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Natural Does Not Equal Safe: 2nd Green Tea Edition

From Rueters: Healthy subjects who received daily caffeine-free green tea extract capsules had an increased production of detoxification enzymes, which may provide some cancer-fighting benefits, study findings show. "Concentrated green tea extract could be beneficial to those who are deficient in the detoxification enzyme and shouldn't be harmful for those who have adequate detoxification enzyme," lead investigator Dr. H.-H. Sherry Chow, of the University of Arizona, Tucson, told Reuters Health. Boneheaded. Let me tell you why. First, we already went over how green tea supplements are actual…

This Day in Medicine - October 10th

Des Moines, Iowa, 1961 - Martin Polzhappel, a 25 year-old carpenter, visits his family doctor for yet another bronchial infection. Instead of giving him the usual intramuscular injection of lincomycin, today the doctor decides to try a new oral antibiotic called ampicillin. Mr. Polzhappel is only too happy to avoid subjecting his buttocks to the not-so-tender mercies of the Hermann Göring look-alike masquerading as the good doctor's office nurse. Our patient takes his prescription to the Katz Drug Store located on Euclid and 2nd Avenue, now considered by historians to be the site of one of…

Another Chart on the Desk

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves. -Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) It was quite busy in the office today; in fact, I'm still here as I type this at 1710 hours CDT, and must go back to the hospital as soon as I'm finished writing. Not to confuse me with a real doctor (read: surgeon), "quite busy" for me usually means one of the following: 1. Had to attend a meeting designed to test my powers of wakefulness. 2. One or more patients presented with a complicated development that required the mental powers of an Einstein to solve. 3. No…

Coming Up Next: New Year's Resolutions - Are They Credible?

As 2006 draws to a close I believe it is appropriate to list a few New Year's resolutions in the hope that they inspire the gentle reader to probity, if not an appearance on Oprah. No, these resolutions are not mine. After an unfortunate incident I refuse to commit any more promises to paper, especially on December 31st. Of course this not only makes a visit to Burger King more enjoyable but leaves one free to snicker at joggers, penny-pinchers and other goody-two-shoes who are in the midst of rectifying their various sins of omission and commission. I don't mind snooping at other people'…

The Cheerful Oncologist's Little Book of Rules: Number 18

But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; -Andrew Marvell, "To his Coy Mistress" Exactly seven days ago I walked into Exam Room Number 3 and happened upon a woman in distress. Her symptoms, physical findings and laboratory abnormalities suggested to me that she had advanced stage ovarian cancer, which by the way is highly treatable. The usual sequence of events is to surgically remove as much tumor as possible and then give several cycles of chemotherapy, which frequently produces long term survival. In this case, though, the patient was about as likely to tra-la-…

Classical Rhetoric in Medicine: Epizeuxis

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. Sir Winston Churchill, 1954 No one can read the writings or speeches of Churchill and not admire his mastery of classic rhetorical terms. Churchill, who was trained in rhetoric in school, used such memorable figures throughout his adult life. For example, his use of oxymoron during a speech he gave in Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946 has become legendary: ."From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." It is certainly easier to learn and use rhetorical terms in one's writing than in…

Who's Got the Courage to Say the "D" Word? Lisa Cullen, That's Who!

Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen If there is one topic in America that will always be voted "Least Likely to Be the Source of Light-Hearted Banter Around the Dinner Table," it is death. According to the voting, the second-place finisher in this election is funerals. When it comes to politics we may be ready to unsheath our verbal swords and attack everyone, even Grandma, but when it comes to death - mum's the word. Death is taboo to the tongue. This is unfortunate in my opinion because given the likelihood of kicking the bucket on this…

Fractals on Fabric

Finally, after months of painting, planning, organizing, and flinging, my home is starting to look like a home. I’m down to the little finishing touches: trim and accessories, windows and doors. Some of these just need to be purchased and installed, so, thankfully, this means I can start getting back to normal... cooking, filing, writing, e-mailing, monitoring comments and even (gasp) blogging! To avoid burnout, I’m returning to blogging on a gradual basis, starting with some interesting but pointless light blogging. Some of it (like this post) might be related to my remodeling, but I…

A Curious Quest

Now, this is the way we ought to be testing our children: Questionaut: A Point-and-Click Quiz Adventure by Amanita Design and the BBC One of the most talented names in the casual gaming business, Amanita Design, creators of the delightful Samorost series, have just teamed up with the BBC to come up with this absolute gem of a game. It’s so cute, you won’t realize it is supposed to be educational... that is until you find yourself completely stumped on a math* question. The questions are aimed at 11-year-olds, but that may not keep you from scratching your head a few times. Even finding the…

"Friday" Fractal XXXIX

You've probably noticed that people are running around drinking green beer, pinching and kissing one another. Yes, it is St. Patrick's Day. But, the other day was Pi Day. So, this week's Friday Fractal was due to be sandwiched between two contrasting holidays, one objective and arbitrary, one colorful and subjective. It seemed to me that a fractal would be the perfect opportunity to combine these two contrasting worlds, and explore the fuzzy edge between. I began with the usual Julia set, and threw in a slice of pi. Usually, in this Julia set, "z" represents a pixel. We tell the computer that…

Effects of Washington DC gun ban

James B. Clark writes: Here's your table. You didn't include the data from 1967-1972, so I have no idea what it looks like. If you pick 1975, 1976, 1977, or 1978 I would bet that a decline in the homicide rates would be detected by the methods in the Loftin study. Probably. All this means however, is that because the data is noisy, statistics cannot tell us exactly when the drop occured. Charles Scripter writes: Curious. If the data is so noisy that one cannot determine exactly when the "drop" occurred, then Pim certainly cannot claim that the "drop" corresponds to the gun ban. He…

Metamorphosis

Would the tadpole, undergoing transformation from pollywog to froglet to frog, be astonished at our changing world? The metamorphosis of the tadpole is probably quite unremarkable--to the tadpole. A budding froglet, (Rana catesbeiana) giving me a suspicious glare. Is he aware that he is growing up in the wrong habitat? Why is it those of us who find this so utterly fascinating, often struggling with external change, feel so nonchalant about our own metamorphosis? "He had not pictured his father like this as he was standing there now; admittedly he had been too preoccupied of late with his…

Only human

I was in the olive department at the local market a few weeks ago, when I heard a voice from in front of the Cerignolas. "Dr. Signout? Is that you?" At one look, I knew who it was--the father of a girl whose forehead I'd sewn up months ago, near the middle of my intern year. I smiled, made chat, inquired after the girl, and cooed appropriately about her impending entry into kindergarten. All the while, I fought the overwhelming urge to bolt, because moments prior--seeing only the rear view of the father and son--I had cursed them under my breath as I'd impatiently maneuvered my shopping cart…

Shock

At about 8 a.m. today, the code bells sounded. ("I love the smell of chaos in the morning," said a nurse nearby.) I ran to the code, but because I had to schlep over from the intensive care unit (the ICU), I was late, and I didn't make it into the room. Scowling, I trundled downstairs to get back to pre-rounding. Half an hour later, the ICU fellow came and tugged on my sleeve. "The code upstairs? She's here, and she needs lines." I jumped up, gathered supplies, and went into the room. The patient was lying in bed, her eyelids stained violet as if with makeup. I began to announce myself…

Workshop opportunities: building strong geoscience departments, early-career faculty, and future faculty

Earth is going to be here for the foreseeable future. Will there be geoscientists to help everyone else figure out how to deal with it? The people who organize the Cutting Edge geoscience teaching workshops have another set of workshops, aimed at helping geoscience departments figure out how to grow and stay vibrant. This is particularly challenging for the geosciences, because we're on both sides of environmental issues. Our majors might end up looking for oil and gas or for ore deposits, or might monitor and clean up pollution. Our departments are also the place where college students learn…

More Good News for Tropical Forests?

I blogged about a study of tropical dry forests in southern Madagascar a while back where the researchers found that the rates of deforestation had dropped in recent years. The challenge was to find out exactly why. Ecologists studying deforestation in the Amazon may have a similar challenge. The Brazilian government is claiming that new legislation and increased policing of their portion of the forest has reduced the harvest by 25 percent. They're right about one thing. Deforestation is at its lowest since they started recording rates - only 14,000 kilometers cut down between 2005 and 2006…

The Slow Decomposition of Savannah River Ecology Lab

At least they're letting some students finish up before they pull the entire rug out from under them: The beleaguered Savannah River Ecology Lab hopes to remain open - but with vastly reduced staff and resources - through the end of the year due to commitments that require some scientists and graduate students to fulfill obligations associated with research grants. "One of our main concerns right now is with these students," said Whit Gibbons, a senior ecologist and University of Georgia professor who has spent decades at the Aiken County lab. The university, he said, has agreed to support…

Bee Alerted!

Researchers from the University of Montana are using bee hives as a sort of early warning system for chemicals and pathogens by analyzing the change in frequency of "collective buzzing" when exposed to contaminants: "We found bees respond within 30 seconds or less to the presence of a toxic chemical," said Research Professor Jerry Bromenshenk. "The military is interested in that for countering terrorism. But the real surprise was that the sounds bees produce can actually tell what chemical is hitting them." The insects also make different sounds when attacked by honeybee maladies such as…

Is There Really a Debate over Seafood?

Whether we should continue eating seafood is a hot topic this week. While I was arguing (again) that we should give up eating seafood, Mark Bittman at the New York Times had a nice piece on how seafood has changed through his lifetime and how the days of "see it/eat it" are over. However, he stops short of a strong stance and tries to justify his continued seafood consumption: One could argue, as I sometimes do (mostly to myself), that one shouldn't eat fish at all, fearing that if fish lovers begin consuming those few remaining species that are not in trouble -- sardines, mackerel, squid…

Peroxymonocarbonate and Percarbonate (Hair bleach or clothes bleach? Why can't it be both?)

Everyone by now has tried products like OxiClean, or detergents with "oxygen bleach." Rather than sodium hypochlorite, which is found in regular bleach, they've got sodium percarbonate, which is actually a mixed crystal of sodium carbonate (the old-timey name of which is "washing soda") and hydrogen peroxide. In solution, they form a "peracid," peroxymonocarbonate. Speaking very generally, a bond between two electronegative atoms is the business end of an oxidant - the oxygen-oxygen bond in hydrogen peroxide and peroxymonocarbonate does the job there, and the oxygen-chlorine bond is the…

Fluoroacetate (Conning aconitase)

(Simul-blogged with The Lab Lemming - check it out.) Fluoroacetic acid is plain old acetic acid, plus a fluorine. It is a poison of some potency. Oddly, neither the "fluoro" or "acetic acid" part is associated with any general tox risks - acetic acid, as you'll see, is central to metabolism, and fluorinated compounds aren't inherently bad. It is a "mechanism based" poison. The overwhelming majority of energy in your food is made useful via the Citric Acid (Krebs) Cycle. Some of it you get directly, and some of it is claimed later, but without Krebs, you're dead. Fluoroacetic acid will…

Phenylthiocarbamate (It's an acquired taste)

Inspired by the comments yesterday, here is a compound that was used in early human genetics: phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC: PTC is one of those molecules with the puzzling properties of tasting bitter to some, and like nothing at all to others. This page gives a good overview: To some people the chemical substance phenylthiocarbamide tastes intensely bitter while to others it is almost tasteless. The ability to taste this and a number of other chemically related substances is inherited. There are two genes, T for tasting and t for non-tasting. T is dominant in expression over t. This system…

Acetone Peroxide (Just say no to ROOH?)

I was a little uneasy about writing about this one, since I was worried someone would try and make it. The image for this entry actually went through a few iterations, first, with a detailed explanation of the mechanism. Then, I cut it down to just the stepwise formation of the dimer and trimer. Then I decided it was probably better to leave bad enough alone and just show the structure: It seems like terrorism news, like Richard Reid's (the "shoe bomber") bombing attempt, the 7/7/05 tube bombings, and, as mentioned on Pure Pedantry, yesterday's apparent thwarted UK-US flight attack, always…

Scientists need to get involved in policy

Back in December, Rees Kassen wrote an editorial for Nature arguing that if scientists want political decisions to reflect good science, they have to get involved. scientists[...] think too highly of their own view of the world and fail to appreciate the complex, multifarious nature of decision making. Our mistake is to think that science will be given a privileged voice on an issue. This is almost always wrong. From a politician's point of view, science is an interest group like any other. As if to confirm this point, a response was published in the most recent issue of Nature by Brett…

Nobel controversy update

Back in October, I wrote about the bittersweet nature of this year's Nobel in Physiology or Medicine. On the one hand, it was given for early discoveries in the field of innate immunity - my field! On the other hand, it was given to a scientist that many* feel is undeserving of the honor, while at the same time sullying the legacy of my scientific great-grandfather. Ed Yong rightly called me out for the phrase "many scientists." This term, and another often-used trope, "some scientists," are vague and lazy, since they obscure the details and can mean almost anything. "Many scientists…

On Stress in Biomedical Research

When a paper in Molecular Cell starts with Science, this very creative human endeavor to understand the nature of the reality that exists independently of ourselves, is impossible. By "impossible," I am not saying "very, very difficult," although it is that, as well. you just know you're in for a treat. He lists 6 things to remember when stressed, but I identified most with the first: Thing #1. You Are Not in Control of the Answers I contend that this is one of the greatest sources of stress in our professional lives. As scientists, we don't ask for much: we want to have some good ideas (see…

Focus is a Renewable Resource

This post from Female Science Professor, about watching a colleague with ADD work, has been stuck in my head for the past couple of days: So now he just lives with it and, although he hates his inability to focus, if he keeps going back to his original activity, even if he can't sustain that activity for more than a few minutes, he gets things done. In fact, he gets a lot done. He published 10 papers last year and wrote at least 2 successful grant proposals. And he is very well informed about the news and weather. I don't have ADD, but I identify with many of the symptoms. I think this is a…

Does This Rheometer Make Me Look Fat?

I didn't manage to get myself scraped off onto this month's Accretionary Wedge - oh, noes! While I am tragically subducted into the mantle, though, the rest of you can read about the many open questions currently puzzling the geoblogosphere. Perhaps I can make it into the volcanic arc or something with a late entry about what's making me go "hmm" this afternoon. It's related to volcanoes, too: the behavior of glass beads suspended in a zinc iodide solution, spun between two cylinders. The picture adorning this post is from an article by Völtz et al. in Physical Review E. They spun a…

Delicious Internet Noms

Nerd Links Igneous Sounds -- What happens if you feed mineral powder diffraction curves into a synthesizer? You get something that's too harmonic for your computer music composition professor's avant garde sensibilities. More details on the process here. Help Save Paleontology at Dinosaur National Monument! -- Dinosaur National Monument without the fossil exhibits would be like Glacier National Park without the glac... er, wait, maybe that's not the best analogy. Anyway, please write to the Park Service and ask them to preserve the place of paleontology in the park. Bunnies Pee Red -- when…

Optimization of the albumen denaturation protocol

Science is cooking done in a lab. Mixing carefully (or not so carefully) measured components, heating, cooling, observing phase transitions, exploring the behavior of animal and plant proteins, exploring the properties of different chemicals, slowly changing variables to optimizing procedures. Often, feeding bacteria has a lot in common with feeding people, and I have to admit that freshly autoclaved yeast media smells delicious. Said another way, cooking is science where at least you can usually eat the failures. My fiancé and I have been failing at making soft-boiled eggs for quite some…

In alternative animal testing, a pessimist really is a well-informed optimist

Back in March in Toxicological Sciences there was a great LTE from Dr David Basketter regarding an in vitro sensitization assay. The part I thought most on the money was this: Overall, a prediction accuracy of about 82% was achieved, which is only a little lower than was obtained during the validation of the local lymph node assay (LLNA) (NIH, 1999), although some might be concerned by the failure of this in vitro system to detect almost 20% of the sensitizers. The authors address this issue by invoking the conduct of complementary assays, such as peptide binding or in silico methods. For…

Germany's anti-genetic testing legislation misses the point

David Clark at Genomics Law Report has a thorough dissection of the recent and highly restrictive laws passed in Germany governing access to genetic testing. You should read the whole thing to get a sense of what happens when governments grab the wrong end of the regulation stick, but here's the crucial paragraph: The German Act [...] adopts an extremely protective, even fearful, view of genetic information as something so dangerous and private that the generation and disclosure of genomic data must be mediated solely through specially trained physicians, accompanied by psychological and…

deCODE now licensed in California

Icelandic genomics company deCODE Genetics has received a license to market direct-to-consumer genetic tests (such as the genome scan provided by daughter company deCODEme) in the state of California. This follows the regulatory crackdown by California's public health department last June, which sent nervous ripples through the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry. Personal genomics rivals 23andMe and Navigenics both received their own licenses last August, and it's unclear to me why it's taken so long for deCODEme to follow suit (please feel free to speculate wildly in the comments…

Brain doping: academics say yes

A commentary in Nature by a group of psychologists, ethicists and neuroscientists has a controversial message: Based on our considerations, we call for a presumption that mentally competent adults should be able to engage in cognitive enhancement using drugs. [their emphasis] The authors call for a rejection of the common knee-jerk notion that cognitive enhancement in healthy individuals - using drugs like amphetamines or the fatigue suppressant modafinil, or other means such as brain stimulation - is somehow "cheating", "unnatural", or "drug abuse". None of these criticisms hold up to close…

More on Today's Revkin Article

Earlier I published a post about an interesting article by Andrew Revkin in today's New York Times about industry's willful ignorance of global warming science. There was an interesting quote in there that I didn't mention earlier about how journalistic practices enabled this campaign of misinformation: George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had. Will Bunch of Attytood already has some good commentary about this quote as…

New Photos on the About Page

Dare I be so presumptuous to suggest that you've checked out the About page on my blog in the last couple of days, you may have noticed a few new photos. The first one was taken last summer in front of the Wellcome Trust building in London: Yes, that's right: I'm standing in front of a giant neon protein structure. And, I don't think it's possible for me to convey just how much I want one of those! The Wellcome Trust--a ubiquitous name in science in the UK--is the second largest medical charity in the world and the largest non-governmental funder of biomedical research in the UK. It…

Rumsfeld Steps Down, Bush Nominates A&M President Robert Gates

It has just been announced that unpopular Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is "stepping down". This is no doubt a positive step for the Bush Administration, the nation, and the world as a whole, but it comes as too little too late, as the disastrous Iraq war has already cost the lives of almost 3,000 troops and hundreds of thousands of others. What's interesting about this story, to me at least, is who President Bush has nominated to replace Rumsfield: former CIA Director (under George Bush, Sr.) and current Texas A&M University president Dr. Robert Gates. Gates has already turned…

The Republican War on Science Paperback Released Today

I don't have my copy yet of the latest edition of Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science, but I've been told that it's on its way. And, believe me, I'll bump it up to the top of my reading list when I get it, so you can expect a review sometime soon. I'm embarrassed to admit that I never actually read the hardcover edition, so I'm doubly looking forward to the new paperback. In his introduction to the paperback edition, Chris writes that it has more of a focus on what the reader can do to combat these attacks on scientific progress: I often heard from readers of the hardcover edition…

Weekend Movies: Nacho Libre and A Scanner Darkly

I don't make it to the movies too often in the UK. To start with, they're prohibitively expensive, and I'm often seeing them months after my friends back home. When you then consider the fact that the popcorn here tastes like salty styrofoam (it's called butter, people! Look into it!), there really isn't much of a draw. However, after completing my transfer viva Thursday, I needed to kick back this weekend. Since you can only go to the pub so many times before people start to call you an alcoholic (people back home, at least), I joined some friends at the movies. On Friday we saw Nacho…

Detonate a Love Grenade

Love can be explosive. This may be a bit much, or it may be just right. From Molla Space: War is destructive and bombs take away lives. But these beautifully sculpted ceramic love grenade coin banks are designed and made to plant seeds for future growth and prosperity. Convert your love to change and save it in "A Love Grenade" and donate it to those who are in need. Part of proceeds benefits Biaugust's cause A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). I fully support efforts to promote human rights. This particular example is visually provocative, and raises an interesting…

What Americans Regret The Most

What do Americans regret the most? Regret can weigh you down, leading to focusing on the past rather than a brighter future. Each of us has a bundle of regrets; I will spare you my own list - it is unlikely you have the time or interest to lend a sympathetic ear. What's on your list? Researchers at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University set out to answer this question by surveying a randomized sample of adult men and women across the U.S. How did they do the study? A total of 370 adult Americans (207 were women) completed a survey via telephone (in exchange for $5; mailed…

Human Connectome: Our Brain's Atlas

If you thought the human genome project was impressive its scope and scale. think about the human connectome project. I recently shared with you the fruit fly brain atlas, comprised of about 100,000 neurons, and compared it to the human brain with some 100 billion neurons. The first high resolution images of the "connectedness" of the human brain are beginning to emerge: According to the NIH-funded human connectome project, to be described in tomorrow's Science Times of The New York Times: {My edits:} Overview Mapping of the human connectome offers a unique opportunity to understand the…

Carnival of Evolution #23!!

The 2010 May edition of our beloved Carnival of Evolution is up today on the official blog for Springer Verlag's journal, Evolution: Education and Outreach. And with that, surely getting your post accepted in CoE is now akin to peer-reviews on some level. Thanks to Adam M. Goldstein for hosting. I have two pieces up: Jason G. Goldman’s post, “Starting from the Beginning: Evolutionary and Developmental Origins of Human Knowledge” offers a readable, useful overview of some main approaches and problems in the study of how people think and learn, focusing on “core knowledge systems,” which are…

Falling Walls: Modern chemistry turns lead into gold

Today I'll be writing a series of blogposts from the Falling Walls conference in Berlin. Each speaker is invited to discuss the ideas, inventions, and discoveries they believe will break down walls in their field. Paul Chirik: How Modern Alchemy Can Lead to Inexpensive and Clean Technology Professor of chemistry Paul Chirik is on a mission to turn lead into gold. Or, to be more precise, to make lead act like gold. Precious metals are instrumental to some of the most widespread and important chemical processes in our world, such as the osmium needed to synthesise fertiliser (so valuable that…

Will Halley's Comet lose its sparkle?

Google is celebrating Edmund Halley's birthday today, so it seemed like a good time to mention something that's been on my mind. It's about life, wonder, and celestial bodies. Halley's Comet is somewhat unique, being the only short period comet visible to the naked eye. "Short period" here is something of an astronomy-centric phrase, given that it only appears every 75 years. I think a big part of the magic of Halley's Comet lies in the breadth of that period. It's just about the length of a human life, which means if you remember seeing the comet, you're unlikely to live long enough to…

Science Showdown: Goldacre vs Drayson

Prepare yourselves for a seismic science showdown! In the reeeeeed corner: the man from Le Mans, Britain's very own Minister for Science, the Lord Paul Rudd Drayson! In the bluuuuue corner: the Rational Radical, Benjamin "Bad Science" Goldacre! After a crossing swords on Twitter, the two agreed to go head-to-head in a no-holes-barred meeting of minds. Details have been released: fight night is Sept 16, 7pm at the Royal Institution. Attendance to this match is FREE, details on how to attend are in the press release issued by BIS below the fold: Science reporting: is it good for you?…

Why do we tolerate celebrities preaching scientific nonsense?

Over at the Guardian's Lost In Showbiz, Marina Hyde continues her campaign to steal my heart, this time by lancing those celebrities who confuse their ability to secure a table at the Ivy with the authority to talk sensibly on matters of science. We're looking at you, Madonna: Behold, the most serious challenge to the Royal Society in that august body's 350-year history - the medical musings of Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Stella McCartney. These women are not just singers, or actresses, or fashion designers. They are distinguished professors at the University of Celebrity, and are coating…

Happy Darwin Day!

I thought I'd include a picture of the young Charles Darwin, since we are celebrating his birthday today. That's him in 1816, when he was 6 or 7 years old, with his younger sister, Emily Catherine Darwin. And then I started wondering about that other person in the picture. Darwin's sisters were an extremely important influence on his life, and I don't know a heck of a lot about her; Darwin had four sisters and one brother, Erasmus, and most of the biographies say quite a bit about the older brother who preceded him to university, but the sisters seem to be background noise. It seems…

Herbal Tinctures: now with more "?/4 ??? ?"

I spotted this yesterday, from the February-March 2009 issue of the Organic Lifestyle Magazine. Perhaps it didn't render correctly, or maybe my browser has a wry sense of humour. Bryan Shillington (Journeyman Herbalist) says: All of our formulas are available to the public. If we lose business and gain competitors, so be it. We need more herbalists and natural healers in this horrid world of huge pharmaceutical companies and pill pushers in white coats. Be the family herbalist. Be your own doctor. maybe if enough of you make your own herbal preparations, we'll drive them out of…

Cash and Community College Football . . . and Academics

If you thought American colleges and universities were all about thugging it up and diagramming the Z-scheme, you'd be surprised to learn how big of a deal football is. Heck, if you were to visit some universities on Saturday afternoon in autumn, you'd be surprised to learn that you were on the grounds of an institute of higher learning. And it's not just the four year colleges and universities that can be called Football-U. California has the best public university system of any state in the US. Multiple University of California schools are ranked as top national universities. On top of that…