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Bot Under Construction

Facetime Communications has href="http://www.facetime.com/pr/pr060918.aspx">announced that they have seen evidence of a new Internet worm that spreads via AOL Instant Messenger.  It comes in the guise of a picture, that is astually an executable file.   The user first sees an ordinarily link, but when the link is clicked, it downloads a file called image18.com.  Details follow... Like many IM worms, W32.pipeline first appears as an instant message from a familiar contact, luring users into clicking on a link with a contextual phrase. The IM message "hey would it okay if i upload this…

The Mouse That Roared

I remember thinking about this film, shortly after the fall of Baghdad.  After yesterday's University of Michigan win over Vanderbilt, which happened on the anniversary of the surrender of Japan in 1945, I was reminded again.   From Wikipedia: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared">The Mouse that Roared is a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_in_literature" title="1955 in literature">1955 novel by href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland" title="Ireland">Irish writer title="Leonard Wibberley">Leonard Wibberley that launched a series of title…

What Makes a Science Teacher Good?

What makes a good science teacher? That is the new ask-a-scienceblogger question. I am sure that there has been a lot of research into this, none of which I have read. That is why this post is categorized as an "armchair musing." I'm going to answer this in a roundabout fashion. Studies on the effectiveness of psychotherapy have been done, to try to isolate the variables that predict a successful outcome.  Factors such as age, level of training, gender, gender matching (whether the patient and the therapist are the same gender), patient perceptions, therapeutic perspective, years of…

FAQ: The Illinois Aphid Swarm

A student at the University of Illinois navigates an aphid swarm between classes. We've had plenty of traffic here at the Myrmecos Blog as bewildered midwesterners look for answers about the swarm of tiny insects that has descended on our cities this week.  As best as we can tell, here's the scoop. Q: What are the annoying little bugs that are swarming Central Illinois this week? A: They are soybean aphids (Aphis glycines).  These small insects feed in summer on soybeans, overwinter as eggs on buckthorn (Rhamnus spp.), and feed in spring on Buckthorn before flying back to soy. A soybean…

Copyright registration

Last week I performed my semi-annual copyright registration ritual, and in the middle of the paperwork it occurred to me that this might make an absolutely scintillating blog post. So, here's why copyright registration is important, and here's how to do it. U.S. law is generous towards photographers. Photographs are automatically copyrighted as soon as they are taken. It doesn't matter if you're taking happy snaps of your pet cat or professionally shooting a Hollywood premiere- you have the copyright. What does having a copyright do for you? Not very much, it turns out. If you'd like…

The Goddess offers fashion advice...and I love the results

A while back I sent the following letter to my dear friend Dr. Isis at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, because we all know who wears the hot shoes around ScienceBlogs. Dearest Isis, Though we may not always see eye to eye on the practicality of footwear, I adore your sense of style. Both your writing and your wardrobe choices are hot! Your Letters to our Daughters project has been blowing my mind with its awesomeness. You are truly a goddess of style and substance. I implore the goddess to spend some of her time to help me with a fashion challenge. The academic year…

An Open Letter to my Students

(to borrow a meme from La Isis) Dear Students, I understand that you took your exams on Monday and that our class meets next on Wednesday. I know that you are anxious to find out how you are doing in the class. Believe it or not, I am anxious to know how well I am in doing in helping you learn the material. But, unfortunately, you are not going to get your graded exams and projects back on Wednesday. You see, I am only human. After you finished your exams, I taught another class and met with students. Then I went home to my family and had dinner with the neighbors. Afterwards, I had a wired…

Eric Hovind just can't help lying

Remember how I told you that Eric Hovind was giving away free DVDs for Valentine's Day? And you all rushed over to place your order, and you got the sad notification? We're sorry, the Valentine's DVD is now out of stock. Thanks to supporters like you, over 2,000 people will get to hear the gospel message! We pray that the Holy Spirit will use these DVDs to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Awww, out of stock. Oh, well, that's fair enough, you thought, and you turned away to go back to the kitchen and turn the roast-baby-on-a-spit some more. But wait! There's something…

Goodbye, Ski Train???

Ski Train? Wasn't that the title of a Cat Stevens song? I was just getting around to putting up a science post when I just received a Tweet from my Rocky Mountain peeps at Denver's Westword magazine, the indy pub of the Queen City of the Plains. (Actually, this is kind of a science post because I did a lot of science in Denver.). In his post, "Video: Goodbye, Ski Train! We'll think of you the day we finally punch Phil Anschutz," Jared Jacang Maher writes: The train had been making trips between Denver and Winter Park since 1940. The operation was owned by local billionaire Phil Anschutz. […

Christian leader is hypocritical abusive homophobe. Since when is that news?

Lots of people are sending me this news story about Stephen Green, the British evangelical Christian fanatic. In case you've never heard of him: Green, 60, is founder and director of Christian Voice, a fundamentalist group he set up in 1994, whose website thunders against the vices — family breakdown, crime, Âimmorality and drink among them — that are ruining the lives of 'real people'. Green's Âpronouncements are often outrageous. For example, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 and killed more than 1,600 people, he claimed it was a result of God's wrath and had purified…

Escalating lunacy

It's a lovely crescent moon this evening up here in the Northern Hemisphere so I can't blame the latest unbelievable and irrational happenings on a full moon (which would be unscientific, of course). Okay, maybe sunspots? First, the Bush administration was proposing draft legislation to grant medical professionals the right to withhold care, prescriptions, etc., based upon religious beliefs or other objections by reclassifying birth control pills and IUDs as "abortion." PalMD covered this among others, but reminded me of several of my old posts on my objections to pharmacists refusing to…

Death due to fake alternative medicine practitioner

This is not at all funny but I guess ironic might be a better word. The science blogosphere has been alight this past week with the recognition of naturopathy by the state of Minnesota as well as other aspects of alternative medicine. As if the risks of going to an alternative practitioner are not enough, here is an alarming case from Sacramento, CA, of a patient dying at the hands of someone posing as a chiropractor: Authorities said Antonio Arellano, 76, was taken into custody on suspicion of homicide after operating his clinic in the 4000 block of Washington Avenue. On Tuesday, a 66-year-…

Jonathan Alter on the lessons from Ted Kennedy and Hamilton Jordan

While I tend to off-blog responsibilities, you may be interested to read this lovely essay by Jonathan Alter in the current (2 June) issue of Newsweek entitled, "How We Really Help Ted." There was a time when mentioning Kennedy and Jimmy Carter (or Carter's right hand) in the same breath would have meant a story about a Democratic family feud even more bitter than this year's between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But today these men offer priceless lessons in how to overcome endless adversity and deep unpopularity and go on to lead redemptive and joyful lives that touch millions. Their…

NPR's The People's Pharmacy on bisphenol A, endocrine disruptors

Bisphenol A (BPA) is currently one of the major lightning rods for controversy in consumer products and public health research. The compound is used in the manufacture of plastic bottles, polycarbonate (PC) in particular, as well as in the lining of many food and beverage cans. The compound has been recognized since the 1930s as having estrogenic activity but it appears to have developmental, carcinogenic, and neurotoxic effects at concentrations well below those at which it binds to the two forms of estrogen receptor. Confused? US governmental advisory committees can't even agree on BPA…

Another warning on "chelation therapy"

Yesterday, the FDA released a warning statement on an increasingly common mistake in the medically-unsupported practice of "chelation therapy" for autism: FDA notified healthcare professionals and patients about important safety information concerning Edetate Disodium. There have been cases where children and adults have died when they were mistakenly given Edetate Disodium instead of Edetate Calcium Disodium (Calcium Disodium Versenate) or when Edetate Disodium was used for "chelation therapies" and other uses that are not approved by the FDA. Edetate Disodium was approved as an emergency…

Ixempra (ixabepilone) Approved for Advanced Breast Cancer

As we discussed here yesterday, ixabepilone, a semi-synthetic anticancer drug derived from a soil bacterium was up for review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Just over a half hour ago the manufacturer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, announced that the drug has indeed been approved for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. The drug will be sold under the trade name, Ixempra. "Previously, patients with aggressive metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer no longer responding to currently available chemotherapies had limited treatment options," said Linda Vahdat, M.D., Associate…

Take it to the Bridge: new blog from Sb commenter, namnezia

Altered Alerted by fellow blogger, Drugmonkey, I learned that insightful commenter, namnezia, has launched his own blog, Take it to the Bridge, with this great intro post on the blog and blogname (I like blog names that make you think.) For those who began reading us for our discussions of underrepesented minority groups in the sciences, namnezia holds forth on the awkwardness of minority status in the university: [S]oon after starting my job I promptly ended up in a list of "faculty of color". In fact, I am the only minority in my department, and one of a handful in my entire division. Now,…

Case dismissed in vaccination libel case against Amy Wallace and Dr. Paul Offit

Writer Amy Wallace just tweeted and posted to her blog the fabulous news that a pending libel case against her and physician Paul Offit has been dismissed. Amy Wallace was the author of the centerpiece article in a Wired magazine feature on how antivaccination activists create fear and confusion by distorting and misrepresenting facts about vaccines. This article "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," was discussed in detail here back in October. Two days before Christmas one of those individuals, Barbara Loe Fisher (also Arthur), filed a $1 million claim…

The Nature of Existence

I forgot to mention that I did attend the local screening of The Nature of Existence, the new movie from Roger Nygard in which he traveled the world asking various people grand questions about the meaning of life, etc. It was entertaining, and it is subtly subversive of religious views, so I will recommend it. But I do have a few reservations that I was also able to bring up in the Q&A after the movie. One thing that was alarmingly obvious when watching it is that almost all the gurus and authorities and religious figures that he interviewed were male. There were exceptions — the 12 year…

Circumcision: chopping that loving feeling

Remember a few months ago, when the news came that circumcision can cut the risk of contracting HIV through sex by 60 percent ... at least, in males, in some parts of Africa? Now we get the bad news. A study just published in the British Journal of Urology finds that what boys lose in the process turns out to be the most sensitive part of the penis. This consequence, one would assume, is universal. Such conclusions have been elusive until now. Most studies in the past were based on questionnaires, not physical investigation. Which is problematic because most males that do undergo the knife do…

The Science of Everything and Nothing

This week's Nature explores the growth of university-level instruction in that most incredible of non-conventional medical therapeutic techniques, homeopathy. That's troubling enough, but apparently it's only a part of an even more disturbing trend: the granting of BSc degrees, by otherwise respectable institutions of higher learning, in fields that don't even qualify as pseudo-scientific, let alone science-oriented. Among the new science degrees one can earn in the UK are: Geography of Mountain Leadership, Staffordshire University Hospitality Management, Manchester Metropolitan University…

Ghost in the Machine

Nature offers a publicly accessible summary of a new study that suggests a physiological explanation for, among other things, out-of-body experiences, ghosts, alien surveillance and "the creepy feeling that somebody is close by." This is yet another example of how we're learning that the human brain is capable of manufacturing a paranormal virtual reality. The scientific article (Arzy S., Seeck M., Ortigue S., Spinelli L.& Blanke O. Nature, 443. 287), refers to "a disturbance in the multisensory processing of body and self at the temporoparietal junction." In other words, errant…

Only Turkey is worse

This week's issue of Science includes the results of a survey that doesn't exactly provide cause for celebration. LiveScience has a preview for those averse to reading journal papers: A comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower. Only Turkey. Sigh. The meta-survey found: A dichotomous true-false question format tends to exaggerate the strength of both positions. In 1993 and 2003, national samples of American adults were asked about the same statement but were offered…

Moral boundaries and the Veto

The fact that yesterday's veto was Bush's first, after more than five years in office, does't interest me all that much. Thomas Jefferson's veto record is a big fat zero and I see nothing wrong with that. What I found bothersome was Bush's justification. He said embryonic stem cell research crosses "a moral boundary." To that I say: which boundary would that be, exactly? I mean, at which point in the human reproductive cycle does one acquire moral worth? This is the fundamental flaw in the anti-abortion and anti-ESC research argument. Life is a continuum. Even if you believe that life worthy…

Top 100 Things Ecologists Don't Know

The Journal of Applied Ecology has just published a list of the Top 100 unanswered questions in the field. It was assembled for the benefit of UK ecologists, but most of the items deal with issues of global interest. If nothing else, it's a timely and humbling reminder of how little we know about the world that sustains us. The list is divided up into topics like climate change, farming and forestry. No. 1, under "ecosystem services" is: What are the benefits of protected habitats in terms of water resources, carbon sequestration and other goods and services, relative to non-protected land?…

Dropping Rocks: Los Angeles

So there's this alien invasion flick called Battle: Los Angeles. It's getting mixed reviews. Ebert hates it - "an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in between them." With the caveats that his judgment is usually questionable, I haven't seen the movie, and I don't plan to see the movie, I'm thinking I'm relatively safe in trusting his opinion in this particular case. Now it's also true that judging this kind of movie by its physics is an exercise in foolishness, akin to complaining about the lack of 8 consecutive 24 episodes of Jack Bauer enjoying a good night's sleep…

Space Shuttle: Electric Boogaloo

A space shuttle launch is pretty expensive. Exactly how expensive depends on who you ask, but if you divide the yearly cost of the program by the number of launches you get something in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. That's actually pretty trivial by federal budget standards, but it's still not chump change. It's a measure of just how difficult it is to get to space. Let's try to put that number in perspective by running a few numbers describing the cost of energy. Think of it as a Fermi problem. An orbiting shuttle has potential energy by virtue of its height above the…

Sunday Function

You all know what the natural log function looks like. Take the number 1, divide it by the natural log, and then find the antiderivative of that function. You'll get the logarithmic integral function. It looks like this: Sometimes the lower limit of the integral is changed to 2 instead of 0, in order to get rid of that singularity at the origin. But we're only interested in the behavior at large x so it doesn't matter either way. It turns out that if you count all the prime numbers up to one million, the answer will be approximately li(1000000). This is helpful because it's a lot…

This is the truth: The "Wilco Effect" and pushing to the top!

O.K., it's been a while since I've checked in with our little "truth" experiment, but it appears that we're still holding in the top ten for google ranking (top five in google.ca). (Oh yeah, and if you're new to this, this is essentially a google bombing exercise attempting to raise a definition of "truth" high on google). As well, if there's anything I've picked up from this exercise is that kitsch and non sequiturs are the things that ultimately rule on the web. I say this, because most of the dialogue and debate (and therefore activity that ultimately led to the current google ranking)…

Cheney's "Humpty-Dumpty World": Not Just After Human Foes, He's Undermining the Environment All the While

When your grandchildren ask the inevitable question -- "Was Dick Cheney real?" -- you would do well to pull out this week's four-part series in The Washington Post to verify that he truly existed. Today's feature, the fourth part, addresses the means by which Cheney has consistently and disturbingly sacrificed environmental and human health for the sake of near-term corporate profit. And in a comment that could easily be the epitaph for the entire White House career of Bush and Cheney, the series of article ends thusly: the administration [has] redefined the law in a way that could be…

What We Waste: A View of Consumption

Artists Chris Jordan, from Seattle, has a fascinating series of images making "contemporary American culture" more visible. It's called "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait." The series will be on display at New York's Von Lintel Gallery starting mid-June. A student of mine sent me the link, and I'll put a few of the images below. This is right up the same alley as Dave's post a while back on "What different parts of the world eats in one week." But check out Chris Jordan's site, and check out the actual show in person if you can. In quiz fashion, then, I ask: what is the…

Lunch with a paleontologist. Molecular Biology and a T. Rex

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Jack Horner, a noted paleontologist, best known academically as the discoverer of the Maiasaura, a duck-billed dinosaur that proved that dinosaurs had parental instincts; and also an expert in the arena of dinosaur growth research (in particular concerning a number of recent T Rex findings, one of which is even bigger than Sue) Of particular interest to me (as a molecular biologist), however, was that last year he had a paper come out in Science entitled, Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex, with the…

Sunday Function

It's been a while since we've done a Sunday Function, so let's get back into the swing of things with a weird one. This is Thomae's function, and using Wikipedia's conveniently typeset definition: If you're new to the concept of rational and irrational numbers, it's pretty simple. A number is rational if it can be written as a fraction p/q. Otherwise it's irrational. Numbers like pi or the square root of two fit this description. For this function we assume that the fraction p/q is reduced as far as possible, so if x = 1/3 we have p = 1 and q = 3. This is opposed to something like p =…

The Anthropic Orbit

One of the first great discoveries of modern physics was Newton writing down the equation for the force of gravity between two massive objects. The discovery was monumental not because it was complicated, but because it was profound. You can state the law in plain English very briefly. "The gravitational force between two objects is equal to their masses multiplied together, divided by the square of the distance between them, and multiplied by a particular universal constant to get the overall scale right." This is the way things are, classically. But as far as we know there's nothing…

Sunday Function

Nobody ever asks the interesting questions at presidential press conferences. But if somehow I could choose a question, it would be this: "Mr. President, has the NSA solved the integer factorization problem?" Of course it's unlikely he'd know off the top of his head, and even if he did he certainly wouldn't give me an answer. That's the kind of codebreaking knowledge that quickly becomes useless if everyone knows you know. Large chunks of modern cryptography are based on the fact that it's easy to multiply numbers like 17863 * 8161 = 145779943. But given a number like 223233911, it's a…

Physics, Cookbooks, and Vox Day

If you're reading this the morning it's published, there's a good chance that right at this very second I am sitting with pen in hand doing battle with a statistical mechanics final. Topics: fermions at zero and low temperature, virial expansion of the equation of state, critical constants and critical exponents of a Van der Walls like equation, and critical constants and exponents in an Ising lattice. The first two (I hope) aren't so bad, the third is difficult, the fourth may be well-nigh impossible. We'll see. I do have something for y'all to cogitate over while I'm sweating. I came…

Stubborn permafrost: Finally, some good news

If not genuinely good news, then at least it's not bad news. I'm referring to a paper out today in Science (Vol. 321. no. 5896, p. 1648) that describes 700,000-year-old permafrost in the Arctic. It's an optimistic report because, if the permafrost has survived the last few ice ages, which come and go every 100,000 years or so, then they stand a good change of surviving the next few decades during which polar regions are expected to get unusually warm. And we want them to survive, because if they melt, they will release their massive carbon reserves in one of those nightmare positive-feedback…

Divorcing Darwin

Over at Uncommon Descent (no link provided due to censorship of comments), Denyse O'Leary is urging "Darwinists" to "divorce" The Descent of Man because not to do so is to support "Darwin's racism" and to thus support racism today. I'm wondering if O'Leary actually ever read Descent and followed Darwin's logic. I know, I know, it's a big book, and Denyse may not have the attention span to handle all that fuddy-duddy Victorian prose but she needs to do so before yammering on. Then she may want to read some of the historical literature on the subject. She claims to be a journalist, so I'm…

Musings From the Edge

Sundries. Warren Buffet is often attributed as saying, "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked" referring to how a bad economy exposes problems in a business. After reading too many comment sections on New York Times articles on the financial crisis, I think it should be "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's a real communist." (Note, dear reader beginning to flame me in the comments, that I didn't say whether I thought this was good or bad or neither good or bad.) Hard economic times really bring out the daggers in economic ideology. I love to…

QIP 2009 in Santa Fe, New Mexico

I can taste the green chilies and after conference ski trip already: QIP 2009 -- 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009. http://qipworkshop.org ................................................................ First call for papers ................................................................ IMPORTANT DATES: Submission deadline for talks: October 20, 2008, 23:59 GMT. Acceptance notification for talks: November 20, 2008. Submission deadline for posters: December 1, 2008. Acceptance notification for posters…

Notes on Moving to a Mac

A list of observations I found in moving from a PC to a MAC. The default on a Mac is that the tab key only moves between text boxes. That's just silly. To fix this, go to System Preferences, click Keyboards and Mouse, and then select the appropriate radio box under the Full Keyboard Access section. Latex Equation Editor and Leopard don't seem to be getting along well. See here for example. My workaround has been to use LaTeXiT instead. However LaTeXiT doesn't work with Leopard yet, and in particular the linkback functionality apparently causes all sorts of problems. One solution is to…

Where the Rubber Hits the Road...

...and the steel hits the flesh.  Mark Rosenberg, MD, representing the href="http://www.researchamerica.org/pgr_society">Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research, had an opinion piece published in the Boston Globe.  He makes a good point about health.  It is not just doctors and hospitals.  Urban design, and infrastructure maintenance have a role to play. href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/18/roads_that_are_designed_to_kill/">Roads that are designed to kill By Mark Rosenberg August 18, 2009 ...Most people think we are doing…

Paul Kurtz on the "Strategic Blunder" of the New Atheists

In 2007, I called attention to a Point of Inquiry interview with philosopher Paul Kurtz in which he expressed concern over the direction of the New Atheist movement while asserting the commonly shared values between secular humanists and many world religions. Kurtz at the time was not the only prominent humanist to voice such concern, as Philip Kitcher in a POI interview expressed dismay over the "unremittingly negative" rhetoric of New Atheist authors. The interview was one of the first volleys in an ever louder critique by Kurtz of the New Atheist movement, affirmed earlier this month in…

Pew: Few Americans Fear the Loss of Their Local Newspaper

The struggles of the science beat at local newspapers have little or nothing to do with scientific illiteracy or public respect for science and much more to do with the economic climate and a more general and profound absence of public appreciation for the role of the press in civic life. Consider this stark finding from a just released Pew report: Less than a majority of Americans believe that the loss of their local newspaper would critically harm the health of their community. So what's going on here? Science has been and remains the dominant force in American culture. Research shows that…

Among Bloggers, a Gender Gap on Peak Oil?

That's the question raised by National Post columnist Vanessa Farquharson. While male writers and bloggers focus on a Pandora's box of looming catastrophe, a storyline that likely leads to a sense of fatalism, female writers and bloggers focus more on practical adaptation and mitigation strategies that citizens can start doing today: "...It's interesting to note that, for whatever reason, most of the voices behind this apocalyptic panic are male. But a growing collective of female bloggers are now writing about peak oil, more often in the context of how many strawberries we should dehydrate…

Will the Edwards Affair Dominate the August News Agenda?

Sigh. Ugh. Damn! That was my reaction when I heard about the brewing allegations that John Edwards had cheated on his sick wife and had fathered a love child. My reaction was not because of disappointment in Edwards. I personally don't think affairs reveal that much about the qualities that make for a strong president. Nor am I really that surprised when powerful men driven by fame and ambition cheat on their wives. I suspect it's a temptation that is in most elected officials' DNA, republican or democrat. But rather, my reaction was in anticipation of what is a whisp of evidence or video…

Paul Kurtz: The Local Leader Who Happens to Be an Atheist

Ask yourself: What's the best way you can promote atheism in your community or on your campus? Do you want to gain attention through polarizing attacks at your blog or in public statements, alienating even your moderately religious neighbors? Or do you want to be known as the community builder and leader who happens to also be an atheist? The latter is a strategy for promoting atheism at the local and national level that I discussed in a previous episode of the Point of Inquiry podcast. I am reminded of that strategy by an article that appeared recently in the Buffalo News. The article…

Sex with a parrot anyone?

Recently, I was on Australian radio doing a bit about the phylomon project and one of the creatures that the host brought up was the Kakapo. As well, an article at the Escapist was just published (again on the phylomon project), and within the comments there, the Kakapo was highlighted once again. What is it with this bird that delights the imagination of biology enthusiasts? Well, first you have to check out this video, which is maybe one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Anyway, I think Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine describe the kakapo best in their wonderful book, "Last Chance…

Linnaeus, Heisenberg, and Cereal Studies

Wherein the author, Dave Frye, finds in his doctoral research that "it remains fairly safe to say that the modern science of cereal studies began no earlier than with the 1764 publication of Linnaeus's De Cerialibus." This, despite some early finds about "the famously lactose-intolerant Pythagoreans." There are some good findings in Frye's work, and one wonders how long it might be until his research is complete. I was particularly struck by the solid integration of the history of science and food studies into true, deeper cultural and political context. Many graduate students seek that…

Clearly, it's holiday season, so let's switch gears a little. Share your musical recommedations.

Well judging by the slowing down of comments, it would appear that the holiday internet slowdown is upon us. Which also means that it's time to put out a post that is a little on the light side. For me, one of the things I'm curious about is musical preferences - especially since I was once (way back in my undergrad days) one of those audio geeks who reveled in finding that great band that nobody else had heard of. Nowadays, I don't have much time to find new music and usually resort to relying on my brother or hearing something awesome on CBC radio (CBC is great for that), or maybe even…