Seriously, this is the awesome :

So awesome.

This channel has a video about each element on the periodic table.

With help from some clever chemists, I’ve done all 118, but I’m not stopping here.

Now I’m updating and improving all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.

The dude’s mad scientist fro is the best ever. Ever.

Scientists have discovered a fossilized duckbilled hadrosaur that is so well preserved that they have been able to calculate its muscle mass and learn that it was more muscular than thought, probably giving it the ability to outrun predators such as T. rex.

While they call it a mummy, the dinosaur is not really preserved like King Tut was. The dinosaur body has been fossilized into stone. Unlike the collections of bones found in museums, this hadrosaur came complete with skin, ligaments, tendons and possibly some internal organs, according to researchers.

The link to the article is here.

you’ll need audio for this one:

Here is a description of the second video: “This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear.”

THE smallpox virus first became entangled with the human species somewhere between three thousand and twelve thousand years ago — possibly in Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs. Somewhere on earth at roughly that time, the virus jumped out of an unknown animal into its first human victim, and began to spread. Viruses are parasites that multiply inside the cells of their hosts, and they are the smallest life forms. Smallpox developed a deep affinity for human beings. It is thought to have killed more people than any other infectious disease, including the Black Death of the Middle Ages. It was declared eradicated from the human species in 1979, after a twelve-year effort by a team of doctors and health workers from the World Health Organization. Smallpox now exists only in laboratories.

I’ve been meaning to post this for week and a half, but am just now getting around to it.

The above is from Richard Preston’s article about smallpox, as a natural human pathogen and as the most horrible sort of potential weapon. The article is a distillation of the book, of the same name.

I can say without hesitation that this is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever read, and among the most engaging too. Those of you who read The Hot Zone (the same Richard Preston, of course) and thought it didn’t get much more frightening than that, well, I’m almost sorry to bring this up.

From the true stories of the eradication efforts in the 60’s and 70’s to the high-security halls of Vector and USAMRIID, a fairly convincing portrait is painted of what seems likely to be the single most dangerous human pathogen we know.

In particular, anyone who lives in Atlanta, where the CDC is one of only 2 legitimate repositories for the virus, will find some very interesting material.

For example, having read this book, I’m essentially certain that I lived just a couple of blocks from the BSL4 lab where active experimentation with large doses of active, “hot” smallpox was taking place. I probably drove past the building on my way to Aikido that very week, and unknowingly practiced my rolls and techniques in the Emory rec center, which is directly behind the main CDC campus.

I always knew, of course, that the CDC worked with a lot of nasty stuff, but it’s somehow different to read about it in detail and realize with a bit of a chill that the author isn’t talking about some anonymous site in the middle of nowhere, but a building in your neighborhood, one that you see on a weekly or daily basis.

You start envisioning the fairly plausible scenarios in which the invisible virus escapes it’s containment protocols and blasts through the neighborhood. Again, not some foreign place with a strange name, but Druid Hills, and Emory, and the Highlands. It didn’t make me mad, or even really make me want to move. Rather, I felt, somewhat inexplicably, wary, as if Preston’s “demon” were one I might see sneaking about, spreading it’s horror.

I was lent this book by a coworker on a Wednesday, the evening of which I left for a business trip to DC. By the time I hit the ground in Atlanta the following night — 4 hours of reading on the two flights, and a few more in the hotel room — I’d finished it. I absolutely couldn’t put it down.

If you’re even passively interested in this sort of thing, either from a biology perspective, or a National Security perspective, you pretty much have to read this book.

Apparently, there has been a zombie outbreak in Cambodia.

A parasite, spread by mosquitoes, kills 100% of those it infects within two days.

After death, this parasite is able to restart the heart of its victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believed to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.”

The Cambodian government is reported by the BBC to have assured the world that this outbreak is contained and studies have begun on the parasite to see if it’s regenerative powers could in any way benefit humanity.

Condoleeza Rice, speaking on behalf of the Bush administration refered to the parasite as a biological weapon and the UN has apparently dispatched a team to verify Cambodia’s assertions that zombieness is indeed contained.

EDIT: But also apparently, I am yet another victim to a very good 2005 April Fool’s gag. Bravo to the creators — I didn’t look close enough to notice the IP address in the web address, nor to think too much on the date displayed.

This means that I can not blame not having traveled to Cambodia to see killer architecture on zombies.
Damnit. And it made such a perfect story for a cocktail party, too.

i can’t bear to write her fucking name, and I’m sure k will have more to weigh in on this review, but a UofChicago scientist recently wrote a review of that stupid evil witch’s book godless: the church of liberalism. some choice quotes from the review:

But could anybody who absorbed the Sermon on the Mount write, as she does of Richard Dawkins, “I defy any of my coreligionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell”? Well, I wouldn’t want Coulter to roast (there’s not much meat there anyway), but I wish she’d shut up and learn something about evolution. Her case for ID involves the same stupid arguments that fundamentalists have made for a hundred years. They’re about as convincing as the blonde hair that gets her so much attention. By their roots shall ye know them.

more below the fold (more…)

If I appear to be thinking a lot about this topic lately, well, appearances don’t decieve. In truth, I’ve always been interested in the way science and religion interact. As a science minded youth who was brought up Christian, it was natural, and necessary, to try and reconcile the two. It seems many people don’t feel the same way.

At any rate, I’d like to thank the New York Times. It’s really well past time for this article to be published. Too many stories paint Intelligent Design as the latest battle royale, because nothing sells media like a good fight. Here we have some fair analysis at last.

Of course, the entrenched interests don’t sit idly by…

John G. West, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, the main organization supporting intelligent design, said the skepticism and outright antagonism are evidence that the scientific “fundamentalists” are threatened by its arguments.

“This is natural anytime you have a new controversial idea,” Mr. West said. “The first stage is people ignore you. Then, when they can’t ignore you, comes the hysteria. Then the idea that was so radical becomes accepted. I’d say we’re in the hysteria phase.”

…

“The future of intelligent design, as far as I’m concerned, has very little to do with the outcome of the Dover case,” Mr. West said. “The future of intelligent design is tied up with academic endeavors. It rises or falls on the science.”

This guy’s pretty savvy, because he knows that if you make your opponents look unhinged, you undercut their credibility. It’s good politics. He knows (after all, he’s got the degree for it) that this argument works because there are a view vocal scientists on who *are* just as fundamentalist and antagonistic as he is. But all of this, like so much public discourse lately, ignores the *middle*, which I’ll come back to. Meantime, I’d like to think he’s correct about (and believes) his last statement, because it is actually rational. Of course, it helps him none, since the science just isn’t there. This segment from earlier in the article is very telling :

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.

“They never came in,” said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

“From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don’t come out very well in our world of scientific review,” he said.

That says an awful lot to me. You keep hearing about the “science” behind ID, but I don’t see it being produced. Here’s an organization who’s dedicated to reconciling science with religion *asking* to spend money on this research. But no, there’s nothing. So the claim that the liberal academic elite have been blocking ID from the journals falls a little flat. If the science was there, someone could have published it by now.

But that’s not the point is it. Mr. West’s claims not withstanding, this issue has almost nothing to do with teaching science or doing science. It’s a front in the war against intellectualism in favor of religious fundamentalism. And I’m certainly not saying every supporter even thinks of it that way, but then, many wars have been fought by people who didn’t know what they were actually fighting for.

Finally, of course, I return to my longstanding belief that there’s nothing about evolution that contradicts christianity (unless you’re one of those “literal reading” folks, in which case, no amount of logic will help you). People on *both* sides of the debate are wrong for propagating an either-or mentality on this issue. I thought briefly about getting one of those “Darwin” fish, but i won’t because it’s an anti-debate symbol. It says “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Hostility and dismissal don’t win intellectual battles. If I wanted to turn my car into a Christian advertising platform, I might go with “darwin fish” + “jesus fish” = “truth fish”. But the symbols are still too blunt an instrument for such a complex issue. Even the most fair minded ID supporters don’t get it…

The slogan, “Teach the controversy,” has simple appeal in a democracy.

Simple is right. It’s a simplistic cop out and a means for promoting religion in the classroom. The fact is that there need not be a controversy. I have no problem believing god created the universe and then man, in His image, and all that, and furthermore believing that He used evolution as His tool for doing so. It’s presumptuous in the extreme to claim that God would not have done such a thing. Simplicity is the enemy of intelligent, rational debate, and the desire for people to have an easy black or white choice is the reason why this issue (and SOOO many others) still has currency. Intellectual laziness.

in the current issue of discover, there is a piece profiling Didier Sornette, a geophysics professor and complexity theorist who is using his research to study cause/effect in everything from earthquakes to economic models. in the piece, Dr. Sornette notes several interesting things in the course of this answer:

Discover: What do you think of gloom-and-doom predictions for the U.S. economy?
Dr. S: These statements are really based not on science but on overinterpreting a very complex system using unscientific methods. There are indeed a certain number of indicators that the United States is on an unsustainable path. But the United States also is a very special player, eh? It has the dollar, which is the world’s currancy. It has teh army of the world; it is the Roma Imperial, if you will. So it has a lot of things that are a positive leverage to its clear overspending. Is it sustainable? I don’t believe it is. But the correction won’t necessary be a crash. (emphasis added)

This quote (especially in the context of the entire article), raises the two interesting statements as emphasized above. First, he notes a conversation that t and I have had on numerous occasions concerning how, despite the accuracy of the different economic models used by the fed or even private investors in a vacuum, they are usually too simple to predict any long-term activity in the economy in general because the system is too complex (not dissimilar to the problem of weather prediction: closed yet complicated system leading to imperfect advice).

Second, he repeatedly notes in the article that economy of the United States (and, indeed, most compelx systems) are not binary: there does not have to be a “bubble” which “bursts”. There are any number of equilibria that could be reached. We just don’t know yet where that is.

Sitting in the freezing terminal at St. Louis Lambert International goddamn meat locker, but felt like I had a few things to write about…

The first is Kansas. We all know what jokers they are already, but I can’t help but comment on the ridiculousness of “redefining” the meaning of the word “science” so that it somehow encompasses the vague pseudoscience (and I’m already being generous giving it that title) of Intelligent Design. Proponents claim they’re trying to buttress the science curriculum with a fair handed examination of “alternate theories”, or that this is a means to educate kids in the need for broad mindedness in science. Of course, “for the kids” is the first refrain of anyone trying to accomplish anything, good or bad, to the extent that I can hardly hear it anymore without being put off. The point I’d like to make, however, is that a good science curriculum already contains skepticism and the questioning of assumptions as a foundation for everything else. It’s the scientific method. Proposing to teach the scientific method by mandating the treatment of a proposition that lacks any connection to it is absurd in the extreme. The I.D. movement is nothing less than an attempt to dilute the very meaning of science until it lacks any authority in the public mind. It’s designed to discredit the scientific establishment (and intellectualism by proxy) in order to leave the Church as the sole available source of stability in a complex and confusing world. In such a world the false certainty and simplistic absolutism of fundamentalist christianity becomes even more attractive to the anxious and fearful *and uneducated* public. Perhaps I’m giving the architects of this movement too much credit. Maybe Americans’ understanding of what *Science* means is already so eroded that supporters of ID really don’t grasp what they’re doing. I’m not sure which explanation I prefer, truly, but I see the whole argument as a dead canary, a signal that America is heading down a dangerous road of fear, ignorance and marginalization.

Now that I’ve gotten my political excitement out of the way, just a quick note on the science magazines this month. Of course, they follow trends as much as any other industry, and I was struck by the number of articles touching on genetics. Both SciAm and Technology Review had numerous articles and sidebars treating the subject of RNAi, the use transgenic animals as pharmaceutical bioreactors, engineered microbes for environmental cleanup, stem cells and so forth. Of course, this will be nothing surprising if you’ve followed science news at all, but for those who haven’t, take note… computers are great, but bio is the looming large.

To close, I want to write briefly about a short but fascinating article in the aforementioned SciAm, which described a mechanism in which fetal cells (in mice, though as usual, the implications for humans are clear) are found in the brain of their mother. I find it remarkable enough that the connection is so two way, but it’s even more incredible is that these cells get into the brain and become, apparently, neurons, macrophages and all kinds of other useful and therapeutic cells. What the laboratorians found is that if they chemically brain damaged the mother mice, those fetal cells disproportionately migrated to the damaged area in an attempt to repair it. The evolutionary implication is pretty clear here I think, but it also got me thinking about parasites. I don’t recall the name, but there’s that one that infects the hosts brain and makes them want to jump into the water and drown because the parasite needs to get into the water for reproduction… in other words, the parasite influences behavior and, perhaps, psychology. The thought that those cells, on top of providing extra backup for damage control, effect a change in the psychology of the mother seems endlessly interesting to me. Of course, I make no claim to know what I’m talking about, but I’ve read enough sci fi (and sci nonfi) to be gripped by the concept that a fetus could send out cells that modify moms attitudes and interests. That there’s more to the inward focus of a mother than hormones, but that the baby rewired her brain, literally. As I say just a rumination, but how *cool*!

from the latest issue of discover….

1) “Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.”

– the ever-quotable Benjamin Disraeli.

2) “But the real relevance of Godel’s theorem is its connection to the fact that inconsistencies can arise if you try to prove statements that refer to themselves. One of the most famous of these is the assertion ‘This statement is false.’ If the statement is true, then according to the statement itself, the statement is false. But if the statement is false, then the statement must be true. Since we are not angels who view the universe from the outiside, we– and our theories– are both part of the universe we are describing, and hence our theories are self-referencing. And so one might expect that they, too, are either inconsistent or incomplete.”

– Stephen Hawking, discussing his recent acceptance that there may be no single ultimate unifying theory.

Any day is a nice day when I can sit in my living room with no pants and make jewelry. Even though Jeff left for potentially 4 days and Aaron’s leaving us in a week, it was still a very happy Thursday.

May I also mention, the Nashville Public Library is gorgeous. This may have encouraged my day to only be better. Of course, I would not be laughing at my day had I not had to stop and wave at a little bit of irony.

Wild Oats is a grocery store that totes an organic & neighborhood-friendly reputation sealed, stamped, and delivered by the wooden coins you get to donate to local schools if you choose a recycled paper bag when you check out and leave the store. Forget for the moment that Wild Oats bought out the locally owned organic food store in 1998, and the overpriced fruits and vegies, grandiose tea and spice aisle, and puffed out “Farmer’s Market” decor may lull you into an “I’m being nice to my environment”. Until you reach for the bananas.

Miss Chiquita Banana is not a sticker anyone should find in an organic market. Well, fine, maybe on the face of a small child, but it’d look cute there especially if it’s surrounded by pink and red sun rays and a little glitter. You would giggle and be sufficiently distracted from the mass of articles written in the late 1990s through 2001.

The Chiquita Banana Company, and other banana companies like Dole and Del Monte, were said to have perpetuated poor working conditions, poor pay, and poor regard for the surrounding environ. The most detailed source I was able to find was an article that was supposedly printed and then pulled in 1998. There’s no telling how true any of what I’ve found really is, as all the articles are written by or for a SaveTheEarth Coalition. What I do believe is that any company that would so overbreed bananas as to render them susceptible to extinction would, I believe, no care about anything other than productivity and the income that would bring in.

Sadly, there are banana plantations in Ecuador.
There are also rose plantations in Ecuador.
Maybe calling them “plantations” is a truth far more weighty than people realize.

For those not in the know, I’m a florist. Which, as you can imagine, causes me to work with a lot of roses. Three people celebrated their wedding anniversaries just last Thursday and all of them sent a quantity of roses. And after each dozen I made, I washed my hands. The roses during off-peak season aren’t nearly as nasty as the ones for Valentines and Mother’s day — for those, I run to the sink holding my hands out in front of me while repeating “icky icky icky icky!”

Rose plantations, and banana farms too according to the sites I found, use pesticides the US banned back in the 60s and 70s and all the run off flows into the streams, rivers, and soil. I’ve heard a number of stories about plantations upstream of the villages their workers live in. Then I hear about the number of miscarriages and deformed children born there or the decreased life expectancy. I believe these horror stories — the layers of crude on my hands every February makes me.

This is a concise write up on pesticides and the effects. And that is a plantation worker’s account as published in the Maimi Herald.

Don’t EVER use roses or their petals from florists in your cooking.
I’ve been known to even lightly rinse rose flowers or their petals if I knew there were to touch a cake. Not all, mind you. Food decorations are certainly not as invasive as cooking them in the actual food.

Even I will admit — the florist rose is a beautiful flower. It’s very hardy, can be very full, and has a rich history [link 1 & link 2], one which culminates in the rose devoutly remaining a representation of the feminine.

The irony at the end is this: the continued cultivation of roses perverts that which the rose is supposed to represent.

Sadly, I cannot see my world without Ecuadorian roses — the price is too cheap and Americans are cheap. Organic roses just wouldn’t fly.. though I would be really curious if they could. Bulgaria is said to have rose festivals. I can’t find anything about people with third ears participating so maybe Bulgaria’s on the right track. Israel is also rumored to have embraced roses in their burgeoning flower trade, but I don’t know how much Israel will continue to have since a number of their greenhouses were on land relinquished to the Palestinians. So we’re stuck with Ecuador.

Sigh.

I think ironies make me laugh so much because truly, there’s nothing I can do right now to fix them.

Sure, $99.95 is a lot of sushi and scotch, but this is an awesome idea sponsored by a venerated organization. I’m in.
National Geographic “Genographic” Project