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51 Best Physics Blogs

A few other people got the same email I did, promoting a list of the 50 Best Physics Blogs put together by Accredited Online Colleges Dot Org. It's a fine list, with one glaring problem: They didn't include Matt Springer's Built On Facts. As you can probably tell from its frequent tagging for the daily links dump, I'm a big fan, and think Matt's got one of the best physics blogs going. I could probably come up with a blog or two that I'd drop off the existing list, but that would be impolitic. So let's just add him as the 51st blog, leaving us one blog shy of a pack of cards. The comments of…

Happenings in the Quantum World: Dec. 4, 2007

SQuInT program and deadline, Rush Limbaugh on quantum cosmology, and the parallel worlds of Hugh Everett's son The 2008 SQuInT conference deadline for registration is fast approaching, December 12. The program is now available online as well. Looks like a good lineup. Rush Limbaugh talks about quantum cosmology. He is completely wrong that man doesn't affect his environment, less wrong that we are insignificant in the universe, and you can imagine that since the paper he is talking about has been filtered through at least one other media organization prior to reaching his hands, the…

Madrid Conference Examines Science and the Media in the Knowledge Society

For readers in Europe, on May 12 and 13, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) will be hosting in Madrid the Media For Science Forum 2010. The event is intended for science journalists, media officers, science communicators, and scientists and is co-organized by the European Union Science Journalists Association. Registration is free. Following the Forum, a report featuring conclusions about the state of science journalism and public engagement will be released with recommendations aimed at enhanced cooperation among journalists, science communicators, scientists,…

Encouraging sign that government may be going all empirical on us

Atop other Obama appointments, this is one I suspect America's scientists will welcome. From the Washington Post: Report: Holdren to Lead White House Science Policy By Joel Achenbach President-elect Obama will announce this weekend that he has selected physicist John Holdren, who has devoted much of his career to energy and environmental research, as his White House science adviser, according to a published report today. The Obama transition office would not confirm Holdren's selection. Last night, asked by The Post to comment on the science adviser search, Holdren responded by e-mail that…

Slowly being seduced by Portugal

I gave my talk today on tree thinking at the local science museum for kids and the general public, which is amazingly popular. The Portuguese seem to hold science and knowledge in high esteem. Which is great. The Ciências Viva helped pay for my ticket, so I hope they liked my presentation. It will be online as a podcast, and they apparently simulcast it at the time, too. I didn't let you know that because I want to check it before I tell my loyal readers about it. Oops... I am overwhelmed by the hospitality and food here. If I could learn another language, or they all spoke English, I'd…

Thursday night RBOC.

* After watching The China Syndrome tonight, I will henceforth refrain from saying "Coffee is for closers!" when I see Jack Lemmon on screen. Getting mad about falsified X-rays of welds makes his character, Jack Godell, an official friend of this blog. * My online Philosophy of Science course has been switched on for about 12 hours and already more than 50% of the enrolled students have logged in to the course. That's good! (Sometimes, weeks into the term, I'll get phone calls asking, "So, when and where is the class going to meet?") * My soccer team (of six-year-olds) seems to have grown…

Open Source Technology Does Not Have Ads

And neither does a lot of proprietary technology. But the possibility that ads will show up on either type of technology is obviously very different. Now, we are about to see add supported P2P services. At the Midem conference in Cannes, France, Qtrax and its parent company Brilliant Technologies Corp. announced deals on Sunday with all four major labels that would make it the first free and legal ad-supported P2P service with major label music. By allowing users to share DRM-protected files with label approval, Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz said he expected the service to offer over 25…

Go, squid, go!

We can learn from nature: Inspired by the sleek and efficient propulsion of squid, jellyfish and other cephalopods, a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher has designed a new generation of compact vortex generators that could make it easier for scientists to maneuver and dock underwater vehicles at low speeds and with greater precision. In addition, the technology — seemingly inspired by the plots of two classic sci-fi films — may soon allow doctors to guide tiny capsules with jet thrusters through the human digestive tract, enabling them to diagnose disease and dispense medications…

Programing note: next two weeks will be exciting!

As you may already be aware I am about to embark on a trip to Europe again. I will be traveling on Sunday and arriving at Lindau, Germany on Monday for the 59th Meeting of Nobel Laureates. The list of Nobel Laureates (23 of them) and the list of about 600 young researchers from 66 countries are very impressive. Of course, not being a chemist, I'll have to do some homework before I go (I printed out the complete list of descriptions of all of them to read on the airplane), learning what these people did to get their prizes and what the younger ones are doing hoping to get a Nobel in the future…

Laser-Cooled Atoms: Rubidium

Element: Rubidium (Rb) Atomic Number: 37 Mass: two "stable" isotopes, 85 and 87 amu (rubidium-87 is technically radioactive, but it's half-life is 48 billion years, so it might as well be stable for atomic physics purposes. Laser cooling wavelength: 780 nm Doppler cooling limit: 140 μK Chemical classification: Alkali metal, column I of the periodic table. Like the majority of elements, it’s a greyish metal at room temperature. Like the other alkalis, it’s highly reactive, and bursts into flame on contact with water, even more so than sodium (in general, the alkalis get more violently reactive…

Get a Grip!

A few days back, John Scalzi posted a piece celebrating YA books and authors, which included some reading recommendations. In the comments, a few people said that as childless adults they were reluctant to go into the YA section of the store, lest people think they were creeps looking for kids to prey upon. I can honestly say that that would just never occur to me. I can't really imagine how skeevey somebody would need to look before I thought "Gee, I wonder if that guy is really a pedophile creep?" rather than "There's a guy looking for books for his kid." Of course, the sad thing is that…

Guns harder to come by in New York than you would think

Last week, in response to a multiple homicide shooting in an Omaha mall, I wrote a post showing the mental illness is actually a pretty weak indicator of violent behavior. I made an argument in passing that this would imply that using it as an exclusionary factor for gun ownership, therefore, would be unlikely to limit gun violence. I want to clarify that a little bit. Most attempts to limit gun access -- as I understand it -- fall into two categories. You can try and limit guns as a blanket policy to everyone, or you can try and limit gun access to key risk groups. Taking the second one…

In Defense of William Jennings Bryan

Senator John McCain, it appears, is not a fan of William Jennings Bryan. In a recent interview with USA Today, the Republican Party's nominee for President compared the three-time Democratic nominee for president from the turn of the last century to the Party's current nominee: "I believe that people are interested very much in substance," McCain said. "If it was simply style, William Jennings Bryan would have been president." (Bryan, a noted orator, lost three presidential elections as the Democratic nominee in 1896, 1900 and 1908.) It would be easy for me to dismiss McCain's dislike of…

A couple of more cluesticks on dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer

Since DaveScot has made an appearance or two in the comments here, annoying everyone he comes in contact with, it's worth pointing out that mine isn't the only cluestick that could be used to pound some science into him about dichloroacetate, the supposed "cure" for cancer that's being "ignored" or "suppressed" by Big Pharma. Since my original article on the subject, two more excellent (and realistic) overviews of the promise and peril of DCA as an inexpensive chemotherapeutic agent to treat cancer have appeared, one of them by fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy and one actually appearing on…

Buffett

The power of Warren Buffett is impressive. He decides to invest a few billion in Goldman Sachs and panicked investors calm down. And why not? Nobody has an investing record that can even come close to comparing with Buffett's record: he is the lone outlier of Wall Street. According to most calculations, since 1951 Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has generated an average annual return of about 31%. The average return for the Standard & Poor's 500 over that period is 10% a year. The stock market is a random walk, but Buffett has somehow found a way to consistently beat the randomness. So what'…

More on video game violence

This is an image from the video game Asheron's Call 2 (source: mmorpg.com). Does playing such a game, involving regular practicing (albeit in a virtual environment) of repetitive, violent acts, increase our general level of aggression? A recent article in New York Times says no, citing a study by "a researcher at the University of Illinois," which found, according to the article, that "violent video games have no 'long-term,' or permanent, effects on aggressive behavior." Interesting, considering the article I discussed in yesterday's post apparently found exactly the opposite. With some…

XMRV and Chronic Fatigue and Autism and Chronic Lyme Disease: "Trusted organizations"

A while back I wrote about how the lead researcher at the Whittemore Peterson Institute, Judy Mikovits, is speaking at Autismone, a huge anti-vax rally in Chicago later this month. I thought Judy was just a crank. Dime a dozen, whatevs. Turns out things are worse than that. Much much worse than that. Its cranks all the way down. Vincent Lombardi, first author on the original 'XMRV causes Chronic Fatigue' Science paper, founded some weird testing company several years back. This weird testing company was then bought by Harvey Whittemore (father of The Princess That Cant Be Named), and turned…

A truly significant poll on license plates

Yeah, and next we'll have a really important poll on what color socks I should wear. Right now, you'll have to settle for answering this question: What do you think of the decision to block the "I Believe" license plate? The results so far: Good. The plates are a violation of church and state 18.16 % (69) I disagree with the ruling. I have a right to show my faith 63.95 % (243) They should get rid of all vanity plates and have one standard design for the state 17.89 % (68) The second, and so far winning (but you'll turn that around fast), choice is palpably stupid. Of course you have a right…

Denialists' Deck of Cards: The 7 of Hearts, "Jobs!"

The trick to using the "Jobs" card is to totally over inflate the size of your industry and the number of employees it has. It's quite a compelling argument, and sometimes it's true. But I've seen many cases where a regulation creates new jobs and economic development. A great recent example of the 7 of Hearts was occurred in the debate surrounding adoption of the federal Do-Not-Call Telemarketing Registry. The telemarketing industry claimed that they employed 6 million Americans, and had $668 billion in sales. But the economic census showed that telemarketing only accounted for 500,…

Getting in the mood for holidays

Perhaps we should buy this: No Limit Texas Dreidel - Jewish Gift Pack Family Entertainment: Let My People Go All In!! Take Dreidel, combine it with poker, and you've got a new dreidel experience that is truly fun, and a game that is the talk of the Jewish community. You'll check, bet, raise, or fold depending on the strength of your dreidel hand (or how much you like to bluff). Standard edition game is for 2-4 players (not suitable for children 3 and under/choking hazard). Each set includes 4 shakers, a "spinner" button, 4 small dreidels and 3 large dreidels, and comes in a heavy quality…

iPod iChing - 222

Steamy hot friday and we ask the mighty iPod: what for the next 16 years? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Rudi, A Message To You - Specials The Crossing: Travelin' Soldier (live) - Dixie Chicks The Crown: (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais (live) - Clash The Root: Sulk - Billy Bragg The Past: Cadet Rouselle - Sien Diels The Future: Winter - Vivaldi The Questioner: Change - Melissa Etheridge The House: Bob Wilson - Anchorman - Half Man Half Biscuit The Inside: O zittre nicht mein lieber Son - Mozart The Outcome: The Price I Pay - Billy Bragg "Well I'd like to meet…

The stoat in winter

I don't think I've troubled you with a picture of me for a while, so here is one I particularly like, taken with Miriam's Galaxy S2 (rush out and buy one now, its got our GPS in it, which is apparently far better than the competition). If you look closely at my right thigh (and who would not wish to do so?) you'll see the graze I got on today's run at the point where I fell over an electric fence that I hadn't noticed was there. Fortunately the 'lectric itself was off. That was in the middle of the mad wiggly bit where I got totally lost trying to find my way back to the Thames, having got…

Help Me Spend Money

I usually listen to music on the computer using the "Party Shuffle" feature of iTunes on a playlist consisting of recently acquired music. It gives me a chance to get a good feel for new albums, and then when I'm at work or on the road, I listen to the four-and-five-star playlist. I haven't bought much recently, though, so the playlist just clicked over to only one album, the new Fountains of Wayne record. Which just isn't that good-- it's not terrible, but it's not so good thhat I want to listen to it exclusively for any length of time. So, what should I buy when I hit iTunes for new music…

links for 2008-09-25

Dynamics of Cats : how to buy a house A first-order approximation. (tags: economics society US politics) Good Math, Bad Math : Bad Probability and Economic Disaster; or How Ignoring Bayes Theorem Caused the Mess "One of the big questions that comes up again and again is: how did they get away with this? How could they find any way of taking things that were worthless, and turn them into something that could be represented as safe? The answer is that they cheated in the math." (tags: " economics politics math statistics stupid) Point/Counterpoint: Gov. Palin Has No Experience vs. Please…

links for 2008-09-23

Submission Form "Use this form to nominate a blog post for The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2008. " (tags: science blogs books) BuyMyShitPile.com: Hey Washington, can you buy my bad investments too? "Use the form below to submit bad assets you'd like the government to take off your hands. And remember, when estimating the value of your 1997 limited edition Hanson single CD "MMMbop", it's not what you can sell these items for that matters, it's what you think they are worth." (tags: politics economics internet silly) xkcd - A Webcomic - Tones "One stand on which I'…

How to Teach Physics to Your Chinese Dog

Got a big box in the mail today, which included author copies of two Asian editions: the Japanese edition, which I had seen before, and this: That is, obviously, the Chinese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I say "obviously" mostly because I know that edition was about ready to roll out-- I can't say anything about the actual characters on the cover, other than that they don't include any katakana, and thus it's not the Japanese edition, and they're not hangul characters, meaning it's not the Korean edition. Other than that, I got nothing. If you can read Chinese, and provide a…

Technical Request: Gas Cell Filling

I doubt that this will actually work, but then the Web has brought me some improbable successes before, so it's worth a shot: I have a sealed glass cell (Pyrex, I think, if it matters) that I would like to get re-filled with a mix of rare gases-- partial pressures of 100mT Ne, 30mT Ar, 30 mT Kr. This will contain an RF plasma discharge to serve as a spectroscopic reference for my experiments, and thus needs to be very clean-- I can't have impurities coming out of the walls and quenching the metastable atoms I'm producing in the discharge. The company that initially made the cell has not…

Thursday Baby Blogging 101509

SteelyKid has cast Appa aside in favor of bigger and better things: That's right. She's not allowed to have candy yet, but she's already gearing up for Halloween... The pumpkin bucket is actually a bribe-- I bought it for her to play with while we waited for her prescription to be filled yesterday. This is in fine family tradition-- my father used to buy presents for my sister and me when he had to take us shopping for my mother's birthday... While we're not going to try giving her candy any time soon, SteelyKid is making great progress in the area of eating, as can be seen in the video…

Good To See the Snake Oil Salesman Alive and Kickin'

Almost as inevitable as evolution is the law that states, where there are stupid naive people, there will be someone to hustle them. People were persuaded to buy a powder which they could allegedly turn into "Magic Cheese", said to make skin look younger and to be highly valuable. The powder, called Yo Flex and costing up to $500 (£270), turned out to be an almost-worthless food supplement. More than 20,000 Peruvians and 6,000 Chileans were reportedly duped. Now, as if that wasn't crazy enough, it gets weirder. According to reports, victims of the scam believed they only had to mix the…

Happy Darwin Day!!! Earn Some Cash!!!

It's official! In honor of Darwin Day celebrations everywhere, the Alliance for Science is having their first annual Evolution Essay contest! This year's question: Why would you want your doctor to have studied evolution? Pop on over for contest details, if you're a high school student. First prize is $300, Second is $200, etc. Plus there are a lot of autographed books on evolution that you can win!!! Teachers, prompt your students. If yours wins you get $250 towards lab supplies! Students, submit something! For 1000 words you can buy a semester's worth of books in college, or make a…

Don't miss the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and ID" takedown

The takedown intro has been posted at The Panda's Thumb. If the server's down, keep checking in. Over the next week or two, various bloggers will pick apart the different chapters and expose this trash for what it is; a coffee table book for the sycophantic zombies among us. While I predict it will have a very limited audience, that audience consists primarily of so-called "family values" politicians who will buy into this vapid PR campaign. Yours truly will pick a Chapter apart midway through next week, so check back here around Wednesday. In the meantime, Tara has already trashed one…

Server trial by fire

Now we'll really get to see how well this new server provided by Seed holds up. Pharyngula just get linked by Slashdot, and I've seen a thousand hits come roaring in in 5 minutes. My lovely old Mac G5 server would have been screaming and shaking at this point, and you wouldn't be reading this article, that's for sure. If ever you were curious about it, here's a snapshot of the slashdot effect, taken at about 11:00 in the evening. This is just today's traffic. The other astounding part of the phenomenon was that the average IQ of my commenters was cut in half (data not shown). I'm hoping the…

MM Friday - Amygdaloids

This Friday is a holiday (in America, at least) and what's better on a holiday than a rerun? Yay for reruns. So, I've written about the Amygdaloids before, but here's an introduction video in case you didn't see it (or want to enjoy it again). Also, this band of rockin' cognitive scientists has a CD available now. The Amygdaloids: Live concert at Union Hall Preview their new CD here (buy it here) alongside descriptions of each brain-based song. "Past lovers often leave strong and enduring memories. 'A Trace' tells a story about this. Memory researchers in the know will figure out that the…

Book Review: Should Bloggers Stop Bush-Hating?

This is Politics Tuesday and the Ocean Champions should be by any moment. In the meanwhile, I found something politically charged and provocative over at Salon.com. Joan Walsh reviews Matt Bai's book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, which she describes as a "heralded anatomy of Democratic disarray in the Bush years". Bai implicates left-wing bloggers in what he sees as a two-part crime that will cripple the Democratic party: the failure to put together a big, bold social policy for the 21st century, and the "disabling hatred" of George W.…

Our Best Answer to Expelled: Flock of Dodos

This is not to knock the very important Expelled Exposed website. But in my opinion, in this day and age you really have to answer film with more film--and entertaining film with more entertaining film. Ben Stein is very intellectually dishonest in Expelled, but he's also funny. Luckily, Randy Olson's 2006 documentary Flock of Dodos is also funny--and charming, and humane. So for people who might want to learn about evolution and actually be entertained at the same time, it seems to me the best answer that we currently have to Expelled. My advice would be to go buy a lot of DVD copies, and…

List of Links

Here is what I am reading: In honor of the 100th anniversary of the FDA, the Scientist has a look at its long-term prospects in light of recent scandals. Best Buy has decided to go to totally flexible scheduling. I feel like business came to the party late on this one. Science had had flex-scheduling forever, and we are doing just fine. All it requires is a little trust and not caring when people get their work done, just that they get it done. The NYTimes has a interesting article on the diminishing number of cases taken by the Supreme Court and speculation as to why that might be. Daniel…

Poke and Prod Your Insect Prisoners with the Solar Insect Theater

When Benny and I were little, we used to bait a large Havahart trap and leave it in the backyard overnight. We caught squirrels, possums and raccoons. Half the fun was the surprise of what might be inside when we woke up the next day. The game ended the morning we discovered we had caught a skunk... The Solar Insect Theater is kind of the same idea, just with less risk of skunk capture and extraction. Basically it's a wooden bug box with a solar powered light that charges during the day and lures insects at night. The insects "can leave anytime they want" although most naturally choose to…

New York Articles 'collects' content from another (sic) sites, sells ads, clogs cyberspace.

As you might guess, my site is one of the sources of content. If you're reading this post at New York Articles (or at "Articles", whose tagline is even more grammatically incorrect) rather than at my actual site, you are partaking of a suboptimal experience. I'm not going to give you the URL for the lesser, because there is no value-added to speak of, unless you count the pennies that come in to the leech that grabs the RSS and sells the Google Ads.* Does such a site do anything to improve an already crowded blogosphere? Does anyone treat a sloppy feed aggregating site of this sort as a…

Which Kindle Do You Really Want Now?

Which Kindle should you buy (or beg the relatives to give you for your birthday)??? The Regular 6 inch Kindle or the fancier Kindle DX? It is said that the two extant technologies .... Kindle-like low power ePaper displays vs "real tablet computers" will merge. I'm sure this is true. It is just as sure as the fact that almost every computer monitor sold to the average customer is the shiny hard to read kind instead of the more functional non-shiny kind. And when the technologies merge, the marketing departments will grin and the users will squint. Does any of this matter to you now?…

Huh

I woke up this morning and the internet told me ... According to this map, I live between Hasty and "I'm Alone" but I have relatives near Grouse, Knocemstiff, Weed Patch and Heist. Will BP oil increase cancer on oiled beaches? Possibly. This should be obvious, but there is now some support for the idea: Children raised by lesbians 'have fewer behavioural problems' In case you've been waiting, Unscientific America in Paperback!. I just go mine. It's small, and papery. Perfect for beach reading. If you are a PZ Myers fan, this is a must read, but you'll probably want to borrow it rather…

Don't forget: The Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching

Listen up, everyone! It's fast approaching. Yes, The Skeptics' Circle will be appearing next Thursday over at The Second Sight. EoR did a bang-up job the last time the Circle was held at The Second Sight; so I expect as great or even better this time around. But your best skeptical blogging is needed. Instructions to submit your work to EoR are here. Guidelines for what we're looking for can be found here. As EoR says, don't be a complete idiot; do it for Deepak. (Yikes! That last one is rather scary. I might have to save it for the next time I take on some Choprawoo.) And, of course, I'm…

$10 Million to Decode Nicholas Wade

Nicholas Wade is up to his old antics, blabbering about a contest to award $10 million to the first person to decode 100 genomes in 10 days. Only he means 'sequencing' rather than 'decoding'. But he still thinks they're synonyms: "The announcement of the prize brought together two former rivals, Drs. J. Craig Venter of the Venter Institute and Francis S. Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which financed the government project to sequence, or decode, the genome." The 100 genomes in 10 days contest is brought to you buy the people who gave away $10 million to the…

Back to life

Sorry for the long delay between posts. I was robbed at the beginning of the month, losing my laptop, passport, other pieces of digital technology and identification, house keys, work keys, pens, papers, business cards and so forth. I'm just now catching up with all the real-life work that piled up during the seven-days-without-a-computer phase. I have some posts queued up, trying to finish out the lengthy series on copyright and databases. And I am going to try to write something approaching a final summary on why I don't like licensing as an approach for databases, instead preferring the…

Why I will never vote for Barack Obama

I can vote for a Christian politician, no problem. I have even liked Obama's sense of vision (although it seems he's been a bit of a flop in execution.) His latest speech, though… And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution. If a liberal Democratic politician wants to buy into the foolish idea that Christians…

Yay, Presents!

Yesterday I received a large package by mail from Dear Reader Twoflower in New York. He'd asked me for my address, and I was expecting a book or an off-print, but the minute I saw the box I realised I had been wrong. Guess what he sent me. Apparently, I have pained Twoflower by publishing ugly pics of nice finds and fieldwork here. I believe that specifically, this pic and this pic hurt his sense of archaeological aesthetics: a lovely new find, shot first with a spade for scale and then with an ugly folding rule. Well, Twoflower, you kind and generous man, thanks to you I will no longer have…

Powers of Ten Concert to Kick off the USA Science and Engineering Festival!!

Thanks to Festival Partner University of Maryland for helping us get the word out about the Festival and the Powers of Ten Concert and Streaming it LIVE! Find out more here on their website. USA Science & Engineering Festival Opens with Live Powers of Ten Concert Festival of Science and Technology - Opening Program: The Powers of Ten - A Journey in Song from Quark to Cosmos.WHAT: Powers of Ten - A Journey in Song from Quark to Cosmos : Opening program of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. WHEN: Sunday, October 10, 2010, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. WHERE: Elsie and Marvin…

penny wise

when making sausage, you not only have to get the guts to stuff with ground up meat and grain, you also have to mix in some small lumps of fat and minced offal From a "heads-up" e-mail from the ScienceDebate 2008 team: "I am writing to alert you to efforts underway this morning to zero out a large portion of the science funding from the Senate American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as a part of a $77.9B reduction effort led by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME). As you know better than most, science and technology are responsible for half of the economic development of the…

Skeptics' Circle 68

Welcome to Aardvarchaeology and the 68th Skeptics' Circle blog carnival! For first-time visitors, let me say that this is a blog about whatever runs through the mind of a skeptical research archaeologist based in Stockholm, Sweden. For first-time carnivalers, let me explain that here, skepticism means to not believe anything without good reason, and to reserve judgement in uncertain cases. This carnival is about reason and critical thinking from all around the world. Onward to glory! Swiss blogger Christian at Med Journal Watch discusses a study of US preterm birth whose authors draw poorly…

Memory and swearing

I have a vague memory of having written something about curse words on Cognitive Daily before. However, I'm almost certain I've never written about false memories in children. Maybe something about eyewitness testimony, but not false memories. You probably know the punch line: I've written about all those things. So why do I remember the study about swearing better than the others? Chris at Mixing Memory discusses a study which shows that we remember both "taboo words" -- and the context in which they were presented -- better than other words. The six-experiment study involved memorizing…

Using a bad virus to do something good

If you're interested in biology and not reading Sandra Porter's Discovering Biology in a Digital World, you should be. As she notes in her profile, her passion is "developing instructional materials for 21st century biology," and it shows--she provides all kinds of little online experiments you can run yourself, even with minimal knowledge of molecular biology. She's recently finished a 4-part series on HIV. The experiment in a nutshell, as she notes: We are going to compare a protein sequence from a wild type, drug-sensitive, HIV virus with protein sequences from HIV samples that were…