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pharyngula | May 26, 2010The anti-vax loons are having a rally in Grant Park, in Chicago, today at 3-5pm. The wretched fraud Andrew Wakefield will be speaking there, encouraging more parents to make their children vulnerable to pathogens and to act as vectors for the spread of disease. Some people are taking action and moving in to spread factual information — if you're in the area and have some time, help them out.
They are also having 'satellite rallies' in Edison, NJ, New York City, and Kent, WA. I'm dismayed at that last one, that's my hometown…and it's being held in the public library. I practically grew up in…
gregladen | May 25, 2010Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture.
grrlscientist | May 25, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) will publish Monday and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog?
Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in the…
gregladen | May 25, 2010
OMG. Go to the sign on page. Look at the "select an avatar" part. What is that all about? I think I'll be an Asian Girl then they'll know I'm smart but non-threatening. No, wait, maybe I'll be a non-white non-hispanic, like in the Census. No wait ...
Well, I tried to register but their registration system is rather broken. Typical. Republicans can never get anything right.
jchosy | May 25, 2010One chrysalis is bursting at the seams! This is what is about to happen...
The newly emerged butterfly will spend its first two hours pumping hemolymph into its wings. In this way, the soft, folded wings will straighten out and become more solid, more flight-ready.
lborkowski | May 25, 2010A study published in the open-access journal BMC Immunology suggests an intriguing hypothesis: The explosion of spread of HIV in Africa and then worldwide in the 1950s might be partially explained by the eradication of smallpox and the discontinuation of smallpox vaccination campaigns.
The researchers - Raymond S. Weinstein, Michael M. Weinstein, Kenneth Alibek, Michael I. Bukrinsky, and Brichacek Beda - tested this hypothesis by collecting peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 20 subjects, half of whom had not been vaccinated against smallpox and half of whom had received the smallpox…
gregladen | May 25, 2010The Diversity in Science Carnival will be hosted at Quiche Moraine. Today is the submission deadline, but I'm sure posts submitted tomorrow (the 26th) will also be considered.
Here is the theme:
We are inviting all posts that challenge pre-conceptions and mis-conceptions of who scientists/engineers are, what they look like, how they behave, what they do, etc. A cross-disciplinary examination of this issue is encouraged and posts about everything from the merging of art and science or science and faith, to posts that highlight social life to how people from well-represented groups are strong…
cortex | May 25, 2010The Allen Brain Atlas just launched their first set of gene expression maps in the adult human brain, based on microarray data from over 700 different anatomical locations. It promises to be an invaluable resource for scientists trying to figure out how a text of base pairs constructs the most complicated machine in the known universe. I wrote about the construction of the human brain atlas last year in Wired, if you'd like to learn more about how the map was made. Although these genetic maps are just a first draft - one researcher at the Allen Institute compared them to those 15th century…
cortex | May 25, 2010I've got a short feature on the Pixar creative process in the latest issue of Wired. This is one of those magazine spreads that really benefits from a glossy paper layout, so I'd recommend not following this hyperlink, and instead picking up the dead paper edition. (It's a really great issue.) As a huge fan of Pixar, it was a thrill getting to venture inside the studio, and meet with a few of the people who help make those wonderful films.* One of the lessons I took away from the Pixar process was the power of endless iterations, as the creative team slowly (very slowly) refines and revises…
gregladen | May 25, 2010Kenya court rules Islamic courts are illegal
Kenya's Islamic courts are illegal and discriminatory, a panel of judges has ruled.
The three judges said the Islamic "Kadhi" courts favoured Islam over other faiths, and that this was unconstitutional as Kenya was a secular country.
South Africa's Julius Malema defends his radical views
The controversial leader of South Africa's youth league has defended his behaviour after being disciplined by the ruling ANC.
Julius Malema had provoked anger with a series of outbursts about race, Zimbabwe and Jacob President Zuma.
In a BBC interview, he efused…
gregladen | May 24, 2010My honored colleague Vanessa Woods, author of Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo (which I am currently reviewing .... stay tuned) will be on Skeptically Speaking this coming Friday, so don't miss that.
Also, yours truly will be on (not live but recorded assuming certain technical difficulties will be worked out) doing something new and unexpected.
You won't want to miss either. Details here. I'll remind you again.
cortex | May 24, 2010Benedict Carey summarizes a new UCLA study that documented the life of middle-class families, videotaping their dinners, conversations and leisure activities:
The U.C.L.A. project was an effort to capture a relatively new sociological species: the dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class American household. The investigators have just finished working through the 1,540 hours of videotape, coding and categorizing every hug, every tantrum, every soul-draining search for a missing soccer cleat.
"This is the richest, most detailed, most complete database of middle-class family living in the…
gregladen | May 23, 2010Skeptically Speaking's Massimo Pigliucci interview is now on line here. He talks about his book: Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk