Robuta

New Scientist has an article on sock puppets (subscription required): IF YOU thought sock puppets were made merely for the amusement of small children, think...

I sometimes gave my anatomy professors hell for wearing anatomy-themed t-shirts, but this is a whole new level. Check out these anatomy-themed tattoos. There...

tags: red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, birds, NYC, Central Park, Image of the Day

tags: house sparrow, Passer domesticus, birds, Image of the Day

I want to thank all of those who have commented on this blog for their thoughtfulness and reason. In answer to some of your questions:

Antivaxers often complain that they are judged harshly. It turns out that they are probably correct. But is this a bad thing? More importantly, what about the...

Rumor has it there's going to be a no-holds-barred culinary throwdown here at Scienceblogs in honor of Pi Day. Personally, I need little excuse to make a pie....

When President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, he also ushered in the first major nutrition changes in the school meal program in 15...

Two interesting new articles are available from the American Geophysical Union publications. The first requires a brief ocean geography lesson, the second...

tags: Nebeliges Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Expat Life, Frankfurt through my eye,

There are a number of aphorisms that one imbibes over many years of medical education, especially in medical school. Some are useful; some are not; but some...

I've never been more ashamed of the Democratic party than I am right now, watching the idiots in Congress piss away the opportunity to expand insurance...

Yesterday, extending a public debate that I participated in earlier in the week, I criticized some arguments by Reason's Ron Bailey and started to criticize...

John A, one of the bloggers at Climate Audit writes: You should know that Lambert's scientific knowledge is *ahem* "challenged". Ask him if he's discovered...

[NOTE added 12/23/2015: It would appear that the offending article has been taken down. I, of course, have screenshots, and, of course, the Google cached...

Virginia Hughes, once the benevolent overlord here at Scienceblogs, asks the Question of the Year: What is Life, Anyway? She notes that many of the major...

An Inca tern (Larosterna inca) about to crush a clump of dirt, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

This review in Nature Neuroscience is excellent. I have never seen the issue of gene-environment interactions laid out so eloquently. Unfortunately, it is...

There are 27 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the...

I've been asked several times about this NY Post article on the CDC's "admission" that a sneeze could spread Ebola. The Post (which, I should note, is the...

Image of bonobos from www.freewallpaperspot.com

"For me the best answer is not in words but in measurements." -Elena Aprile Dark matter is perhaps the most mysterious substance in the Universe. It outmasses...

There are close to just under 900 species of bird in Australia, and The Australian Bird Guide

On his most recent Sunday show, John Oliver did a tour de force segment on the antivaccine movement. Not surprisingly, antivaxers are not pleased.

"...and the Sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist hovers over all." -Homer's Odyssey The great american eclipse is coming, and you're in luck! This...

Rusty from New Covenant has replied to my post replying to his post in response to comments at the end of my post. Did you follow that? Drugs help, I promise.

Another fiscal quarter, another record profit: Exxon-Mobil reported earnings of $10.49 billion today. These earnings are eclipsed only by the $10.71 billion...

As of 2/24/2008, Sewell has just responded to this, pretending that he just noticed it. To make discussions easier to follow, I have responded with a new post...

I'm open to suggestions. Do we just need to kick our PR departments in the pants? To be fair, often the internets skips that step. H/T TR

After watching Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk* it occurred to me to go back and look at my own scientific papers and try to assess them for how creative they...

Aloha from Hawaii's Kona coast where I spent the day yesterday learning about captive-bred seahorses from Craig Schmarr who, along with his wife, marine...

Clive Hamilton has written a five part series on the attacks on climate science in Australia: Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial. I...

Long, long ago, seemingly in a galaxy far, far away, I first encountered quackery on the Internet. Because I am a cancer surgeon, naturally I gravitated...

I think the engineers are just trying to wind me up, again. Joe Felsenstein tackles a paper published in an applied physics journal that redefines evolution...

Douglas Rushkoff responding to Steven Pinker at Edge.org:

"Grandpa" McCain?: The presidential hopeful relies on his wife and aides to show him things online or to read him email messages.

From The Top American Science Questions: 2012. Which starts with: "Whenever the people are well-informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with...

I've had it with Dr. Oz. Although I haven't seen his show today (for one thing, I work for a living; for another thing, even if I had today off I wouldn't...

tags: The Beagle Project, science, fund-raising, humor, streaming video

Fellow Yrekan Austin Sendek's quest to get "Hella" the official prefix for 1027 has scored a Googol-sized success. Err I mean a Google-sized success:

Let's leave aside decency and morality and try to forget that Romney eliminated funding for a gay teen suicide hotline to curry favor with the theopolitical...

Discovery.com recently reported two instances of animals manipulating sound to master their environments.

by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure on October 24, 2006

I just returned from the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, where 8,000 of conservation's "best and brightest" (along with plenty of the "most...

This is going to be uncharacteristically short, for me that is. I sometimes listen to NPR as I drive home from work, and I happened to be doing just that...

Back in September, I merrily applied a little not-so-Respectful Insolence to the service of deconstructing the overwhelmingly silly fear mongering by a group...

Is a familiar concept but also a page-turning pot-boiler by Thomas "just call me Tom" Bingham, which I'm in the middle of reading1.

So, you may or may not recall that last week, Matt Nisbet posted about a study purporting to show that religious people were more generous in their charitable...

Earlier today, President Barack Obama delivered a major speech on science policy to the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about it in my previous post....

Alex, Dan and John Wilkins have wise things to say about metaphors in biology, Big Biology and a recent article by Sir Paul Nurse.

Kevin Zelnio of Deep Sea News tweeted the title of this piece and sent my mind going over the various theories of citation,

Admirable restraint from a 16-year old. The policemen involved in the incident have no clue about their own guidance? A mighty stink must be raised.

Sunrise on the Maasai Mara, Kenya. Vearl Brown / Creative Commons

One of the tricky things to convey about rocks, especially in a lecture or in a textbook, is the way geologists can see such different things at different...

Two recent events put in stark relief the differences between the old way of doing things and the new way of doing things. What am I talking about? The...

There is a question on the World Values Survey which allows people to give a number corresponding to their position on a spectrum where 0 = "Ethnic diversity...

Imagine a book I would write. On viruses (what else?). Now, instead of it sounding like it was written by a chimpanzee who learned English from watching...

Back in October, I admitted a patient to the general medicine service with a three-week history of abdominal pain and progressively yellowing eyes. She was a...

Two music-related follow-up items: Over on her LiveJournal, Kate has a more complete concert report from the Springsteen show, including a full set list, and...

The more moral you believe yourself to be, the less moral you may be inclined to act, according to a new study in Psychological Science. Psychologists...

Registration for QIP 2009 is now open: QIP 2009 -- 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING - Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009....

The 2010 USA Science and Engineering Festival is the first of its kind: multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the...

tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, politics

So it would seem. West Nile is spreading beyond birds, horses and humans. A squirrel has tested positive for the virus and hundreds more are showing the same...

A few nights ago, Minnow was in the mood to make videos of some of her favorite books - almost any books, except ones with an overt scientific bent. Right now,...