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Finally, NCCAM actually funds some worthwhile research!

I thought I might start developing chest pain when I read it, but to my shock NCCAM has actually funded some worthwhile research! Even more amazingly, NCCAM described it in a press release! Too bad it supports the contention that acupuncture is nothing more than placebo and that the attention given by the practitioner is what really accounts for much of the perceived therapeutic effect that patients attribute to it. I'll explain. The press release to which I refer leads to a rather interesting study that examines the components of the placebo effect. The article, published online yesterday in…

Stones, glass houses, etc.

John Bohannon of Science magazine has developed a fake science paper generator. He wrote a little, simple program, pushes a button, and gets hundreds of phony papers, each unique with different authors and different molecules and different cancers, in a format that's painfully familiar to anyone who has read any cancer journals recently. The goal was to create a credible but mundane scientific paper, one with such grave errors that a competent peer reviewer should easily identify it as flawed and unpublishable. Submitting identical papers to hundreds of journals would be asking for trouble.…

Poor old Watts

Via dubious routes I ended up at the bizarre http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/william-connolley-and-wikipedia-turborevisionism/. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the original version. In what is presumably deliberate irony, he has coined the term "Turborevisionism" to describe his own updating. And it possesses the always-amusing feature of the ignorant trying to talk about wiki: that people complain about the unreliablity of wiki when they are clearly clueless about how it works. So: assuming he hasn't re-revised it (I've kept a copy in the "extended" bit below, so refer to that if you…

Top Science Books: 2016

Here is my selection of the top science books from 2016, excluding those mainly for kids. Also, I don't include climate change related books here either. (These will both be covered in separate posts.) The number of books on this list is not large, and I think this was not the most prolific year ever for top science books. But, the ones on the list are great! For brevity, I'm mostly using the publisher's info below. Where I've reviewed the book, there is a link to that review. Click through to the reviews if you want to read my commentary, but in most cases, you can judge these books by…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Anne Frances Johnson

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Anne Frances Johnson to answer a few questions. Anne is a freelancer and grad student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where…

Science Roundup: Satellites and Submarines Collide + a World Powered by Hamsters

Submarines collide: In a freak accident, two submarines carrying nuclear missiles, one French and the other British, collided while submerged on operational patrols in the Atlantic early this month, the British and French defense ministries said Monday. Both vessels returned damaged but otherwise safe to their home ports, with the 250 crew members aboard uninjured and with "no compromise to nuclear safety," the defense ministries said in terse statements that appeared to have been agreed upon by the nations. The reference appeared to cover the nuclear reactors that power the submarines and…

Antivaxers are petitioning the White House and Antivaxer-in-Chief President Donald Trump to listen to their demands.

I've never been a huge fan of the We The People (WTP) website, which was set up during the Obama administration to allow people to petition the White House and, if they receive a sufficient number of signatures on their petition, receive an official response from the White House. While I applauded the sentiment of wanting to provide people an online means of petitioning the administration and like that a petition receiving 100,000 signatures in 30 days would receive a response, I was disappointed by the results. For one thing, although 321 of the 323 petitions that reached the threshold have…

Chateau D'Yquem: Because It's There by Thomas Levenson

While I get to finishing my post on the much-ballyhooed ScienceOnline'09 winetasting, I'd like to share with readers a fantastic wine essay by MIT Professor of Science Writing and multiply-decorated journalist, Thomas Levenson. Tom also writes The Inverse Square Blog where each post includes at least one illustration as beautiful as his writing. Tom is also author of the upcoming book, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist, currently scheduled for release on 4 June 2009. I had the lovely pleasure of sitting between Tom and Rebecca Skloot…

‘Atheism is the new fundamentalism’ by Debate - Intelligence Squared

A live debate is coming up at 6:45 GMT…I think that means in about half an hour. The topic is one that irritates me greatly: "Atheism is the New Fundamentalism". Arguing for the motion is Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, and Charles Moore. former editor of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. I know nothing about either of them. Against the motion, the godless have once again fielded their A team: Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. I forecast another rout in favor of the heathenish barbarians with prestigious academic appointments. It will be streamed live at the intelligence2 site…

War, rape and group selection

Fortune favours the brave; but the brave are motivated by favours of another kind: If courage makes it significantly more likely that small bands of tribes-men will win military confrontations with their neighbours, its overall advantages can easily outweigh its risks, a mathematical model has shown. Some men who carry genetic variants that promote bravery might perish because of them, but the ones who survive may win more battles through their greater daring. The resulting opportunities for rape and pillage can create a net evolutionary benefit. The study is published in The Proceedings of…

Don't Forget BirdNote This Holiday Season

tags: BirdNote, BirdNote calendar Image: BirdNote calendar. In these difficult economic times, it is unusual to get something for nothing. However, there is one thing that you can get for free: BirdNote. BirdNote is a 2-minute radio program that combines the rich sounds of birds into stories that illustrate the intriguing and sometimes truly amazing ways of birds. BirdNote premiered in February 2005 and runs seven days per week on a roughly a half dozen National Public Radio stations. For years, I have advertised BirdNote in Birds in the News because I strongly believe in their mission,…

Ideas for development: Playlists on LoveFilm / Netflix [SciencePunk]

So here's a modest proposal for film rental / streaming companies like LoveFilm and Netflix: why don't you have shareable playlists like Spotify? You see, I was reading Time Out's 100 Best Horror Films and I thought, there must be loads of these lists out there, on all kinds of criteria, for all kinds of audiences. Why isn't there a button at the end labelled "ADD THESE TO MY LOVEFILM"? There are buttons to tweet it, Like it, add it to Reddit, Dig, and a dozen other aggregation sites, but none that actually serves the purpose of the list: getting these films in front of my eyes! I don't…

Diane Beers to appear on NPR's Diane Rehm show about Animal Rights on Monday

Yesterday, I heard the announcement on NPR for Diane Rehm's Monday show and recoiled in horror as it appeared she used the terms "animal welfare" and "animal rights" interchangeably. Unfortunately, these two terms apply to philosophical opposites. It is like interchangeably using the terms "WWII history" and "Holocaust denial", or "climate science" and "global warming denial", or "evolutionary biology" and "evolution denial" (aka Creationism in its various stripes including Intelligent Design Creationism). What is common to all these pairs of terms is that one is legitimate line of work…

ScienceOnline2010 - introducing the participants

As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what. Sheril Kirshenbaum is a good friend, a marine biologist and a former SciBling. She blogs at The Intersection, has co-authored "Unscientific America" and written the forthcoming "The Science of Kissing". After proclaiming she'd never do it, she succumbed to Twitter as well. At the conference, Sheril will co-moderate the session "Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging)…

Tweetlinks, 10-24-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time (all my tweets are also imported into FriendFeed where they are much more easy to search and comment on, as well as into my Facebook wall where they are seen by quite a different set of people): Open Source Science Commons ScienceOnline2010 Hotel information is now up. No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund RT @eroston "Dangerous article for not saying--whatever US thinks--temps are rising and industry is responsible": Survey Says: Americans Not Worried About Global Warming Journalists sink in The Atlantic article…

Open Notebook Science

I know, I know, many people are still skeptical, but opening one's lab notebooks is a part and parcel of the new world of Open Science. There is an opinion piece about it in Nature (also available on Nature's Nautilus blog). Attila Csordas added some very important points today, reminding everyone of the global nature of scientific collaboration. The few pioneers who have opened their notebooks do it in different ways. Jean-Claude Bradley's group uses both a blog and a wiki. Rosie Redfield's group has one central blog plus each student's own blog (see them here, here, here and here).…

Open Access Policy for York University Librarians and Archivists

On October 1, 2009 librarians and archivists at York University Libraries voted unanimously to adopt the following policy: York University Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists Librarians and archivists at York University recognize the importance of open access to content creators and researchers in fostering new ideas, creating knowledge and ensuring that it is available as widely as possible. In keeping with our long-standing support of the Open Access movement, York librarians and archivists move to adopt a policy which would ensure our research is disseminated as widely as…

Friday Blog Roundup

This week, bloggers look at whoâs making decisions about coal: At Gristmill (home of David âcoal is the enemy of the human raceâ Roberts), Ted Nace explains how a bureaucratâs change of one number in a spreadsheet can lead to 132 fewer new coal plants being built, but Tom Philpott warns that Appalachian coal will be mined anyway â and shipped to China. Keith Johnson at Environmental Capital explains how Kansas has become Big Coalâs new battlefield, and the role of state courts and officials in determining who wins. At Appalachian Voices, jdub reacts to Hillary Clintonâs remarks about…

Saturday roundup

More fascinating topics I didn't get around to: Orac disses a report linking Ipods to autism. Really. He also has the low-down on snake oil salesman Kevin Trudeau's unbelievable new book. You think having a few people on a blog deny the germ theory is bad; it's even worse when an author who'll sell millions of books does so. Carl Zimmer has an excellent post discussing circuits and evolution, and even touching on network theory. Joseph wonders about the gender gap in academic medicine. The Bad Astronomer asks, is the government trying to kill us? Dr. Charles gives the details on a…

ScienceOnline09 - Alternative Careers

If you look at the Program carefully, you will see there are three sessions specifically addressing the question of alternative careers at the ScienceOnline09. Here they are: How to become a (paid) science journalist: advice for bloggers - This session is moderated by Rebecca Skloot and Tom Levenson: Bloggers are bloggers because they like to write. But writing a blog is not the same as writing for a newspaper or magazine (or radio or TV). Most science bloggers have a background in science, not journalism. So, how does one become a science journalist? We'll ask some journalists for advice.…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Social Interactions Can Alter Gene Expression In Brain, And Vice Versa: Our DNA determines a lot about who we are and how we play with others, but recent studies of social animals (birds and bees, among others) show that the interaction between genes and behavior is more of a two-way street than most of us realize. Playing A Game Shows How Personalities Evolved: Why do some of us always do the right thing while others only seem to be out for themselves? Research by the universities of Exeter and Bristol offers a new explanation as to why such a wide range of personality traits has evolved in…

Weblog Awards 2007

Yes, Weblog Awards are up again. Not everyone's favourite (as opposed to the Koufaxes), as they are easily freeped and one can find candidates who should not be there, i.e., blogs that have not written anything factual in years, e.g., right-wingers in political categories, pseudoscientists in science categories, medical quacks in medical categories, etc. So, the voting at Weblog Awards (which you can do daily) is more voting against than for in many categories. But there are certainly worthy finalists in many categories so it's worth your time to try to remember to vote. Here are my…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (SciBlings in North Carolina)

There are 88 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 96 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Abel PharmBoy is a good friend of mine and a great blogger on Terra Sigillata. He "writes on natural product drugs and dietary…

KITP: colourful extragalactic globulars

and we continue our lesson on extragalactic globulars, with a trifectaduet of talks and an emphasis on colour: red or blue, it is like South Central here sometimes remember, red is metal rich or old blue is metal poor or young... except the reds are actually probably younger than the blues so it is metal dominated, except for really young clusters Steve first then Jay PS: our summary 20 minute talks have an interesting habit of actually lasting 60-90 minutes. I blame that rude chap in the front row who keeps interrupting the speakers with stoopid questions... as usual the multimedia video…

Cobb County does something right

Cobb County, Georgia is infamous for its efforts a few years ago to slap a warning sticker on biology textbooks, which might have given the impression that it's full of southern yahoos. However, intelligent people and godless people are everywhere, including Cobb County, and they now have another claim to fame: a local atheist, Edward Buckner, used the opening invocation of a county board meeting to deliver a godless homily. It's not bad; you can hear it online. He spoke for all the people who do not attend church, and who do not want their government interfering in religion, and decried the…

Fatal work injury that killed Gerald Thompson was preventable, MN-OSHA cites DSM Excavating

Gerald Lyle Thompson’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Minnesota OSHA (MN-OSHA) in the agency’s citations against his employer, DSM Excavating. The 51 year-old was working in June 2015 at a construction site for Ryland Homes in Lakeville, Minnesota. The initial press reports indicated that Thompson and his brother were installing drain tile inside a 6 to 8 foot deep trench. Thompson was trapped at the bottom of the trench when the soil collapsed onto him. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred. Inspectors with MN-OSHA conducted an…

Not an “accident”: Timothy Winding, 50, suffers fatal work-related injury in Claycomo, MO

Timothy Todd Winding, 50, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, December 30 while working at Ford Motor Company’s Kansas City assembly plant located in Claycomo, MO. Fox4KC reports: He was part of a crew of contractors who were working to retool the plant for a new line of Ford trucks. While working on a body marriage machine, "a safety rod broke on the decker and crushed the worker.” “Several of the workers FOX 4 spoke to Tuesday say that this is not the first time that machine has broken, and say they were worried something like this was going to happen." KCTV5 says Winding's…

Climate Change Items

A few climate change related items I know you will be interested in, especially since you will want to be very current for the big event Tuesday. There is now a new profession: Extreme Weather Architect. (Hat tip: Paul Douglas) You may hear again and again that climate change is over, that warming has stopped. This is wrong in many many ways, and I've written about that here. Dana Nuccitelli has this important piece as well: We haven't hit the global warming pause button. Also, see this brand new item for a detailed discussion of how surface warming varies across time. You've heard of the…

Do wireless routers degrade over time, and if so, why?

I really dislike the commentary on Slashdot. It is worse than reddit in a way. Well, not really, but it is very annoying that an interesting question can be raised, and then seven thousand geekoids feel that it is very important for the world to read their own stupid little joke about the question. If someone provides actual information or rephrases the question usefully or anything like that, then it is lost in the sea of irrelevant yammering that is Slashdot. So, yesterday or so, acer123 posted this: "Lately I have replaced several home wireless routers because the signal strength has…

Newsflash: people still stupid about STDs

Okay, so it's just an MSNBC survey (aided by none other than Dr. Ruth), but geez, when will people ever wise up about sex? MSNBC.com and Zogby International asked online readers to share some intimate details about their personal lives, and more than 56,000 adult men and women -- one of the largest responses ever to a sex survey in the United States -- revealed that many are playing a pretty risky game. Just 39 percent of people who took the survey always ask whether a new partner is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or other STDs. Nearly one-third said they never check on a…

Kickass Archaeological Sites Register On-Line

With its extremely late urbanisation, Sweden doesn't have much of an archaeological record compared to Italy or China or Peru. But we keep really good track of the stuff we have: active organised surveying for ancient monuments has been going on for over 70 years, aided by the fact that Sweden has no trespassing laws and affords land owners no ownership to archaeological remains. Sweden's National Heritage Board has been placing its sites and monuments register on-line gradually over a period of years. At first, it was only accessible to professionals, offering a crappy map and working only…

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: A Review Is In

I'm trying not to be Neurotic Author Guy and obsessively check online reviews of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog every fifteen minutes. I've actually been pretty successful at it, so successful that I didn't notice the first posted review at Amazon until my parents mentioned it to me. It's a really good one, though: I'm at the point know where I could answer some of the most basic questions that his dog has, but I remember a time when I couldn't and when the questions the dog asks would've been exactly the questions that I would have had. Pretty much every time a statement by the author…

Evolution 2008 is for teachers

Teachers, come to Minneapolis this summer! Not for the Republican convention, but for the other great big important meeting that will be taking place: Evolution 2008. Teachers in particular get a really good deal: a special workshop is planned, specifically on the teaching of evolutionary biology in the schools. We've got some good speakers (and me) lined up, and the registration cost of a mere $20 not only gets you into the workshop, but into the regular meetings as well. Here are the details: Evolution 101 Workshop for K-12 Educators Friday, June 20, 2008 Bell Museum of Natural History…

World's largest telescope will revolutionize the future of astronomy (Synopsis)

"For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift." -Wernher von Braun Sure, going to space is great for overcoming Earth’s atmosphere, but it’s no substitute for the sheer size of what we can build on the ground. The current record-holder for largest telescope is 10.4 meters in diameter, and that takes 36 hexagonal segments to get there. But single mirrors can be cast up to about 8 meters in diameter. Thanks to a revolutionary design, the Giant Magellan Telescope will stitch 7…

Thrilling Tales of Astrophysics

Over in LiveJournal Land, James Nicoll is pining for the good old days: I'm going through one of my "I would kill for some new SF" phases, SF in this case being defined in a narrow and idiosyncratic way. In particular, I want the modern version of those old SF stories where SF writers, having just read some startling New Fact [Black holes could be very small! Mercury isn't tide-locked! The Galilean moons are far more interesting than we thought!], would craft some thrilling tale intended to highlight whatever it was that the author had just learned. I suspect this is mostly due to James's…

Bad News for the LHC

As you undoubtedly already know, the Large Hadron Collider suffered a setback this week: The start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN could be delayed after three of the magnets used to focus and manipulate the accelerator's proton beams failed preliminary tests at CERN earlier this week. The magnets were built at Fermilab in the US, which announced the failure on its Web site. Although CERN has not yet issued a formal statement on the set-back, it looks increasingly unlikely that the LHC will come on-line this year as planned. (See also the official Fermilab release on the…

links for 2008-02-04

Locus Online: Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading: 2007 A few books and stories to pass those quiet moments. (tags: books stories SF) Science in the 21st Century Conference participants include a bunch of really smart people with innovative ideas about the future of science and the interplay between science, information technology, and society. And they invited me, too. (tags: academia science computing society publishing internet) ...My heart's in Accra » Searching for common ground with Andrew Keen "Keen [author of _Cult of the Amateur_] has some very important points. But he's also…

I get no respect

Here's the difference between me and Michael Bérubé: he gets labeled a dangerous radical and profiled in David Horowitz's new book, while all I get is a mild squeak in our weekly campus newspaper and our local conservative rag. While perusing the UMM main page, I happened upon the website http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula which belongs to UMM's own Professor of Biology Dr. Meyers. Upon closer inspection I found content relating to my religious beliefs that offended me beyond belief. Not only was this speech sacrilegious and offensive, but it was readily available to anyone who happens across…

The Republicans on Evolution

There were a number of interesting tidbits in the Republican candidates debate tonight. There was the spectacle of Mitt Romney desperately trying to explain away his flip-flop on abortion. There was the stampede to declare embryonic stem-cell research immoral and unnecessary, culminating with Colorado representative Tom Tancredo's declaration that such research is “reprehensible.” But the one that really caught my ear was the brief discussion of evolution. John McCain was asked directly, “Do you believe in evolution?” The answer, after a brief pause, was a simple, if somewhat uncomfortable…

Links for 2010-10-08

A Nobel prize for levitating a frog - The Dayside "Unlike the graphene discovery, frog levitation hasn't begotten a vast worldwide research effort whose fruits include thousands of research papers and scores of patents. Nevertheless, as Novoselov recounted in an interview with ScienceWatch, the two projects have something in common: 'The style of Geim's lab (which I'm keeping and supporting up to now) is that we devote ten percent of our time to so-called "Friday evening" experiments. I just do all kinds of crazy things that probably won't pan out at all, but if they do, it would be really…

Mountain Top Removal Update: Oprah's In On It Too!

Grist has been posting many excellent links, discussions, and interviews about Mountaintop Coal Removal in the Appalachians. It's been a while since we added to our MTR posts (one, two, three, four), so allow me to do so now. photo source: Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition First is an article in Blue Ridge Country by Peter Slavin. Slavin reports on the anti-MTR movement over the past year, with successes in Tennessee, large protests in West Virginia, with sit-ins, congressional action, and with new popular press articles ("Features have appeared in 2006 in Orion (January), National…

Blogging and history of science

Ben Cohen over at The World's Fair has gotten me thinking about something: is there really a readership for blog posts about the history of science [HoS]? My own experience is that there may not be such a readership, or at least may not be one that engages in commentary. Admittedly, my evidence is fragmentary. Over the past two weeks I have been posting HoS-based material, namely a series of book reviews and a commentary on the value of HoS for science education. The former series generated virtually no comments and the latter a meager nine comments (it also wasn't picked-up by any other…

Wanna Live Longer? Move to Maryland!

A recent Yahoo news story reports that life expectancy is tied to race, income, and where you live. Although not unexpected, it makes for quite interesting food for thought on the disparities that exist in the current health care system in America, as well as genetic factors involved in life span. Asian-American women living in Bergen County, N.J., lead the nation in longevity, typically reaching their 91st birthdays. Worst off are American Indian men in swaths of South Dakota, who die around age 58 -- three decades sooner. Compare those longest-living women to inner-city black men, and the…

New York, New York, New York

I'll be giving three talks in the next couple weeks in New York. First up, my lecture at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn Tuesday. It's possible I'll be able to post the video of the lecture later--I'll let you know. (Out of curiosity--anybody know a good way to combine video and powerpoint slides online? I've seen it done, but not on any open social video sites.) Then come two appearances in the World Science Festival. First up: Thursday, May 29th 7 pm, I'll be moderating a panel about Steven Kurtz, the bioartist who was charged with terrorism. (He was also the subject of a movie,…

Mouse Brains on a Screen Near You - In Great Detail

Researchers at Duke University have recently invented a technique for improving the spatial resolution of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) by a factor of nearly 100,000x. Whereas routine clinical MRI scans contain 3-dimensional pixels ("voxels") approximately 1mm x 1mm x 1mm, this new technique allows for voxels as small as 21.5 thousandths of a milimeter on each side. This is fortunate for many mice, who in the future might no longer need to be sacrificed - but rather merely sedated - for precise neuroanatomical analysis. It is also fortunate for neuroscientists, as older histological…

Ozone depletion denial, part III

I wrote earlier about ozone depletion deniers John Ray and Sylvain Galineau. I've found another such denier and his name is John Lott. Lott wrote a positive review\* of Environmental Overkill, a book written by Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo. In his review, Lott calls ozone depletion an "environmental myth" and a "scare story". Now, Lott's false statements about ozone depletion might have been forgivable if Ray had made a good case against ozone depletion, but the quality of the science and scholarship in her work is appalling. Robert Parson has written a…

Does your name dictate who you are?

If you believe that a name can have an impact on how people treat you, your future career and if you also like math you should name your daughter (or change your name) to something further down this list: Isabella 1.21 Anna 1.04 Elizabeth 1.02 Emma 0.97 Jessica 0.93 Samantha 0.83 Sarah 0.78 Olivia 0.74 Hannah 0.70 Emily 0.68 Lauren 0.66 Ashley 0.63 Grace 0.50 Abigail 0.48 Alex 0.28 If you want your daughter to be a beautician, home maker or a monarch the names on the top of the list are fine. Something bothers me about studies like this but I'm not sure if it's just that I don't want things…

The Biology of Pink

Perhaps you don't remember an entry I wrote about a year ago titled Pink Is For Boys, Blue Is For Girls. I linked to a Fairer Science post that was debunking a Times Online editorial suggesting girls had a biologically determined preference for "pink fluff". Fairer Science quoted a June 1918 edition of Ladies Home Journal thus: There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate…

Poetry for Physicists?

The Chronicle of Higher Education had a great piece this week about A. Van Jordan and his new book of poetry, Quantum Lyrics. Unfortunately, I think you need a subscription to read the article online. It's the June 22, 2007 issue, p. A48, if you have access to the print version. "Physicists talk in metaphor all the time," says Mr. Jordan, 41, who weaves theories and theorems into his latest poetic examinations of history, race relations, memory, and grief. The centerpiece of Quantum Lyrics is a lengthy cycle of poems about Albert Einstein, but the book is alive with a wide array of…

7th Scientiae Up For Your Reading Pleasure!

Yes, it's Scientiae Carnival time again! FemaleCSGradStudent has asked us "How We Are Hungry", and has collated and contextualized a most interesting set of responses. Maybe you want to go visit Kat on a Wire and leave her a comment. Online communities can be very, very important for those of us deprived, for whatever reasons, of that community in the meat world. Addy wants to be taken seriously. I swear, when I read this: I was recently introduced to a professor emeritus in another department and he asked "are you a grad student?" My first reaction was, "Hey, why is she writing about…