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gregladen | October 22, 2009"I don't need the Swine Flu vaccine because I already had the Swine Flu when it went around in the 1970s"
Sorry, you do.
While we're on the subject, a couple more:
"I had the mist vaccine for the seasonal flu, so now I have to wait a month to get the H1N1 vaccine"
No you don't. You should not have both vaccines as a mist without a waiting period between, but if one is a mist and one is shot, no problem. They can be taken on the same visit, on the same day.
"I can't afford a Swine flu vaccine."
Yes you can, it is free from most sources. That have it. Which there hardly are any yet…
pronald | October 22, 2009Until his favorite heirloom tomatoes died on the vine after succumbing to late blight disease, Chef Dan Barber believed that science when applied to agriculture was "suspect, a violation of the slow food aesthetic". Unfortunately, this distrust of science hurts farmers, consumers, and the planet. It also ignores 100 years of scientific progress.
In 1905, Sir Rowland Biffen generated disease resistant wheat varieties, demonstrating for the first time that Mendel's laws of inheritance could be applied to plant breeding. Today most of the fruits and vegetables that we eat (including those…
cortex | October 22, 2009David Brooks has written yet another wonderful column on the mind. This time he explores the nagging gap between our intuitions about personality - we each express a particular set of character traits, which can be traced back to our early childhood - and the scientific facts, which suggest that the vague personality traits measured by the Myers-Briggs are too vague to mean much of anything. Here's Brooks:
In Homer's poetry, every hero has a trait. Achilles is angry. Odysseus is cunning. And so was born one picture of character and conduct.
In this view, what you might call the philosopher's…
gregladen | October 21, 2009Twitter had to shut down 33 bogus Twitter accounts that were created by Republicans in the name of Democratic state reps. The plan was to mock the democrats.
Mock THIS, Republicans nincompoops!!!
Details here
Hat tip, Bora's Twitter Stream. ... which for all I know is a total fake perpetrated by LIBERTARIANS!!!
gregladen | October 21, 2009Hold on a second.... Executive compensation will be reduced in the Pig Seven (the seven companies that split up the multi-deca-billion dollar bailout). The argument is against this is that with lower executive compensation, these executives will bail, go away, move to other companies.
But these are the executives that ran these companies so deep into the ground we had to ask the naked mole rats for directions when we went to bail them out.
So ... why do we care of these executives stay vs. go away? Why are they still breathing our air?
Economists take note: You may be scientists. Or…
gregladen | October 21, 2009Pamela Ronald, author of Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, is now a Sbling! She will be blogging at Tomorrow's Table. Welcome Pamela!
gregladen | October 21, 2009David Sloan Wilson is famous for his work on group selection, a.k.a. multi-level selection, and it is quite a coup for Seed and Scienceblogs.com that he has joined our ranks. Please visit E4E and say hey.
gregladen | October 21, 2009People say that clinical trials have not been perforemd with H1N1 vaccine, so we can't be sure it is safe. Clinical trials have been performed on the H1N1 vaccine. People say that the inhaled version of the vaccine give you the flu. The inhaled version does not give you the flu. Yes, it is a "live" virus ... but only barely. Don't listen to people. People are not as smart as they think they are.
Anyway, wired magazine is running a major story on this. I've not read the story, but I just saw the author interviewed on msnbc.com and it looks interesting.
gregladen | October 21, 2009Bug Girl's Blog: "Stupidity....there's an app for that" is a skeptical look at an iTouch/iPhone app to repel mosquitoes.
Biological ramblings talks about this cool thing that shrikes do. Do you know about the shrikes? It's cool.
gregladen | October 21, 2009Below the fold. Because that's where it belongs.
This is not bad. It is hard to make a parody of a parody.
Hat Tip Dusty.
ddobbs | October 21, 2009
1. The tireless, and occasionally tiresome, advocacy on behalf of liberal bloggers and interest groups for the public option. Whatever you think of their tactics -- I haven't always agreed with them -- the sheer amount of focus and energy expended on their behalf has been very important, keeping the issue alive in the public debate.
2. The fact that the CBO thinks it will save money.
3. The seeming inevitability of health care reform, which neuters the voices of those who aren't opposed to the public option per se so much as the entire project of health care reform.
4. The fact that the…
grrlscientist | October 20, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published recently. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica -- 14th edition. The author of Genetic Interference is speaking (right now!) at the American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting and is planning to "live blog" that conference as well, despite the fact it's in Hawai'i, so be sure to poke around on his blog to find those essays.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a…
gregladen | October 20, 2009Pseudoscience, quackery, and the swine flu.
An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All
gregladen | October 20, 2009Consisting of the many and varied robotic spacecraft exploring our Solar System and parts beyond, the IREL soldiers on tirelessly, often in obscurity and in conditions that would make even the most hardy of human beings question their resolve, all to provide us with the data necessary to enhance our understanding of the Universe. They may only be robots, but they give every ounce of circuitry in the service of completing their missions, in many cases going above and beyond the call of duty to return useful measurements long after their designed operational lifetimes. Join me now as we take a…