Misc.
tsmith | April 26, 2007As pointed out by Dale in the comments over at Orac's post on Duesberg and aneuploidy, Duesberg and fellow HIV "dissident" David Rasnick are marketing a new cancer detection system, AnuCyte Cancer detection system, based upon his aneuploidy-basis-of-cancer ideas. And guess who else is on the company's Board of Advisors? Our old friend, Harvey Bialy, also a HIV "dissident" and author of a biography on Duesberg: Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS. Very interesting....
Now, I don't besmirch anyone's ability to make a profit from their research if that's their angle. Certainly other biomedical…
tsmith | April 11, 2007As I've mentioned on here previously, I recently moved. Now that I've painted every room in the house, I've been s-l-o-w-l-y unpacking things, and today I started on my non-essential books (aka, the ones I don't need on a day-to-day basis for classes). One of the boxes I dragged in from the garage just happened to have all my Vonnegut books; except for my old yearbooks, they're all that's sitting on one bookcase in my room right now. I'm a relative latecomer to his novels; we never read Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five in school, and I somehow missed out on him during college as well.…
tsmith | April 6, 2007So, this "why do you blog> meme is apparently making the rounds here at Scienceblogs and elsewhere. Reading the other responses, I realized this is something I've discussed in interviews and with friends and others, but I can't recall writing about here. So, in case anyone is interested in the whole sordid tale, I'll put a bit about how and why I got into blogging after the jump.
After I graduated college, I moved back to Ohio for awhile. At this time, the Discovery Institute was just starting to ramp up their campaign to get "intelligent design" taught in schools there. Being only…
tsmith | March 23, 2007Apologies for the blog silence again this week. Last week was a bit crazy and I'm still catching up for it. I have a write-up of last weekend's evolution and intelligent design conference on the way, but before I attended that, I met up quickly for drinks and conversation with a few other Sciencebloggers. Left to right, The Intersection's Chris Mooney, Evil Monkey of Neurotopia, me, and Orac of Respectful Insolence.
tsmith | February 2, 2007"Sheesh, kids today" generally is a phrase said to malign the young'ins, who are typically characterized as slothful video game junkies. This stereotype ticked me off when I was a teenager (ah, back in the day...) and I'm sure some teenagers today feel the same way. So just to help combat that for "kids today," I want to highlight this fundraiser started by two high schoolers, and being spread around on MySpace and other venues: Dollars for Darfur.
We started Dollars for Darfur because we got tired of waiting for others to change the world. Dollars for Darfur is a national high school…
tsmith | January 15, 2007Well, we missed the ice storms that hit a few other Sciencebloggers, but we did get a bit of this:
My kids, of course, were clamoring to play in it this morning as I rudely shipped them off to school (the nerve!); meanwhile, I'm realizing I don't even have snowpants and boots that fit them this year, and I haven't thought about it because this is the first snowfall that's been more than a dusting (and even this is only a few inches). Maybe tonight we'll make the tiniest snowman ever.
tsmith | January 11, 2007
So I see from other blog siblings that it's National Delurking Week. Aetiology has been around now for a year and a half (and just over a year here at Scienceblogs), and I'm thrilled to have a good group of regular commenters, but I never know quite how to answer when people ask who reads my blog. I know a bit just from my sitemeter stats, and a bit more from what commenters occasionally reveal, but that's only a small subset of regular readers. So for the rest of you who just pop in and read but rarely, if ever, comment, I'd love to hear a bit about you--where/how you found the site, how…
tsmith | January 10, 2007So this week's American Astronomical Meeting is the current (as I type this, anyway) Buzz in the Blogosphere. Not being an astronomer, though, I'm wondering who's heading to another upcoming meeting...AAAS (that would be American Association for the Advancement of Science) in San Francisco, Feb. 15-19? I know a few other Sciencebloggers will be either in attendance, or else in the area and popping their heads in. Who else out there is in?
tsmith | January 9, 2007This is bizarre....White rats pop up in toilets
Residents of a neighborhood next to the University of Arizona say small, live white rats have been swimming through sewer pipes and into their toilets.
Making it from the sewer into someone's toilet is a difficult trip. A 4-inch pipe runs from the house to a sewer main. And there's no "trap door" or other barrier in place. If the lines are running, the rats have to hold their breath and swim uphill against the water current.
The best part of the article:
The Pima County Health Department said it's best not to handle or touch a toilet-surfing rat…
tsmith | January 9, 2007Heavy underdog Florida annihilates Ohio State 41-14
Sorry, Grandpa. Maybe next year...
tsmith | December 28, 2006It's been quite awhile since I've had a real vacation. Most of my "vacations" are spent traveling back and forth to relatives' and friends' houses, and this Christmas holiday has been no exception. After a jaunt to Ohio to visit family, I'm currently in the metro D. C. area visiting a friend, and hooked up with fellow Sciencebloggers Janet of "Adventures in Ethics and Science" and Evil Monkey of "Neurotopia" recently at an Irish pub here in the area (photographic evidence can be found here). I'll be traveling back to Ohio tomorrow for some more family time and to work on a house I still…
tsmith | December 18, 2006Via Stranger Fruit comes this gorgeous shot of an aurora over Des Moines, Iowa.
tsmith | December 14, 2006So, razib relates a recent observation of the apparently rare species hottus chicas scientificas at a local wine bar. Shelley's ticked:
Not sure whether to be more irked that Razib suggests that smart women aren't hot (and vice versa), that hot women don't like sci fi, or than sci fi somehow denotes intelligence. Booooooooo.
While razib tells her to "focus on the science fiction part. not the intelligence," I agree with Shelley's later comment that who cares exactly whether he was talking about SciFi or intelligence--the idea that, because one is female and "hot," one therefore cannot be…
tsmith | October 30, 2006Busy again today, and we're hosting a talk by Darrell Trampel, an expert on poultry diseases. (He'll be talking about avian influenza). Still have a few stories to get to in the queue but may be short on time for the rest of the week once again. In the meantime, bask in the cuteness of new puppy:
tsmith | September 20, 2006Everyone's favorite sexy geek is 29 today. Stop on over and drop some birthday wishes for the youngin'.
tsmith | September 11, 2006It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
--Oscar Wilde
It's hard to believe that it's been five years since the collapse of the twin towers. In September 2001, I was still a graduate student in Ohio, with about another year to go until I finished my degree. I was in early that morning to get an experiment started, and shortly before 9AM, a grad student from the lab down the hall stopped in to tell us to turn on the radio…
tsmith | September 8, 2006Oh, and for the record:
How the heck I got that nerd score without building my own computer or knowing my current IP address, and admitting I prefer Windows, I haven't a clue...
tsmith | September 5, 2006You may remember earlier in the summer that several ScienceBloggers mentioned a cartoon contest called Science Idol, looking for submissions of political cartoons with a science theme. Well, the finalists have been posted, and you can vote for your favorite.
tsmith | September 3, 2006coturnix is featuring a microbial theme this week at A Blog Around the Clock; check it out for some recent and classic posts on the topic.
tsmith | August 24, 2006Jaime made a thoughtful comment here regarding yesterday's "hater" post. I started responding in the thread but it's become more of a treatise. Hope I don't scare Jamie away (since it's noted that s/he is unlurking to make it):
i read the post, and the comments, and the stuff on here, so i will unlurk to make my 2 cents. there is bad science in evolution like in any field these days but no one seemed to address the issues - some complained about the crappy font and 2 regulars on here used the 'you're stupid' argument on him.
tara also can be a little guilty for snipping parts of sentences…