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DonorsChoose Payoff: Sporting Superiority

As part of the "Buy This Blog" incentive for the DonorsChoose fundraiser, Ewan McNay asks for a post on the superiority of Commonwealth sports (cricket, football) over the US-favoured kind (baseball, american football) ;-). Oh, OK, then; I'll setle for cricket. Cricket? You want me to talk up cricket? The best I can do is this: If you've ever been watching a baseball game, and said to yourself "Boy, I wish this could go on all week," well, then, have I got a game for you... I can, however, make a case for the superiority of rugby to American football: Now, don't get me wrong-- I'm a big fan…

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part One

I'm back! Did I miss anything? The big summer vacay turned out to be much harder work than what I was doing in Virginia prior to leaving, but it was tons of fun nonetheless. Far too much to report on in just one blog post, so we'll do a few. Of course, the first order of business was to participate in the World Open chess tournament in Philadelphia. No one seemed to mind that I was standing on a chair while taking that picture. Since the World Open offers the largest cash prizes of any open chess tournament, it routinely attracts some of the top players in the world. One of the great…

How Big Brother keeps us honest

Imagine that you're walking along a quiet street and you see a wallet lying on the pavement. Would you take it? Now imagine a slightly different situation - the wallet has a red circle drawn around it. While many people would be tempted in the first scenario, almost no one would touch the wallet in the second. The key difference is that the lone wallet was most likely dropped accidentally by a passer-by buy the encircled wallet was clearly placed and marked by someone, who may well still be watching. And there is nothing that keeps people more honest than the presence of a watchman.…

Paul Rubin on the Evolution of Conflict

Paul Rubin has an editorial in the Washington Post about how evolution may result in a proclivity towards economic and social conflict: Conflict was common in the environment in which humans evolved. As primates, which are a very social order, our ancestors lived in relatively small groups in which everyone knew everyone else. Our minds are adapted to deal with populations of that size. Our ancestors made strong distinctions between members of the in-group and outsiders, and we still make such distinctions today -- social psychologists can create in-group and out-group feelings based on…

fMRI of a dead salmon: Why dead fish have almost nothing to do with "voodoo correlations" in neuroimaging

A number of very smart people (and smart communities) seem like they might be under the impression that the "voodoo correlations" scandal in the neuroimaging community is somehow related to recent work by Bennett et al, who used fMRI to show task-related neural activity in a dead fish. These two things have almost nothing to do with one another. 1) The Bennett work is, in the words of a friend, "a cute way to make a point" that every fMRI paper I've ever read has failed to explicitly acknowledge. The reason they've failed to acknowledge it is that it's standard to run equivalent statistical…

Diamonds last forever; art, not so much

My friend Nicole sent me this WSJ article about a month ago - it's about the sad reality that artworks made with nonarchival materials often don't outlive the artist: Art is sold "as is" by galleries or directly from artists. (Can you imagine Consumer Reports reviewing art?) Still, dealers hope to maintain the goodwill of their customers, and artists don't want to develop a reputation for shoddy work. But it's not fully clear what responsibility artists bear to their completed work, especially after it has been sold. That's particularly the case for artists who purposefully use ephemeral…

What is Generation Rescue selling now?

Oh, geez. You might have noticed that I haven't written much about Jenny McCarthy in a while. The reason is fairly obvious. She seems to have faded into the background as far as her previous promotion of a vaccine-autism link. Three years ago, she was leading marches on Washington in which anti-vaccine activists claiming not to be anti-vaccine but "pro-safe vaccine." Today, even though she remains nominally head of anti-vaccine crank organization, Generation Rescue, she's clearly been making an effort to be seen as "respectable" and to downplay that anti-vaccine message that she used to…

The Vista Bounce

It could be called the Vista Bounce. Here is how it works: First, you have to understand that a good desktop computer costs about $3,000 and always will. A good laptop costs the same. If you believe differently either you have been believing the ads or you do not know what a "good desktop" or a "good laptop" is. The reason that a computer is said to cost a certain amount, say "$1850.00" or "Under a Grand" but actually costs $3,000 is this: The less expensive computer does not have something important, like memory, or a screen, or enough of a hard drive, etc. When you add that stuff on…

We're all Dakotans

Just a thought…but you know, my town isn't far from the South Dakota border, and there really isn't that much difference between my neighborhood and that of some small South Dakota town 50 miles away. I think the piggish prigs who are pushing the legislation to criminalize abortion are contemptible, but does that mean we people of the progressive state of Minnesota are any better? That got me wondering—I'm a fully entitled, blissfully unaware, card-carrying member of the Patriarchy, after all, so I've never had to consider what it would be like to be female, 17, and worried that I might be…

Cynicism in the face of Idiot America

I have to disagree with Red State Rabble and his announcement of the demise of Intelligent Design. We're seeing signs of a shifting of strategies, the fading of a few personalities, and a little confusion on the part of our enemies, but it is a colossal mistake to be predicting their end at this time. Intelligent Design was nothing but the mask worn by one of the blank faces of ignorant creationism, and all we've accomplished with victories like the Dover trial is to take a slap at the façade. We've made them briefly recoil, and at best what we can expect is a brief respite while they try to…

HuffPo hits a new low---medical infomercials

My regular readers know that I hold the Huffington Post in the lowest possible regard when it comes to its medical writing. HuffPo offers a daily platform for the worst pseudo-science and infectious disease promotion. Apparently that was getting to hard, because now I think their down to phoning it in. Last week's post by a "body cleanse expert" reads like a late-night infomercial, and is about as accurate. The article, with the fanciful title of, "Antibiotics Cause Cancer?" is written by Kim Evans whose medical qualifications are apparently limited to selling books on how to cleanse your…

Did My Dog Die From Melamine?

I try to keep all posts here strictly on topic, after all this is Deep-Sea News. So if you are not interested in my personal life and only in the deep sea then stop reading now. Last year on July 4, I faced the decision that no one with a dog should ever face. The vet looked at me and said, "We can take Moses into surgery and try to find and correct the problem or..." It is the next words that scared me the most, "or put him to sleep." I never hurt so much except for the day I left him behind at an interstate exit when I asked for directions, not realizing he was missing until 10 miles…

Vaccines and the Republican War on Science

Ever since Chris Mooney's Republican War on Science was published in 2005, folks have been looking for a way to argue that Democrats are just as bad. The standard example for this counternarrative, one which Mooney even offered in his book, was vaccine denial – the claim that vaccines cause autism or are otherwise dangerous. Intuitively, this seems right. The folks and venues touting antivaxx conspiracy theories tended to be New Agey outlets, and the places facing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases tended to be liberal strongholds, like Boulder, CO or Marin County, CA.  That must mean…

Researchers’ nightmares

This excellent article in the Chicago Tribune documents the abuses of science by quacks. Legitimate researchers identify certain properties of autism — markers for inflammation in the brain, for instance, or correlations with testosterone — and write up papers that even go out of their way to explain how their observations are interesting, but do not necessarily lead to therapies, and what do you think the medical frauds do? They use them to justify useless or dangerous treatments like injections of testosterone inhibitors or anti-inflammatory agents or loading up patients with intravenous…

They f**k you up, your genes...AVPR1A that is

The post below on AVPR1A and fidelity alluded to the fact that this locus has been implicated in many other behavioral traits. I spent some of today digging through the literature. So check it.... AVPR1a and SLC6A4 Gene Polymorphisms Are Associated with Creative Dance Performance AVPR1A and OXTR polymorphisms are associated with sexual and reproductive behavioral phenotypes in humans Link Between Vasopressin Receptor AVPR1A Promoter Region Microsatellites and Measures of Social Behavior in Humans Association between a vasopressin receptor AVPR1A promoter region microsatellite and eating…

Internet Connectivity Problems

I've not been publishing much recently because I've been unexpectedly blown off the air. Tuesday at 2 minutes after midnight local time (Monday afternoon in NYC), when I was trying to publish Scientia Pro Publica, my internet connection crashed and I nearly lost the entire document (!), apparently due to a router malfunction. Rebooting multiple times did nothing to correct the situation, so it is assumed that the router is "dead." Never mind that it is brand-new (two months old?). Of course, the Germans being the models of technological inefficiency, have decided they cannot fix this issue…

Turing Award to the Institute’s Prof. Shafi Goldwasser

Prof. Shafi Goldwasser, who is at both the Weizmann Institute and MIT, will receive the 2012 A.M. Turing Award, together with Prof. Silvio Micali of MIT. Goldwasser is only the third woman to receive the Award since its inception in 1966, and she is the third faculty member of the Weizmann Institute to receive what is considered to be the “Nobel Prize in computing.” Goldwasser and Micali’s work in the 1980s laid the foundations of modern cryptography – the science that, among other things, keeps your electronic transactions secure. The basis of their work is a series of riffs on the…

A Dynamic Trio of Findings

Blurring, chopping and blocking. Three online items this week all deal with some pretty dynamic phenomena. The blurring is in our perceptions. It turns out that if you even think you have lost money in an experiment, your ability to distinguish between musical notes will be hampered. What’s the connection? Dr. Rony Paz has been showing that this tendency to lump sounds together is tied to fear. In our evolutionary past, humans may have survived because anything that sounded remotely like a predator aroused an immediate “fight or flight” response. But if mild stress can provoke a similar…

World’s Largest STEM Event Impacts Thousands

Nearly 800 volunteers and exhibitors brought the Lockheed Martin 2014 USA Science & Engineering Festival pavilion to life last April 25-27, including more than 40 hands-on demonstrations from across the corporation in the areas of nanotechnology, data analytics, robotics, energy, advanced aeronautics, and scientific discovery. A photo album is available online here, where you will see participants, young and old, flying cockpit simulators, trying on Antarctica cold weather gear, building and flying gliders, learning about 3D printing, and enjoying the many others activities in our…

Spirituality

I am always late for The Buzz. I just can't blog on command. Jason, Jason again, Mike, Mark, PZ and their numerous commenters have chimed in on time. But the "sprituality" buzz is long gone and I am only now getting to the topic. Ah, well. Anyway, it's late at night so I will be short and only semi-serious.... When asked "What's your religion?" who answers with "I am spiritual"? Here is a Borges-like Chinese Classification: A) People who really believe in ghosts, spirits, talking with the dead and Ouija boards. B) People currently under the influence of LSD C) People who get the strong…

In Memoriam: Charles Frederick Ehret, 1924-2007

This news just came in: Charles F- Ehret died of natural causes on February 24th at his home in Grayslake, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His Wikipedia entry is quote short: Charles Frederick Ehret is a WWII veteran (Battle of the Bulge/Ardennes along the Siegfried Line) as well as a world renowned molecular biologist who worked at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in Lemont, Illinois, USA, for 40 years. Dr. Ehret researched the effects of electromagnetic radiation on bacillus megaterium with Dr. Edward Lawrence (Larry) Powers, as well as the effects of time shifts on paramecia, rats and…

Flu "hype", vaccinations and tin foil hats

It really gives me heartburn to see an otherwise sensible article in AOLNews by Katie Drummond with a headline: "Hyping H1N1: Did It Create a Dangerous Flu Fatigue?" I don't know if that was her title or not. Newspapers have headline writers who often seem never to have read the piece they are headlining, but online authors often title their own pieces. In any event, the word in the headline I object to is "Hyping." It implies deliberate exaggeration for ulterior motives. Did many respectable news outlets do this? Some did, no doubt. They are businesses and news is the commodity they are…

Credit Freeze: An Example of How Regulation Gives Consumers Choice Where the Market Wouldn't

Brian Krebs reports good news: Trans Union, one of the three major consumer reporting agencies, will offer all consumers the option to freeze their credit files in order to prevent identity theft: A credit freeze directs the credit bureaus to block access to a consumer's credit report and credit score. At present, at least 39 states and the District of Columbia allow consumers to freeze their credit files, but many of those laws do not take effect until 2008 or 2009. TransUnion would be the first bureau to voluntarily offer freezes to consumers in all 50 states (and D.C.). There's a lot to…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Computer Idle? Now You Can Donate Its Time To Find A Cure For Major Diseases: Not using your computer at the moment? You can now donate your computer's idle time to cutting-edge biomedical research aimed at finding a cure for HIV, Parkinson's, arthritis, and breast cancer. 1.02 Billion People Hungry: One Sixth Of Humanity Undernourished, More Than Ever Before: World hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with 1,020 million people going hungry every day, according to new estimates published by United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Brain Detects Happiness More…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Marijuana Ingredients Show Promise In Battling Superbugs: Substances in marijuana show promise for fighting deadly drug-resistant bacterial infections, including so-called "superbugs," without causing the drug's mood-altering effects, scientists in Italy and the United Kingdom are reporting. Can Science Improve Man's Best Friend?: If you could design the perfect dog, what would it look like? Tall, short, fluffy, wiry, black, white, tan or brindle? While animal buyers often look closely at physical characteristics, behavioural traits can make the difference between a dog becoming a much loved…

Happy Birthday, PLoS ONE!

On this day one year ago, PLoS ONE opened its doors to manuscript submissions. Chris Surridge, the Managing Editor, wrote a blog post recounting the past year: The initial success of PLoS ONE is something unprecedented in scientific publishing. It has been achieved because of the commitment and faith of hundreds of people: PLoS staff, editorial and advisory board members, reviewers, authors and particularly readers. And yet this is only a very small step towards an open, interactive and efficient literature that will accelerate scientific progress. Over the coming months, we will take…

A naturally occuring mutation of the core clock gene timeless in European Drosophila affects photoperiodic response

Surprise, surprise - a paper in Science is up there with a free online access (not the PDF, but the Full Text and that is something!): A Molecular Basis for Natural Selection at the timeless Locus in Drosophila melanogaster: Diapause is a protective response to unfavorable environments that results in a suspension of insect development and is most often associated with the onset of winter. The ls-tim mutation in the Drosophila melanogaster clock gene timeless has spread in Europe over the past 10,000 years, possibly because it enhances diapause. We show that the mutant allele attenuates the…

The Best Life Science Blogs in The Scientist

The good folks at The Scientist asked a few of us to recommend some of the best and most interesting life science blogs. We have done so and the article is now online: So, we at The Scientist are asking you to help compile the first list of the best life science blogs. Tell us what your favorite life science blogs are and why by clicking the button and leaving a comment, and we will publish a list of the most popular choices across the different areas of life sciences. With your help we hope to provide a list of who is currently hot in the science blogosphere, and why you should be reading…

AAAS and NSF Communicating Science Workshop - April 3 - Raleigh, NC

Got an e-mail from AAAS and will try to go if at all possible: The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and North Carolina State University, will be holding a one-day workshop "Communicating Science: Tools for Scientists and Engineers" on Thursday, April 3, 2008. We aim to extend an invitation to the faculty scientists, engineers, and Ph.D. students at your institution who would like to attend this workshop, in order to learn more about communicating science to news media and the general public. Please feel free…

Gribbit's Delusional Memory

Our old pal Gribbit is back, and he's inventing history. In the middle of a post about some crazy leftist that he, naturally, thinks represents everyone who disagrees with him, he writes the following: There a few leftists like you who did a blitz on me a few weeks ago trying to drum up traffic to their weak blogs. I know mine doesn't get much traffic, but I write for bigger blogs than they or you would ever hope to be. The same theme keeps coming up, the Al Franken school of debate. "Liar" "You're a liar" "Liar" but no proof. He is of course referring to the exchange where I tested his…

Trump, The Others, and A New Test of the Hypothesis

A couple of days ago I assimilated data from a bunch of on line polls where people could informally and unscientifically express their opinion about who won the GOP debate (the big boy debate only, with ten candidates). I suggested a series of hypotheses to isolate the idea that this sort of on line unscientific effort might reflect reality, with the idea of testing the results of those polls with upcoming formal polls. Now we have a couple of formal polls to test against. I took the raw percentages for the ten GOP big boy debate candidates, recalculated the percentages, and came up with…

Wonderful Life with the Elements

Have ever really thought about the elements? Have you ever really asked questions about them? If you are some kind of scientist or science geek, you probably know a lot about them, and that could even be a disadvantage for you, in a sense. For instance, if you learned early on that elements were formed at certain points in time and in certain places (the big bang or later in stars, for most atoms) then the following question may not have occurred to you: "What happens when a bunch of Carbon atoms get old. Do they fall apart?" Also, a sense of purity may be something you understand but…

September Pieces Of My Mind #2

I'm a closeted boardgamer. Is the gents' loo in the new Stonehenge visitors' centre fitted with Aubrey holes? Heh. Here's a nice piece of home-made Scandy English: "the people living in the castles would spend their days doing chores, quarrelling, sleeping and eating". The author probably means that castle dwellers would often "quarrel" with attacking troops. The Kings of Leon have a very odd singer. I can't decide if he's interesting or just bad. Borrowed one of the more recent Pratchetts that I haven't read yet. Realised that it's about a quarter-century old. Twitter just suggested that…

How to Protest a ‘Psychic’

How to do things, from someone who actually does things: How to Protest a ‘Psychic’-- Dr. Caleb Lack There is a big difference between writing and talking about doing something, and actually doing something in the Real World.  Confuse the two at your own risk. For instance, while it is fine and dandy to demand on your blog that all skeptic/atheist meetings have child care provided, it is another thing entirely to secure the necessary insurance for child care, find the money to pay for that insurance, find volunteers trained in child care/CPR/basic medicine, train all the volunteers in a…

World Series of Poker, Day 4

This has the makings of a truly incredible story in the poker world. As play began today, the chip leader was none other than last year's winner, Greg (Fossilman) Raymer with just over a million chips. Should Raymer win again this year, that would almost certainly rank as the greatest achievement in poker history. Three players in history have won back to back WSOP main event championships: Johnny Moss in 1970 and 1971, Doyle Brunson in 1976 and 1977, and Johnny Chan in 1987 and 1988 (and finished second in 1989). But when Johnny Moss won it the first time, the title was voted on by the…

Physics News Round-Up

I've been collecting a bunch of little news squibs from the IoP and the APS over the last week or so, and I keep saying that I'm going to do a nice long post explaining each of the experiments. And my actual job keeps eating my life, what with candidate interviews, committee meetings, class prep, and lab set-up. And, of course, those news items are becoming less current with every passing day... In lieu of a lengthy and detailed explanation of each, then, here's a short list of physics stories that have caught my eye. If there's a great clamor for a more detailed explanation of any of these,…

Paul Volcker: More Science, Less Finance

The main speaker at yesterday's Commencement was Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman (the guy before Alan Greenspan) and current chair of President Obama's economic advisory council. As you would expect from somebody of his background, the bulk of the speech was about the current economic crisis. The full speech is online, but the relevant-to-ScienceBlogs bit is this: The past couple of decades have been seen as a triumph of finance - new and more complex financial instruments, a huge growth of financial institutions, enormous compensation for traders, speculators, and finance…

Speaking of simulations and projections - PART I: Real life SimCity rocks!

Well, Ben has beaten me to the punch on showing some of the marvelous pictures presented here at Paleo Future. But I've actually been interested in these images for the past two weeks (with a nod to BoingBoing), having had the chance to look at some current projects that aim to use future simulations to aid in things like urban planning or policy authoring (particularly if it can be aimed at either mitigating or adapting to the possible consequences of climate change). So what's this about? Why is a geneticist looking into the academia of such things? Well, there's actually a pragmatic…

#2: The Current Literature on Science: Author-meets-Blogger Series in Review

(Ten Best of the Decade from Half of the World's Fair) This series began with the kindness of a friend who agreed to let me ask him about his book about Barry Commoner, science, and modern environmentalism. It then spawned a series of 17 interviews with authors of books in science studies, environmental history, the history of science, and all combinations in between. Every one of them was enjoyable to do; every author was generous and insightful. I've been able to use some of these as thumbnail sketches of readings I use in class. In that, they stand as the best example of blogging as a…

Librarians & Scientists: YMMV

Dorothea Salo reports that the scientists she spoke with at Science Online 2010 did not get why she was there or even why librarians would be interested in science communication. For some reason, I didn't get that so much, if at all, this year at this venue. Not that I haven't gotten that in the past. What happens now is a bit more interesting. Someone who doesn't know me either personally or through my blog will start down that direction, and someone else will say something along the lines: Oh, that's Christina, she's ok. This happens at work quite a bit, too. Huh. This isn't exactly what I…

PZ, You've Seriously Disappointed Me

PZ Myers is a really nice person and I love Pharyngula - I just spent a nice half hour reading it, and among other good stuff I encountered there was a link in this post to Robert Hooke's notebooks online. Very cool indeed, and totally geekalicious. But I'm also aware of this recent distasteful post wherein PZ offers up an apologia for Jim Watson. You know, he just has these repellent personal opinions; he's an asshole; but we all have to learn to tolerate this because he's such a fucking hero. A healthy dose of puke for your shoes, PZ. If Watson suddenly announces that design theory…

The Nerd-Off

I'm bowing to peer-pressure and joining the throng of SciBlings who have admitted to taking the nerd test. Orac's been trying real hard to claim dominance in this category, and having met the man I am reluctant to argue with him, but it would seem like quite a few of us are giving him a run for his money. For the record, I scored just as highly as he did on the nerd test, which means that we are equally nerdy, or that we are not actually equally nerdy but one of us knows how to game the test, or that neither of us is all that nerdy but both of us can game the test. (And I should get bonus…

Quantum decay through the looking glass

Imagine looking in the mirror and finding your familiar face reflected back as you've always known it. But as you look more closely, as you precisely examine that mirror image, subtle distortions emerge. The glass itself remains flawless, but real and fundamental differences exist between you and the face that lives on the other side of the looking glass. Something similar happens in the quantum world when matter is examined against its exotic reflection: antimatter. The analogy is admittedly fanciful, but it's no more dramatic than the dynamics of these almost-twins, which annihilate one…

Redefining the Role of Presidential Science Adviser

A propos of the ScienceDebate2008 project, my latest Seed column has just gone online. It's about how we must reinvent the role of the presidential science adviser for the modern media and political era. An excerpt: Because formal US science advising was born during the Cold War, the emphasis often lay upon finding someone who intimately grasped nuclear security issues. The tradition lingers up to the present: The past four science advisers, including Marburger, have all been physicists. Yet while nuclear security issues remain vital, the science policy portfolio has dramatically diversified…

A subtle change can affect your ability to count

Here's a really interesting experiment that we may be able to replicate online. Take a look at this very short video. You'll be shown a set of 12 arcs. Some of the arcs will be upturned and some of them will be turned downward, as in the example below. You'll have about 2.5 seconds to count the DOWNTURNED arcs -- just watch the video once! How many did you see? Record your answer below. How many downturned arcs did you see (second try) ( polls) After you've answered the poll, read on for an explanation of what this all means. Just to make sure your answer isn't spoiled, I'm going…

Mommy, why is that man covered with penises?

Have fun and go visit the Missing Universe Museum online. You will feel as if you are finally getting close to the bottom of human stupidity. Every page promotes this argument: If you don't believe God created all living things, male and female, in 6 days.... How many millions of years was it between the first male and the first female? It's idiotic when Ray Comfort says it, and it's just as inane when whoever put this website together says it. I had to stop and close the web page at the sight of this, their argument against vestigial organs. You see, if evolution were actually true, and…

Gene Variant Increases Obesity Risk

This is from Medpage Today, which often carries the same things as Medscape, but does not require registration (hint, hint). They report on the finding of a genetic variant that increases the risk of obesity.  the more copies of the allele, the greater the risk.  The association was found when researchers at were looking for a genetic basis for type II diabetes mellitus.  They thought they found one, but when they controlled for body mass, the association disappeared.  So the allele is not a direct cause of diabetes, but does increase the risk by increasing the risk of obesity. The article…

Awesome part-time opportunity for cell/microbiologists

For all my microbiology/cell biology peeps, this could be a neat opportunity. ASCB has obtained a two-year stimulus grant from NIH to assemble an image library of the cell. According to Caroline Kane, project PI and professor emerita at UC-Berkeley (and a wonderful person/mentor), "By visualizing the structure and dynamic behavior of a broad range of cells, scientists and clinicians will be better able to understand the nature of specific cells and cellular processes normal and abnormal. This will likely lead to new discoveries about diseases and drug targets in the future," Kane added. "I'm…

Mendel's Garden #15 - Summer Reading Edition

Welcome to the 15th edition of Mendel's Garden. This month Gregor wanted to compile a summer reading list for all those going to the beach. But watch out, a sandy keyboard is never good! So here we go: First off, Gregor would like to point out this very interestin peice on what exactly caused wrinkling in his peas, you remeber don't you - the wrinkled versus smooth phenotype. Well Larry Moran at Sandwalk informs us that the wrinkling phenotype was cause by a defect in a gene that encodes a starch branching enzyme. How very interesting. For some great summer reading, Gregor suggests that you…

Do You Despise Adware?

Who doesn't? Well, for one, all the people who have sipped the Kool-Ade of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is adware. Or at least, this is the arugment made by OpenOffice.orgNinja, and by the way, something I've been saying for years. Is Microsoft Office adware? Wikipedia defines adware as "any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertising material to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used." Ninja then goes on to demonstrate that this is true. It goes beyond that, to the level of malware, in that malware…