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tqa | June 28, 2006The rise of factory farming over the last half-century has resulted in a crisis for family farms. Factory farming benefits from the economy of scale, producing much, much more of whatever their product is - milk, beef, pork, whatever - at costs per unit that are far lower than a family farm can achieve. This allows the factory farms to sell their products cheaper than the family farmer can, driving the small farms out of business.
Over the past decade or two, the decline of the family farm has received a fair amount of attention, mostly focused on the people who are affected, but there's…
tqa | June 27, 2006It's taken me a while to take a swing at this particular Ask A ScienceBlogger question, mostly because I just don't know the answer.
It's definitely true that some science teachers are better than others. The best teacher I had in high school was my physics teacher. The worst teacher I've ever had was for biochem. Thinking about it, I can figure out what made the bad teacher bad, but I'm having a much harder time figuring out what makes a good teacher good. If I had to guess, I'd say that the traits tha make a good science teacher are probably the same traits that make a good teacher in any…
purepedantry | June 27, 2006In contrast to neuroscience journals who Shelley reveals are still mortally under-representing women, James Lileks is at least trying to bring out some feminism in his daughter. He has this little episode about trying to teach his daughter to go to Harvard in the Bleat. Unfortunately sometimes lessons don't take (sort of):
Every time you think you're raising a level-headed child you get a bit of TV culture seeping into their play. She wanted me to play Polly Pockets after summer school; it was a simple routine. They were going to Hollywood. In a helicopter car. In their underwear. (Aspiring…
tqa | June 27, 2006I've been rather lax in promoting my Donors Choose challenge, and it's time to change that. The initial three challenges I picked have all been funded, mostly by people not involved in my challenge. That meant that I hadn't come close to fulfilling my goal, but didn't have any projects left on my list for people to donate to. I just went back to the Donors Choose site, and added three more projects to my challenge.
If you haven't already done so, I'd like to really encourage you to donate - if not to my challenge, then to one of the other challenges that ScienceBloggers have running right…
purepedantry | June 27, 2006Oh you!
Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose was arrested in Stockholm early Tuesday after allegedly biting a security guard in the leg outside his hotel, police said.
Rose -- who performed in the Swedish capital on Monday evening -- was being held on suspicion of attacking and threatening the guard, as well as causing damage to the Berns Hotel where the alleged scuffle took place, police spokeswoman Towe Hagg said.
Hagg told The Associated Press that Rose was intoxicated during the confrontation, which broke out around 8 a.m. (0600 GMT), and would face questioning after he sobers up.
"He was…
stcynic | June 27, 2006I think we have a first in medical history. Rush Limbaugh was detained at an airport in Palm Beach for having a prescription bottle of viagra that wasn't his prescription. And just to show you how powerful the stuff is, this story gave David Letterman and Jay Leno erections. Seriously, how embarrassing is this? I even feel bad for Limbaugh. Or I'm sure I would, if I could just stop laughing. If I laugh for more than 4 hours straight, I'm gonna call my doctor.
purepedantry | June 27, 2006Discovery News makes me wonder whether they will be reporting all new theories that come up, no matter how odd they are or how little evidence they have. This one argues that people are en masse becoming less mature. To whit:
The theory's creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, which will feature a paper outlining his theory in an upcoming issue.
Charlton explained to Discovery News that humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be…
tqa | June 26, 2006Here's a nice bit of breaking news from the conservation biology front: The birth of two Whooping Crane chicks in Wisconsin. (Scroll down this page at Operation Migration's site to the June 23rd entry for pictures of the birds.)
This is absolutely tremendous news. These birds are part of the reintroduced Eastern Migratory Population, and these births mark the first time in over a century that Whooping Crane chicks have hatched in the wild in the Eastern US. There's still a long way to go, though. The chicks have a couple of months to go before they're ready to leave the nest, and even if they…
neurotopia | June 26, 2006I'm not doing too hot on raising money for low income school districts and kids that need books because theirs were destroyed in hurricanes. Please visit my Donor Challenge by clicking on the icon below my profile and, well.... donate!!!
tqa | June 26, 2006Remember Ward Churchill? He's the apparenty-soon-to-be-former University of Colorado academic who stirred up controversy when he referred to 9-11 victims as "little Eichmanns" in a 2001 essay. Today, the UC Boulder Interim Chancellor announced that the university, following a very lengthy investigation, intends to fire Churchill for cause. (Hat tip: No Se Nada)
Back in 2005, when the whole Churchill affair was big news, I wrote a letter to the campus paper explaining why I disagreed with the decision a number of university groups had made to bring him out to UH as a speaker. That was in my…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006I am not doing this because the Seed Overlords will be happy -- even though they probably will be. I am doing it because I think it will help you out. I wanted to plug a link that our happy friends over at Seed have. At the end of every week Seed publishes a "Week in Science" summary that I find exceptionally helpful. It is a short summary of whatever happened that week -- sort of a Kiplinger letter, only for science. If you don't have a lot of time but you still want to know what is going on, I highly recommend it. Anyway, here it is.
tqa | June 26, 2006Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, I find this Washington Post article about the effect of the Daily Show on attitudes towards politics and politicians. The article reports on the results of a published study that found that people who watch the Daily Show regularly are more likely to be cynical about politics. The authors of the study (and the author of the WaPo piece) conclude that this is a Bad Thing, because, "negative perceptions of candidates could have participation implications by keeping more youth from the polls."
The WaPo article, with it's uncritical recitation of the study's…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006A Japanese boy burned down his home, killing his stepmother and two younger siblings, for fear his parents would find out he had lied about his score on an English test.
Talk about your high pressure testing environments.
tqa | June 26, 2006In the first post in the Hawaiian Evolution series, I wrote a bit about why evolution is so readily apparent on Islands. Today, I'm going to shift away from the biological a little bit, and talk about a different type of evolution - the evolution of the islands themselves. Because of the way that the islands are formed, they go through a distinct lifecycle as they form over the hotspot, then move off to the west and erode. The evolution of the islands is one of the things that shapes the evolution of life on the islands, so let's take a look at it.http://scienceblogs.com/cgi-bin/MT/mt.cgi
The…
grrlscientist | June 25, 2006Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment and the fine family dining communities.
The Pillsbury Dough boy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.
Dough boy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours.
Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Dough boy as a man who never knew how…
grrlscientist | June 25, 2006
The referees for the World Cup games are truly ridiculous. They are not doing their job very well because they have consistently missed making important penalty calls, such that some of the games have gotten out-of-control at times. One especially unpleasant example was today's Nederlands-Portugal game, where the refs missed making two particularly important penalty calls in the first half (and several more in the second half), so the game, which had the potential to be very exciting, instead deteriorated into a miniature war during the second half.
For example, the Portugal-Nederlands…
neurotopia | June 25, 2006Despite the United State's disappointing loss to Ghana, I remain a stalwart Cup Addict. While rooting for the home team is fun, the US is not really my favorite team. In fact, I have many favorites...
Italy is tops, then whoever is playing Brazil comes next. Don't get me wrong, I love watching Brazil, I'm just sick to death of seeing them win so I cheer for the opposing team. Unless that team is France. Can you tell I'm still bitter about the 1998 Cup?
England is always enjoyable to watch, and they're currently playing in their first elimination match against Ecuador, the team I…
neurotopia | June 25, 2006Just a reminder that the first edition of The Synapse should be up and running soon!
neurotopia | June 24, 2006If I had to decide what makes a good science teacher, it would be the ability to demonstrate how experiments fit into the proverbial "scheme of things". Nothing kills interest in science faster than 1. not being able to accurately relay the structure of the big picture and 2. just tossing a bunch of apparently random experiments at the students and expecting them to figure out how the pieces fit together. You wouldn't attempt to put a jigsaw puzzle together in the dark, would you?
A second skill that can make a science teacher go from great to outstanding is the ability to motivate…
purepedantry | June 24, 2006Are Shelley Batts' magnetic brain stimulators the first step in creating the sex helmets from Demolition Man? You be the judge.
[after futuristic, contact-free "sex"]
John Spartan: I was thinkin' we could do it the old-fashioned way.
Lenina Huxley: You mean... *fluid transfer*?
I think it is only a matter of time.