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Why 'Good People' Should (Sometimes) Walk Away from Their Mortgages

The whole CDO binge (aka Big Shitpile) led to a whole slew of perverse incentives to not help a borrower who is having difficultly paying the mortgage, even though, in the era before mortgages were treated as commodities to be sold, banks routinely went out of their way to avoid foreclosure--usually the costs were too great to make foreclosure a routine act. I've argued that if banks aren't willing to work with homeowners due to financial reasons, then homeowners should also act in their best interests: if that means walking away ('strategic default'), so be it. Nicholas Carroll runs the…

A Very Ghoulish Example of How Financial Speculation Hurts Everyone but the Speculators

I bet you didn't think life insurance policies could be securitized. You would be very wrong: The bankers plan to buy "life settlements," life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash -- $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to "securitize" these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die. The earlier the policyholder dies…

Dover Trial, Final Day

Today is the final day of testimony in the Dover trial. Scott Minnich is scheduled to finish up his cross examination, and likely already has, and then we'll move on to closing arguments this afternoon. Expect a ruling in the next 6-8 weeks, give or take. On another note, the New York Times has an interesting article today about the Thomas More Law Center that includes information I did not know. The TMLC, it turns out, has been going around the country trying to find a school board to adopt a policy like this so they could take it to court. They've gone in and lobbied for it, offering to…

Should you drink tap water or bottled water?

This is the time of year, spring, when a lot of people switch to drinking bottled water instead of tap water. They do this because in their particular area the tap water seems to "go bad" ... usually it is a mild smell or a slightly icky taste. This makes people fear their tap water, so they go to the store and buy bottled water. What has happened in many cases is that the local municipal water supply has done everything it can reasonably do to clean up and make nice the water that comes out of your tap, but there is this slight taste or smell because in the spring, that is what water does…

What Halloween Costume Is Best...

Arrrrrrgh. ... for science-oriented secular skeptical people like you? Halloween is when the really scary things make their appearance, mostly in the form of the Halloween Costume Industry. This is when we learn about all those latent adult sexual fantasies involving school children, for example. But more insidious and damaging, if not just plain annoying, is the janus-faced monster of jack-booted gender policing and Disney/Pixar marketing. Little girls should be princesses or some other girly thing, and little boys should be race cars or some other boyish thing. Huxley will be…

My First Review!

Update, 10:27 pm: It turns out the book is available for sale right now! So go buy one right this very second! Don't know what that June 4 date was all about... And it's a good one! The official release date for the Big Monty Hall Book (BMHB) is June 4, but some review copies have already gone out. One of those went to Peter Flom, who is a diarist for Daily Kos. You can find the full review here. Flom writes: I'll mention right up front that the book was sent to me by Oxford University Press, it's called the Monty Hall Problem, the author is Jason Rosenhouse, it's due out in…

How can universities get lean? and green?

Like many other public universities around the country, Mystery U has been hit hard by the economic hard times. Most of this year, we heard ominous rumblings that (at some point) there would be a budget reversion, i.e., we'd have to send some portion of our budget back to the state coffers. But all was pretty much business as usual until a few weeks ago when the axe fell. Instantaneously our whole university budget and we were under strict orders to conserve the precious resources we still had...you know, things like copier paper. Because we have no money to buy any more. I've been biting my…

Oriental Trading Co. Face Paint Recall - Colors Expanded

The US Food and Drug Administration is usually the first federal authority to take action on adverse event reports for any health product. But few appreciate that the FDA is also responsible for regulation of cosmetic products: pretty much anything applied to the skin. So, it was no surprise when I was trolling the FDA adverse event reports and news releases to find their announcement of a recall of a number of children's face paints due to rashes and undue skin irritation. The products are manufactured by Shanghai Color Art Stationery Company Limited, Shanghai, China. The original recall…

Justice rolls along in the case of Dr. Roy Kerry, negligent chelation killer

It may take a long time, but sometimes justice does eventually move to act against a wrong: A Butler County doctor will stand trial on charges he caused the death of a 5-year-old autistic boy by negligently ordering a controversial treatment, a district judge ordered Thursday. Dr. Roy Kerry of Portersville ordered chelation therapy - which the federal Food and Drug Administration approves for treating acute heavy-metal poisoning, but not for autism - on Abubakar Tariq Nadama in 2005. During a third treatment, on Aug. 23, the boy went into cardiac arrest and died. Kerry, 69, is charged with…

Tap Water's Low Blow?

Most cities and towns use chlorine or bromine to disinfect water. When the water is polluted, chlorine or bromine reacts with the pollution (agricultural runoff is probably a bigger problem here than traditional industrial pollution) to create what are called disinfection by-products (DBPs). DBPs are associated in humans with adverse pregnancy outcomes (usually miscarriage)*. Since DBPs damage DNA and are considered carcinogens at some level, researchers thought that it was likely that DBPs would affect sperm as well. Rodent studies show that some DBPs do harm sperm quality; however, there…

Law firm doing dirty work for coal industry?

The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. reports that one of West Virginia's oldest and largest law firms, Jackson Kelly PLLC, is being sued for hiding evidence of coal miners' black lung disease.  Ward writes: "Earlier this year, an investigative panel of the state's Lawyer Disciplinary Board filed misconduct charges against Douglas A. Smoot.  Smoot hid a key portion of coal miner Elmer Daugherty's medical examination report during a 2001 case, a board investigative panel alleged.  A hearing on those allegations is scheduled to start June 18.  And two lawsuits filed last month in Raleigh…

Stealthy zombie vampire librarians

And I mean zombie vampire in the best way, as a comment on how hard it seems to be to kill my Stealth Librarianship Manifesto. It's even been translated into French! (Merci, Marléne!) For a post I mostly wrote in an hour of white hot typing from midnight to 1 a.m. some weeknight when I should have been sleeping it sure has some legs. There have been three posts about the manifesto fairly recently, mostly more critical than complimentary but with a lot of input that I really value. Let's take a look. Identity crisis? No. Or why I think we need to move beyond "stealth librarianship." by…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 17 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Adult-Young Ratio, a Major Factor Regulating Social Behaviour of Young: A Horse Study: Adults play an important role in regulating the social behaviour of young individuals. However, a few pioneer studies suggest…

Course redesign part 3: goal? I need goals?

I'm rethinking one of my courses, an upper level general education course called "The Control of Nature." I've been blogging my way through the course redesign process, starting with past problems with the course and with my various practical constraints (class schedule, physical space, student background). I'm using an online tutorial to guide me through the process, and now I'm finally moving towards thinking about the course itself. Before I actually start redesigning lectures and in-class exercises and assignments, I need to figure out what I want students to be able to do when they get…

Scientists and Supporters Rally Against Animal Rights Extremism at UCLA

By all accounts, yesterday's UCLA Pro-Test rally in support of animal research was a great success. Up to 800 people showed up for the Pro-Test rally, but only 30-40 people showed up for a concurrent anti-research rally These numbers are particularly notable for two reasons. Firstly, the number of supporters of animal researchers greatly dwarfed the number of detractors, an excellent illustration of how large this hitherto silent majority is compared to the fringe but vocal animal rights activists. Secondly, the number of participants at the UCLA rally was similar to the number that showed…

The best objective herbal medicine information for less than $100 per year

For several years, various media outlets have asked my opinion about herbal medicine and dietary supplement issues. I've generally written several pages of responses only to find a few key quotes mined from my paragraphs of wisdom (in my mind). No problem at all; I just have trouble with churning out sound bites. So, I'd like to share with you stuff that never makes it to the so-called mainstream media. This is a repost of classic Terra Sigillata that first appeared on the old site on 8 May 2006. Recently, I was asked by a US television network to comment on the value of the release of…

News flash--condoms do help prevent HPV

Especially in religious circles, much has been made about the "uselessness" of condoms for the prevention of infection with the human papilloma virus (HPV). This is the virus that is responsible for almost all cases of cervical cancer, against which a new vaccine was recently approved (for more background, see this post). Approximately 20 million Americans are currently infected with HPV, and over their lifetime, about half of sexually active adults will be infected at one point. Though most strains of the virus are harmless, a small portion of them cause cervical cancer in women, a…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Last November, a roof section larger than a football field collapsed at the Woodgrain Millwork in Prineville, Oregon. Luckily, no one was harmed. However, mill workers, who spoke of a variety of workplace hazards, say they had alerted management to the leaky roof long before the collapse, reported Amanda Peacher for Oregon Public Broadcasting. In 2004, Woodgrain, a global company with manufacturing facilities across the U.S., bought the 14-acre Prineville mill. Noting that each of the 23 former mill workers interviewed for the story described a “roof riddled with leaks,” Peacher writes: Peggy…

Links for 2010-07-23

slacktivist: Credit scoring and unemployment "Say you're unemployed and you decide to work your tail off to land a new job, so you send out 40 résumés a week. Half of the companies might decide to do a credit-check before getting back to you. This sets off alarm-bells at the credit-rating agencies. Twenty credit-checks in one week? There goes your credit score. And there goes your hope of landing a new job. This is what the use of credit scoring in employment decisions means: Looking for a job disqualifies you from being hired." (tags: politics economics class-war blogs slacktivist US…

Godwin's Law

Wikipedia states: Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states that: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made in a thread the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. The point of the tradition is that such comparisons are so offensive that further…

Three uneaten ears of corn

While I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'm reposting some classic insolence from the month of July in years past. For today, there was really no other choice for what bit of Classic Insolence to repost, except that, today, there's no insolence whatsoever. The reason is that today is a very sad day. It is the one year anniversary of the death of our beloved dog Echo. In 2008, about about three weeks before the day for which this is the one year anniversary, we noticed that Echo was favoring her hind leg. When I looked her over, I noticed a lump, which, thanks to the power of…

Reprogramming adult cells into embryonic stem cells

As promised, I'm going through the three papers from last week about the re-programming of adult cells into an embryonic-like phenotype. Since it is three papers I'll go through first what's common to all three, and then what each group did special. First of all, let's summarize the method one more time. Background All of these papers are based on the "rational identification" of 4 critical transcription factors by Yamanaka in 2006. What they did was take 20 proteins that drive the expression of other genes that were known to be in embryonic stem cells, and added them to adult cells to…

Entelev, CanCell, and Cantron: Not curing cancer since the 1930s

A couple of months ago, a reader sent me an article that really disturbed me. In fact, I had originally been planning to write about it not long after I received it. However, as I've mentioned before, when it comes to blogging, I'm a bit like Dug the Talking Dog from the movie Up in that I'm easily distracted. Unlike Dug, what distracts me aren't squirrels, but rather bright, shiney pieces of pseudoscience, quackery, paranormal, or otherwise weird nonsense. Sometimes after I'm distracted I come back to the topic I had originally wanted to blog about. Sometimes I don't. Or, sometimes (like…

Birds in the News 94 (v3n21)

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter A male Henslow's Sparrow, Ammodramus henslowii, photographed in July on the Konza Prairie [song]. [This is a] species in decline, probably partially due to habitat loss, since they are obligate grassland birds, and grasslands are disappearing. Additionally they require grasslands that have been unburnt or unhayed during the last season, since they only nest in "standing dead" vegetation left over from the last growing season. The current practice of annual burning here in the Flint Hills means that these birds are very…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 32 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Novel Weapons Testing: Are Invasive Plants More Chemically Defended than Native Plants?: Exotic species have been hypothesized to successfully invade new habitats by virtue of possessing novel biochemistry…

Skeptical About Skeptics

This is an adaptation of the talk I gave at Westminster Skeptics in the Pub on Monday 2nd August. You can hear an audio transcript of the talk at the Pod Delusion website. I was invited to stage the talk again at the Winchester SITP, a recording of which is here. I'm very much a child of the skeptical community. I started writing about bad science in 2004, in a scissors-and-glue zine titled War On Error (a very droll play on words at the time, and a lot easier than coming up with a twist on Overseas Contingency Operation). Eventually this moved online, morphing into SciencePunk. Over…

I love it when an antivax "study" meant to show how "dirty" vaccines are backfires so spectacularly

I've frequently written about what I like to refer to as the "toxins gambit" with respect to vaccines. Basically, in the hard core (and even soft core) antivaccine crowd, vaccines are feared as being loaded with all sorts of "toxins," such as aluminum, formaldehyde, mercury, and various chemicals that are dangerous enough separately, but, when combined, "poison" young babies, resulting in their becoming autistic, acquiring asthma and autoimmune diseases, or even dying of sudden infant death syndrome. Of course, many of the scary-sounding chemicals to which antivaccinationists point actually…

Butterflies, Beetles Bees, Bugs... Insects Rule! ISO Entomology Contributors, Sponsors and Volunteers at the Expo!

Insects make up the largest and most diverse group of organisms on the planet, with the over 1 million described and 4-30 estimated species all playing a crucial role in biodiversity of the ecosystem. They are also critical for a wide variety of science and technology fields including agriculture, environmental and even biomedical science, and are even being explored as a vital source of food. "Insects are much too important to leave out of an event like the USA Science & Engineering Festival," says Dr. Aaron T. Dossey, a Ph.D. biochemist and postdoctoral research entomologist, currently…

Poppy seed tea can kill you

A little over a week ago, we posted on the very sad story of the accidental death of a University of Colorado sophomore from ingesting poppy seed tea. The poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the commercial source for prescription narcotic painkillers such as morphine and codeine. The seeds can be had online and in retail stores. The plants can often be grown if these seeds are not roasted or otherwise sterilized. I had originally suspected that the CU-Boulder student had not used poppy seed tea but rather some other decoction of the plant itself. I had always contended that the seeds did not…

Low-Resveratrol Muscadine Grape Skin Extract (MSKE) Inhibits Prostate Cancer Cell Growth

A press release came in from the US NIH before the weekend noting that NCI's Dr Jeffrey Green has identified potential anticancer activities from a grape skin extract that is not dependent on the presence of the well-known compound, resveratrol. The report is to appear in the 1 September issue of Cancer Research, but the article is not yet online. Green's group investigated a skin extract from muscadine grapes (Vitis rotundifolia) that was apparently nearly devoid of resveratrol but contained high levels of compunds called anthocyanins (they called it MSKE for "muscadine skin extract"). The…

Framing Science - the Dialogue of the Deaf

My SciBlings Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet just published an article in 'Science' (which, considering its topic is, ironically, behind the subscription wall, but you can check the short press release) about "Framing Science" Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers, Mike Dunford (also check the comments here), John Fleck, Larry Moran, Dietram Scheufele, Kristina Chew, Randy Olson, James Hrynyshyn, Paul Sunstone and Alan Boyle have, so far, responded and their responses (and the comment threads) are worth your time to read. Chris and Matt respond to some of them. Matt has more in-depth explanations here, here and…

Implications of the immune response

I started writing this post before I read ERV dissecting some "the immune system is perfect" BS. Go read hers, then come back if you want more. Now that I've gone through the basics of a typical immune response, I think it's necessary to point out some of its many flaws. In many of the immunology courses I've taken, the mammalian immune system is presented almost as the pinnacle of evolution, but it is far from perfect. In fact, in many ways, we might be better off if it had never evolved at all. First up - Autoimmunity. T-cells and B-cells generate random receptors that can in principal see…

AVPR1A correlated with fidelity?

Over the years I've blogged a fair amount on the AVPR1A gene. Variation on this locus has been associated with differences altruism in humans and mating preferences in voles. Now a new paper is out in PNAS, at some point in the near future (not online, but will be here), which shows differences in martial behavior based on AVPR1A. From Study Links Gene Variant in Men to Marital Discord: About 40 percent of men have one or two copies of the allele. Walum, a PhD student, said that men with two copies of the allele had a greater risk of marital discord than men with one copy, and that men with…

Some More Thoughts About Unscientific America: What Are We Trying to Communicate?

One of the parts I liked about Unscientific America was the recognition that many scientists need to be trained in communication--and as importantly, this training requires funding, so universities have a financial incentive to reward scientific communication and outreach. Mooney and Kirshenbaum also think that non-profit organizations should and will play a critical role in communicating science: not only do we have to train people, we need to actually pay them to communicate. So that's all good (TEH RELIGIONISMZ!! AAAIIEEE!!!). One example of the non-profit model is Rick Weiss, who is an…

Why I Moved (Some of) My Money to a Community Bank

One of the infuriating things about the collapse of Big Shitpile is that there hasn't seemed to be much you or I can do about it (and that wanker Bernanke is useless). Until now. Move Your Money has developed a nice online tool to find local banks and credit unions. Recently, after using their tool, I moved much of my money to a local bank, Wainwright Bank. When I told them that I wanted to open a savings account, they started to tell me about ten dollar minimum deposits, as part of Wainwright's mission is to serve who often don't have access to banking services. Maybe it just was the…

Organized Crime and the Case for the Legalization of Pot

I've been meaning to get to this topic after it came up in Obama's 'online' press conference. For me, the argument in favor of legalization is that it would weaken organized crime and that legalization of other popular activities has done so in the past (more on that in a moment). Of course, for some reason, one can't discuss this without describing one's drug using history and beliefs, so here they are: I don't smoke pot. I have no interest in doing so--I don't have any interest in smoking cigarettes either. Because I have a very good sense of smell (sadly, this is the sense that has…

My exciting new job at Elsevier: Inaugural editor-in-chief of The Journal of Applied Publishing Experiments

Hi everybody, It is with great pride and excitement that I'm finally able to announce something that's been in the works for a few months now. I will be accepting the role of inaugural editor-in-chief of an exciting new journal to be published by Elsevier: The Journal of Applied Publishing Experiments. This amazing opportunity arose a few months ago, initiated by a blog post of mine that congratulated Elsevier on their wise marketing and publishing moves and this one a bit later, where I declare my undying loyalty to the Elsevier brand. The publisher of Elsevier immediately contacted me…

ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap

8.20.07 to 8.26.07 Announcements Welcome Zooillogix! Please welcome the newest addition to ScienceBlogs, Zooillogix. Brothers Andrew and Benny Bleiman author Zooillogix, "a hobby and a secret outlet of forbidden passion" that showcases their shared obsession with zoology. Check out the Bleimans' recent Gallery d'Bug Arte post, and their Video of the Week, where a male jumping spider dances for a foxy spider babe. Homepage Buzzes 8/21: Gender Benders Are young boys more likely to get rowdy in the classroom? Do girls really prefer pink? Yes, say a couple of recent scientific studies done by…

Science News in brief

Researchers Identify Very First Neurons In The 'Thinking' Brain: Researchers at Yale School of Medicine and the University of Oxford have identified the very first neurons in what develops into the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that makes humans human. The findings published in Nature Neuroscience show that the first neurons, or "predecessors," as the researchers called them, are in place 31 days after fertilization. This is much earlier than previously thought and well before development of arms, legs or eyes. "Thinking brain" and "what makes human human" are journalistic phrases…

Food Storage and Preservation Class Starting Next Week!

It seemed up here in the north that spring would never come - and now we're headed rapidly into that time of year when everything is ripe and abundant in our gardens and at local farms, and learning to put food up can make it possible for you to enjoy summer in winter, and continue eating locally as long as possible. It can be overwhelming when you start preserving, so if you'd like a friendly voice to walk you through it, please join us, starting next Tuesday! The class is on-line and asynchronous, and you can participate at your own pace. Every week we'll have projects involving what's…

What is "health" ?

I know many of the HIV threads here get very tedious and repetitive, but occasionally interesting things come out of them. Believe it or not, I've learned a lot about HIV denial over the past year and a half or so. I've long been familiar with Duesberg's objections, but it wasn't until more recently that I realized there still were active denial groups around, and even wholesale germ theory deniers. So to me, the threads aren't all wasted. Anyway, in one of the ongoing threads, there was discussion of one commenter's "natural" remedies, and her claim that "Germs cannot get a strong-hold in…

Keeping President Bushâs Anti-Regulation Campaign in the Spotlight

By David Michaels The handcuffs President Bush recently imposed on regulatory agencies continue to be the focus of public attention. (Weâve compiled a listing of posts on the Executive Order and its nefarious implications). Members of Congress, along with public health and environmental advocates, are now considering legislative approaches to overturning these new requirements. Media attention is criticial for building political will to address this issue. Robert Pear's New York Times piece (subscription-only access) drew attention to the Executive Order's implications, and a now we're…

Electrifying Speciation

Although these fish look similar and have the same genetic makeup, they produce very different electrical signals (right) and will only mate with fish that produce the same signals. Cornell researchers believe that these different electrical signals are the fishes' first step in diverging into separate species. [Image: Carl Hopkins.] The fishes depicted in the picture above are several types of mormyrids that are endemic to some tributaries of the Ivindo River in Gabon, Africa. These fishes produce weak electrical signals from a battery-like organ at the base of the tail to communicate…

Sustainable Garden Planning Class

First of all, in my first post I accidently wrote the class was starting tomorrow, April 4.  In fact, we're starting the following Thursday, April 11 and running to the first Thursday in May (apparently I can't read a calendar correctly). I still have spots available, but sign up soon, because I'd like to make sure I have plenty of time for individual attention. Here's the syllabus and class information: Sharon has been running her small family farm in rural upstate NY  for 12 years and before that, was gardening on urban balconies and in city lots in the Boston area for years before that. …

Kudos to open government groups for new FOIA law

Advocates for government transparency, including journalists and watchdog groups, were pleased to witness President Obama signed the FOIA Improvement Act. He did so on June 30 without fanfare. After it was signed into law, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) commented: “The signing marked the culmination of open government advocates' battle to reform part of FOIA ahead of the law's 50th anniversary on July 4th.” And Open the Government.org called it: “...a herculean effort on the part of Congressional leaders, staff members, and open government advocates who have been…

Upscale Night Clubbers, Wherefore Art Thou?

I've never understood the point of bars or night life. Most people seem to go to bars and night clubs to meet their friends, get drunk and possibly get laid. I don't drink, from a very early age I've been in steady relationships with vigorous women, I see my friends on-line or at our respective kitchen tables, and I get really sleepy around midnight. So night life has nothing to offer me. I was once single for eight months, which meant that I did have to do something to get laid. But what took care of that certainly wasn't my exploration of clubs: I hooked up with women everywhere except in…

Eliminating Majors

Inside Higher Ed reports that Indiana State is eliminating physics and philosophy, among other majors, in a move to streamline their programs. These programs have very few majors relative to the number of faculty (physics has five faculty and nine majors, philosophy four faculty and 19 majors), so they're on the block due to an accreditor's comment that they have too many programs. The discussion in the article centers on the question of whether you can really call a university a university if it doesn't teach physics or philosophy. Several people in comments object that they're only…

Links for 2010-08-10

Why Public Employees Are The New Welfare Queens | The New Republic "To what extent is the problem that the retirement benefits for unionized public sector workers have become too generous? And to what extent is the problem that retirement benefits for everybody else have become too stingy? I would suggest it's more the latter than the former. The promise of stable retirement--one not overly dependent on the ups and downs of the stock market--used to be part of the social contract. If you got an education and worked a steady job, then you got to live out the rest of your life comfortably.…

Generalists, Specialists, and the Slappable

There are at least as many ways to write really interesting essays as there are people writing really interesting essays, but for the most part, they break down into two broad types. There are the ones that completely change the way you look at some subject you thought you knew about, forcing you to change your opinion of it; and there are the ones that explain some subject in such a clear and compelling way that they change the way you think about it (even if you don't change your opinion of the subject). Those two types account for most of the interesting essays out there, but don't cover…

Fun you can have with your three year old and protein crystallography/NMR coordinate data.

So basically, I've been hearing stuff about some new game show that pits adults against the sort of knowledge that a child in Grade 5 should know. It sounds like a pretty interesting concept, and has gotten me thinking about kids and science information generally. Anyway with this in mind, today, I thought we could play around with a piece of free software that enables folks to look at three dimensional structures of a varety of biologically relevant molecules. Because kids like video games right? And what could be more challenging to young inquiring hands than navigating the structure…