purepedantry
Posts by this author
October 22, 2006
I like posting poems from time to time. They remind me that at one point I had an interior life that did not involve anxiety over tissue culture.
Anyway, the poem of the week is by Billy Collins, a personal favorite. His work is always direct but insightful -- like prose-poetry until it isn't,…
October 20, 2006
Hydrogen is great, but I feel like there are some structural and technical issues that have to be solved before...you know...the angels fly down to save us and hugs and bunnies abound. Popular Mechanics introduces a note of realism to the debate on alternative fuels with a great article on…
October 20, 2006
The Scientist has an excellent article attempting to fairly evaluate the Bush record on science:
What may be adding to the perception that the Bush administration is harder on science than ever before is that in recent years, biology has borne the brunt of political interference in science, which…
October 19, 2006
This Synapse features a special Society for Neuroscience line-up with Shelley, Evil Monkey, Nick the Neurocontrarian, and myself attending.
I arrived and faced a moral quandry of whether to drag my ass out of bed to see stuff. Having decided to have a look, I attended a Workshop on Teaching, a…
October 16, 2006
If you have never been to Neuroscience, one of the things they do is have slide sessions. These sessions are sort of like short talks -- a slide of data or two presented by many people. It is sort of a good summary of what people are working on.
Considering that I work in a lab that studies…
October 16, 2006
My head hurts. I am sitting in a crappy slide session of limited personal relevance, trying vainly to find something fascinating in the injection of morpholino oligos into Xenopus. Two complete yo-yos are talking really loudly behind me.
Let's have a little humanities moment, so that I don't…
October 16, 2006
I attended a panel discussion chaired by David van Essen entitled (R)evolution in Scientific Publishing: How will it Affect You? It was focused on what the implications of the Open Access movement in science are, and what scientists should expect from that. For those of you who don't know, the…
October 15, 2006
I TA'd a bunch in college and I am currently the TA for the medical school Neurology course, so I am always looking for good ways to make teaching better.
However, the moderator made a good point during the workshop that SfN -- in spite of the fact that majority of members do teach or are…
October 15, 2006
Last night, we also met Nick from Neurocontrarian. He is also liveblogging the proceedings, and maybe doing some audio interviews. Check out his site for his coverage.
October 15, 2006
There are a bagillion people here -- a bagillion. No other word appropriately conveys how many neuroscientists are in this building.
That being the case and there being so many exhibits and lectures and craziness going on absolutely simultaneously, it has become an issue about how to break down…
October 15, 2006
I got here late night after a plane flight filled with people accidentally clubbing each other with long cyclinders filled with posters. The baggage checkers probably thought we were a horde of terrorists.
"Sir, what is in that long skinny package?" she asks as her hand moves to the alarm. "…
October 14, 2006
Hi everyone,
For the next 5 days, I -- like fellow Sciencebloggers Shelley and Evil Monkey -- will be blogging up a storm from the Society for Neuroscience convention in Atlanta. Check in regularly for updates as to the proceedings. And remember to check in next Thursday for a very special issue…
October 14, 2006
Previously, not cute. Now, cute.
Let the swooning media attention begin.
October 13, 2006
Chris from Highly Allochthonous -- say that five times fast -- has a great post summarizing the geological issues of the North Korean nuclear test (how deep? how do we know that? etc.) Check it out.
October 13, 2006
I expressed a certain level of skepticism about North Korea's nuclear test this week because of the low estimated yield and the failure of the earlier test of their Taepodong-2 missile. Basically, I question the ability of North Korea to make a nuclear weapon that will actually work, given the…
October 13, 2006
Scientists have discovered a bacteria the survives with an incredibly small number of genes:
The tiniest genomes ever found belong to two types of bacteria that live inside insects, researchers have announced.
One of these types of bacteria, Carsonella ruddii, is so small that it could perhaps be…
October 13, 2006
CNN is reporting that mammals have been sighted in Europe:
Using DNA testing, scientists have discovered what is believed to be the first terrestrial mammal found in Europe in decades: a mouse with a big head, ears, eyes and teeth that lives in a mountainous area of Cyprus.
The mouse was native to…
October 12, 2006
There are intruders invading from our Southern border! No, not illegal immigrants -- jaguars. Having not been seen in the Southwest for some time, some of them have started to filter in from Mexico. The NYTimes reports:
Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, male jaguars are…
October 11, 2006
The NYTimes is reporting that an aircraft has crashed into a residential building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan:
A small plane crashed into a high-rise on the Upper East Side, raining down debris on Manhattan and unleashing what witnesses reported was a gigantic fireball, police said.
The…
October 11, 2006
Conservationists have discovered a new species of bird in the cloud forests of Colombia:
A colorful new bird has been discovered in a previously unexplored Andean cloud forest, spurring efforts to protect the area, conservation groups said Monday.
The bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-…
October 11, 2006
Unbelievable:
Not even a medical emergency can pull some men away from a television showing their favorite sports teams, a U.S. study has determined.
University of Maryland emergency physician David Jerrard tracked nearly 800 regular season college and professional football, baseball and basketball…
October 10, 2006
News@Nature has the best summary of what is known about North Korea's missile test that I have read thus far.
How big was the blast?
Estimates for the bomb's yield (the amount of energy discharged when the weapon is detonated, in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene, or TNT) differ widely, from…
October 10, 2006
So there is no one schedule to do the Synapse for next week, and this is kind of deliberate.
For those of you who don't know, the annual Society for Neuroscience convention is this weekend from Saturday to Wednesday. The SfN is the Lolapalooza of neuroscience meetings. Tens of thousands of…
October 10, 2006
I was sorry to hear this story. A high school student in Colorado Springs, CO died suddenly on the football field. There was no apparent cause. Autopsy revealed that the boy had an enlarged heart:
A preliminary autopsy conducted by the El Paso County Coroner on Saturday said Vialpando died as a…
October 6, 2006
Here is your YouTube fun of the day. It is compilation of the Daily Show series Evolution Schmevolution from about a year ago I think. Hilarious.
October 6, 2006
So I went to the book signing last night for the Best American Science Writing 2006, and it was really interesting so I want to plug this book. In attendance were Jesse Cohen, the series editor, as well as authors Paul Bloom, Dennis Overbye, and Johnathan Weiner.
I haven't had a chance to read…
October 5, 2006
The Seed Overlords interviewed me (via email) in their continuing quest to know (Biblically) all the bloggers. Check it out here.
October 5, 2006
On September 30 the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act -- an act intended to criminalize the intimidation of scientists involved in animal research -- passed the Senate by unanimous consent. I wrote in support of this bill earlier this month.
This is from a press release from the AAAS related to…
October 5, 2006
Memoirs of a Skepchick dramatizes the researchers who determined men and women are aroused at the same rate -- talking to a grade school class:
"So you watch the men and women get hotter with the night vision goggles?"
"It's a camera, technically, and . . . yes, yes we do."
"What are they doing…
October 4, 2006
Some scientists have decided to form a 527 -- a political action committee that is not tax deductible under election law -- to combat what they feel is a rising anti-science sentiment:
Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had formed an organization dedicated to electing…