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Open Laboratory 2010 - submissions so far

The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far, as well as buttons and the bookmarklet. The instructions for submitting are here. You can buy the last four annual collections here. You can read Prefaces and Introductions to older editions here. ============================ A Blog Around The Clock: What does it mean that a nation is 'Unscientific'? A Blog Around The Clock: My latest scientific paper:…

What Everyone Should Know about the Universe on the eve of Planck

"Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view." -Max Planck Tomorrow morning, at 8 AM my time, the press conference that cosmologists have spent the past decade waiting for will finally happen, and the Planck satellite -- the most powerful satellite ever to measure the leftover radiation from the Big Bang -- will finally unveil its results about the origin and composition of the Universe. Image credit: ESA / LFI and HFI Consortia. They've figured out how to subtract the…

The Way of the Wellness Warrior: Enabled by credulous reporting

Since I've been complaining about credulity in the media reporting on cancer this week, in particular the way local reporters Carol Robidoux and April Guilmet published articles that were nothing more than regurgitations of propaganda from Stanislaw Burzynski, I figured I might as well go all in and finish the week out with more of the same. Hopefully, it'll clear the deck to move on to different topics next week. Besides, seeing this really irritated me. I don't live in Australia (obviously), but it seems that I'm frequently aware of things going on in Australia relevant to skeptical…

Better late than never: Orac comments on the hijacking of evidence-based medicine

It's no secret that I'm a fan of John Ioannidis. (If you don't believe me, just type Ioannidis' name into the blog search box and see how many posts you find.) Over the last couple of decades, Ioannidis has arguably done more to reveal the shortcomings of the medical research enterprise that undergirds our treatments, revealing the weaknesses in the evidence base and how easily clinical trials can mislead, than any other researcher. Indeed, after reading what is Ioannidis' most famous article, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False", back in 2005, I was hooked. I even used it for our…

Tim Lambert's comments on the Duncan-Lott exchange

Lott's reply to Duncan's article raises some disturbing questions about Lott's honesty. See also James Lindgren's report on his attempt to find some evidence that Lott actually conducted a DGU survey. Where did that 98 percent come from? 98 percent claims before 1997 Way back in 1993 in talk.politics.guns, C. D. Tavares wrote: The answer is that the gun never needs to be fired in 98% of the instances of a successful self-defense with a gun. The criminals just leave abruptly, instead." When I queried him about this, he quickly corrected his error: Kleck says in the magazine "…

Anti-fluoridation crankery? How quaintly 1960s! I only wish it weren't on ScienceBlogs

No, no, no, no, no! I hate it when a fellow ScienceBlogger goes astray! Fortunately, it's been a long time indeed since I felt obligated to administer a dose of Insolence, Respectful or otherwise, to a fellow ScienceBlogger. It's been even longer (as in, I think, never) that I've ever seen one whose resource I use regularly screw up so amazingly. I'm talking about Coby of A Few Things Ill-Considered, whose How To Talk To A Climate Skeptic (also found here) is a resource I turn to again and again and again when faced with denialist arguments about anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, I've…

Another Week of GW News, November 30, 2008

Sipping from the internet firehose... This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup (skip to bottom) November 30, 2008 Top Stories:Poznan, Recession Gambits, ICE, Mandate Survey NW Passage, Greenland Geopolitics, Wilkins, Icebergs Calving, Romm & Revkin, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHG Stats, Carbon Cycle, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Forests, Corals, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings,…

The Trump War on Science: Daring blindness, Denying climate change, Destroying the EPA and other daily disasters

The last one of these was in mid-June, so we're picking up all the summer stories of scientific mayhem in the Trump era. The last couple of months have seemed especially apocalyptic, with Nazis marching in the streets and nuclear war suddenly not so distant a possibility. But along with those macro-level issues, Trump and his cronies are still hammering away at climate change denial, environmental protection, research funding and public health issues. As exhausting as it seems -- and this is part of the plan -- amongst all of us opposed to Trump, we need to keep track of a wide range of…

We're Gonna Need More Pie

I'm back from my northeast travels - I had a great time at both NOFA and NESEA, and am slowly recovering from a glazed state of sleep deprivation to something sort of coherent enough to finish the book (3 weeks to go!). But I'm still sleepy and tired, so to remind you that Pi day is coming, I include my classic (ok, if I have any classics ;-)) essay on why the world can be saved with Pie. If you are inspired to follow up with a submission to the Pi-day contest, that would be awesome. The other day I got embroiled in one of those endless discussions/debates/headbangings about what the best…

Keeping transportation dollars from worker-safety violators, such as Thomas Industrial Coatings

The $109 billion transportation bill passed last week in the Senate has a title that doesn't even mention roads or highways. It's called the ''Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act'' (MAP-21) The 74 Senators who voted in favor of the bill (S. 1813), including 22 Republicans, described their support in terms of its potential to save and create nearly 3 million jobs, many in the construction industry. One provision of the legislation fits especially well with the bill's title, with real potential to make progress on worker safety while we move ahead with transportation projects…

Fisking Phyllis Schlaffly

One of the most fascinating aspects of the last couple weeks since the Dover ruling came down is surveying just how low some of the IDers are willing to go to attack Judge Jones. It's all the more interesting because when he was assigned the case they were quite happy about the selection. After all, they had gotten a conservative judge, appointed by President Bush and with close ties to Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum. How could they have asked for anything more? Alas, once he ruled against them they turned on him like a pack of rabid dogs, engaging in one ad hominem after another. But the worst…

How can so much stupidity about medicine be packed into one article?

I'm currently in Las Vegas at The Amazing Meeting. Believe it or not, I was even on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007. Mike Adams is an idiot. There, I said it. Adams runs the NewsTarget website, a repository for all…

A misstep in castigating HuffPo's journey into creationism

I've been a critic of Arianna Huffington's massive group blog, The Huffington Post, since three weeks after it first blighted the blogosphere. That's when I first noticed that the "health" section (such as it is) of HuffPo had already become a wretched hive of scum and anti-vaccine quackery, something I began documenting again and again and again and again and again over five years ago, before Salon.com and Rolling Stone flushed their credibility right down the crapper with Robert F. Kennedy's infamous conspiracy mongering about thimerosal in vaccines. Indeed, I continue to document the…

The long strange road to normalizing the "integration" of quackery with medicine

It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered Glenn Sabin. You might remember him, though. He runs a consulting firm, FON Therapeutics, which is dedicated to the promotion of “integrative” health, or, as I like to put it, the “integration of pseudoscience and quackery with science-based medicine. What I remember most about Sabin is how he once proclaimed that “integrative medicine” was a brand, not a specialty. Unfortunately, he was correct in his assessment. Basically, he declared, “CAM [complementary and alternative medicine] is dead. The evolution of evidence-based, personalized integrative…

That'll teach 'em for using an actual valid placebo control

I almost feel sorry for acupuncturists these days. Almost. Well, not exactly. Clearly, given the infiltration of woo into academic medicine, acupuncturists are in demand even in the most allegedly "science-based" of academic medical centers. After all, acupuncture is what I like to refer to as "gateway woo," an unscientific placebo-based therapy that has somehow come to be viewed as seemingly respectable, as though there's something to it. It's not hard to see why acupuncture has achieved this status. Indeed, there was a time when I, the arch-skeptic, the guy who has built up one of the top…

Old wine in a new skin: The Society for Integrative Oncology promotes integrating pseudoscience into oncology

Last week, I discussed a monograph published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs entitled Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Use of Integrative Therapies as Supportive Care in Patients Treated for Breast Cancer. As you might remember, I was completely unimpressed. However, those guidelines were not the only thing in that particular JNCI monograph. There were lots of other articles, and, given that some of them show just how deeply quackery has insinuated itself into oncology in the form of "integrative oncology," I thought it was worth revisiting one more time.…

Birds in the News 158

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Nonggang Babbler, Stachyris nonggangensis, a newly discovered bird species, is found only in southwestern Guangxi province, part of the south-east Chinese Mountains Endemic Bird Area. Image: James Eaton; Birdtour Asia. Birds in Science For many decades, the white-eyes (Family: Zosteropidae) were known as the "Great Speciators" in honor of their apparent ability to rapidly give rise to new species while other birds in the same areas showed little or no diversification. But the Great Speciator hypothesis could only…

Get out the popcorn: Science Babe vs. The Food Babe

I've spend considerable time documenting the utter pseudoscience, misinformation, and downright idiocy about "chemicals" in food regularly inflicted on the public by the misguided "food activist" named Vani Hari, who is better known by the moniker she chose for herself "The Food Babe." Indeed, in decade-plus that I've been running this blog and the few years before that during which I honed my skeptical skills on Usenet and other discussion forums, rarely have I come across someone so full of the arrogance of ignorance, someone who is the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.…

Antivaccine quackery, anti-GMO pseudoscience, and climate change denialism: Is there a connection other than crank magnetism?

Ever since I first started writing about antivaccine conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself) back in 2005, it's always been assumed by many who combat this particularly pernicious and dangerous form of quackery that antivaccine views tend to be more predominant on the political left compared to the political right. I used to believe that as well, but over the last few of years have questioned this bit of "conventional wisdom." At the time, I based my questioning of the thesis that antivaccine views are more common among those whose politics lean left than among those whose politics lean…

Are mouse "avatars" useful for predicting human response to chemotherapy and targeted agents in cancer?

From time to time, I tussle with various animal rights activists online. Over the summer, unfortunately the radical animal rights types, those who think that, at the very least, vandalism is perfectly acceptable in the name of their cause, some of whom think that action up to and including murder of scientists could potentially be morally justified, came to my campus. They also threatened and harassed an excellent scientist whom I know personally and with whom I've served on a committee. That's a bit too close. Then there are animal rights apologists whom, although they make a point of…

Will 2017 be the antivaccine year?

]As hard as it is to believe, I've been dealing with the antivaccine movement since at least the early 2000s. Back then, I didn't have a blog, either this one or my not-so-super-secret other blog, and most of my online activities were restricted to Usenet. For those of you who don't remember Usenet, which has largely become the province of trolls and spam these days, it is a massive set of online discussion boards on literally thousands of topics. Indeed, I first encountered antivaccine advocates on Usenet and started to learn the sorts of pseudoscientific arguments they make, so that when I…

Freedom in the classroom.

Perhaps you've already seen the new(ish) AAUP report Freedom in the Classroom, or Michael Bérubé's commentary on it at Inside Higher Ed yesterday. The report is such a clear statement of what a professor's freedom in the classroom amounts to and, more importantly, why that freedom is essential if we are to accomplish the task of educating college students, that everyone who cares at all about higher education ought to read it. Some of the highlights, with my commentary: On concerns that professors "indoctrinate" rather than educate: It is not indoctrination for professors to expect…

Another week of GW News, April 18, 2010

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose...April 18, 2010 Chuckles, Copenhagen, COP16, Bonn, Cochabamba, MEF, WHCEM, Missing Heat, Volcano, Lockwood, Endangerment Bottom Line, Carbon Tariffs, Subsidies, Medupi, Krugman, QUB, CRU, Oxburgh Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs…

Whole Life Redesign

As most of you will remember, we came very close to moving during the summer. It was an agonizing decision to make - there were compelling arguments on both sides, and while we ultimately came down in favor of staying in place, we also recognized that the problems we saw with our present situation are real, and need to be resolved in some way. All of this came back to us last week when Eric and I took the boys to our favorite orchard, up near the farm we nearly bought. There was the house and its for-sale sign still there. We'd assumed that the house would sell, and now we were back to the…

Roman Numerals and Arithmetic

I've always been perplexed by roman numerals. First of all, they're just *weird*. Why would anyone come up with something so strange as a way of writing numbers? And second, given that they're so damned weird, hard to read, hard to work with, why do we still use them for so many things today? The Roman Numeral System --------------------------- I expect most people already know this, but it never hurts to be complete. The roman numeral system is non-positional. It assigns numeric values to letters. The basic system is: 1. "I" stands for 1. 2. "V" stands for 5. 3. "X" stands for 10. 4. "L"…

This is not something you see every day

One day I was walking along a path dedicated to philosophers in Kyoto, Japan, with my friend Hitomi. It was interesting that there even was a path dedicated to philosophers. It made me think deeply about paths, which at the time was the subject of my PhD Thesis. Suddenly, earning a Doctorate of Philosophy with a specialization in Paths made sense. But that feeling wore off quickly enough when we something rather unusual unexpectedly appeared in the sky. First, we heard it. A thump thump thump sound. Then we noticed other people looking up and in one direction, so we looked too. We…

Okay, I Guess It's Not Over

As badly as this missing explosives story has gone for the administration and their reporters, both reluctant and otherwise, I must confess to being more than a little surprised that Sandefur is still insisting that I somehow "jumped the gun" or "fell" for a false story. The evidence could not be any more firmly on my side on this one, as I will easily show below. In this latest post, he does at least attempt to address the actual substantive issues rather than just linking to obviously farcical articles and making sarcastic comments. Unfortunately, almost every factual claim he makes is…

Shor Calculations (Quantum Wonkish)

Over at Emergent Chaos I found an article which throws down the gauntlet over quantum computers. And there isn't anything I cherish more than gauntlets thrown down! Note: I should preface this by saying that I don't consider myself a over the top hyper of quantum computers in the sense attacked by the author. I find quantum computers fascinating, would really like to see if one can be built, but find the hyperbole that accompanies any small advance in the field a bit over the top. However I also think the article misses a lot of important points (and insinuates that people haven't…

Pessimistic Pooches? Depressed Doggies? Not So Fast!

Does Fido see the cup as half full? Is your dog pessimistic? Last time we saw headlines like these they were about a certain barnyard animal. Remember "Pampered pigs 'feel optimistic'"? I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. Roughly half of the population of dogs in the UK are likely to - at some point in their lives - exhibit "undesirable separation-related behavior (SRB)." These are things that sometimes happen when left alone, like barking, chewing up or otherwise destroying objects, and urinating (or worse!) inside the house. While some owners view these behaviors as fine and…

More credulous reporting on placebo effects

Now that Trine Tsouderos no longer works for the Chicago Tribune, there aren't that many reliable generalist medical/science reporters around any more. For example, here in the U.S. there's Marilyn Marchionne at the AP, Gina Kolata of the New York Times, and then there's Sharon Begley, who used to be at Newsweek but is now at Reuters I'm having trouble thinking of others with national prominence, other than Nancy Snyderman, who has recently profoundly disappointed me with a fawning report on "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) that made it seem to be the greatest thing since sliced…

Ethical Stem Cells Hyped?

Those of you who read an earlier post here noted that I was somewhat skeptical of the technical aspects of the so-called ethical stem cells. I felt that there were several technical hurdles that had to be surmounted before this technology could be used reasonably. It turns things were even worse than I thought. New Scientist reports that Nature has issued a clarification to the article because many had complained that the scientists had been disingenuous in suggesting that no embryos had been destroyed in that set of experiments. In fact, 16 embryos had been destroyed. Early press reports…

New tool to figure out what the flu virus does (and what it needs to do it)

In my regular science trawling I noticed a fascinating paper in Nature (epub ahead of print) that I haven't seen anything about in the news. It seems to me it's worth a discussion, if for no other reason than it uses a relatively new approach, small interfering RNA (siRNA), to dissect the functions in the host cell the virus needs for the only thing it wants to do, make a copy of itself. It also lets me try out on you a new analogy I cooked up for a short talk on flu for high school students and their parents and teachers. It turns out that parts of it will be useful to explain the new siRNA…

SVPCA 2007: lepidosaurs, turtles, crocodilians, the plesiosaur research revolution continues

So I've done the pterosaur meeting; now you all know all about it. But what about the 55th Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, held at the University of Glasgow between August 29th and September 1st, and described for some reason as 'The best conference ever', I hear you cry? After much deliberation I have decided to do a brief rundown of the tetrapod talks: and my intention is to be as brief as possible about talks and their contents, not to review them at length or properly summarise them. As usual, I regret that I'm only covering those talks that appealed to me…

Names and faces featured in Worker Memorial Day reports, new database

I can’t help but contrast last week’s release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of workplace fatality data,with the reports issued this week by community groups to commemorate International Workers’ Memorial Day (WMD). BLS gave us the sterile number: 4,585. That’s the government’s official, final tally of the number of work-related fatal injuries that occurred in the US in 2013. But groups in Tennessee, Massachusetts, and elsewhere have already assembled workplace fatality data for 2014. Better than that, they’ve affixed names and stories to the numbers. The information comes in the…

Classic Edition: Shut Up and Calculate, Already

I'm going to be away from the computer for the long weekend, but I don't want to have the site go completely dark, even over a weekend, so I'm going to schedule a few posts from the archives to show up while I'm away. Everyone else seems to be doing it (and pushing my posts off the front page, the bastards), so I might as well. This goes back to the early days of the blog, back in August of 2002, and is at least vaguely relevant to the recent discussion of interpretations. It's been a while now since I talked about science stuff, mostly because there hasn't been any news that I felt strongly…

Computers Seized in Cyber-Thief Investigation (updated again)

I've decided to update this blog entry (20 Dec 2011) because it occurs to me that certain things could be misinterpreted, in no small part because of the common language that separates us across various national borders, and differences in the way debate and concepts of free speech operate in different lands. I want to make it clear that I do not think that the blogger "TallBloke" a.k.a. Roger Tattersall has broken British law. British authorities are obviously vigorously investigating what might be a criminal act, what might be an ethical violation, what might be a mere violation of…

Why you sound so stupid when you say "global warming has stopped"

Science is good at seeing things that you can’t really see. For example, science can provide an accurate three dimensional model of a critically important molecule even though no one has ever directly seen what this molecule looks like. That three dimensional model of the molecule can be used to understand things such as a) how life works and b) how to address some important disease. Science can measure the exact proportions of each of several elements that are invisible that make up the air. We can sense the air but we can’t see Nitrogen vs. Oxygen vs. CO2 in the air, while Science can.…

Global Warming is the Real Thing, but "Global Warming" is not the real problem

As is the case with most things that are important, we as a society have done a very bad job of developing an effective conversation about Global Warming. The vast majority of electronic and real ink that I see spent on the discussion of Global Warming (outside of the peer reviewed literature) is not even about climate or climate change. Rather, it is about talking about climate change, the politics of climate change, critique of the rhetoric about climate change, clarification, obfuscation, complaining, accusing, yelling or belly-aching, and the occasional threat of violence. And today,…

The Papacy Pastiche

So, you know, I had this idea for a novel. I started it, but I've since discovered that jewel-like prose and engaging story-telling is a little bit hard, and when I couldn't finish the whole thing over lunch, I've sort of given up. But then I had another brilliant idea! I'll put up the first significant piece of the story, the really really important part, and let you people finish the rest for me. Just post the subsequent chapters in the comments, and I'll splice them together and publish them and make a million dollars, and even more when I sell the movie rights. I'll be sure to include…

I get emails from crazy people

Working on for scienceblogs.com, I would say that I receive more interesting emails than the average person. Most of these emails are legitimate such as offers to send me books to read, and those are always appreciated. Some of the emails quote scripture and say that I am going to burn in hell. I would have to say that I appreciate those as well; I rather doubt the people would send them if they realized how much they put a smile on my face. Well, here is one for the crazy record books. Because this email is truly deserving of ridicule, I will interject. from time to time. To wit:…

Kadath's Sound Advice To The Lovelorn

When this first came up, I thought it was really outside the scope of my blog. But then I thought about all those stories you hear about women on tech campuses getting "glommed" by clueless nerd boys. I remembered dating catastrophes and tragicomedies from my own undergraduate days, a hundred years ago. And I thought, well, maybe there is a place for at least some brief commentary on this topic. In the comments to this blog post, Anonymouse asked Granted, a lot of the behaviors described elsewhere (tit-grazing, eg) are very much not appropriate, but how exactly DOES one go about the…

Abraham Cherrix: Still battling Hodgkin's lymphoma five years later

When you've been at this blogging thing as long as I have, it's possible to be shocked at how long you find yourself commenting on the same story. As I approach the end of the seventh year of Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, I find these "senior blogging moments" popping up from time to time. One such story is that of a young man named Abraham Cherrix. I first learned of Cherrix back in June 2006, when, a few months after having been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at age 15, Cherrix, supported by his mother, decided that he didn't want to take any more chemotherapy and…

Why don't you rant about what I think you should rant about?

I've written before about how one of the favorite tactics of those who do not like my insistence on applying skepticism, science, and critical thinking to the claims of alternative medicine or my refusal to accept a dichotomy between "alternative" and "conventional" medicine is to try so smear me as some sort of "pharma shill." It's happened so often ever since my Usenet days that I even sometimes joke about it preemptively sometimes when writing skeptical posts or make smart aleck comments asking where I can sign up to get those big checks from big pharma, given that they'd almost certainly…

Crassigyrinus, or... How I'd love a giant killer Carboniferous tadpole for a pet

Today I submitted another one of those long-delayed manuscripts. Yay. I also got to work preparing one of the three conference talks I'm supposed to be giving this year - how the hell I'm going to pull off all three I'm not sure. Anyway, leaving well alone the whole picture-of-the-day debacle, it's time for a proper post. Last time we looked at the edopoids, one of the most basal clades of temnospondyls, and in the next post I plan to write about some of the other basal temnospondyls. Ever trying to recycling old text that sits, un-used, on disks, drives and memory-sticks, here I'm going to…

Note to Scientists: Ultimately, It's Up to Us to Decide If We Want Supplemental Sections

I've railed against the rise of supplemental data and methods before, but, having just reviewed a paper where I spent more time reading the supplemental sections versus the actual fucking paper, what Scicurious wrote struck a chord with me: Sci wishes she could make her own flowchart of supplemental data. It might look like this: Does the journal have ridiculously short page/word limits compared to the ridiculously huge amount of data they require for publication? Yes. Are your methods way too numerous and complicated due to the ridiculously huge amount of data required for publication? Yes.…

Will the boss have your Tamiflu?

That pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche would have trouble meeting the orders it received for its antiviral Tamiflu was well known and not a surprise. Roche's manufacturing method is said to be laborious, dangerous in spots and have a long production cycle (NB: shorter and cheaper methods have since been discovered but it isn't clear anyone is using them to make Tamiflu at this point; see our post here). So it has surprised and upset many to see the drugmaker marketing Tamiflu to businesses, essentially inviting them to move to the head of the line. With only a fraction of the doses needed…

DrPal, tell us more about HPV and cancer

OK, if you insist. This comes with the usual caveat directed at scientists that I know this is oversimplified, but I wish to reach the largest audience possible. Feel free to correct my mistakes, but please don't bother me about oversimplification. So here's the deal. Several decades ago, it became scientifically fashionable to believe that most cancer had a viral cause. This belief coincided with the discovery that some viruses do cause cancer. And while it turns out that most cancers are not caused by viruses (probably), many of them are. Viruses can cause cancers in a number of ways…

SILENCE IS THE ENEMY

About a week ago, Nicholas Kristof wrote an eye-opening op-ed in NYTimes - After Wars, Mass Rapes Persist. In Liberia, and probably in some other places, the end of war does not automatically mean the end of rape: Of course, children are raped everywhere, but what is happening in Liberia is different. The war seems to have shattered norms and trained some men to think that when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl. Or at school, girls sometimes find that to get good grades, they must have sex with their teachers. The war, and the use of rape as a weapon of war, changes the…

Notes from the road: a trip to Corpus Christi and a drama in the airport

Every now and then, people hire me to travel places and give workshops for college instructors and teachers on using bioinformatics. In a couple of weeks, I'll go to Long Branch, NJ. This week, I went to Corpus Christi, Texas and gave two workshops at Del Mar College; one on using Cn3D to understand protein DNA structure, and another on using BLAST to identify the source of unknown DNA sequences. Del Mar College has a beautiful science facility, with an amazing assortment of fancy high tech equipment. The workshops were fun and I enjoyed seeing the student posters showcasing work on the…

Sunday Function

We're doing two functions today. If I'm not mistaken we've done each of them separately, but there's a famous and interesting relationship between the two that's always interesting to look at. Like very many interesting mathematical facts, it has to do with the prime numbers. As such the first function is the log integral Li(x), usually defined in the following way: We'll plot it in a minute, but if you're interested in a rough idea of it's behavior it so happens that Li(x) ~ ln(x)/x. That is, those two functions have a smaller and smaller percentage difference as x becomes larger. Now…