Search Content

Displaying results 8551 - 8600 of 87947

Still more reports and books on the future of academic libraries

For those of you new to Confessions of a Science Librarian, I've been publishing various lists of books and reports/white papers for the last little while. The reports and books explore various ideas, issues and trends that I think will be important in the development of academic libraries over the next several years and range pretty far and wide in terms of subject matter. I've done four lists so far, mentioning a rather frightening number of different items: Sixteen books Twenty-nine reports Thirty-four books and eight reports Nine reports and sixteen books Reports Online Catalogs: What…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In 2003, FRONTLINE, The New York Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation teamed up to investigate nine deaths and thousands of injuries at facilities owned by McWane, Inc., a major iron pipe foundry company â and âa portrait emerged of McWane as the most dangerous company in an inherently dangerous business.â The resulting program caught the attention of the Environmental Crimes section of the Department of Justice, which guided a nationwide investigation that led to prosecutions. McWane and eight of its executives and managers were convicted of 125 environmental, health, and safety…

Elsevier Blinks, Will No Longer Support Research Works Act

In a victory for science, and those who favor open access for the easy dissemination of scientific results to the public and scientists around the world, Elsevier has withdrawn support for the Research Works Act. I think credit has to go to Tim Gowers calling for and Michael Eisen spreading the word on the boycott and getting Elsevier's attention. Eisen initially brought our attention to the bill which would have allowed Elsevier to break with the growing tendency towards putting science payed for with tax dollars into open access databases. The Research Works Act would allow them to erect…

Say No to EHP Changes

One of the best ways that mothers, fathers, grandparents, and caregivers can find out about hazardous agents in their homes, communities, and workplaces is by reading the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).  EHP is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), an agency created in 1966 by the Surgeon General as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  EHP is published monthly and can be accessed on-line at no cost.  Some of the scientific articles published in EHP may be too technical for some readers, but the journal's  Environews…

Extreme math: 1 + 1 = 2

Finally, I have found online, a copy of the magnificent culmination of the 20th century's most ambitious work of mathematics. The last page of Russel and Whitehead's proof that 1+1=2. On page 378 (yes, three hundred and seventy eight!) of the Principia Mathematica.. Yes, it's there. The whole thing: the entire Principia, in all of its hideous glory, scanned and made available for all of us to utterly fail to comprehend. For those who are fortunate enough not to know about this, the Principia was, basically, an attempt to create the perfect mathematics: a complete formalization of all things…

The exciting history of history of science. And mammoths!

Scientific facts are fun. But probably to a limited number of people. It's more fun to know how scientists got those facts - their thoughts, motivations and methods. How they did it. Why they did it. Where did they get the idea to do it in the first place. It's even more fun, for a broader number of people, if that finding is placed in a historical context - how work of previous generations of scientists, meandering around various age-specific ideas, led to the work of this particular group. But it is even more fun watching the historians of science at work. Most recent science is pretty easy…

Science crowdsourcing - ecology

Help scientists track plant and animal cycles: The USA-National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) -- a University of Arizona, Tucson-based group of scientists and citizens that monitors the seasonal cycles of plants and animals -- is calling for volunteers to help track the effect of climate change on the environment. The group is launching a national program encouraging citizen volunteers to observe seasonal changes among plants and animals, like flowering, migration and egg-laying. They can then log in and record their observations online at the USA-NPN website. "The program is designed for…

2008 Edublog Awards - time to start nominations

This is what you need to do: 2008 Nominations Contact Form In order to nominate blogs for the 2008 Edublog Awards you have to link to them first! So, follow these two simple steps to nominate (nominations made without links or without correct submission will not be counted) 1. Write a post on your blog linking to a. The 2008 Nomination page & b The blogs & sites that you want to nominate (must be linked to!) You can nominate for as many categories as you like, but only one nomination per category, and not yourself :) You can nominate a blog (or site) for more than one category) 2. Use…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Local bloggers 2)

There are 77 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 113 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. Antony Williams is the Director of ChemZoo Inc, which runs ChemSpider which is an Open Access online database of chemical…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Technology + Science + Business = Uber-geekery)

There are 79 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 112 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. Emile Petrone is a young entrepreneur who designed and runs one of the first science-specific online social networks - Knowble.net…

Feeling ethically challenged?

Confused about terms like "autonomy" and "beneficance" and their relationship to biomedical research? The Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) is offering a short course at the University of Washington, Feb. 29th and March 1st, on Ethics in Science. Registration details and a description are below. An Ethics Shortcourse February 29, 2008, 4-8pm and March 1, 10am-4pm Waterfront Activities Center, University of Washington Registration Deadline: February 15, 2008 To apply online, please visit: http://www.nwabr.org/education/esc.htm $25 with credit card or $20 with check.…

Not an “accident”: Ascencion Medina, 44 suffers fatal work-related injury in Greenville, SC

Ascencion Molina Medina, 44, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, July 30, 2015 while working at a construction site in Greenville, SC. Greenville On-line reports: Medina “lost his footing” and fell about 30 feet, according to the county coroner. He died several hours later at the local hospital. The construction project is a new mixed use development called Main + Stone which will house residential and retail properties. The Beach Company is the developer and the project broke ground in late 2014. The general contractor of the Main + Stone development is Yeargin Potter Shackelford…

Let us pray

Just the title of this book is good for a laugh: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Prayer. They've certainly got their target audience pegged. As an added bonus, the reviews are amusing. Have reviewed a number of books on prayer and they usually get too complicated and bogged down. "Close your eyes and pretend" is too complicated? Are there rules and regulations and rituals that must be performed for this prayer thing that are baroque and beyond my understanding, or is this reviewer the kind of person who finds swallowing to be an act of will that requires concentration and practice? I just…

Hackers & Painters and The Charterhouse of Parma

These were part of my reading matter for the summer. They contrast somewhat; the former is by Paul Graham and is a collection of essay about the software world; the latter is a classic novel by Stendhal. But they do link together, vaguely, in this sense: One of PG's themes is money, or wealth as he would prefer (wiki has a stub, which will at least point you to the book and the essays online). How to make it, and why its fair to have large disparities, and such. He asserts that a rapid rise in wealth occurs when socieites allow individuals and groups to retain the rights to the wealth they…

Baylor episode is getting wider circulation

The story of the Robert Marks debacle has now made the pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education. If the account is accurate, I'm going to do something you'll only rarely see: I'll take the side of the creationist. The problem is that Baylor was more than a little ham-fisted in intruding on Marks' academic freedom. Marks is promoting this bogus idea of something called "evolutionary informatics", and he admits that he is doing it on his own time (which leaves Dembski, his colleague, dangling without any legitimate connection to Baylor; if Marks is doing it on his own time, what is he doing…

More Deutsche Dodging

You gotta love this. George Deutsche continued his dodging in an interview with the New York Times. Here's my favorite line: "When I left college," he said, "I did not properly update my resume. As a result, it may appear misleading to some. However, I was up front with NASA about my undergraduate status when they hired me." Apparently he thinks that on a resume, you put in all the stuff you hope to accomplish later and then delete them if you don't before you send it out. He also says that the email demanding that the word "theory" be appended to "big bang" every time it was mentioned on a…

Gravitational Waves Win 2017 Nobel Prize In Physics, The Ultimate Fusion Of Theory And Experiment

"Well, I walked into Building 20 and looked in at the various little labs. There was a bunch of people doing something that looked to me to be sort of interesting, and since I knew all this electronics, I asked them, “Look, can you use a guy?” And I sold myself off as a technician for about two years." -Rai Weiss, on the start of his physics career at MIT It’s official at long last: the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three individuals most responsible for the development and eventual direct detection of gravitational waves. Congratulations to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and…

LIGO-VIRGO Detects The First Three-Detector Gravitational Wave

"Einstein's gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea." -Richard Feynman For over a century after the publication of General Relativity, it was uncertain whether gravitational waves were real or not. It wasn’t until their first direct detection less than two years ago, by the LIGO scientific collaboration, that their existence was spectacularly confirmed. With the VIRGO detector in Italy coming online this year to…

John A. Davison: fool in his own words

This simpering sycophant to John A. Davison has been spamming the site recently, yammering away to get everyone's attention despite the fact that he has been banned. Please do not reply to V.Martin, or anyone who is babbling about Davison — their posts will be deleted as soon as I notice them. This particular irritating fool has not only been morphing his username to get past my filters, but has at least once imitated a regular here, a particularly obnoxious and contemptible strategem that guarantees that I won't ever be lifting the ban. One reason he has been so frantic is that his hero,…

Skamby Boat Grave Paper Published

When you've finished an archaeological excavation, you always produce an archive report describing the results. Most excavation units these days actually publish their reports in small print runs. If you're lucky enough to find something really interesting, you should also try to publish it in a journal, anthology or monograph. This is good for you, because it enhances your academic qualifications, and it's good for research, because it makes new data available to colleagues and opens up a discussion of the new finds. In the summer of 2005, me and my friend Howard Williams directed the…

Green Buttocks

Does anyone watch TV anymore? Anyone? I mean, seriously, its like every other day Creationists are doing something infinitely more hysterical than anything Hollywood can think up. Todays side-splitting sitcom is brought to you by William Dembski and a new character*-- a buxom young brunette named Sean McDowell. They wrote a new hip (some would say, 'groovy'... perhaps even 'ZANY!') book on ID Creationism for teenagers, 'Understanding Intelligent Design'. I think Creationists are going for 'The Odd Couple' spin with this mismatched duo! Check this out! Dembski: theotard with no scientific…

More Falwell Lies

Media Matters has a report on the many lies told by Jerry Falwell in his appearance last weekend on Meet the Press. It's just baffling to me that he continues to lie about his incredible statement on the 700 Club after 9/11, where he said, "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the…

Framing and Arrogance

An idle observation: One of the more ironic things about the whole framing argument (other than the sheer number of people talking past one another, as Mike notes in passing) is how quick a lot of the anti-framing people are to declare that Mooney and Nisbet are just completely and totally wrong. And the people who are most adamant about Nisbet and Mooney being way off base are the people who are most outraged whenever somebody with an engineering degree dares to say something stupid about biology. The irony here is that this framing business is exactly Nisbet's area of expertise. This is…

Links for 2010-05-04

Online civility: between 10,000 cliques and 2 cultures, where's the neutral ground? : bioephemera "Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the blogosphere abhors a neutral and nonpartisan blog. For whatever reasons, cultural or historical, participants expect partisanship. They want to know if you're with them or against them; the dedicated communities at various blogs can be pretty defensive of their space, and sometimes stream like lemmings through the aether to attack a blogger that they perceive as threatening. It's human nature: when our friends get attacked, we get mad. The problem is, we're…

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

Been a little while since I've done an Obsessive Update, but a few noteworthy things have come up recently: A very nice review at Pet Connection: "this brilliant and (relatively) simple book explains the basic premises of quantum physics in terms that dogs and most English majors can understand." Which is not to say that English majors are less likely to understand it than dogs-- English majors are a big part of our target audience, and it's nice to hear that it works for at least some of them. Another blog review, this time at Synergy of One: "Throughout the book, the author's extremely…

Links for 2009-08-27

Why Our Analemma Looks like a Figure 8 : Starts With A Bang "We got a good number of thoughtful comments, many of which are on the right track, and many of which have some misconceptions. Let's clear them up, and then let's give you the explanation of what gives us our figure 8, and why other planets make other shapes." (tags: science astronomy blogs starts-with-bang) Are recent developments in scholarly communication relevant to undergraduates? « the Undergraduate Science Librarian "I am very excited about these changes, and I spend some of my time checking out real-time science blogs…

Links for 2010-01-28

Resolving the Red Controversy? : Starts With A Bang "Earlier this week, I introduced you to the Red Controversy, the observations recorded around 2000 years ago in Europe asserting that the star, Sirius, appeared red. Now, taking a look at Sirius today, it is clearly not red: And, based on what we know about stars, they don't change color on timescales that quickly. " (tags: science astronomy blogs starts-with-bang pictures history) Cambridge physicist wins Glamour magazine award | Varsity Online "The award gives Professor Donald a chance to bring attention to the under-representation of…

Three white guys to leave ScienceBlogs: an opportunity for increasing diversity?

All of us at Terra Sig world headquarters are sending out hearty congratulations to the boys over at Deep Sea News - Peter Etnoyer, Craig McClain, and Kevin Zelnio - on the announcement of their September move to the Discovery Channel online. I've had the good fortune of meeting all three gentlemen in person, even breaking bread with Craig. I can tell you that they are individually and collectively superb stewards of the deep sea and tireless promoters of conservation and habitat preservation. Best wishes to you fellas - we'll miss you but we'll keep reading (plus the Zelnio family is…

Mooney Invades My House (Again)

The June issue Harper's features Seed's (our) own Chris Mooney. In a series of short commentaries about "Undoing Bush," Chris contributes some thoughts on science. The 11 contributors all ponder "How to repair eight years of sabotage, bungling, and neglect." Although the Harper's website has vastly improved (and subscribers have access to the entire 156 run of the magazine, which should elicit a big ole, Holy Shit! I had no idea Henry Smith Williams wrote that article on the century's progress in chemistry in the October 1897 issue), it doesn't yet have the June issue's contents up. And…

Another Christmas gift suggestion: Cat Cloning for $32,000 (although it does come with a free video, maybe)

Since Ben has posted on the new hypoallergenic cat, I thought it pertinent to talk a little about the Granddaddy of transgenic pet services, that is the company known as Genetics Savings and Clones. Here's a company with some pretty strong research credentials having been published in the not too shabby Nature (this was the cloning of a cat named "cc:"). In essence, they were the first to provide a pet cloning service with the February 2004 launch of their "Nine Lives Extravaganza," to the first 9 clients for $50,000 each. This by the way, was adverstised as coming with a "free video",…

Help me put the Bergman-Myers debate on YouTube!

I've received a suggestion that one potential source of a lot of the recent nonsensical creationist literature-quoting has a plausible source: Jerry Bergman. That guy is completely nuts, as I learned in a debate a while back; he's also pretentious while not knowing much, and he's painfully prolific, publishing lots in fringey creationist pseudo-journals. So now I have a technical question. I have a DVD copy of that wretched debate, and I've even gone so far as to rip it, and now have five MP4 files sitting on my computer (I also have a folder of the raw ripped files, a bunch of .bup, .ifo, .…

Video Game Violence Leads to Mass Bugnapping

Now Benny and I have always been suspicious of claims that violent video games spawn violent children. In fact, after zoology, few things are closer to our hearts than violent video games. However in a cruel twist of fate, it appears globalization has pitted our passions against one another. This does look fun... A new video game, (Mushiking) Insect King, has taken Japan by storm. In the game, which is targeted to young children, competitors fight one another with digital stag beetles. Sounds fun right? Well as with many Japanese obsessions, things have been taken a step too far. Excitement…

Evolution and Cancer

Jonathan Wells wrote a paper a while back that proposed a "ID-derived" explanation for cancer. I've written about that before (here, here , here, here, and here) as have others. Thus, this is of interest: In a study published online today in Nature Genetics, Carlo Maley, Ph.D., a researcher at The Wistar Institute, and his colleagues report that precancerous tumors containing a population of highly diverse cells were more likely to evolve into cancer than those containing genetically similar cells. The finding suggests that, in at least some forms of cancer, the more genetically diverse a…

I should use Internet Explorer and Register too? Why, oh, why?

I was trying to view a tamil magazine website. The scrawny bouncers at the door of Sloppy Coders Paradise stop me with a message: "Use Internet Explorer only please". Huh, my firefox fingers bristle at the affront. Still I am not unduely surprised. I was aware the website was probably the work of a web development company with moderate to sloppy software skills. Oh well. Alright, perhaps the website will have some redeeming quality in its content. I use IE and enter. The moment I step in, the website asks me to install a particular tamil font. Well, I pause a moment to consider if I should…

Neuron Culture top 5 hits for May

In reverse order: 5.  David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists. "I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist." This sparked some lively action in the comments. 4. Lively or not, Wilson and Dawkins lost fourth place to snail jokes. A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails.  3. A walking tour that lets you See exactly where Phineas Gage lost his mind   2. "Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size We're constantly told -- we writers are, anyway -- that people won't read long stories. They're hard to sell to editors,…

Chocolate Pudding Letters Review : A New High Profile Journal

I'm excited to announce that I've been named an associate editor for a new high profile journal, Chocolate Pudding Letters Review. Read below for our first call for papers: CALL FOR PAPERS! We are now accepting papers for the 1st issue of CPLR! DO NOT MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY! Leading scientists anticipate that CPLR will become the premier outlet for major breakthroughs in the study of chocolate pudding (CP) and other viscous edible creations (VECs). Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, 1) theoretical reviews, 2) empirical works, 3) recipes, 4) novel…

Ohhh the Irony! Enzyme responsible for Alzheimers can suppress tumors

Clearly I'm not a medicine bio person - but this just had to make it onto the blog. Researchers at Burnham Institute for Medical Research ("Burnham") have provided the first evidence that gamma-secretase, an enzyme key to the progression of Alzheimer's, acts as a tumor suppressor by altering the pathway of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a potential treatment target for cancer. Expedited to publication online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these findings reveal a limitation of targeting gamma-secretase for treatment of Alzheimer's and potentially other diseases.…

An online abortion poll — for real

I'm about as pro-choice as you can get; I'm even willing to say that I'm pro-abortion, and would like to encourage more people to abort. But I'm also rather shocked by my fellow Minnesotans, Pete and Alisha Arnold, who have decided to allow people to vote on whether they should get an abortion. Way to trivialize a significant life decision, Pete and Alisha! They have an online poll, and you can go vote right now. Should We Give Birth or Have an Abortion? Give Birth 77.3% (118,301 votes) Have an Abortion 22.7% (34,741 votes) Clearly, looking at those numbers, the 'bots have been at work,…

Medicine and logic

I have an ambivalent relationship with the medical profession. On the one hand - my left - I lost a finger because a general practitioner refused to investigate a wart, that turn cancerous. On the other, I think medicine is one of this civilisation's greatest achievements, at least when it is made available to people. But I don't think highly of medical practice. So it comes as a great pleasure to read a medical practitioner saying: So I was very happy to read an article in The Boston Globe today entitled, The mistakes doctors make by Dr. Jerome Groopman. Unfortunately, the online…

Penis Transplant Rejected (Psychologically By Wife)

I feel really bad for this guy: Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife. Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year old man whose penis had been damaged in a traumatic accident. The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Hu and his team removed it two weeks later. "Because of a…

40 Percent of World of Warcraft Players Addicted, Sex Insufficient Motivation to be Exposed to Sunlight

Apparently the sexual drive is insufficient at motivating many people to leave their apartments: Having treated all types of addictions for more than 15 years, Orzack says there's little difference between drug use, excessive gambling and heavy game playing. And with millions of gamers hooked on mega-popular massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), she believes the problem is growing rapidly. In fact, Orzack says as much as 40 percent of World of Warcraft players are addicted to the game. TwitchGuru talks with Orzack to find out more about the issue of game addiction, and…

Kennedy In Science, Kirshenbaum Around The Clock

Lots going on just one day into February... In Science magazine, Donald Kennedy has an excellent editorial called 'The Real Debate': We in the United States are sliding down a ramp that will take us, in just 4 days, to the much anticipated "Super Tuesday" in the presidential nomination cycle, when voters in over 20 states participate in preliminary elections to select their favorite candidate. I have prepared for this by watching, in alternating stages of boredom and disbelief, the numerous "debates" staged by the creative powers who run television. I wonder whether the same sensations haven…

The 2007 List: Ten Most Dangerous College Classes

Now, if only they would offer these online for free... 10. Collegiate Sexualities at Occidental College. 9. Body Politics: Power, Pain, and Pleasure at Williams College. 8. Issues Dividing America at Columbia University. 7. Whiteness and Multiculturalism at Ithaca College. 6. Truth, Lies, Politics, and Policy at Portland State University. 5. Introduction to Labor Studies at the University of Washington. 4. Speaking Out at Bucknell College. 3. Imperialism in American History at the University of California, Irvine. 2. Movements in Social Justice at Occidental College…

Removing an Organ Makes Female Act Like Male

At least in mice, that is: rendering the href="http://neuro.fsu.edu/%7Emmered/index.htm">vomeronasal organ inactive by deleting the gene href="http://www.informatics.jax.org/searches/accession_report.cgi?id=MGI%3A109527">TRPC2 (transient receptor potential cation channel, subfamily C, member 2) results in profound behavioral changes.  This was reported on Nature News: href="http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070730/full/070730-13.html">Nose goes, gender bends.  They include a video (link below the fold) of mouse sexual behavior (which may not be safe for work, depending on the…

Chris Mooney on the deniers

Welcome to the new year, and now that I'm back from a little family vacation I'd like to applaud PAL for the excellent job he did summarizing our thesis, and the job he's done in general in the last year. I'm busy doing my last 3rd year clerkship in neurology (even though I'm graduating in 2009 - it's complicated) and it's wonderful to have him at our side fighting the good fight. Objects of interest in the last couple of weeks include (former?) framing ally Chris Mooney breaking with Matt Nisbett on the necessary language for addressing denialism. In his article defending the Obama…

The spread of disorder - can graffiti promote littering and theft?

Imagine walking through a neighbourhood and seeing graffiti, litter, and shopping trolleys strewn about the place. Are these problems to be solved, or petty annoyances that can be ignored in the light of more serious offences? A new study suggests that the former is right - even the most trivial of transgressions can spread and spiral because their very presence stimulates more of the same behaviour. Through a series of stunning real-world experiments, Kees Keizer and colleagues from the University of Groningen have shown that disorder breeds more disorder. The mere presence of graffiti, for…

"All Labor Has Worth"

From the archives: One of the things that is often neglected on Martin Luther King day is his dedication to economic justice. What is forgotten--often willfully--is that he was an advocate for racial and economic justice. From a speech he gave to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968 (italics mine): My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of the sanitation workers and their families, and to all of my brothers and sisters, I need not pause to say how very delighted I…

Grand Rounds v.2 n.33

Welcome to Grand Rounds at Aetiology! Grab a cup of joe, take a seat, and enjoy the best of this week's medical blogging. Just make sure to wash your hands when you're done...you never know what's lying around here, between the kids, the dog, and the lab... First, a programming note. Just a few weeks back, our Grand Rounds host was The Fat Doctor. Since then, she has suffered several strokes. As of the time I'm writing this, there hasn't been an update since Friday, but it seems like things are going OK. Check out her blog and please send along your well wishes; though it appears she…

University of Colorado student died of opium tea overdose

After writing this post, I came across Alex's obituary and guestbook on Legacy.com. By all accounts, Alex was a great kid - loved and admired by many - an accomplished hockey player and musician with a love for the mountains. This could have been you or I, or worse, one of our own children. Breaking my heart this morning is news from Boulder that last month's death of 20-year-old CU student, Alexander McGuiggan, was from consumption of "opium tea." Police department spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said investigators believe McGuiggan and others had acquired poppy plants -- which are available…

Does Anyone at S&P Have Links to the Trader Who Bet $1 Billion That the U.S. Would Be Downgraded?

Not that either the SEC or the Holder-led Justice Department would do anything about it. This happened July 21: Jack Barnes writes : Someone dropped a bomb on the bond market Thursday - a $1 billion Armageddon trade betting the United States will lose its AAA credit rating. In one moment, an invisible trader placed a single trade that moved the most liquid debt market in the world. The massive trade wasn't placed in bonds themselves; it was placed in the futures market. The trade was for block trades of 5,370 10-year Treasury futures executed at 124-03 and 3,100 Treasury bond futures…