purepedantry
Posts by this author
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-…
The Synapse #13 is capably hosted at Neurocontrarian. Thanks Nick.
I have a Synapse-related announcement. The Neurophilosopher, host of the other neuroscience carnival Encephalon, and I have noticed a decline in the number of posts coming into the carnivals. We have agreed that it would make…
You know the scene from Old School where they wedding band is playing. The band from the movie is called The Dan Band, and I saw them last night.
They were awesome, and in honor of that I have a horde of YouTube videos. (Warning: A lot of these videos are rather vulgar.)
For those of you who don'…
The last Synapse of the year is tomorrow, so remember to submit. It is being hosted at Neurocontrarian. Submission details here.
Your gut reaction is probably that the question is irrelevant; what parent would choose for their child to have a genetic disease. That was my reaction.
Apparently, however, some parents with genetic diseases that make them lead relatively normal lives but isolate them into special social groups…
CNN's headline reads Flatulence on plane sparks emergency landing:
It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane.
An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence…
Yesterday, the NY Board of Health voted to ban trans fats -- after a phase-out period -- in restaurants in the city:
New York City's board of health on Tuesday voted to phase out most artificial transfats from restaurants, forcing doughnut shops and fast-food stands to remove artery-clogging oils…
Scienceblogs welcomes OmniBrain, a neuroscience blog that I am quite fond of.
I am particularly fond of this cartoon, which has to be the funniest one ever made about oligodendrocytes. Granted that is a small group, but still...a very good comic.
In order to raise money for schools in India, Christie's auctioned one of the black dresses that Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany's:
The iconic black dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" sold for 410,000 pounds ($800,000) on Tuesday, around seven times…
Encephalon #12 is up at AlphaPsy.
The Neurophilosopher has a cool article on Phineas Gage -- a patient that is often used as an example in neuroscience classes because he had a railroad spike tamping iron go through his head and cause personality changes.
The Mungers at Cognitive Daily are…
The Stern Report -- a report by Sir Nicholas Stern, head of Britain's economic advisory panel -- that came out last month urged action on climate change in terms of future economic loss. I reported on people like Richard Tol who took issue with Stern's numbers in terms of the costs and benefits of…
In light of the incidents with Michael Richards and Mel Gibson, Malcolm Gladwell posits some criterion by which we could judge the severity of racism:
1. Content. What is said clearly makes a difference. I think, for example, that hate speech is more hateful the more specific it is. To call someone…
So I have a spectacular announcement. Very soon this blog will be taking on a co-blogger, the lovely and wonderful Kara Contreary. Kara Contreary is currently a Economics PhD student at the London School of Economics. I am excited that she is willing to join me, and I think that an economist-in-…
Totally effective, side-effect free treatment of Parkinson's continues to elude physicians, but a study by Deuschl et al in the NEJM shows that we are definitely making progress.
Deuschl et al performed a randomized study that assigned patients into one of two groups. The control group recieved…
Funny:
2) If you have children, you will save yourself and everyone else a lot of time if you laminate some picture(s) of your offspring and staple them to your forehead.
3) That person you had a crush on in tenth grade? They're still going to look good.
4) Someone will be out of the closet -- with…
To His Coy Mistress
By Andrew Marvell
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love…
Trushina et al from the Mayo Clinic have made a big advance in understanding the etiology of Huntington's disease.
Huntington's disease is a progressive and ultimately fatal disease that is characterized by uncontrollable limb movements and progressive dementia and psychosis. It is 100%…
Wired magazine is asking for nominations for the top ten sexiest geeks of 2006:
Be they programmers, scientists, writers, architects or attorneys, please leave your suggestions in the comment space below. There are no rules for submission. The only guidance we can offer is: you know a sexy geek…
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Massachusetts et al. v. EPA. In the case, several state governments are suing the EPA for failing to regulate CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
There are many levels of legal conflict on which the justices could rule, summarized in the NYTimes coverage:…
Benjamin Zycher, fellow at the Manhattan Institute, questions of the wisdom of allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies.
Actually what I don't like about this debate is that is called "negotiating" drug prices. There is no negotiation that is going to take place. What will happen…
Paul Tough, writing in the NYTimes, has an excellent long article about the challenges in teaching underprivileged and minority children.
I was talking to my parents about this issue over break. I am from Denver -- though I went to school in a relatively affluent suburb. In the Denver schools,…
This is super interesting. Acephalous is trying to measure the speed of a meme -- an infectious idea -- as it spreads through the blogosphere. More importantly, he is trying to figure out whether they spread from the bottom up through low-traffic blogs or from the top-down through high traffic or…
Take a fun test to see if you have an accent.
My friends periodically give me hell because I speak like a newscaster -- or that I have a "professor" voice. Anyway, now there is validation: I actually have no accent. Not shocking...I grew up in Denver. However, I was born in the South, and my Mom…
There you go, lemurs! Way to speciate:
The number of known species of the mouse lemur, the world's smallest primate, has increased by 25% with the description of three new species, bringing the total to 15.
Mouse lemurs are wide-eyed nocturnal animals that scamper around the forests of Madagascar…
I have a bunch of articles on politics here that I have been perusing.
Free Exchange has a post on the moral benefits of growth. One of them is that it is prerequisite to the creation of jobs that allow women to be equal. They also have a post from a bit back about Europe's emerging demographic…
NPR had a great article about how otaku or nerd culture is driving economic growth:
Take 24-year-old Kai. Sengoku Basara is her favorite computer game. An office worker by day, Kai spends her weekends dressed up as a 16th-century samurai, Chosokabe Motochika. Her chest is bound flat. She wears a…
Mind Hacks covers an article in the Financial Times about delusions and how brain damage affects cognition:
Some researchers have argued that this is the basis of a similarly curious syndrome, known as Capgras delusion, where someone believes that their friend, spouse or relative has been replaced…
The Synapse #12 is up at Dr. Deborah Serani's blog. Next Synapse is on December 10, 2006 at the Neurocontrarian. Submission details here.
This was forwarded to me in an email, and it is just too "dam" funny for me not to post. It is a letter that was sent to a man named Ryan DeVries by the Pennslyvania Department of Environmental Quality and his letter in response. Make sure you read the first letter first.
SUBJECT: DEQ File No.97-…
This poem is not for children. This is an adult poem for adults -- and possibly mature, sophisticated teenagers. (In some ways it makes me wish my parents did not read this site, but I will get over that.) As a consequence of its sordid nature, it is completely below the fold. It is also very…