My brother, who lives in Kentucky, very recently had similar corrective heart surgery as PZ’s. He sent me this video to pass on to PZ of what appears to be the latest trend in Kentucky health food, as well as the main novel food item that will be sold at the Kentucky State Fair which starts up in a day or two.

Continue reading PZ Myers new diet →

Click here to find out what it is.

Timely:

Investigations into research misconduct cost US institutions more than US$110 million per year, estimates a study published this week. But experts contacted by Nature question whether calculating the cost of investigation is the right way to measure the impact of research misconduct.

read the rest at Nature

The word on the street is that PZ Myers has been surgically updated and will return home soon, probably tomorrow. My understanding is that he received a stent, which is routine, but as long as they had him on the table they also upgraded his laser eye blaster tubes and retractable squid arm assemblies. So look out.

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,” Bess says.

Now, here’s the thing. I copied that from a story I found on the web, but the assholes who wrote the story did not have the courtesy to link to Marilyn’s blog! Imagine that!

So, here’s the reference to the site, so you can type in the URL. But I’m not going to make this easy for you because, well, they’re obviously assholes:

It’s at Philidelphia’s “citypaper” and the url is citypaper dot net slash articles two oh one oh oh eight one nine, with some backslahses in there where you might expect, followed by blogging business priviledge tax philidelphia but with dashes where I put spaces and stuff speld right. Good luck.

You know of DuWayne Brayton as the over the top highly opinionated commenter who is always giving everyone a hard time on this blog, or when not here, on his own blog. (Which, by the way, has recently undergone a style change, and I like it.)

Well, you may not know that DuWayne writes fiction now and then. Have a look at this piece, “Leaving.”

I’m afraid the people who really need to read this are not going to. So pass it around, please. It’s quite good .

But you can help. And there’s something in it for you.
Continue reading Eight Preventable Infant Deaths →

I am sad to report that it is indeed confirmed by official sources that primatologist Marc Hauser engaged in several instances of what is being termed misconduct while carrying out experiments in his lab.

Dean Michael Smith issued the following letter to members of the Harvard community today:
Continue reading Harvard Confirms Scientific Misconduct by Marc Hauser →

If you haven’t seen it, please check out this bit of dark comedy from PZ, who reveals that he will be undergoing unspecified probing and surgery. Medical science will be having its way with him over the next few days.

Go wish him well!

And now it is time for a new edition of Name that Organism. Each of the following photos was taken at Itasca State Park, except one. Extra points for naming which photo was not taken in the park.
Continue reading Name that organism →

September 2nd, in Atlanta, honoring Jeff Medkeff and run by the Atlanta Skeptics. Details here.

is HERE at Great Auk

Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design

Wanted: All toolbars that can be on top should also be able to be on bottom or side, in any software, any system, anywhere, and function properly while there.

See the whole “WANTED” list here.

…. Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something. …

CLICK THIS

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