Flock of Common Terns at Long Beach

A flock of Common Terns spent last Saturday at Long Beach Conservation Area. Every two or three minutes they all decided to take off at once. I figure there was about 250 birds.

Expelled Exposed

The people at the National Center for Science Education have a new website dedicated to countering the Expelled movie. It's a good explanation of all the things that are horribly wrong, one-sided and unfair about the movie. From Pharyngula.

Housewatch episode 4.12

Last night's solution to House was incredibly easy to understand, so I'll focus a bit on physiology instead.

The woman (Sarah Silverman's sister for those of you not watching the credits) had nephroptosis, or floating kidney. Everytime she stood up, her kidney slid down lower into her pelvis. She lost blood pressure, and she fainted and her breathing stopped. It's called orthostatic hypotension. The kidney is suspended in the pelvis by connective tissue. It can move easier than most organs. Since we can bend at the waist, this is a good thing.

So, why were they saying everything was backwards? In a healthy person, when you stand up your heart rate and blood pressure go up a little. If they didn't, you'd faint. With the head now above the heart, it takes more work to get blood to the brain, so the heart pushes a little harder, and then circulatory system tightens up a little, so the blood is less likely to trickle backwards.

Anna's hummingbird

Nature's The Great Beyond blog has an interesting post about the Anna's hummingbird. It seems its mating calls are generated by its tail, not its mouth or wings. It's a (so far) new and unique way of bird communication.

Journal article in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Encyclopedia Brittanica video of hummingbird flight.

Housewatch 4.10

It's been such a long time since a new episode of House, M.D., I almost forgot about my resolution to try and explain some of the science and medicine behind the show.

This week, the woman had breast cancer. But it wasn't in her breasts, it happened to be behind her knee. So how did it get there? It wasn't metastasis. Rather, it was a developmental abnormality that left her with some breast tissue that should have been resorbed before she was born.

So, we have to digress into embryology and teratology, which is embryology gone wrong. Many tissues are created, sorted out, grown, trimmed and pruned as an embryo becomes a fetus and then a baby. In the woman's case, a small patch of breast tissue wasn't properly disposed of during development, and it later became cancerous. 35 is young for breast cancer, but they did mention her mother died of it and that the patient had a prophylactic double mastectomy.

Was that really breast milk House extracted from the knee? Yes. Risperidone can stimulate breast tissue to produce milk.

So the women's treatment became a standard course of surgery and chemotherapy.

Finally, it's worth mentioning osteopetrosis (literally, bonestone). It's rare, basically the osteoclasts, which are supposed to clip and remodel bone, are defective. Or carbon anhydrase deficiency can lead to mildly acidic blood, which alters bone metabolism.

Science songs busting out everywhere

This video is making the rounds of biology blogs faster than an ebola outbreak. What could get nerds so excited? PCR.



Nature's The Great Beyond has a nice roundup of other science songs.

But they missed one of the best, They Might Be Giants - Why Does The Sun Shine?

Stem Cells

A couple of crappy arguments are thrown up in this op-ed on stem cells.

There does need to be some caution. Embryonic stem cells, to date, have not produced a single therapeutic cure -- not one.

True. But there's no cure for HIV either, and I don't hear De Souza clamouring for us to stop that.

Cloning still remains a potential future source of embryos. Because there is an elementary moral objection to creating embryos solely to be destroyed in the course of research, some scientists have turned to "surplus embryos," left over after fertility treatments.

That's your elementary objection, not mine.

National Post doesn't understand evolution, either

The National Post, which is one of Canada's prime hotbeds of climate change denialism, has an editorial showing that they don't understand evolutionary genetics either.

Toni Vernelli, a dedicated British environmental crusader, may strike some as a deeply devoted champion of her cause. Frankly, she strikes us as more than a little off balance, perhaps even cultish. At 27 (Ms. Vernelli is now 35), she had herself sterilized in order to "protect the planet." Prior to that, she had an abortion rather than bring another consumer/ emitter into the world.

"Having children is selfish," she recently told London's Daily Mail newspaper. "It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet. Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases and adds to the problem of over-population."

Toni Vernelli obviously gets the modern understanding of evolutionary genetics. Genes behave in ways that appear to us as selfish.

The National Post, obviously doesn't get it:

We like to think (as most people do) that giving another person life and agreeing to raise them through infancy, childhood and the teenage years into adulthood is the height of selflessness, not selfishness. How much easier to be able to come home from work when you want, not when a child needs picking up from school, or to go out when you want and not have to worry about being home in time to put children to bed and get the babysitter home. No pretending to enjoy animated television or movies. No sitting up nights nursing a scared and feverish little one. No 6:30 a.m. hockey practices. No fights with a ninth-grader over friends, clothes or hair. No worried late nights waiting for a high schooler to return with the car.

Yes, most people think having children is unselfish, because it "ruins" your previous life. Suddenly, you're a full-time child care worker. And having no children seems selfish, because you can do whatever you want, have more disposable income, and far fewer wrinkles than your child-rearing peers.

But from the gene's point of view, having children is exactly the most selfish thing that can possibly be done: pass on your genes to the next generation. That's point of kids. Keep the genes moving. From a gene's point of view, Vernelli is so unselfish her combination of genes are going to go extinct.

The National Post's stupidity continues, and I can't be bothered to pick it all apart. It winds up with:

Finally comes the most indelicate observation of all: If it is selfish of environmentalists to have children because of the damage those offspring would do, isn't it even more selfish for those environmentalists to stay alive themselves when they are consuming every bit as much water, land, fuel and timber, and producing just as much pollution and greenhouse gas? Why sacrifice the lives of their potential children before they have sacrificed their own? Mightn't suicide be the ultimate sacrifice an environmental extremist should make for his or her beloved planet?

Even suicide isn't a solution, nor the ultimate sacrifice for the environment. The bacteria, fungi, insects and worms that devour our bodies are all greenhouse gas emitters. So you can't win, even in premature death.

Housewatch - Episode 4.8

A little bit delayed, since I knew this would be an unusual episode to explain. (I have kept it very simple. Many of the dirty immunological details have been ignored.) Anyway, the patient had lupus, which is an autoimmune disease. The body's immune system loses its ability to distinguish self from non-self, and attacks its own tissues.

Why was it so hard to catch? Basically, he didn't show the usual symptoms, including the characteristic "butterfly" rash, which spreads across the face under the eyes. In the patient's case, a transfusion of improperly matched blood was affecting his blood cells, which was causing most of his symptoms, and masking or overlapping many of the lupus symptoms.

The explanation was really rushed at the end, but the ultimate problem was the patient had type A blood, while they thought he had AB. So, when given AB, he had a violent reaction to it, which was causing all the bloody episodes. They gave him type A blood and steroids to control the lupus, and he recovered.

Like I said, a lot of immunological difficulties have been swept under the rug.

Random speculations: Big Love got the axe this week, and was turfed for disloyalty. A little surprising, I thought his religion would keep him in. I think 13 is next. If she has Huntington's, she's out of there. Either way, she appears to have a fatal flaw that will get her kicked out soon. I presume the plastic surgeon will go, due to age, leaving us with Amber and Kutner to form the new team, along with Foreman.

Housewatch - Episode 4.7

A great convergence of ideas this week on House, M.D., but probably not the way the producers intended.

This week's patient had Lyme disease, an infection you get through tick bites. The tick carries a bacteria that it gets from deer and other large forest creatures. It's named for Lyme, Connecticut, and is prevalent throughout New England.

The disease wasn't found very quickly, because the characteristic bulls-eye rash at the site of the bite was hidden under his hair.

Sound familiar? It should. Scrubs used the exact same plot three weeks ago.

Convergent evolution? Two shows of writer independently coming up with the same idea? Unlikely. Most likely, the writers and medical advisers read the same news story or journal article and thought that would make a good story.

One can only imagine the groans from the staff of House, M.D., as they realize Scrubs has beat them to the plot!

If caught in time, Lyme Disease is treatable with antibiotics. If you want to hear an endless "he said, she said" debate, google "post-Lyme syndrome".

Housewatch - Episode 4.4

This week on House, the girl was unfortunate enough to have ergotism, a historically common, but now rare, disease.

Ergotism is a result of poisoning by ergot, a fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that grows in rye, and other cereals. In this episode, the patient was baking her own organic rye bread at home. So, she ate it, and the toxins produced by the fungus caused the illness.

The mold can continue to grow in the rye, and secrete a toxin that causes a variety of neurological effects, which can lead to seizures and hallucinations, both of which the patient had. It's also possible to have vascular effects, such as the bleeding the patient had. In worse cases, limbs can fall off.

There isn't a specific antidote, but it can be controlled with drugs that help the blood flow and sedatives for cases of hallucination.

Recently (OK, 1976), ergotism has been as a suggested cause of the Salem Witch Trials (original scientific journal article here). (I was just in Salem.) Briefly, in 1692 a bunch of girls accused people of being witches. Twenty people (men and women) died, 19 by hanging, and 1 by crushing.

Ergot poisoning has been a suggested cause, which largely, but not completely, accounts for the symptoms demonstrated by the girls. Others think they were just evil bitches.

And now, some speculation on what doctors will remain. Amber (blonde doctor) will survive, because she's been given a lot of lines, seems about as amoral as House, and is very ambitious, all traits that House will like. (Or perhaps she could be too similar, and get turfed like the old guy did this week.) The Indian guy will survive, because I've seen him in other shows, or movies. I don't remember. He's not a nobody. The black guy will probably end up part of the team too, because House can pick on him for religion, and therefore have a few religious dilemmas this season. And they wouldn't want to have a team of all-white doctors. That begs the question, where are the Asian doctors? (I can't recall ever seeing an Asian doctor on the show), who tend to have the highest marks on entering and leaving medical school.

The white guy disappears, because he's hardly said a word. The brunette doctor disappears because there can't be two women on the team, though I could see her staying on because she's the most attractive of the group. And the surgeon goes, because he's already a doctor and can simply return to practice.

Another moment of hilarity: Chase suddenly being a accomplished surgeon. Fine for tv, but in the real world, I don't think people realize just how far apart surgery and medicine are. Surgery is carpentry and sewing, medicine is pills, IVs and tests.

Pinker on cursing

Steven Pinker has a long, but interesting essay on why we curse.

"...The upshot is that a speaker or writer can use a taboo word to evoke an emotional response in an audience quite against their wishes. Thanks to the automatic nature of speech perception, an expletive kidnaps our attention and forces us to consider its unpleasant connotations. That makes all of us vulnerable to a mental assault whenever we are in earshot of other speakers, as if we were strapped to a chair and could be given a punch or a shock at any time. And this, in turn, raises the question of what kinds of concepts have the sort of unpleasant emotional charge that can make words for them taboo."

Housewatch - Episode 4.3 http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Another episode of House, another post. This time, the patient had the misfortune to suffer from spinal muscle atrophy. In his case, it was ascending, which means it started at his feet, and slowly worked its way up his body. Like last week's disease, it's genetic. But SMA is recessive, which means you need two copies of the bad gene, instead of just one, as in von Hippel-Lindau.

SMA kills motoneurons, which are the nerve cells that control muscles. Related diseases include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig's Disease, and Parkinson's. In SMA, the mutated gene (SMN1, or survival motor neuron 1) makes a protein that is essential for nerve cell maintenance. Without it, the nerve cells shrink and die, and without stimulation, the muscles atrophy.

They called what actually killed him by two names, threadworm and Strongyloides. This was very confusing, since they are different, but related diseases. Both are caused by a worm infection. In each case, the 1-cm worms can easily be seen in the stool. That's why the male team wanted a stool sample.

Threadworm, or pinworm, is a very common illness. As this article notes, one course of treatment is usually sufficient to cure the disease. (The patient did not have this.)

Ickiness from Wikipedia:

Reproduction

Pinworm eggs are easily seen under the microscope.

After mating, the male dies. The female migrates to the anus and emerges, usually during the night, to deposit about 10,000 to 20,000 eggs in the perianal area (around the anus). She then secretes a substance that causes a very strong itching sensation, inciting the host to scratch the area and thus transfer some of the eggs to the fingers. Eggs can also be transferred to cloth, toys and the bathtub. Once ingested orally, the larvae hatch and migrate back to the intestine, growing to maturity in 30-45 days. The eggs can survive from 2 to 3 weeks on their own outside of the human body. It is also in some cases where the larva will hatch around the skin of the anus and travel back inside the anus, up the rectum and back into the intestines where it matures. (SOURCES: Rudolph's Pediatrics - 21st Ed. 2003; Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment - 45th Ed. 2006)

The patient actually had Strongyloides, which involves a different worm that can infect dogs and be transmitted between humans and dogs. This article is very informative. Like a lot of parasites, it has a bizarre life cycle.

But it's easy to treat with a dose or two of ivermectin, which is why everybody was upset at the end that it wasn't caught. Or that it was caught, and the medicine wasn't delivered.

And what about the dog? The dog died because it ate the ivermectin pills intended for the patient. Collies react unusually to it (J Vet Intern Med. 2002 Jan-Feb;16(1):89-94. Ivermectin toxicity in 17 collies. Hopper K, Aldrich J, Haskins SC.).

----------------
Now playing: Deadbeat - RA.072 Deadbeat - 2007.10.01
via FoxyTunes

Housewatch, episode 4.2

Last night on House, M.D., the young Air Force pilot was finally diagnosed with Von Hippel-Lindau disease, a rare genetic disorder that causes abnormal growths throughout the body. The process, called angiomatosis, leaves the patient with cysts or tumors scattered throughout the body. The pilot happened to have hers in the liver and brain, although the blood vessels, kidney, pancreas and retina of the eye are common locations too. It occurs worldwide, in about 1 in 32,000 people.

The gene that causes the disease is located on chromosome 3. It is a tumor suppressor gene, which, when lost, lets cellular division go out of control. This can lead to the overgrown blood vessels, which turn into cysts and in the worst cases, cancer. It is an autosomal dominant disorder, which means only one copy is needed for the disease to occur.

Chase showed up to posit that the pilot's panic attacks were caused by a pheochromocytoma, a known early sign of Von Hippel-Lindau. (One researcher has suggested pheochromocytomas aggravated the Hatfield-McCoy feud. ) A pheochromocytoma is a small tumor in the adrenal glands on top of the kidneys that secretes too many stimulating hormones, like adrenaline, into the bloodstream. This is logical, considering VHL can often cause abnormal growths in the kidneys.

The pilot's original complaint was synesthesia, which is a confusion or overlapping of the senses. The most common form is associating sounds with colors. For instance, a flute would be associated with bright red. I searched PubMed for "synesthesia and von" and "synesthesia and hippel". Both came up with zero results, so I wonder if the writers just made that up.

Addendum: Given that Cameron was only onscreen for 60 seconds, she still managed to be quite annoying. House was right, she did look like a cheap hooker. Dark hair and blue eyes is a much better combination.

Housewatch, episode 4.1

I've decided to start explaining (or trying to) episodes of House, M.D. I like the show, medicine and Hugh Laurie.

Now, last night's episode was a case of mistaken identity. Not very medical.

Perhaps the most interesting medical hypothesis was crush syndrome, which I had never heard of. Basically, you get crushed by a building or other heavy object and unsurprisingly, it's not very good for you. It's common after earthquakes, but was first described during the Blitz, in London, (Bywaters EGL, Beall D. Crush injuries with impairment of renal function. BMJ 1941; 1: 427-32.) when buildings were falling left and right.

During crush syndrome, the large muscles of the body get compressed. Cutting off the blood supply causes cells to weaken, since they don't have the energy to maintain themselves, and they release potassium, phosphate, enzymes and the muscle protein myoglobin into the bloodstream. Ultimately, it's bad for the kidneys. But the brain and muscles can suffer too, often leading to amputation of a limb.

The patient also had acute respiratory distress syndrome. It's a little less interesting. When you have lots of other problems, it's not very surprising that the lungs get a little stressed and can fail when they fill with fluid.

----------------
Now playing: Face (Extended Demo Edit) - G.R.R.L.
via FoxyTunes

Fungus identified

Tom Volk, a professor of biology at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, has identified my fungus. (Not my fungus, it's on a neighbour's tree.) It's Polyporous squamosis. Thanks!

I need a mycologist, stat!

These fungi(?) are growing on my neighbour's maple tree on the north shore of Lake Erie. They are enormous, as local fungi go (and shapely too). The lower one is ten inches wide, the upper eight.

I'd love to know what they are. I'm hoping a Circus of the Spineless or Tangled Bank reader can enlighten me. Please leave a note in the comments for everybody to see if you know what it is.

Postnatal disease testing

The state of Wisconsin tests all newborns for 27 genetic diseases, at a cost of $69.50. Many of these are quite rare, but dangerous.

Nearly all are incredible mouthfuls. There are ones I'd expect there, like phenylketonuria (see any can of diet pop), cystic fibrosis, and a few I've never heard of, like Dienoyl-CoA Reductase Deficiency, Medium/Short Chain Hydroxyacyl-CoA Dehydrogenase Deficiency, Argininosuccinic Acidemia, and Maple Syrup Urine Disease, which may sound cool, but you wouldn't want it.

Rational, scientific assessments of drugs and narcotics

This chart above is the best thing I have seen in months. (I first saw it in mixmag.) It is from England's Science Select Committee, who were charged last year with finding out if England's policies on illegal drugs made any sense. The short is answer is no.

They reviewed the ABC classification scheme, A being worst, C being least worst, and found that the way the drugs had been ranked did not match scientific assessments on their effects and impacts on society and health.

So, they rearranged the impacts of drugs based on scientific assessments. The graph above, from this report, is what they ended up with. They left the old A, B, C labels on. It gives a good idea of how the political and societal judgments on drugs don't match the scientific assessment. For instance, alcohol and tobacco are both much higher than permitted by governments. Marijuana is much higher than its advocates like to admit, but lower than its detractor paint it. Ecstasy and LSD are much lower risks than any policy treats them.

Ponder the graph, for it is wonderful, and chock full of information.

When Inbreeding Isn't So Bad

My third Just Science post:

German researchers have found a fish that prefers to mate with its relatives, rather than strangers. The result, published in Current Biology, suggests inbreeding can be a good evolutionary strategy. Timo Thünken et al. studied African cichlids (Pelvicachromis taetiatus), a river fish. They found that the fish preferred to mate with unfamiliar close kin over unrelated kin. To put it in human terms, they'd rather mate with a distant cousin than a stranger.

Why would this be a good strategy? Well, your kin are more likely to help you than a complete stranger. In this species the male and female care for the young. They have to cooperate to care and feed their young broods, which requires time and energy. The researchers measured the degree of cooperation between related and unrelated parents, and found that related parents invested significantly more time in caring for the young. The desired result is to produce more, stronger offspring.

The scientists also found that there was no inbreeding depression, which is the fancy way of saying the children weren't talking one-eyed mutants with 18 flippers.

The scientists suggest there may be other instances of inbreeding waiting to be discovered.

To be crystal clear, this is not an endorsement of human inbreeding!


Thünken et al.: “Active Inbreeding in a Cichlid Fish and Its Adaptive Significance”. Publishing in Current Biology 17, 225–229, February 6, 2007 DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2006.11.053.

Erase and Rebuild to Program Stem Cells

My second Just Science post:

Biologists from Shanghai have discovered that cloned cells follow an "erase and rebuild" strategy to return to a state where they can begin dividing again. This isn't much of a surprise, since it's long been suspected that something like this happens. But it's nice to put a mechanism to things.
Huizhen Shang and colleagues report in a special stem cell issue of Cell Research that the developing (single) egg cells of mice erase many of the transcription factors and other modifications that control protein expression. The erasure strips away most of the programming done by the mouse's cells, leaving the cell in a "blank" state. (More technically, the chromatin, a mixture of DNA and proteins, factors are nearly all removed.) Then the egg cell gets rebuilt/reprogrammed after fertilization by sperm, and is ready to develop as a stem cell that forms a complete mouse.

In the early days of cloning (ten years ago), this reprogramming was done by electrocuting cells after a nucleus had been transferred into a denucleated oocyte. Nobody knew why this worked, but it did. With this new discovery, biologists can now determine how and what control factors are erased and reset.

Needless to say, but worth mentioning, is that this finding was not discovered in the U.S., due to the federal government's failure to support stem cell research.

Nitrogenase

Nitrogen is a fundamental element for life. There are no living organisms which do not depend on it, because it is found in DNA, RNA and protein. Therefore, obtaining it is absolutely essential.

The ultimate source of nitrogen is the atmosphere, which is 80% nitrogen gas, composed of two nitrogen atoms bound by three strong bonds. In this form, it is absolutely useless to life. It must be broken apart, and there are only a few ways of doing this. (Oxygen gas, which is composed of two oxygen atoms with two bonds, has been broken down every second of your life by enzymes.)

1. Lightning.
2. The Haber process.
3. Enzymes.

If we relied on lightning we'd be dead, since it doesn't produce enough freed nitrogen. The Haber process was only invented in the early 20th century, and is the source of fertilizer. That leaves enzymes, which are the source of nearly all the nitrogen in your body.

The enzyme that does this is nitrogenase. It is found in bacteria that live in the roots of plants. If you ever pull up a plant by its roots and find the roots covered in small nodules, those bumps are probably filled with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. There, they break atmospheric nitrogen and form ammonia and hydrogen gas.

N2 + 8e + 16MgATP + 8H+ = 2NH3 + H2 + 16MgADP + 16Pi.

This equation says take nitrogen gas, electricity, energy, protons, and convert them into ammonia, hydrogen gas, and spent fuel. Ammonia is easier to convert into nitrate, which is now biologically useful.

The enzyme is one of the most difficult ones to study. What happens "inside" it as it breaks nitrogen has been nearly impossible to observe by traditional methods, because the delivery of electrons can't be controlled. Biochemists know that the bonds are broken one at a time. A new paper by Dmitriy Lukoyanov et al. (subscription required) has unravelled much of the first part of the reaction. They find that no bonds are broken, and that nitrogenase accumulates four of the eight electrons before breaking a single bond. Their discovery finally links electronic states of the enzyme to hypothesized intermediates, and gives a better idea of the order of events performed by nitrogenase.

Stem cell debate

Bunk from beginning to end. Some day Levin and Kass and all the rest of the nuts will be gone from the President's Council on Bioethics. I hope it's soon.

Oekologie, first issue

Oekologie, a new blog carnival featuring writings on ecology and the environment, has posted its first issue.

Making life's first RNA molecules

Scientists have discovered a way to synthesize an important component of RNA from small molecules. The finding lends support to the RNA world hypothesis, which is one of the hypotheses describing how life got started on earth.

RNA is the intermediary between DNA and protein. DNA gives cells instructions, proteins carry out the instructions. But somehow, this all had to get started from extremely simple molecules, like ammonia, water, methane and carbon dioxide.

DNA is a difficult molecule to make. Its sugar portion has a modification that can only happen with enzymes. It is incredibly unlikely to find it naturally. That's where the RNA world hypothesis comes in: it has a much easier to make sugar, therefore it was the molecule that started life on Earth, not DNA, even though DNA is now by far the most common genetic material. Only a few viruses use RNA to transmit information through generations.

Importantly, strands of RNA can catalyze reactions. Scientists think this could have led to the formation of proteins and DNA.

The details are not completely known. But John Sutherland and colleagues from the University of Manchester have found a way to make the sugar portion of RNA from three smaller precursor molecules, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, 2-aminooxazole, cyanoacetylene, and water.

Water was common on the primordial earth. The scientists speculate that the other two molecules could combine when one evaporates and is delivered to the location of the second component in rainfall.

By doing this, they sidestep a chemical bottleneck that avoids creating a problematic molecule, ribose-phosphate, which is hard to make and decays quickly, and they also offer a way of making RNA from smaller molecules, which may show how life got started from small molecules.

It should also stick in the craw of creationists and intelligent design fans. They always like to wonder how complex things arose, an argument that basically stems from personal incredulity. Well, if this discovery pans out, it shows just such a logical way.

Reference:

J. Am. Chem. Soc., 129 (1), 24 -25, 2007. 10.1021/ja066495v S0002-7863(06)06495-X
Web Release Date: December 13, 2006 Copyright © 2006 American Chemical Society
Two-Step Potentially Prebiotic Synthesis of -D-Cytidine-5'-phosphate from D-Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate
Carole Anastasi, Michael A. Crowe, and John D. Sutherland

Neil Tyson speaks the truth

Talking about the recent case of a teacher spouting religious anti-science nonsense in class, Neil de Grasse Tyson wrote in his letter to the New York Times:

To the Editor:

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s ark carried dinosaurs.

This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it’s about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

New York, Dec. 19, 2006

The writer, an astrophysicist, is director of the
Hayden Planetarium.

PS. 500th post!

Tom Cruise

A truly bizarre suggestion. I don't know enough neurology to comment on it, so just read it.

The invasion has begun

The invasion has begun, our mighty foot soldiers have infiltrated the capital of the U.S. and A, inventors of democracy. Prepare to be cowed! Or squirrelled.

Whatever the reason, observers say, black squirrels have been showing up in areas where only gray-colored specimens had been.
They appeared in Bethesda, Silver Spring and Chevy Chase in the 1960s, perhaps using the Rock Creek Stream Valley as a highway north from the District. One survey of Bethesda in 1990 found that about 25 percent of the squirrels there were black.

From Sandwalk.

Test your ability to hear tones

Here is a neat test for tone deafness. It is designed by Jake Mandell, formerly a producer of electronic music, now a medical student.

I scored 75% correct, which put me in the 43 percentile. About what I expected.

Via Music Thing.