Commenters here might have noticed that, this week, PooterGeek acquired a new CAPTCHA, that is a test to check that you are, er, “human” before your comment is accepted by the system. It’s to discourage spammers from clogging up this blog with links to their poker, porn, and Viagra sites. The PooterGeek CAPTCHA is basic: […]
As you’d expect from an embittered wannabe academic like me, I enjoy immensely reading reviews in which genuine scholars demolish the latest fashionable nonsense published by trend-chasing academic presses. Here Ben Goldacre casually and rightly puts the boot into an absurd attack on evidence-based medicine—it’s “fascist” apparently. Here Shalom Lappin does a grand and rigorous job on […]
I haven’t had time for a proper post for the past few days and I still don’t, but Leasey recommends that you explore the platypus genome by hovering your mouse pointer over the little image of a platypus on this page and reading the pop-up that appears. Genomics: an unrecognized mine of comedy gold.
I’m smart enough to appreciate just how much smarter than me my friends are. As I always say, talent recognizes genius. Talent should also recognize its own limits. I’ve reached that stage in my life when I’ve had to accept that I won’t be able to do the things I dreamt of doing when I […]
Over at Drink-Soaked Trots, frustrated holidaymaker Eric objects to the pre-emptive arrest of the alleged terrorists: “This all seems a counter-productive effort really. I mean actually arresting them before they actually carry out the attack may alienate these oppressed young men and further radicalise them. Not to mention that their civil rights have probably been […]
So obvious I didn’t think of her, though she probably refuses to self-identify as blonde: Hot Wheels Helena! Babes Of Biology No. 3: Miss July[click to enlarge] Helena has a PhD in biotechnology and her interests include killer bugs and driving quickly but very, very safely. If she wins Miss Biology 2007 she’d like to travel around the World as an ambassador […]
Having read an article I wrote reviewing bioinformatics courses in the UK, and despite my honest warnings, Wei applied to be a student on one I once taught on. Because the admissions office at [insert name of educational institution easily obtained by googling] failed to process her paperwork properly she had to make do with […]
Today’s featured Wikipedia article reveals that velociraptors were probably covered in feathers, stupider than cats, and the size of turkeys. Once again scientific accuracy ruins a fun night out at the cinema.
I used to work in a scientific research group where lots of light microscopy was done, a place where I was once instructed by my boss—who also happened to be the departmental sexual harassment officer—to spend a summer afternoon locked in a tiny darkroom with two attractive female medical students and show them how to […]
Via the Rubbish Man I came upon this. Despite the inherent wrongness of psychoanalysis, it’s rather a good read: “England’s repeated failure in penalty shoot-outs is not down to bad fortune, as the English media, with its empiricist presuppositions, insists. To lose once might be an accident, but to lose five times demands a psychoanalytic explanation. […]
Squander writes with justified awe about the wonders of genetically modified plants. I have attended boxing tournaments with an Australian woman who worked on the very explosive-munching GMOs upon which he marvels. Almost as marvellously, she once marched into work in the lab where she was a PhD student and expressed her outrage that her walk […]
“Hot Wheels” Helena acquired her nickname because, despite being an Advanced Driver who can cadence-brake, control-gear, and turn into skids with the best of them, she used to get about in an ancient Mini Metro Rover 100—and get me about in it when she was my Genome Campus car-sharing partner. She’s ruined the (weak) joke now by buying […]
These three blogs have all drawn attention to the dichotomy between the strange habits of angry Left-wingers online as reported by The Washington Post and the tone and content of the Euston Manifesto. There is something deliciously satisfying about seeing the wilfully stupid wax hysterical at the thought of a few people meeting in a […]
Today, 13Apr06, we—bloggers, academics, campaigners, writers, scientists, journalists, citizens—launch the Euston Manifesto. With this document we hope to publicly assert our progressive, democratic, egalitarian, internationalist principles in the face of recent attacks upon them from the Right and, to our dismay, the Left. Many of us are of the Left, but we come from across the […]
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The genetic revolution brings you a “healthier” fry-up: Geneticists have mixed DNA from the roundworm C. elegans and pigs to produce swine with significant amounts of omega-3 fatty acids – the kind believed to stave off heart disease [hmmm…]. Researchers hope they can improve the technique in pork and do the same in chickens and cows. In […]
Once we would bond by grooming each other to remove parasites. Now we log into each others’ blogs to delete spam posts.
The Anonymous Economist draws my attention to this amazing story: James McGaugh is one of the world’s leading experts on how the human memory system works. But these days, he admits he’s stumped. McGaugh’s journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her […]
If you search the medical literature for “D Counsell”—type “Counsell-D [AU]” into the search box here—half the papers returned have my name on them; the other half carry the name of an anaesthesiologist who didn’t drop out of medical school. Today someone emailed the wrong D J Counsell to offer him a temporary consultant anaesthetics post. […]
“Women chose funny men as relationship partners despite often rating them as less honest and intelligent,” the researchers said in the study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour. In other news: Actor Tom Cruise has branded a story suggesting he is to split from pregnant fiancee Katie Holmes “100% false”. The denial came after US magazine […]
Yes, this is a link to a story about how pigeons are going to be equipped with mobile phones, rucksacks, and digital cameras and released over California to ‘Blog pollution. [via Slashdot]
Yesterday I had an excellent evening of argument. I spent it contending that, since our emergence, we human beings have been, for plausible biological reasons, fundamentally aggressive and suspicious of visibly different members of our own species. In reply it was argued that our behaviour towards others has been characterised by altruistic tendencies and trade. […]
Nikon is going to stop making most of its film cameras. Time to have a look at some lousy digital photography. In other news, I’ve just bought another Minolta film camera body.
If you are interested in biotechnology enterprise and investment in the Philippines then you need to be at this conference. [Is that okay, cs?]
I found out just before Christmas that I’ve been turned down for that SciArt grant I was applying for. This is not exactly a surprise, but I’m still not happy about it. Thankfully, my family took my hint when I told them and I didn’t have to endure a Christmas of them looking at me […]
You Don’t Want To Do That, a new BBC reality radio show, will follow a group of potential recruits to the Samaritans as they attempt to become full-time counsellors to the suicidal, the depressed, and the lonely. In this preview recording of the first episode, the hopefuls are thrown right into the deep end. They […]
Jackie would like people to check out this appeal over at Science Blog.
Via Elemy: “The average homeowner should expect to repair direct meteor damage every hundred million years.” Via the Motley Fool: “When you are in deep trouble, say nothing and try to be cool.”
And talking of photogenic sea life, here’s something you don’t see every day: giant rectangular fish leaping into the air.
Penguins: evidence of Intelligent Design or gay Commie bastards? You decide. [Having provided this link about animal behaviour and evolution I am now bracing myself for a breathtakingly confused Cuthbertson post accusing me of elevating “my radical politics” over “what science tells us about human goals and social realities” by failing to point out that “one […]
Further to one of my shortest and most cited posts, if you don’t mind having Return of the Sith spoiled [hah!], the frankly strange Mike Doughty explains that, because Darth Vader is black, you must trust your feelings and know that he is your father. Mike was an amazingly prescient child: “I have this interesting […]