traditionalists (12.6%), centrists (10.8%) and modernists (2.9%). Predictably, the traditionalists are Republican (70%), oppose evolution (93%), believe in Armageddon (77%), support "traditional marriage" exclusively (89%),…

Women In High Tech: Catalyst Survey

Are you a women in a high tech job? Please consider participating in this worthwhile project; it only takes a few minutes. Lisa Gable recently wrote to the WEPAN listserve: I am writing to share news about exciting research being conducted by Catalyst, which IBM is sponsoring, in part. Catalyst is the leading research and advisory organization working with businesses and the professions to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women at work. This study focuses on talent management and women in high tech jobs and/or companies. The research provides insight into women's…

Other adaptive landscape papers

Having blown my own trumpet, I should mention that there are a few other articles in the same edition of Biology and Philosophy (which I hadn't seen until now) on Gavrilets' view of adaptive landscapes now on Online First: Massimo Pigliucci has a very nice historical summary of Sewall Wright's initial metaphor and ideas and how they changed (it hadn't occurred to me, but should have, that the landscape metaphor fails to deal with new mutations, which change the landscape itself (although I did say something like this in my 1998 paper). Anya Plutinski discusses the iconography of Wright's…

We're Being Studied!

How's that for role reversal on Science Blogs? Well, leave it to the good folks at Carnegie Mellon... Scientists have long studied how information, influence or physical items move through networks. But by combining that field of research with how to optimally detect the flow in a cost-effective way, the Carnegie Mellon researchers have devised a formula, or algorithm, that could lead to dramatically improved sensor networks, whether geared toward political blogs or posture. But how would this cascade be modeled? What sensors, or blogs in this case, should be tapped to maximize the…

Casual Fridays: How many browser tabs do you use?

A few days ago after downloading the latest beta version of the FireFox web browser, I posted what I thought was an innocuous complaint on Twitter: The software assumes you will always have multiple web pages open. Even if you're only reading one web page, the browser puts it in a tab, thus taking up valuable screen real estate. Immediately I started getting replies: "how can you work with just one tab? I've got 37 open now!" "Does anyone not use tabs anymore?" Actually, it's not that I never use tabs, it's that sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But perhaps I'm the only one. But still, it…

ScienceOnline09: Blogging allies

Both ScienceWoman and I are attending ScienceOnline09 in January; ScienceWoman has already gotten your feedback about her session she's co-chairing with KH, so it is high time for me to ask your thoughts about the session I'm co-chairing with Abel Pharmboy and Zuska. Our session is titled "Gender in science" but we're really interested in how blogging and online interactions can provide allies with a way to support women bloggers, bloggers who are people of colour, LGBT bloggers, and other underrepresented bloggers in STEM. So, as examples, in no particular order (but numbered in case you…

Evolution/design: if a conversation starts in the blogosphere and no one joins it, does it make a sound?

Something I ran across by accident, while perusing our latest copy of Issues in Science and Technology: currently, the National Academies are sponsoring a Visual Culture and Evolution Online Symposium. It runs through Wednesday. What that means, apparently, is their panelists discuss the intersection of design, art, and culture with evolutionary biology concepts (sexual selection, genetics, adaptation, etc.) at a blog set up for the purpose. The blog is basic (generic template), and a bit confusing. What seems to be happening is that panelists' ongoing contributions are folded into the posts…

Industry practices bias

Shocking: The study, published by the Public Library of Science online journal PLoS Medicine, echoes other findings that show industry-funded research on drugs is more likely to be favorable to the drugs than independent research. Ludwig's team reviewed 111 studies on soft drinks, juice and milk that were published between 1999 and 2003. "We chose beverages because they represent an area of nutrition that's very controversial, that's relevant to children, and involves a part of the food industry that is highly profitable and where research findings could have direct financial implications,"…

Life imitates the Castle

The Sydney Morning Herald reports The High Court Computer games enthusiasts are free to modify their Playstations to run cheap games bought overseas or online, following a landmark High Court ruling. The court found that "mod-chips"- used to override technology that prevents consoles running games not purchased in Australia - are legal. The decision follows a four-year battle between Eddy Stevens, a Sydney mod-chip supplier based in a backyard at Kensington, and the electronics giant Sony, which claimed the chips were overriding its copyright protection technology. Kim Weatherall has the…

China Choking on their own growth.

I'm traveling right now but wanted to post a link to NYTimes' "Choking on Growth" series. It's well worth a read (it's not the best written article I've seen - it repeats itself a lot, but the facts make a good story). The author of "The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future" will be online chatting today on the NYTimes' site. Three facinating stats before I go: In 2005 alone, China added 66 gigawatts of electricity to its power grid, about as much power as Britain generates in a year. Last year, it added an additional 102 gigawatts, as much as France. and Only 1…

Science Online 2010 ...

... SciTen is coming ... In preparation for Science Online 2010 Session C, Trust and Critical Thinking organized by Stephanie Zvan and including PZ Myers, Desiree Schell, Greg Laden, and Kirsten Sanford, I'll be posting a few items such as Are You A Real Sketpic? over the next few days. Most readers of this blog will not be going to this mid-January conference, but that does not mean you can't participate. There will probably be the ability to participate in the actual events via twitter or other social networking media. However, it is also possible to be involved by posting comments on…