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How to wait for a very long time

This is my current favorite song, by the underrated band Fanfarlo. The lyrics, which remind me of Roswell crossed with Spoon River Anthology, are a touching portrayal of the eternal plight of the social misfit. But the video is exactly what we'd have gotten if the Dharma initiative had set up its own music television station. So in honor of last night's long-awaited and poignant end to LOST, here's "Harold T. Wilkins, or How to Wait for a Very Long Time." Lyrics (from here) You've been packing your bags for the tenth time You've been up on the roof again And you're biding your time but it's…

Worms, art, and the "dogma of science"

"Labyrinthine Meditation, Middle Stage" Brian Knep, 2009 Brian Knep, an artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School, just ended a solo exhibition at Boston's judi rotenberg gallery. Interestingly, the exhibition press release is unabashedly critical of science: Through the scientific study of microscopic worms, Knep engages metaphysical questions of human behavior, the passage of time, and our inevitable transition to death. Knep's study of Caenorhabditis elegans, was inspired by the studies being conducted by scientists at the Harvard lab, specifically the study of aging, or the "…

ScienceBlogs Must Read: How to Make a PowerPoint

Bad teaching is one of my pet peeves, but I go back and forth on PowerPoint. I think its egregious abuse most of its users shouldn't necessarily bring a cloud on the whole program -- sometimes it is used effectively. Still most people are not using it correctly, in a way that facilitates good teaching rather than is a crutch for bad teaching. Chad Orzel from Uncertain Principles has an excellent guide to using PowerPoint for good rather than evil: 2) Limit Your Material. I tend to view one slide per minute as an absolute upper bound on any given talk, and I rarely reach that. The most…

This must be blog-about-food-issues week....

...because I just got a call from Minnow's daycare saying that she'd accidentally been given two foods that she hadn't yet been introduced to: Orange juice and cheese crackers. Apparently, a substitute teacher didn't bother to read the menu circling which foods Minnow was and wasn't eating. So, what's the big deal about a little snack. No less a mainstream source than babycenter.com has this to say about introducing citrus fruits: "Citrus fruits -- such as oranges, grapefruits, and tangerines -- are very acidic and can cause stomach upset or diarrhea in babies. That's why doctors recommend…

If you don't publish, you are invisible.

I've frantically been writing a grant proposal for a small internal grant competition, due later this week. Basically, I am proposing to update some work I was involved with ~10 years ago. This work was presented at a few meetings, but never published.* When we were doing the work 10 years ago, it was really innovative. Other people working int he field area were surprised by our results and our literature review didn't reveal a lot of similar work in other places. But now there is a reasonably well-established worldwide literature. And, more disturbingly, bits and pieces of our work (in our…

New Mommy on the Block

I'm the new mommy blogger here at ScienceBlogs. I don't write about the latest ground-breaking research in my field. I don't even publicly reveal what my field is. What I do write about are my experiences as an early career scientist who also happens to be a woman. I share my life as the mother of a spunky seven-month old girl who has already "helped" with field work and seminars. I describe the dramas of being a first-year assistant professor, scrambling to write lectures and grant proposals and figure out what "service" means, while trying to be home for a little playtime before my…

Rogue Astronaut Highlights Need For Better NASA Psych Screening

Wouldn't you think that NASA would use the most rigorous psychological test to screen for tough minds in potential astronauts? How then does the soap-opera-esque debacle with astronaut Lisa Nowak (you know, the one in the love triangle who's been arrested for attempted murder) even come to such a boiling point? That it *did* happen has brought into question NASA's ability to monitor the psychological state of the people who go into space. In response to increased scrutiny, NASA has promised to review its psych testing practices. The only lucky break in this situation is that Lisa Nowak "…

Scientists (and Bloggers) in Love

The cat's been out of the bag about Jennifer Ouellette (of Cocktail Party Physics) and Sean Carroll (of Cosmic Variance) being engaged, and now a feature story on the two of them is on Nature news today. Specifically, she's asking advice from other scientists about how to keep a relationship together when the significant others both have demanding science careers. Jennifer is a science writer, and is relocating to California to be with Sean, although she says: Alas, scientists who marry scientists can't always get it together quite so easily. There is a daunting obstacle to be overcome: they…

Man Robs Bank, Blames Parrot's Demise

My oh my oh my, parrots really are the cause of so much human suffering aren't they? I couldn't wait to post this until Friday Grey Matters, well, because Irene Pepperberg's interview will be featured this week (a long time coming, but we finally had a little chat Sunday night). So stay tuned for that, good stuff from an exceptionally smart and kind person. Anyway, back to parrot-induced bank robberies: A Murfreesboro [Tennessee] man told authorities he robbed MidSouth Bank on East College Street Monday because he "lost his job, tried for another and didn't get it, and his dog ate his parrot…

Global Warming Keeping Bears, as Well as Liberals, Awake

The forests of Siberia are full of insomniac bears, scaring the locals, as the weather has been staying too warm for them to go into hibernation. Usually Siberian bears sleep six months, beginning in October or November, but the Kemerovo region where they live has currently gotten no snow. Hunters, out in the woods stalking birds and hares now that the hunting season is open, need protection from restless bears the most, she added. "We have observers who ensure there are no attacks on hunters." Bears den in dry places usually covered by snow, and wet weather makes finding a suitable "bedroom…

Sailor saves a bumblebee

When a sailor misses a chance to go to sea, he tends to wander around his garden, paying special attention to the clouds and the weather, as if he were walking on the ship's deck in fresh sea air. He circles his home like it were a shipyard, looking for repairs. Today I noticed some rotting wood on the gable in a corner of the garden. A bee crawled out. The adjacent firebush (Fig. 1) buzzes every morning with dozens of bees of a few different species. Two species are bumblebees, big, black, and loud; the other is small, like a honeybee, yellow and black. Hummingbirds also frequent the bush.…

Cool Visual Illusions: Freaky Filled In Afterimages

I love afterimages and aftereffects, so I was excited to see that the 2008 winner for Best Illusion of the Year is a new afterimage illusion. To see the illusion for your self, watch this sequence of images for about 30 seconds (it takes at least 30 seconds for it to really work for me): The illusion isn't really strong, so you may need to know what you're looking for in order to see it. What you should see is, after 20 or 30 seconds, the blank shapes start to be filled with a "ghostly" color. That's the afterimage, and though the actual colors only fill part of the the shapes, the…

Cool Visual Illusions: Depth Perception and The Power of Shadows

I frequently hear people imply, if they don't state directly, that two working eyes are required for depth perception. This is surprising because with a moment's reflection, it's easy to see that there are depth cues that don't require both eyes. In fact, out of the many, many cues to depth that our visual system uses, only a couple -- convergence, or the relative position of the two eyes, and disparity (though there are two or three different kinds of disparity, depending on who you ask) -- require both eyes. The rest are all monocular. The most obvious monocular depth cues are size (…

The Cognitive Psychology of Scrabble?

I kid you not: Halpern, D.F., & Wai, J. (2007). The world of competitive Scrabble: Novice and expert differences in visuospatial and verbal vbilities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 13(2), 79-94. Competitive Scrabble players spend a mean of 4.5 hr a week memorizing words from the official Scrabble dictionary. When asked if they learn word meanings when studying word lists, only 6.4% replied "always," with the rest split between "sometimes" and "rarely or never." Number of years of play correlated positively with expertise ratings, suggesting that expertise develops with…

If The Only Thing He Does...

If the only thing Obama does, is to not do the bad things that Bush did, then he will be a success.  A disappointment, yes, but also a success.  Above is a clip of Olbermann, summarizing in about 9 minutes the worst of the past eight years. Below the fold is one of the consequences. It is a chart depicting the KBW Bank Index performance over the past four years.  The Index is a weighted index comprised of the 24 largest national and regional banks.  It is now at a 13-year low -- and that is AFTER a gazillion dollars (actually $2.8 trillion) in bailouts. The prospects are not good. …

Grad Students as "Security Threats"

I realize that in the spectrum of boneheaded moves by the Administration, this one is not the most extreme.  Still, it was a pretty dumb thing to do. href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/washington/13tsa.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">Blunt Federal Letters Tell Students They're Security Threats By SCOTT SHANE Published: May 13, 2008 WASHINGTON -- A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied to the Transportation Security Administration for a new ID card allowing him to work around ships and docks. What the student, Wilken-Jon von Appen,…

Zyprexa Adhera Nears Final Approval

Zyprexa Adhera is a new formulation of href="http://zyprexa.com/index.jsp">Eli LIlly's antipsychotic medication, href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster/a601213.html">olanzapine.  It contains the same active ingredient as the pills, but it is a long-acting injection.  It is supposed to last two to four weeks. There is not a lot of specific information available yet.  It is not on the market yet, either.  The milestone is that in was just recommended for approval by the title="Food and Drug Administration"> href="http://www.fda.gov/">FDA. Background:…

Dreams, Corrected

I really liked Jonah's post at The Frontal Cortex, about href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/dreaming_smelling_and_memory.php">Dreaming, Smelling and Memory.  But I have to take issue with his treatment of the use of dream interpretation in Freudian psychotherapy.   I know this is a nit-picky point, and is completely tangential to the point of his post.  But this close to Piday, we need to be thinking about things like tangents.   It is true that psychoanalysts refer to dreams as "the royal road to the unconscious."  It is true that the interpretation of dreams can be an…

'Tis a good day to #creozerg

I'm in Springfield, Missouri, and today at noon I'll be joining a mob of skeptics and atheists at the Gillioz Theater to prepare to hit the Creation Ministries of the Ozarks. We shall descend upon them as a horde and sweep through their "museum", documenting the foolishness and mocking the silly. You're all welcome to join, but if you do show up, there are a few rules to follow: Be polite and nondisruptive. This is their property and you are a visitor. Remember: the Christians running this show, and the Christian attendees, are the delusional victims here. Feel some pity for them. Do…

Now What? I Thought Things Were Getting Better

I almost wrote about this yesterday: a pair of articles indicating that the FDA is getting more serious about protecting people: href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/30/AR2007013001496.html">FDA Revamps Process for Safety of Drugs After Approval href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/30/AR2007013001388.html">FDA to Monitor Post-Market Drug Safety The need to bolster post-marketing surveillance has long been a sore spot with FDA-watchers.  It seemed that improvements were on the way.  Plus, it appeared to be the case, that…

Radiology Quiz

Usually, doctors post radiology quizzes with odd clinical findings, or sometimes odd things that people have swallowed, or gotten into their bodies through other means. But this particular image has nothing to do with medicine, or even traditional radiology.  Rather, it pertains to astronomy and archeology.   This is the famous href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_Mechanism" rel="tag">Antikythera mechanism, found in the Mediterranean Sea, discovered in a shipwreck in 1901, off the coast of the Greek island, rel="tag">Antikythera.  That's the origin of the name of…

Brownfield Development for Biofuels

Rehabilitation of disused industrial sites has been a costly and contentious issue in urban planning.  Sites that are mildly or moderately contaminated are called href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield" rel="tag">brownfields.  Research is underway to see if some brownfields can be used to grow crops, specifically for the production of biofuels. Michigan State University, known affectionately as "Moo-U," in collaboration with rel="tag">DaimlerChrysler and href="http://www.nextenergy.org/" rel="tag">NextEnergy, has small plots of soybean, corn, canola and switchgrass…

The Stimulus - How much is marked for science funding?

From the AAAS: The three agencies highlighted in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 and President Bush's American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) would do extremely well in the stimulus appropriations bill. The National Science Foundation (NSF) would receive $3.0 billion; the Department of Energy's Office of Science (DOE OS) would receive $2.0 billion; and Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would receive $520 million; nearly all of these supplementals are for R&D activities. The $5.5 billion allocated to these three agencies would finally put all three budgets…

The Trip Part IV - Bavaria

After Paris we flew to Munich on Airberlin (20 Euros per ticket, 50 Euros after taxes and airport fees.) There we met up with some former colleagues (Julia and Michael) and a current member of the Rapoport Lab (Briana) who will be leaving us soon to start her own lab in the MCB department at Harvard's Main Campus. Also in attendance was Briana's husband and my wife who snapped this picture of us in the English Garden. Munich is a beautiful city. For anyone who enjoys the music, Munich might as well be the world capitol of classical music. The number of great performers who currently live in-…

The Trip Part III - Short Stop in Paris

We then arrived in Paris on June 21st. If spending the summer solstice in the city of lights means nothing to you then you've never heard of Fete de la Musique, a one day outdoor party. The streets were filled with Parisians taking in the food, the sights and the sounds generated from live musicians trough out the city. Fete de la Musique is now celebrated in almost every part of France and a good chunk of Switzerland too. There were teenage garage bands, DJs, tam-tam players and of course many troubadours. At one location the musician's distributed lyrics into the crowd so that everyone…

New England RNA Club - Next Meeting is Feb 21st

I'm almost done with my grant. Yesterday I sent out a 95% completed version of my proposal to SPA (Sponsored Programs Administration - an organization that vets grants to make sure that there are no conflicts of interests and that all the proposed protocols treat human and vertebrate animals ethically - since my research uses tissue culture cells, this ain't a problem). Next I had to take care of all the other items I had been neglecting. Priority number two was the RNA Club. Here is the letter I sent out: Hello All, The next meeting of the New England RNA Club will take place Thursday,…

Sleep loss & false memories

It is well established that certain types of memory are consolidated during sleep. Now Nature News reports on findings presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum in Geneva last weekend, which suggest that sleep loss can lead to the formation of false memories: Susanne Diekelmann in Jan Born's lab at the University of Lubeck, Germany, and her colleagues asked volunteers to learn lists of words, each list relating to a particular topic. For example, they might learn the words 'white', 'dark', 'cat' and 'night' -- all of which can be linked to the word 'black' -- but…

Return of the infrared Alzheimer's helmet

Back in January, the Daily Mail reported on "the helmet that could turn back the symptoms of Alzheimer's." The device is pictured above, held by its inventor, a British GP called Gordon Dougal. It consists of 700 light-emitting diodes which transmit near-infrared light into the brain and can, according to Dougal, stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis, and therefore reverse the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's, if worn for 10 minutes a day for about a month. When the story first came out, David Gorski did a brilliant job of explaining why it is probably too good to be true: Dougal'…

A quick peek at the future Louisiana science curriculum

Oh, boy — Bobby Jindal's new program to open up state funds to support all kinds of random nonsense in schools is going to have some interesting (that is, horrifying) effects. They are going to be throwing money at A Beka Books and Bob Jones University texts, and Accelerated Christian Education. What kinds of things will Louisiana kids be learning? Science Proves Homosexuality is a Learned Behavior The Second Law of Thermodynamics Disproves Evolution No Transitional Fossils Exist Humans and Dinosaurs CoExisted Evolution Has Been Disproved A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur Solar…

The brain's Venetian bridge

I returned to UCL today, after spending the first week of the new term writing my second piece of coursework for the M.Sc., a 2,000-word essay about AMPA receptor recomposition in synaptic plasticity, which I'll post on here soon. The third block began today with a lecture on nociception (pain), and a brain dissection. It wasn't a dissection as such, because human brains are, for some reason, in short supply, so me and the other students spent nearly 2 hours gathered around two preserved specimens - a whole brain and a sagittal section. This was disappointing, as I was hoping that we might…

Portraits of cannibals

Photograph courtesy of the Exploratorium  Jonah Lehrer* points out an exhibition of Paul Ekman's photographs at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Ekman is a psychologist at UCSF who has spent time in Papua New Guinea studying the facial expressions of the people there, to try and determine whether or not such expressions are universal, as Darwin suggested in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals.  The exhibition in San Francisco consists mainly of Ekman's photos of the South Fore peoples, a subgroup of about 8,000 individuals who live in the highlands to the east of…

Quote of the day

This week has just come and gone. I didn't do a single experiment. As for the blog, I typed two measly entries. But I did finalize my PLoS paper, give journal club and prepare for the next New England RNA Data Club. It's taking place here at Harvard Medical School on October 30th. So what else happened this week? Yes, I heard about the whole Watson affair. (BTM do you have anything to say? I guess the last time Watson was served by a black waiter, our Nobel laureate didn't tip well ...) The latest in this story is that he just got reprimanded by the Board of Trustees at Cold Spring Harbor.…

Baby Bugs Beg Parents for Food, Protection and Affection

A paper by the University of Basel's Zoological Institute to be published in the upcoming issue of the journal, Animal Behavior, reveals the complex relationship that baby bugs - nymphs and larvae - have with their parents. When young tree hoppers feel threatened they will shake the leaves and stems that they reside on, signaling their mothers to sit on top of them and chase away any attackers. Burying beetles and earwigs kick their mothers in the face until they regurgitate delicious filth into their babies' open mouths. Even Vespidae wasp larvae, which grow up in cells, will scratch at the…

Swallows Shed New Light on Looks vs. Testosterone

A new study of barn swallows has shed fascinating light on the link between appearance and the levels of sexual hormones in their bodies. Scientists have long noted that male swallows with deeper red throats attract more females and have higher levels of testosterone. Conventional wisdom assumed that swallows born with more testosterone had deeper throats and thus attracted more females. Turns out, however, that this is only partially true. Who's the private dick who's the sex machine with all the chicks?....Artificially painted barn swallow! Awwwwwww yeah. University of Colorado, Boulder…

Blogger Challenge 2008 sprog thank-you art + poem: memory.

Ewan made a generous donation to one of the projects in my challenge and, as he did last year, he requested a poem illustrated by the sprogs on the subject of memory. It turns out that drawing "memory" is pretty challenging! However, the sprogs worked out some ways to represent the concept of memory more concretely. So, we offer a poem, some illustration, and our thanks to Ewan: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance." -- Hamlet, Act IV, scene v I can't remember how to sit down to write a proper poem, though somehow I can remember the feel of the humid air, the smell of summer in the…

Friday Sprog Blogging: competing expertise.

Elder offspring: Why do mice have long, naked tails? Dr. Free-Ride: Why do the tails of rats look so much like earthworms? Elder offspring: That doesn't answer my question. Dr. Free-Ride: Sorry, I thought we were just making a list of life's mysteries. * * * * * Younger offspring: Why are there so many bugs outside when we eat dinner outside? Dr. Free-Ride: What am I, an entomologist? Elder offspring: Or an insectivore? Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm, which knows more about insects, an entomologist or an insectivore? Elder offspring: An entomologist studies bugs. Younger offspring: An insectivore eats…

Blogiversary programming notes.

Hey, today is the third anniversary of my first post on "Adventures in Ethics and Science" at the original digs. I can honestly say that when I started the blog as a virtual extension of class discussions in my "Ethics in Science" I didn't imagine that it would continue past the end of the semester, nor that it would get scooped up to become part of ScienceBlogs. A few notes before the cupcakes: I've made some post-Blogroll Amnesty Day updates to my blogroll (and, with luck, didn't mess up any of the links). But it's not too late to tell me about a blog I really should be reading! I…

Who has the biggest snakepit?

As I was weighing in on aetosaurs and scientist on scientist nastiness, one of the people I was talking to raised the question of whether careerist theft and backstabbing of professional colleagues was especially bad in paleontology. (Meanwhile, a commenter expressed surprise that it wasn't just biomedical researchers who felt driven to cheat.) I don't know. So I figured I'd put it to my readers: In your experience, which scientific discipline seems most prone to fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and generally nasty business between its members? Do you have any hypotheses as to why…

What would it be like to be an engineer?

It has recently transpired that I will be teaching (and before that, designing and constructing) a brand new ethics module in the large introduction to engineering class at my university that all the freshman who are majoring in any of the multitude of engineering disciplines must take. I'm jazzed, of course, that the College of Engineering thinks that it's worth cultivating in their students the idea that ethics is an integral part of being a good engineer (and a good engineering student), so much so that they are devoting two weeks in the fifteen week term to this. And, I want to do a…

I don't know that I like this song

Roy Zimmerman released this one today as appropriate to the dissent at the top in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. I have to applaud Rolling Stone for exposing the chaos in leadership in the war. The Rolling Stone article highlights how President Obama has long had an even bigger decision to make. His Afghan team is widely regarded as dysfunctional. There is an astonishing web of animosities and rivalries between key civilian and military players. McChrystal comes off as an honest — too honest — jerk who is so arrogant that he doesn't care that the follies of the conduct of war are…

Friday frivolity: let's write a three-toed sloth sex joke.

Whereas the commenters on this blog have on numerous occasions proven themselves to be whip-smart and very funny, and whereas this humble blog comes up near the top of Google searches for "three toed sloth sex jokes", I propose that we write some worthy three-toed sloth sex jokes. Indeed, I'd like to write some jokes that turn on factual information about the three-toed sloth while not relying on sexist (or ableist, etc.) tropes for their "humor". Bonus points if we can generate genuinely funny three-toed sloth sex jokes that would turn up as results of a safe search. Here's some potentially…

Friday Sprog Blogging: school supplies.

The Free-Ride offspring just kicked off a new school year. The start of school in these parts means a long list of supplies to find -- stuff you'd expect, like crayons, pencils, binders and binder paper, scissors, and glue sticks, plus stuff for general classroom use like tissues, had sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, paper towel, and copier paper. The tighter the school's budget, the more items get added to the "voluntary donations" list. (And we've heard tell that the donations aren't always voluntary. If you don't get crayons, your kid goes through the school year without crayons. This…

Robert Burns' birthday food blogging.

Robert Burns's birthday, which was January 25, is an important day for Scottish celebration and food. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Give it a chance. So, back at ScienceOnline'09, I was talking with AcmeGirl about marking the 25th with some lovely Scottish food. She was talking about haggis. In the Free-Ride house, seeing as how we don't do meat, we don't do canonical haggis either. (In 1997, in Scotland, I had a fabulous vegetarian haggis, but I doubt I could reproduce it in my own kitchen, at least on the first try.) So I was thinking maybe tatties and neeps (potatoes and turnips…

What's up, NSTA?

This is a troubling development, and perhaps some members of the National Science Teachers Association in the readership here know something about it. They seem to be in the pocket of the oil industry. In tomorrow’s Washington Post, global warming activist Laurie David writes about her effort to donate 50,000 free DVD copies of An Inconvenient Truth (which she co-produced) to the National Science Teachers Association. The Association refused to accept the DVDs: In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said…

Blame the pope...for everything!

A reader sent me a link to this very strange site, and I've been trying to determine whether it's a satire or not. It seems the answer is…not. There's a huge amount of kook screed here. We get to learn that we Americans are actually living in Cabotia, named after the one true discoverer of North America, John Cabot (oh, and since North and South America are all one connected land mass, he gets to claim both continents.) Pope Pius IX had something to do with Lincoln's assassination, and Kennedy's assassination was the work of a conspiracy by Nelson Rockefeller. The author is not a fan of…

UARS Satellite Crashing Into Earth Update: North America LEAST Likely Spot

As you know, the UARS (Satellite) is in the process of de-orbiting. It is a bit more like a death watch (have you ever done one of those?) than a technological procedure. The satellite was pushed into a dangerous orbit that would drag it down within several days, and it is now losing its grip on orbital inertia as it plows ungracefully through thicker and thicker regions of the upper atmosphere. One wonders what might affect UARS's orbit. Would a powerful weather front with tall thunderheads, or a hurricane cause enough extra molecules of air to be pushed up a bit farther, to cause the…

The Internet is Very Interesting Today

Did we miss an opportunity over the last few months? For several months, since Last April, SETI has been in hibernation, not taking calls from aliens living in other worlds with radio sets. Phil Plait reports that SETI is back on line after a revival of funding. The question is, did we miss any calls? The funds are private donations. Phil "... was happy to see that people such as Jodie Foster (who played SETI astronomer Ellie Arroway in the movie "Contact") and science fiction author Larry Niven were among people who had contributed, as well as Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders. The $200k…

Alternative medicine and "alternative" methods of payment?

I don't know where EoR finds this stuff, but I like the way Deborah Ross thinks when she discusses offering alternative medical practitioners alternative methods of payment. Not surprisingly, they aren't interested: There has been much fuss this week about the 'scientific status' of homeopathy, just as there is always a fuss about 'alternative' treatments generally. Personally, I have no patience with the dismissive and often contemptuous attitude these therapies can attract, as there are many useful treatments and products on offer out there. These include: THE ALTERNATIVE CREDIT CARD (…

UPDATED: Major Funding for Science Friday Ends; What will happen next?

It is hard to imagine a world without science Friday. But it is easy to image a world in which our collective respect for the National Science Foundation, who is pulling their funding for the program, is seriously compromised. Also, it is easy to imagine a world in which we do NOT renew our memberships to NPR because they are ALSO pulling funding. UPDATE: Ira Flatow, host of Science Friday, has added a comment below which you should read. As you know, I tend to be bit radical in these areas. I may very well shift my personal donation to Sci Fri despite Ira's suggestion, or perhaps split…

What is life? New Biology Textbook

My old friend, colleague, suaboya, and educator extraordinaire, Jay Phelan has written what many believe will be the next Campbell. The name of the book is What Is Life?. There are two versions: one regular, and one with extra physiology. And both are based firmly on and integrated thoroughly with excellent evolutionary biology. The text is fully modernized, using inquiry based learning (called "Intriguing Questions" or "Red Q" Questions. For instance, "Why doesn't natural selection lead to the prodution of perfect organisms?", "Why is it easier to remember gossip than physics equations…