Quick Picks on ScienceBlogs, Weekend Edition

What to read when you're drinking coffee in your jammies:

• "Antisense Oligonucleotide Therapy for ALS patients?"

  Lou Gehrig suffered from ALS, as does Stephen Hawking. A new treatment promises relief for some sufferers of this intractable disease.

• "Mountaintop [Coal] Removal, Part II: Is a stream without fish still a stream?"

  Ben Cohen and Dave Ng chat about Appalachia, the march of progress, "and the questions oddly left unasked about coal, energy, and where we get it."

• "Friday Sprog Blogging: how the dinosaurs really went extinct."

  "Please pass the ketchup. I'm going to make a tar-pit on my plate."

• "Your Friday Dose of Woo: Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?"

  After pointing last week to a candidate for "the grossest thing on the internet" in the course of a post debunking claims about the miraculous effects of colon cleansing, Orac is back to explain why you probably don't need a "liver flush" (but if you like coffee enemas, well, that's another thing.

• "More on popcorn workers' lung"

  Effect Measure's update on the lethal respiratory condition affecting workers who deal with artificial food additives.

• "Friday Flower Porn: New and Improved with Interspecies Sex!"

  Hot 'n' nasty photos of live, nude flora at Doc Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge (warning: actually completely safe for work, though may be smile-inducing).