Science & Society

A little of this and a little of that today... I had just clicked "save" to publish my blog and the internet closed without warning, so this is an abbreviated version of my abbreviated blog. Two stories caught my eye on the train ride in to work - the Washington Post's compacted commuter daily, the Express, featured one bona fide science story and one story that mentioned the word science, so I'll include both. The first: D.C. has the (mis)fortune of lovely ginkgo trees lining certain streets in town. I love ginkgos. Except when they drop their fruit. Arborists attempted to mitigate the foul…

Vitamin C has been hailed as a magical vitamin for decades. Feeling sick, sleepy, or a little under the weather? Quick! Jam your mouth full of vitamin C, drink some orange juice and eat some strawberries (which have more vitamin c per weight than even oranges). But why cling to these feelings? Researchers have been unable to prove that vitamin C actually boots immune system power. It seems that every time I see a research study done on vitamin C's mysterious powers, the results are just as vague as the questions which initially prompted the study. That being said, I guess its obvious that I…

I’m used to some American media outlets shamelessly feeding crap to the public. Think Fox so-called News, for instance. But the Los Angeles Times? That’s supposed to be one of the most highly respectable papers in the country, on par with the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune or the Boston Globe. Well, once again I was wrong. David Klinghoffer published an opinion piecein the LA Times that argued that belief in the paranormal is not just, well, normal, but actually good for you. Klinghoffer begins his tale by telling us that the Hasidic rabbi who circumcised his…

Well, two reasons; reason one is that if we write about bdelloid rotifers we just make reference to bdelloid rotifers but if they write about bdelloid rotifers, they find a way to incorporate lesbian necrophiliacs into the title.    Seriously, who is not going to click on that title?   I am sure we can all agree that Safe For Work (SFW, because I am so internet lingo hip after getting a Facebook account) articles with 'lesbian' and 'necrophiliac' in the title are kind of rare. Who knew you were so sexy?  And deviant!  Credit: David Mark Welch They are fascinating…

So says an article in the Sunday Telegraph, following the death of Oliver Postgate, creator and writer of some of Britain’s most popular children’s television programmes, namely Pingwings, Pogles’ Wood, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers and Bagpuss, of which the last was voted in a 1999 poll to be the most popular children’s television programme of all time. Now I would tend to sympathize with this article.  As Susan Greenfield says in her book The Private Life of the Brain: Perhaps the modern lifestyle, emphasizing as it does the immediate multicoloured universe of the CD, the…

Recently News Account have published an item The Meaning Of Milton 400 Years Later. This has led me to some thoughts. It was only when I was into my forties that I got around to reading Paradise Lost. To start with, there are some bits that really stick in my scientific mind. Take this bit where Satan gets ejected from Heaven: Him the Almighty Power hurled headlong flaming from th' eternal sky with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire, who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. Adamant is an ancient word often applied to…

Research by dating site FreeDating.co.uk found that 36% of women would end a relationship over an 'inadequate' Christmas gift.  This was particularly the case when the present was the latest in a series of disappointing let-downs within the relationship. Examples of gifts which were deemed inadequate included cooking utensils, cleaning products, and a sticky tape dispenser.   Generally speaking, it seems common sense to think that devices meant to cook for a significant other or clean the house would be a bad idea - but that's why science studies are needed. Highly educated women…

Most scientists wanted someone - anyone - other than George Bush in the White House.  Not because of budgets, clearly they went up a lot for NASA, NSF and the NIH during the Bush years, but because there was a perception of an anti-science agenda that went beyond what was seen in the past, though that was primarily due to the rapid-fire ability of the internet to magnify problems and the viral ability of groups with agendas to mobilize their audience on the crisis du jour.  In reality, Bush had no more to do with actual science policy than any other president since World War 2 and a…

FOLSOM, California, December 11 /PRNewswire/ -- ION Publications LLC, publisher of ScientificBlogging.com, (http://www.science20.com/) The world's premier online science community, has released its version 2.0. ScientificBlogging.com (http://www.science20.com/) is the world's largest independent online science community and a place where world-class scientists, professionals and science enthusiasts alike contribute to writing science articles and blogs while facilitating discussions about physical science, earth science, biology, medicine, neuroscience and culture. The 25 featured writers…

Obviously, scientificblogging.com is all about science writing (it's not just a clever name, as Wayne Campbell would say). Blogging, as Atlantic senior editor Andrew Sullivan said in the November issue, "is, in many ways, writing out loud." But what about that dying breed of the enterprising newspaper science journalist? The Washington Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, tried to wrap her head around the difficult job science writers have in reporting the news to a lay audience this Sunday in her column. Based on comments posted on the Post's site and discussions on the NASW listserv, how to…