Misc
ksharpe | August 11, 2006To what extent do you worry about AIDS, either with respect to yourself, your children, or the world at large?
ksharpe | August 11, 2006Ladies and germs, please say hello to the latest addition to the ScienceBlogs family circus, Molecule of the Day.
ksharpe | August 11, 2006
"Taxicab Confessions: The Earwax Episode"
"I usually try to avoid the subject [of what i do] with some people, because when i say "I study the inner ear" a lot of people feel the need to unload their medical problems regarding earwax upon me." And: is it a coincidence? Sandra Porter also has a post about earwax, here.
"Vonnegut: Science Art"
Did you know that Kurt Vonnegut has a website with original works of art that you can buy? I didn't!
"Science losing a good friend in Lieberman"
"Say what you want about Joe Lieberman and the political scene, but Lieberman for years has been one of…
apalazzo | August 10, 2006
This has to be one of the funniest/strangest blogs:blog.tenderbutton.com
He recently performed NMR and TLC on his earwax.
I love his rant on old crappy bottles of reagents. (Great graphics too!)
And his love for dirt cheap reagents with antiquated warning lables.
I really like this TBSCl, mainly because of the packaging. The bottle looks like a giant pickle jar. The best part is the little corrosive warning icon. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be that familiar graphic of the acid melting through the guys hand, but it's so poorly rasterized and pixellated that it's almost unrecognizable.…
ksharpe | August 10, 2006
"Platensimycin: Putative New Class of Antibiotic Medication"
Scientists from Merck report on a previously unknown class of antibiotic.
"A Necessary Twist (Values, part IV)"
Why can't we picture a fifth dimension? Stretch your mind with the fourth installment in Karmen's series, complete with illustrations by the author.
"Debunking the Upper Tail: More on the Gender Disparity"
Jake continues his previous discussion of gender differences in cognition: they exist, but are they significant enough to explain anything?
"Hillary for President? Not If You're Old."
Does Hillary make you feel proud…
ksharpe | August 9, 2006If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring seven recent ScienceBlogs posts with you, well, these would be the ones to choose.
"Extra Special K?"
This just in: treatment-refractive depressives respond reall well to...ketamine!?
"Where's the threshold for action?"
Kevin Vranes on why overwhelming scientific consensus alone isn't enough to spur action.
"In the Beginning There Was .. The Big Bang"
Artist and biologist John Kyrk has created flash animations of biological events great and small.
"Cabinets of Curiosity"
Because 'wunderkammer' is just about the best word there…
ksharpe | August 8, 2006Editor's picks for your reading pleasure on Tuesday, August 8:
"Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut"
Benjamin Cohen on a book that stands up after a dozen readings.
"Buy Stock in Abloy"
Tim Lambert reports on a report that new innovations in thievery have made the pin-tumbler lock obsolete.
"Psychics at the Atlanta Zoo"
The Atlanta Zoo has hired psychics to predict whether their panda is expecting; Orac is not amused.
"Carnivalia, and an open thread"
Don't you love open threads? I do. They're like the digital equivalent of a Quaker meeting. PZ's got one up now over at Pharyngula...
"Where…
apalazzo | August 7, 2006I haven't done this in a while:
Below the fold you'll find links to an interview with Alan Parker editor of Nature Genetics, Boltzmann and entropy, Big Biology, Tanzanian society (as seen through a medstudent from the west) and a note on affirmative action.
Hsien Hsien Lei of Genetics and Health interviews Alan Parker, editor of Nature Genetics. Here's an excerpt (re:open access):
As for Nature, my guess is that it will remain a 'reader pays' journal for the foreseeable future. The primary reason is that it costs a great deal of money to produce. One thing that may not be apparent from the…
ksharpe | August 7, 2006Wake up and smell the content: a good week's reading starts here.
"Hurricane-Climate Books"
Two new titles look ahead to the one-year anniversary of Katrina's wrath.
"20,000 Year Old Australian Footprints"
The Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area in New South Wales, Australia, turns up traces of ancient humans on the move.
"Algal Bloom in the Charles River?"
Mike the Mad Biologist thinks he's observed an algal bloom in Boston's Charles River. Have any other Bostonians out there noticed this?
"The Synapse vol 1, issue 4"
Started on ScienceBlogs but drawing entries from throughout the…
ksharpe | August 2, 2006Author and science writer David Dobbs has written for the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American Mind, Slate, Audobon, and others. He is the author of the books Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral; The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World's Greatest Fishery, and The Northern Forest.
Now he brings his expertise and passion to ScienceBlogs in the form of Smooth Pebbles, a blog that reflects his wide-ranging interests in science, medicine, nature and culture.
Look for a Q & A with David Dobbs in this space soon,…
apalazzo | August 2, 2006... so hot that the cable on my laptop's AC adapter MELTED. (If any of you is expecting an email from me - this would explain the delay.)
Last night I was typing a summary of the recent rasiRNA/piRNA papers (while playing scorched3D) when my computer switches to battery mode. At that point my wife asks me "do you smell burning plastic?"
(Maybe I can blame that on scorched - a ridiculous game that my brother and I used to play about 15 years ago - little tanks lobing missiles at each other while uttering insults and bizarre quotes - "I love the smell of napalm in the morning". I guess some…
ksharpe | August 2, 2006Five posts so red-hot I wouldn't recommend touching the screen while you read them.
"Science Is Not a Path to Riches"
"They're not getting out based on a rational assessment of career possibilities, they're getting out because they don't like the first class or two that they take. By the time they find out about the lousy career possibilities, they're too far in to change majors..."
"Zombie DDT Myth Will Not Die"
"The restrictions on the agricultural use of DDT that [Rachel Carson] helped inspire have prevented the development of resistance and are the reason why it can still be used today…
ksharpe | August 2, 2006What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally.
ksharpe | August 1, 2006
"Testosterone and Euphoria"
Another rumple in the mysterious case of Floyd Landis.
"Early childhood exposures and a healthy life"
Aetiology on the links between infectious and chronic disease; many avenues of research converge to show that our health is strongly influenced by our exposures in the first few years of life, or even in the womb.
"Save the Australian Lungfish!"
PZ Myers wants YOU to help this magnificent endangered creature.
"FDA moving on Plan B" and "An acceptable quid pro quo on Plan B?"
At last, the FDA has decided to over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive.
"…
ksharpe | July 31, 2006Just what your case of the Mondays needs:
"Darwin has nothing to do with science....There's not a shred of evidence that Darwin was a scientist."
Ben Cohen heard a guy on the radio claim that there was 'no evidence that Darwin was a scientist.' And he asks: What? What does that even mean? He is curious, intrigued, and a little bit weirded out.
"Collaboration, competition, and turf wars"
Janet Stemwedel's continuing coverage of the bouhaha over MIT professor Susumu Tonegawa's role in the decision not to hire job candidate Alla Karpova. Notes on life in "the snakepit" of academic science.
"…
apalazzo | July 30, 2006... or how the human brain is wired. Beware we'll be hearing from David Brooks, Frank Rich, William Gibson (Thomas Kuhn), and a preview of a Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers discussion.
So I'm reading David Brooks in today's NYTimes, and it's the same old thing ... he's trapped in a different universe it seems. Apparently America (and Israel) are all powerful. They can do anything and whatever they want:
Lebanon is a chance to show that the death cult is not invincible.
To its enormous credit, the Bush administration has kept its focus on that core reality, and it has developed a strategy…
apalazzo | July 30, 2006Yes I've been doing some hardcore science blogging. But apparently my blog is
not just about science, but art, food, music, citylife and other mental stimuli.
And so enjoy.
PS I just got the album - it's getting better with every listen.
ksharpe | July 29, 2006What to read when you're drinking coffee in your jammies:
"Antisense Oligonucleotide Therapy for ALS patients?"
Lou Gehrig suffered from ALS, as does Stephen Hawking. A new treatment promises relief for some sufferers of this intractable disease.
"Mountaintop [Coal] Removal, Part II: Is a stream without fish still a stream?"
Ben Cohen and Dave Ng chat about Appalachia, the march of progress, "and the questions oddly left unasked about coal, energy, and where we get it."
"Friday Sprog Blogging: how the dinosaurs really went extinct."
"Please pass the ketchup. I'm going to make a tar-pit on…
apalazzo | July 29, 2006Thursday marked the 350th anniversary of Spinoza's excommunication.
Here are some exerpts from a great OpEd by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in today's NYTimes:
The exact reasons for the excommunication of the 23-year-old Spinoza remain murky, but the reasons he came to be vilified throughout all of Europe are not. Spinoza argued that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the Creator's partiality to its beliefs and ways.
...
Spinoza's reaction to the religious intolerance he saw around him was to try to think his way out of all sectarian thinking. He understood the…
ksharpe | July 28, 2006
"How to Get a Ph.D. and Never Pay a Dime For It!"
If you're in the sciences and you're paying for your Ph.D., says Shelley, you're getting fleeced. Plus, there looks to be a lively discussion shaping up in comments.
"Science and Hard Work: II"
Is science hard work? Steinn compares a summer job in a fish-processing factory, fieldwork as a hydrologist, and the life of a Caltech graduate student (including taking the last class that Feynman ever taught). The verdict? No. And yes.
"Life and Death in a Lady Beetle Colony"
Karmen's trees are infested...with a gardener's best friend.
"Antibiotics…