Dung Beetle and Robot No. 023-027 “Chlorophyll”
CARTOON: Dung Beetle and Robot No. 023-027 “Chlorophyll”
1 January 2018 at 15:29 (DUNG BEETLE & ROBOT, Science)
CARTOON Dung Beetle and Robot No. 001-002 “Six Legs”
11 December 2017 at 21:49 (DUNG BEETLE & ROBOT, Insects & Arachnids, Science)
This is is the first of a new cartoon series full of silliness and science,
Dung Beetle and Robot No. 001-002 “Six Legs”
TWITTER: @AndreasBuzzing CARTOON: QUARK
17 November 2017 at 1:26 (Humor/ Fun Stuff, Science)
Tags: humor, humour, physics
Description: Six blocks of Quark cheese, labelled Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange, Charm.
It’s not all strawberry versus chocolate ice cream!
6 October 2012 at 19:48 (Cognitive biases, College/University, Communication, Critical Thinking, Epidemiology, Food, Logical fallacies, Politics, Pseudoscience, Science, Teaching/Tutoring, Vaccines)
Now, I am a mint-chip ice cream (-loving) person myself, and dismiss vanilla* for being merely useful as an ingredient base for other treats. And of course, I’m entitled to my opinion. In turn, you all are free to express your own opinions about flavours of ice cream, including your total disinterest in eating ice cream.
(* It may be that I lack some kind of flavour receptor[s] to fully perceive vanilla/vanillin, because no matter what sort of sweet or quality of material, vanilla has never seemed to be particularly interesting or tasty to me.)
But there are opinions and there are other opinions, and Patrick Stokes, Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University, teaches his students that they are not entitled to have their opinions.
In a recent article, “No, you’re not entitled to your opinion” he immediately acknowledges this sounds a bit harsh, but explains that the point of a philosophy class is learning how to create sound arguments, instead of leaning on beliefs, emotions, and misconceptions of what we think we know. Although opinions may be owned or expressed, not all opinions are equally valid.
Stokes skillfully distinguishes between the different things that fall under the vast umbrella of opinion:
But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.
It’s the conflating of being able to express one’s tastes, preferences, and beliefs — and then expecting those statements to be taken as seriously as fact-based, logically-sound argument — that is the major problem.
It is a major problem in everyday discourse, and in heated debates within and between countries, and it is an especially prevalent problem in various media. There’s the tired trope* of “getting balance” by interviewing “both sides” even though there are often more than just two sides (life is messy that way), and the problem that the opinions of both “sides” do not necessarily carry the same factual value (life is reality-based that way).
(* More on the problems with the news media and “balance” in my earlier post, “Both Sides Now”.)
Not all the information one finds or hears is equally valid. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”
Stokes further explains:
The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.
Wait a minute — can’t anyone have an opinion about anything? Of course!
Can’t anyone express their opinion about anything? Of course!*
(* Although it really helps if people take the time to ensure their protest signs are properly spelled and punctuated. Otherwise much hilarity ensues and one ends up with derisive and/or dismissive infamy rather than being taken seriously.)
But what unfounded opinion cannot do is carry equal weight when discussions require expertise.
Back to our ice cream opinions: I know that vanilla bean pods come from a variety of orchid, because that’s a tidbit of horticultural knowledge and I am a horticulturalist. Being a foodie, I have long known that vanillin was synthesized as a less-expensive alternative for use in commercial products, and that it is the primary ingredient in the artificially-flavoured vanilla extract sold at the market.
BUT, I cannot be an expert witness or speaker on vanilla.
Likely, neither can the majority of you.
Not on the cultivars, growing, agri-ecology, processing from raw material to diverse flavouring forms, business economics, grower’s social justice issues, distribution and packaging, artificial synthesis of vanillin, culinary chemistry, historical usage, future trends of natural versus artificial flavouring … none of that stuff. Nor anything else that didn’t come to mind, albeit I was able to come up with a longish list just because I have that horticultural background and was able to extrapolate what accessory topics could be included.
You are entitled to have and to express your opinion, but that does not mean it must to be taken as serious fact; pointing that out is not being disrespectful to you as a person — it means that your opinion is insufficient to the case.
‘Personal Opinion’ is not some cloak of factual immunity that one can wear to suddenly become a creditable expert.
(Oh, and speaking of public persons with opinions but who are not experts, guess who came along to comment upon Stokes’ article …)
What Would Molly Ivins Say?
8 July 2012 at 5:28 (Abuse, Critical Thinking, Epidemiology, Family, Parenting, Politics, Pseudoscience, Science, Teaching/Tutoring, Vaccines)
Oh, boy howdy! This article by Laura Hibbard, “Texas Republican Party Calls For Abstinence Only Sex Ed, Corporal Punishment In Schools” nearly made me choke on my cuppa tea. She described just a few of the details the 2012 Republican Party of Texas wants for their state schools. (The article also includes a nicely scrollable copy of their entire Platform Report.)
You know me, I’m a science person, with keen interests in education and social justice. And I was flabbergasted. It’s like a car crash — you can’t help but gawp in horrified fascination. Well, I had the day off work, so after a house-painting break, scanned through most of the document. It’s one thing to hear soundbites on the radio or in video, but quite another to actually be able to read an entire position. For one thing, it gives a person the chance to notice internal inconsistencies, and look things up.
In addition to the aforementioned items listed in the title of Hibbard’s article, the Texas GOP’s document lists a lot more in their “Educating Our Children” section. For example, they also want to eliminate preschool and kindergarten, and require daily pledges of allegiance to the US & Texas flags (because that somehow makes one patriotic).
Ooh, get this:
“Classroom Expenditures for Staff – We support having 80% of school district payroll expenses of professional staff of a school district be full-time classroom teachers.”
You realize that means giving the ability to hire a number of part-time classroom teachers (and paraprofessionals if they opt to include some) who can be paid WAY less, which will keep a district’s budget way down. “Fiscal responsibility” as a loophole for loading up on part-time staff. Who of course often don’t get benefits — unfortunately, a common practice in education and other industries. (Yes, I’m calling education an industry.)
And of course, this next incredible ::head-desk:: concept that (for me) underpins a great deal of their platform:
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
Because you know, mastering the subject material and learning how to think critically will undermine the GOP’s fixed beliefs and enable challenging authority. Any challenges to authority will be dealt with accordingly:
“Classroom Discipline –We recommend that local school boards and classroom teachers be given more authority to deal with disciplinary problems. Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas.”
Under the “Promoting Individual Freedom and Personal Safety” section, this concept continues as, Read the rest of this entry »
I’m picking up good fermentations
23 March 2012 at 5:07 (Anti-Quackery, Food, OMG, Science)
… but the Woo is giving off bad vibrations!
OhMyGosh the world is full of idiots! Tonight I was stocking over in the health foods section, which is either a great place (for our large selection of gluten-free products for coeliacs) or a magnet for all people woo-stricken.
A woman came to the grocery wanting “bread made without yeast” — I gestured to the big display of matzo (unleavened for Passover), but no, she wants loaf bread, but without yeast so her son “doesn’t get yeast infections”. I tried to explain they’re not even the same kinds of yeast, and it’d be dead after the bread’s baked anyway, but NO-O-O-O…
[facepalm]
Yeasts are a kind of fungus: yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae is necessary for yeast-breads, beer and wine fermentation. For sourdough breads, a variety of wild yeast Candida milleri plus acid-producing bacteria Lactobacillus sanfrancisco that gives the dough the distinctive “tang”.
For our confused customer, the yeast infection [mouth, digestive tract, vagina] is from an entirely different fungus, Candida albicans.
If you’re curious, the fuzzy black stuff that grows on bread is a mold, Rhizopus nigricans. Molds are another kind of fungus. Yummy blue cheeses [Maytag blue, Dana-blu, Gorgonzola, Roquefort, Stilton] are made possible from the mold Penicillium roqueforti or Penicillium glaucum that were naturally present in the [naturally cool] caves where the cheeses were made & aged. (Nowadays the cheese wheels are injected with the appropriate mold). A few people with Penicillin antibiotic allergy may have a reaction to blue cheeses, but the quantity of the material is so much smaller in the cheese, it is rarely a problem.
I almost mentioned yogurt as a source of probiotics — I was “this close” — but refrained. Trying to add bacteria to her mental mix of Bad Things We Can’t Pronounce & Must Avoid would have been too much for the both of us.
Related to fungi (well, related just in the sense of small organisms helpful to food), are bacteria. Most of the bacteria that exist in the world are neutral to humans, and many are beneficial. Only a relatively small number are responsible for bacterial infections. Truth be told, we NEED bacteria, because they are responsible for the fermentation processes that turn raw food items into different, processed food items that have better/different flavor, are more digestible, and store for long periods of time. Some examples of these great bacteria include: Read the rest of this entry »
V1brat0rs for Ensuring All Your Cucumber Needs
11 September 2011 at 22:34 (Gardening, Geeks, Humor/ Fun Stuff, Insects & Arachnids, Science)
Bug G. Membracid recently had a radio show appearance! (Is it called an “appearance” when you’re on a wireless programme and no one can see you? Nevermind.)
But it featured her line about honeybees being ”little flying phalluses” – which is really funny when you remember that worker honeybees are girls!
That in turn reminded me of a story during a horticultural study tour to a Dutch production greenhouse …
Tomatoes and peppers do not need insects to transfer pollen between flowers, as the flowers are “perfect” (have both male & female parts). But for the pollen to get moved/bumped from the pistils to the stigma there still needs to be some kind of wind or other vibration.
There’s not enough wind for this to naturally happen (or rather, efficiently happen) in a greenhouse, especially when the panes are shut to the weather. So it used to be that the operators would equip their greenhouse workers with *little vibrating wands* (oh yes), which they used to buzz-pollinate Every. Single. Fresh. Flower. (Insert inevitable sniggers from the undergrads.) Of course, that’s a lot of paid worker hours.
Nowadays the thrifty Dutch use bumblebees, who work for much cheaper wages of cardboard nesting boxes and some supplemental nectar. The big, gentle bees still visit all the flowers for the pollen, and resultant heavy buzzing results in flower fertilization for good crops.
[N.B. Derf; “cucumbers in the title is incorrect – they DO need to be insect pollinated! Except of course for the parthenogenetic cukes, which basically set fruit by a sort of “virgin birth” process…]
Science Rules!
26 February 2011 at 2:30 (Anti-Quackery, Autism/Asperger's, Science)
One of my favorite blogs has another great one:
Under pressure
5 February 2011 at 4:24 (Migraine, Pain, Science)
(We keep our dish soap on the counter, in a small pump bottle to meter out doses, and to use less counter space.)
So I go into the kitchen to catch up on some dishwashing, and find a small puddle of goo on the counter. “Is the barometric pressure dropping?” I ask the family as I sponge it up, and proceed to do my washing-up.
“It’s supposed to snow on Sunday,” answers my son-in-law.
Well, that explains a lot. Firstly, the reason the soap has drooled onto the counter is because the barometric pressure outside the bottle is now lower than inside the bottle. (I filled and re-sealed it a couple days ago.) The fluid seeps out because fluids go from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure.*
Out of typical insatiable curiosity (“More input!”), I then check out my local weather data site. This explains the second question. No wonder I have a headache; the barometric pressure has dropped about 15 millibars in the past day, from the general maxima down to the general minima. Barometric pressure hoo-hahs are one of my headache/migraine triggers.
Sometimes I wish I lived on the space station, where the air pressure is kept constant. (Besides, I could grow my veggies, herbs and flowers without all the dang pests.)
* AKA “Why do we have to learn this stuff?” Well, now you know — no one squeezed dish soap onto the counter and left a mess; it happened because of natural forces.
Naturally, I love chemicals!
1 February 2010 at 3:26 (Critical Thinking, Pain, Science)
This is a continuation on my previous post, “Attention, grocery shoppers!”
So the other night my daughter was complaining of her ingrown toenail that’s been bothering her for the past month.
“Why don’t you soak your foot in Epsom Salts?” I suggested.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“See that blue milk carton atop the fridge?” (That’s where we keep our first-aid/pharmacopeia.) “It’s magnesium sulfate*. Bath salts. It’ll help draw out the inflammation and such.”
“Salt?!” She winced
“Mineral salt, not sodium chloride table salt,” I added, while refraining from explaining about ionic bonds. Her hubby the medic prepared her a foot soak and explained that magnesium sulfate is a natural mineral salt that’s mined and used for all sorts of things.
While she soothed her cold, sore feet in warm water, I had a mental chuckle over “natural chemical”. To many people, the two words are antonyms — and very distant opposites at that. As I’ve said before, a “chemical” is simply a substance with a defined composition. Minerals are chemicals. So are sugar, water, caffeine, theobromine (mn chocolate), baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), all the ingredients in your can of soda, and so on.
Natural means that something is found in nature, with or without some processing. Apple juice and olive oil are natural because they squeeze the bejeezus out of those fruits. (Botanically, fruits are the parts of the plants with the seeds inside; olives and tomatoes are vegetables insofar as cookery and taxation are concerned.) Vanilla extract is a natural flavor because vanilla beans are used. Other natural flavors use plant and animal products.
Artificial, which is what many people really mean by the word “chemical”, means a substance produced synthetically. In my organic chemistry lab, we made (minute) quantities of isopentyl acetate, which most of us are familiar with as artificial banana flavor used in candies or instant puddings. Imitation banana flavor is obviously pretty fake! But imitation wintergreen is not so readily identifiable, nor is it dissimilar from naturally-distilled wintergreen essence, aside from the fact that the natural distillation will have additional “impurities” that add more depth to the flavor.
The divisions between natural and artificial are fairly straight-forward. But the definitions of “organic” aren’t! That’s because we have different meanings for the word organic in different contexts.
Once Upon A Time, O Best Beloved, there was just chemistry, that field of natural philosophy that the scientific method dragged out of the abyss of alchemy. Organic materials were those which came from natural sources, and were deemed special and beyond the production of the laboratory; they were somehow still deemed to have a “vital force”. However, in the early 19th century, urea (yes, the stuff of urine) was artificially synthesized, thus dispelling that last thread of medievalism.
Nowadays, organic chemistry occupies itself with materials composed of hydrocarbons, that is, molecules with both Carbon and Hydrogen atoms. So instead of natural materials, there are a lot of well, unnatural materials involved, such as plastics, drugs, fertilizers, house paints … ordinary everyday stuff, most of which we wouldn’t want to live without.
In addition to the chemistry definition of organic, we have a couple of other usages. When I’m teaching about composting, we use the term organic in its original sense of “from something living”. If it used to be alive, you can compost it and create lovely humus (although fatty things will smell, so we leave meats & dairy items out).
Organic gardening and farming is yet another story. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides cannot be used, and transgenic plants are most always frowned upon as well. (I have mixed feelings about transgenics; not about the processes, which are simply more specific means of breeding, but about other economic and agro-ecological issues.)
Unfortunately, the history of organic growing is fraught with heavy doses of woo, including planting by moon-signs, astrology, companion planting, and whatnot. Fortunately, the professional realm has abandoned these, because professional growers have a lot of energy, money, time and effort invested (and of course, documentation work, because nothing officially exists without documentation). They can’t afford to waste time on nonsense. Unfortunately for the gardening end, lots of this woo still propagates through the vacuum of teh interwebs.
Last on my list of definitions is the oft-misapplied sense that anything “natural” or “organic” must therefore be safe. This is bullshit. There are lots of natural poisons!
Conversely, artificial does not automatically mean dangerous. For example we’ve been using synthetic acetylsalicylic acid (commonly known as aspirin) for decades, instead of the salicylic acid derived from willow bark that was painful to swallow and digest. The name salicylic acid comes from the genus Salix, in reference to the willow. (Interestingly, wintergreen flavoring can be made from … aspirin!)
There are many organic materials that can be derived both naturally or artificially, and the molecules have no magical memory about where they came from previously. A nitrate is a nitrate is a plant fertilizer, and a pan’s a pan for all that.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to nom on some banana Laffy Taffy.
* Technically magnesium sulfate heptahydrate, for chemists and those who actually care — you know who you are.
“Attention grocery shoppers!”
24 January 2010 at 6:09 (Anti-Quackery, Arthritis, Auditory Processing Disorder, Critical Thinking, Food, Hypermobility, Prosopagnosia, Science, Work / Employment)
“We have a special going on in our natural foods aisle, right now! You can get your specialty questions answered by our very own over-educated scientist-grocery stocker! That’s right, weekends and evenings only, over in our natural foods aisle! And THANK YOU for shopping your local supermarket chain grocery!”
Oh, boy.
It’s one thing to be helping someone find the curious location where the grocery manager decided to stock the barley. No, not with the rice and beans — that’d be too easy; it’s with the bouillon.
And it’s another thing — but I get ahead of myself. (Alas, when I do that I’m likely to trip over my own feet and sprain an ankle, but that’s hypermobility for you).
One evening, every other row of fluorescent lights was off, as was the canned music. Apparently they were filming a commercial or some advertising stills. Whatever, we had a couple hours of bliss. Why can’t the store be so calm and pleasant all the time? Because the people who study customer behavior say that noise and lights are important. Or maybe the grocery industry just thinks that noise and lights are important. Or maybe old research suggested such. Or maybe stores are following some historical misinterpretation of behavioral research. Hell if I know. As for me, the canned music just adds unnecessary background noise, aggravating my Auditory Processing Disorder. Did someone just page Manager to the Customer Service Desk or Andrea to the Customer Service Desk? Did my boss just page me to dial 14 or aisle 14? “Oops, sorry, mis-heard you with all the background noise,” I apologise to an older gentleman, as I lead him away from the [recycled paper] brown plates to the bran flakes.
Sometimes a customer will ask for something not on the shelf, so I helpfully zip down to the back room to see if there’s any in backstock. Usually, there isn’t, because by definition, backstock is the overflow that won’t fit on the shelves. Alas, if I’m in a distracted mood, I will forget to make a mental note of what the customer is wearing, and upon my return, will have that panicked second when I realise that they have moved onto another aisle, and I am supposed to find them. Oh, the perils of being faceblind: I can’t remember people! Were they alone, or with another adult, or children? Did they have a large or small cart? Do I have any idea of whether they were male, female, or some overbundled or indeterminately-coiffed gender? Were they were pink- or brown-skinned? Hat? Fancy purse? Team jacket? Why can’t everyone be as distinctive as the fellow who dressed like Eddie Izzard’s less-chic sibling?
My other problem of course, is that I actually answer the questions about the things we sell. Some day, someone is going to get annoyed.
Once in a while I stock groceries over in the natural foods section. It’s pretty much like stocking groceries over in the unnatural foods section, except that omitting artificial coloring makes food more expensive. That and the aisles are narrower, so I have to park the flatbed down at the ends of the aisles and lug more cases. One day I forgot my knee pads, and realised with a heavy note of irony that stocking all the arthritis treatments was making my knees ache.
“Um, where do you sell the sugar?”
“The sugar?” I repeat, buying a moment’s time while I re-engage my customer-conversation scripts, and activate my mental map of the store.
“Yes, I want the sugar without any chemicals.”
Omigod. Aside from bottled water, the bags of sugar are probably one of the purest chemical resources in the entire store.
“But sugar is just sucrose; it doesn’t have any added chemicals,” I manage to shut my mouth before going onto explain that sucrose is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. Nobody cares … “Here are our organically-grown sugars on this shelf. And we also have sucanat and turbinado, if you’d like.” (These latter two are less-processed forms of cane sugar; they have varying amounts of tasty molasses impurities that also make them brown.)
Honestly, a “chemical” is simply a substance with a defined composition. You already know what H2O is. Sucrose is C12H22O11 – there are 12 Carbon molecules, 22 Hydrogen molecules and 11 Oxygen molecules. Of course, just knowing how many atoms of each element isn’t enough – other sugars such as lactose and maltose also have the same formula. The differences are in how those atoms are arranged.
And if you’re shopping for plant fertilizer, a nitrate is a nitrate is a nitrate, and they’re all NO3-. The plant doesn’t care where the molecules came from, nor can it tell the difference if the nitrate came from an organic (naturally-derived) source or an artificially-manufactured source. That said, organic fertilizers are more expensive and less concentrated, but are less likely to result in a build-up of salts atop the potting soil.
But please, don’t ask me for anything “chemical-free”; the only thing that is “chemical free” is an absolute vacuum.
I retrieve random things left on the shelves, where someone has left a box of Big Name mac & cheese amongst the organic mac & cheese, a shopping list, a wee sample cup given out by the guy flogging new flavors of hummus, and a box of Airborne.
“What does that do?” asks the other grocery stocker, gesturing at the colorful box that proclaimed, “Created by a school teacher!”
“Nothing. There’s no research evidence to support it at all. A grade-school teacher is not the same thing as a compounding pharmacologist.” Were I in charge of ordering, we wouldn’t waste shelf space for nonsense like that, or for things like Bragg vinegar that is supposed to “help remove body sludge toxins”. Body sludge toxins, what nonsense! (I suppose it’d help the lime buildup in my sink drain.)
“Excuse me, where are your all-natural gummy candies?”
Because you know, gummy candies are so natural. Wow, I’d love to have a shrub that produced gummies, especially the cherry and liquorice sorts. Does the soil have to be aerated by gummy worms? I hope it’s not thorny … “They’re over here, on the top shelf. Is there anything else for which you’re looking?”
“Attention grocery shoppers! Are you looking for holiday candy and merchandise? You can find it all over in aisle 14, where we have a wide selection of holiday candies in Fun Sizes, all your same favorites as the last holiday, but wrapped in this holiday’s color themes! Don’t forget to get some holiday-themed merchandise for your loved ones, and holiday-themed party goods as well. And THANK YOU for shopping your local supermarket chain grocery!”
First on the Scene
5 July 2009 at 4:25 (Epidemiology, Insects & Arachnids, Science)
A shiny green fly sponging up nectar from a fennel flower head
The other day I was out in the garden taking pictures when a shiny green fly caught my attention. Green bottle flies (Diptera, family Calliphoridae, genus Lucilia) are a bit larger than the ordinary house fly. The adults feed on nectar and are pollinators, but because of their life histories, they fill some really interesting roles in the realms of human sciences.
One piece of news I found particularly interesting is related to newer use of Lucilia illustris in Maggot Debridement Therapy. This $50 term refers to putting young maggots on a wound because will consume only dead tissue — fear not, they are reared under clean laboratory conditions.
[Pausing for readers to get past the “Eeuw, gross!” moment before moving onto the really interesting stuff.]
The news is that these larvae are exceptionally good at helping patients recover from bad MRSA infections. A University Manchester study found that thirteen diabetic patients with nasty foot sores were able to heal up in an average of just 3 weeks, instead of the usual 28 weeks! Not only do they clean up the dead cells that would just fester and decay, but they also get rid of the bacteria directly, and help stimulate the healing process. As the article points out, this means that patients don’t have to deal with some of the side effects of strong antibiotics. My daughter has dealt with several staph infections, including an episode of MRSA, so this ranks a big w00t!
Yes, these are the same sort of fly larvae, AKA blow flies, that help clean up dead animals in the environment. Not only do the larvae need the nutrients from dead animal tissue to grow and mature, but the females need the extra maternal protein for egg production. (Unfortunately, they are also pests in the world of sheep ranching.)
Which leads us to another famous use of flies, forensic entomology. Calliphorid flies are attracted to blood or other fluids, and are the first to colonize a corpse. The rates of maturation for various species of flies have been extensively studied. By examining the age of the larvae, comparing this with the conditions where the body was found, and the known temperature data to calculate the Accumulated Degree Days, the Post Mortem Interval or PMI can be determined. The PMI is how long it has been since the person died.
Blow flies may be “icky”, but the smallest of details can make great differences in the affairs of humans.
“To Serve Man”
21 April 2009 at 4:25 (Gardening, Insects & Arachnids, OMG, Politics, Science)
Holy Crap.
So why am I taking Crap’s name in vain? This bang-head-here piece of news:
Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Kenner, has filed Senate Bill 115 on behalf of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Conference lobbyist Danny Loar said the bill is designed to be a “pre-emptive strike” against scientists who might want to mix “human and animal cells in a Petri dish for scientific research purposes”
(Shouldn’t that be human and other animal cells? What am I, a petunia?)
So, if this mosquito sucks my blood, and I squish her and drop her (with my blood cells inside her) onto a Petri dish, would that be illegal?
a mosquito sucking blood from my arm
Yeah, they’re trying to prevent stem-cell research; but come on, no one is going to make centaurs or Fly-Human monsters or Playboy bunnies. And I don’t believe that theoretical smear of biological mush I’ve just rubbed onto the agar contains crumbs of my soul in the red white blood cells, nor did any of my eggs (fertilized or otherwise) that were shed over my lifetime.
When I teach a class on seed-starting and we are talking about how to take cuttings of coleus, geraniums, Swedish ivy, or rosemary, I describe how we stick them in rooting hormone (if needed), and then in media to grow more of the same kind of plant. I tell my students, “You’ve just cloned a plant. It’s genetically identical to the parent plant.”
Coleus cuttings rooting in water-filled champagne flutes on a window sill
I then go on to explain in brief (as this is a non-credit class), that there are dormant cells in those plant stems that can grow into any kind of cell, such as a root cell. Because plants have these “totipotent” cells that can become any other kind of cell, we can take cuttings and roots will grow where there were no roots before.
We can also cut the very tip of the stem off, place it into culture medium with tiny amounts of plant hormones, and encourage those cells to grow into lots more cells — and that’s another way how plants are cloned, by using tissue culture to produce hundreds and thousands of the same plant, and they’re even free of diseases and pests.
Clear plastic box containing dozens of tiny plantlets from tissue culture
Gee, if we could take a few cells from people, we could grow you new skin for burn victims, new livers for people with liver cancer, and so on. Best of all, those pieces of tissue or organs would not be rejected by the body because they would not be foreign cells, the would be your own. (Nor would you need heavy doses of drugs to suppress your immune system to keep it from reacting to the foreign donor organs.)
But we can’t, because although plants have totipotent cells, we don’t. After a certain stage in development, we don’t have these stem cells. (I pause for a couple of seconds, and it’s great to see the “light bulb effect” pass through the room as people get the concept.)
Ooh, human cells with other cells, scary. Do the bishops not realise that each human is an entire ecosystem, with millions of bacteria in our guts and on our skin, and an astonishing number of infinitesimal mites living on our eyelashes and brows? Do they not realise that their mitochondria has its own DNA, different than the nuclear DNA? Do they not realise that we already use genetic recombinant technology to make insulin for diabetics?
Um by the way, isn’t this piece of legislation mixing government and religion in a Petri dish?
Hope against fear
20 January 2009 at 22:18 (Advocacy, Politics, Science, Teaching/Tutoring)
I rarely get choked up listening to speeches. I’m just not a terribly sentimental person as far as patriotic stuff goes.
Except for this bit from Obama’s inauguration speech today:
We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.
Oh, I do hope so!
Fruit flies like a banana
2 November 2008 at 16:04 (Autism/Asperger's, Developmental disabilities, Insects & Arachnids, Learning Disabilities, Politics, Science)
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”
Some of my special interests are insects, science and special education. The three subjects rarely intersect, but you can bet that when they do, it’s going to be interesting! Populist politics is once again — or rather — still degenerating into vast bogs of anti-intellectualism. As noted across many news-editorial and science blogs, Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin positively excels at scorning science. It shows up not only in her stump speeches, but also in her belief in young-earth creationism and stance on teaching Intelligent Design in classrooms. One of the latest foofaraws is her denunciation of funding for research on fruit flies.
“You’ve heard about some of these pet projects, they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good,” Palin said. “Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.” [YouTube link]
What does Palin have against this line of science? Well, that’s a bit puzzling, especially when we look at the subject of her first policy speech. The VP candidate was talking about special education services and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). But all the pro-funding talk was a bit of a turn-around for the Alaskan governor, who had previously cut the funding for Special Olympics in half.
What really stood out is that within her speechifying, the intent of her points about science funding collided with the actual content of part of what she was saying. Palin was (among other things) advocating for Read the rest of this entry »
How to Swat a Fly
25 October 2008 at 18:30 (Behaviour management, Insects & Arachnids, Science)
Some of this is not breaking news, but some is. When I was watching someone in another classroom in futile pursuit of said dastardly, dirty diptera, I realised that there is a lot of interesting science behind successful swatting.
Flies are hard to swat for a number of reasons. They avoid predation by both sensory detection and behavioral responses. With its large eyes, a fly can see nearly 360°, including behind itself. This means that it’s nearly impossible to “sneak up” on a fly. Because an insect’s flicker fusion frequency is 250 Hertz or more (compared to the human 50), they are vastly more sensitive to motion. Flies can see a flyswatter coming at them, no matter how slow or fast you move it. As anyone who has ever examined their prey has noted, flies are also hairy. These “hairs” (setae) make them sensitive to changes in ambient air speed and direction — they can feel the acceleration of the air from the pressure wave created by the flyswatter.
Michael Dickinson and others at the California Institute of Technology have recently teased out other details to the flys’ success. They used high-speed imaging to discover that Read the rest of this entry »
The sum of good intentions
11 October 2008 at 12:55 (Anti-Quackery, Critical Thinking, Developmental disabilities, Learning Disabilities, Medical Quackery, Politics, Science)
Feel free to insert the more familiar or acceptable word of your choice. But regardless of your word choice, the equation stands:
Good Intentions plus Bullshit still equals Bullshit
It doesn’t matter if you are a parent earnestly trying to help your child improve lagging developmental skills — if the information you are disseminating to newbies or news agencies is based upon bogus treatments and world-wide conspiracy theories, then the information you are giving others is still bullshit. (Example: vaccines cause autism and/or dozens of unproven “cures” for all sorts of developmental/educational difficulties.)
It doesn’t matter if you are an elected official trying to get funding for projects that could potentially improve the local economy — if your cherry-picked “experts” assert that there are no ecological problems, but the overwhelming majority of experts from agencies around the world say there will be serious consequences, then your assertions are still bullshit. (Example: Sarah Palin on global warming, oil pipelines, and polar bears.)
It doesn’t matter if you are a news reporter trying to ensure “balanced coverage” of a story by quoting from “both sides” — when one of those “sides” lacks credibility and just presents distraught protagonists ranting over perceived injustices because fact-based reality keeps intruding upon belief systems based upon magical thinking and millenia-old folk tales, then your editorial judgment is weak and the news is full of bullshit. Respecting others’ feelings and beliefs does not mean that those should usurp sound legislative, educational or economic practices, or be allowed to trump everyone’s civil rights. (Example, Creationism/Intelligent Design being taught in science classes.)
Nope; the earnestness and good intentions part cannot gloss over the huge piles of bullshit. Crap is still crap, and the best thing we can do with crap is to put it with the rest of the dead stuff and compost it, until the bacteria and worms and arthropods have broken it down into something useful.
Maths * Chem = Ranting^2
10 May 2008 at 17:20 (Attribution Errors, Communication, Mathematics And Statistics, Rants, Science, Teaching/Tutoring, Uncategorized)
Tags: Uncategorized
Why are so many math books poorly written? Even many of the physical sciences books seem to have this terrible dichotomy between the text explaining the concepts, and the text explaining the calculations. I suspect it’s partly because one person is writing the conceptual text, and another person is writing the calculations text. I also suspect it is because both are written by people who are naturally good at the subject, just like most maths, chem, and physics teachers are naturally good at the subject.
Well, you do want people teaching who are good at the subject. But as many of us have noticed, being naturally good at something frequently results in people who cannot understand why others aren’t equally good at it. Once in a while those adepts become snobbish, because obviously the rest of the world just isn’t smart enough to get the stuff like they are. Many of the others simply have little patience with students who “must be stupid because they can’t figure out easy things” and can’t understand the material from having the previous explanation repeated again.
Duh! If it didn’t make sense the first time around, why would repeating the same explanation make any more sense the second or third time around? What we really need is Read the rest of this entry »
New season, eternal science illiteracy
21 April 2008 at 1:27 (Cognitive biases, Rants, Science, Teaching/Tutoring)
Well, it’s spring for sure because the frogs and toads have been singing, the daffodils and dandelions and forsythia are blooming, and it’s impossible to keep my nails clean. Earlier today I was able to get this shot of the chief noisemaker from the backyard pondette; it’s the American Toad (cleverly named Bufo americanus, which means American Toad).
Seeing him trilling reminded me of an incident just a few years ago when I was at a gardening function. A group of us were touring some gardens, one of which had a little pond. All of a sudden, one of the Teetery Old Garden Club Ladies* let out an agitated squeal and began dithering around in circles, begging others for assistance.
She was pointing to Read the rest of this entry »
Love Bug
15 February 2008 at 15:28 (Community, Geeks, Humor/ Fun Stuff, Science)
I love a good debunking! Bug Girl has an appropriately geeky and humorous Skeptic’s Circle #80, “The Valentine Edition” going on over at her blog. Go check it out!
My Own Dream
21 January 2008 at 20:12 (Advocacy, College/University, Diversity, Medical Quackery, Pseudoscience, Science, Teaching/Tutoring)
Here in the States, today is Martin Luther King Jr Day, a “bank holiday” honoring the civil rights leader. This means that as a school employee, I get the day off, which in turn means that I have the opportunity to not only contemplate civil rights, but also run errands to places I can’t go because my work hours are the same as their business hours. The exceptions of course are my bank where I need to visit my safe box, and a couple of colleges where I need to visit with people about getting teaching certification. Holy conundrums, Batman!
Anyway, reading through the news brought several things to my attention, and helped clarify some of my own dream for humanity, especially with regards to both diversity in academia and the rest of the work world, the academic responsibility for preparing our students, and the social and political valuation of real science.
Firstly there is the need Read the rest of this entry »
Sn*wed under
18 January 2008 at 4:32 (Anti-Quackery, Community, Science)
Sn*w day for the kids today. Meanwhile, college classes have started, and colleges rarely shut down no matter what the weather. That means I’m temporarily snowed under coming and going. So bop on over to The Skeptical Surfer’s blog for very humorous Skeptics’ Circle #78: The “Still High From The Chelation” Edition. (And remember, don’t believe everything you read ::wink:: )
My Favourite Oxymorons (and other “woo”)
17 January 2008 at 3:08 (Critical Thinking, Humor/ Fun Stuff, Insects & Arachnids, Science, Teaching/Tutoring)
And now for something light, because it’s been heavy blogging lately, and there’s more around the corner.
Once Upon A TIme I used to be a newspaper proofreader. And once a proofreader, always a pain in the ass, because I pay attention to the wording of the things I read (and hear). Here are some things that drive me abso-bloomin-lutely-nutz, from the realms of horticulture, entomology, and the exciting intersection, er, catastrophic collision of science and marketing. Disclaimer: these are all my own unbiased opinions.
Some years ago, a student came in and said that she wanted a “carefree garden”, one that bloomed all the time and required virtually no care. I blinked a few times in disbelief and could only reply, “Plastic?”
There’s always good, clean dirt. Although a person can have fumigated soil or “sterile” seedling media (that’s nursery-sterile, not surgically sterile, meaning free of pests and pathogens), but dirt by definition is what gets tracked across the kitchen floor, lodged under your fingernails, or ground into the knees of your pants. “Detoxifying mud bath” should join that for all-around absurdity.
Then there’s trying to explain to my students Read the rest of this entry »
Both Sides Now
11 January 2008 at 4:29 (Anti-Quackery, Communication, Rants, Science)
I hate hearing about “both sides” in news pieces. It’s not that I don’t want to hear what people have to say; rather, my complaint is with the whole idea of “presenting both sides”.
I should note that I’ve been a freelance writer for various local and national publications. So let me explain a bit about what the press does before I explain the reasons for my statement.
Journalists and reporters are encouraged to find stories that fill a number of requirements; depending upon their editors’ preferences, they may be looking for background to current events, introducing new discoveries, showing the personal sides to big events, exposing wrongdoing, educating the public, describing controversy, or providing inspiration. (I find it somewhat disheartening that the press is so slanted toward “stories” rather than “news”. I think this reflects a lot of the emphasis on warm-fuzzy human interest elements at the expense of focusing on actual information. Maybe I’m just a jaded scientist, but I like more details and verified facts in my news.) Of course, most news items stories combine several of these aspects.
There are a variety of different kinds of journalists and reporters. Some journalists have large amounts of specialised background in particular fields that they use to understand, put into context, and interpret the news, which enables them to know how to sift through information, evaluate it and present it in a manner that is intelligible to people who aren’t as well-versed.
In contrast, many live media reporters tend to have more background in the presentation of the news, and frequently have to reduce an hour or more of recording down to just a few minutes of “sound bites” arranged in the popular three part news-program format of: When we return, we’ll tell you this amazing news; Here I am telling you this amazing news; and My co-anchor just told you this amazing news.
Okay, you were probably aware of most of that. But to get those Controversies! and New Discoveries! and Inspiring Personal Stories! and Expose Wrongdoings! (excuse me, Expose Alleged Wrongdoings!), they frequently follow the dictate of getting quotes and information from both sides. Of course, sources who can deliver “sexy” sound-bites are especially preferred by live media reporters.
So what’s wrong with presenting both sides? We want balanced reporting, right? Read the rest of this entry »
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