Get fired up about science!

I just discovered Neil deGrasse Tyson on a repeat of the Daily Show. If this guy doesn't get you fired up about science, no one can. Watch here:

Your civic re-shelving duty.

Callooh! Callay! Pharygula points out today a biologist on a mission. Go check him out, you have to love his cause. His first post explains:

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but some bookstores seem to have a little problem discerning science from non-science. I'm specifically talking about biology books vs. creationist books. Sometimes, you will find psuedo-scientific rubbish such as "intelligent design" books next to such authors as Darwin, Mayr, Gould, et al...

...Realise just how successful creationism has been in blurring the lines of what science actually is in the public's eye. So successful, in fact, that books whose main argument is that "God did it" enjoy shelf-space with some of the finest minds ever to grace humanity.

This is unacceptable, and something must be done...

...It is my mission to correctly re-shelve books to the appropriate section of the bookstore.

For example, "Darwin's Black Box", the famous psuedo-science book by the non-evolutionary non-scientist Michael Behe, should not be in the "Evolutionary Biology" section, but something more appropriate, such as "New Age", "Religion", "Christianity", or even "Fiction". You get the idea.

I call on all readers of this blog to follow my example. Help your local bookstore correctly stock their science section. Spread the word.

Thank you, Ste. You just made my day.

via Pharyngula

My travels

Orac at Respectful Insolence has a neat toy up that shows everywhere he's traveled in the U.S. I thought it might be fun to map out everywhere I've traveled in the world (I confess, I'm less well traveled than he in the U.S.).

Neat toy, you should give it a try.



create your own visited countries map

EDIT: Hmmm... It seems to cut out everything east of Africa. Ah well, I've never traveled there, so it's all good.

Sadly, this is me.

Astronauts gone wild!

Oy. From the New York Times:

NASA’s astronauts have flown while intoxicated on at least two occasions, according to reports of an internal NASA investigation, and the astronauts involved were warned that their drunkenness constituted a safety risk to the flight. But it is unclear whether this is a current problem and whether the incidents involved space shuttle flights.

NASA? Meet Nissan. Nissan, meet NASA. From CNET:

[Nissan] this week announced that it had started testing an in-car Breathalyzer system that disables a car's ignition if it senses that the would-be driver is over the legal limit.

Friday beautiful science

Today's Friday beautiful science comes from the Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois. From the caption:

Image of a Xenopus Melanophore stained to reveal the microtubule cytoskeleton (green) and the nucleus (blue). The pigment granules in the cell were imaged using back-scattered light. Image by Steve Rogers. (Confocal)

How ignorance can kill a child.

I have people in my family who have said things like, "If I ever get cancer, I will show how you can cure it with a good attitude and eating lots of carrots." When I tell my colleagues stories like that, they tend to think that I'm exaggerating.

Take this Canadian family:

Anael L'Espérance-Nascimento was being treated at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa for cancerous cells in his brain and in bone marrow, which are currently not life-threatening.
Doctors recommended chemotherapy for the boy, but his parents have decided instead to treat him by feeding him on a diet of almost exclusively organic vegetables, without sugar or animal products.

Organic vegetables as a cancer cure. Their child will certainly die from this cancer. Why have his parents chosen this path?

[The child's mother] said earlier treatment at the hospital during almost the entire winter took its toll on Anael, who grew small and whose complexion grew green.

Chemotherapy is awful. Really and truly awful. But consider the alternative:

Anael's mother, Marie-Élise L'Espérance, said Tuesday the treatment is based on the idea that the body can heal itself if given the right nutrition.

Great idea, why didn't I think of that? Too bad that most great ideas turn out to be wrong. This woman is experimenting with her child without controls, and with no reason to think that it will work. My heart breaks for her, that her child is suffering through cancer at such a young age (he's only a year older than my son). But my heart breaks even more for her son, who will certainly die under her "care".

[Canadian government] officials asked the province's child protection agency to intervene, but it declined.

One wonders if the reason they're not protesting is that the child is already terminal. I feel sick.

via Eamon Knight