Bad Science

Science has a problem.

Not only are there numerous folks dedicated to its destruction as a paradigm of understanding reality, there is an entirely new phenomena.

It seems that the open access movement (to make scholarly publications freely available) afforded by the internet has facilitated an entire parallel world of pseudo-academia, complete with impressively titled conferences and journals. Many have names that are nearly identical to those of established publications and events. Here is a quote from a New York Times article.....

"The number of these journals and conferences has exploded in recent years as scientific publishing has shifted from a traditional business model for professional societies and organizations built almost entirely on subscription revenues to open access, which relies on authors or their backers to pay for the publication of papers online, where anyone can read them."

Yes, you read that correctly. The authors and presenters are charged to publish in these "journals" and present at these "conferences" and then they use them to pad their résumés.

It's bad enough that certain American politicians are working hard to undermine scientific endeavor, but does the world at large have to help?

There is hope. The journal Nature has noted “the rise of questionable operators” and has suggested that a black list be created. One such list is already available from research librarian Jeffrey Beall from the University of Colorado in Denver.

Almost Half Of The World’s Languages Are Endangered

I have written several times about the tragedy of languages going extinct. We lose one language about every three months and when it is gone an entire idea base goes with it.

Now comes a report from the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Project that half of the Earth's remaining languages are in danger of becoming extinct.  447 (almost 10%) are spoken by 10 or less and on the brink of extinction and 3176 are endangered.

What's worse is that it is possible that up to 90% of the world's languages will be dead by the year 2100.

Click here to go to an interactive map of threatened languages around the world.

Generated Paper

Do you need graph paper? Music staff paper? Templates? Tic-tac-toe paper?

Then Generated Paper is the place to go. They have all sorts of down-loadable (is that a real word?) files for generating almost any kind of grid, graph or lined paper you can imagine.

Fun Time! The Art Of Harvey Kurtzman!

If you were a kid in the 1960s, it was practically impossible to avoid MAD Magazine. Brilliantly satirical and innocently subversive, MAD helped kids understand the world they were growing up into.

Here is a short documentary featuring artists Al Jaffee (he did the fold-in pages on the back cover) and Robert Grossman (he did many of the front covers) talking about the inception of MAD and the magazine's creator, Harvey Kurtzman. They also show you where the origin of the publications mascot, Alfred E. Neumann.

Outdoor Living Japanese Style

Here's a link to a photo spread on the website Spoon & Tango of a beautiful home in Tokyo, Japan. The city is the most crowded on the planet and the owner wanted to take advantage of the outdoors and had requested an “open house” with a courtyard and roof terrace.

Landfill Harmonic - Making Music From Trash

Cateura, Paraguay is a slum built on a landfill. That's two strikes, but the inhabitants are certainly not out.

Nicolás Gómez is a humble garbage picker. What is a garbage picker, you ask? A garbage picker is "a person who salvages reusable or recyclable materials thrown away by others to sell or for personal consumption." That's from Wikipedia.

Mr. Gomez is also a luthier.

Favio Chávez is a musician who works on a recycling program in Cateura and seeing the needs of the children of the area, he decided to start a music school. That was the beginning of the Recycled Orchestra and is what brought the two men together.

Mr. Gómez creates the instruments from scavenged trash and Sr. Chávez teaches the kids to make music. 

Below is a short video about their endeavor. It is from a Kickstarter project to finish a documentary and help the orchestra tour internationally. I am supporting this project. How about you?

Travel Photo of the Week

"I love that dirty water. Boston, you're my home."

Too Much Lead Found In Imported Rice

The effects of lead in the brain on cognition is well documented. Now comes word that unacceptable levels of the element are being found in rice imported from Asia, Europe and South America.

At the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, a group of researchers lead by Tsanangurayi Tongesayi announced the results of their analysis of rice from Asia, Europe and South America and he said that from what the team studied, it seems that the contamination is coming from contaminated soils and irrigation waters.

As certain populations consume more of the grain, it is estimated that Asian infants and children in the U.S. could be exposed to lead at 60 to 120 times higher than the FDA’s provisional total tolerable intake.Young children under six years old are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can impair mental and physical development and also be fatal.

Rice from Taiwan and China contained the highest levels of lead, with rice from Italy, India, Thailand, Bhutan and the Czech Republic also containing levels higher than the maximum amount before contaminant exposure causes potentially toxic or adverse health effects.

My question is, when will we come to the realization that our industrial processes are poisoning our food?

Here's more from Time's Health and Family webpage.

Kepler’s Tally of Planets

From the New York Times Space and Cosmos webpage comes a tally of planets discovered by NASA's  Kepler mission. I've only included a part of the page with our solar system tacked on to the bottom for comparison. Click here to see the entire Times' interactive page for more systems and detail.

OBEY THE GIANT - The Shepard Fairey Story

Shepard Fairey is the person behind one of my favorite subversive art memes, OBEY GIANT, seen here to the right. Here is a short film by director Julian Marshall about Fairey and the creation of an idea that has spread around the world.

Fun Time! Balloon Sculptures!

Jason Hackenworth creates huge sculptures from balloons. Here's a link to his website and a link to a Flickr page containing more photos from his exhibit a the Edinburgh International Science Festival in the Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland.

Is Organic Better? Ask A Fruit Fly!

This is going to stir up some stuff.

When middle school student Ria Chhabra heard her parents arguing about the whether organic foods had more nutrition and health benefits, she decided to do a science fair project that, three years later, has earned her top honors in a national science competition, publication in a respected scientific journal and university laboratory privileges that are normally reserved only for graduate students.

Her paper, “Organically Grown Food Provides Health Benefits to Drosophila Melanogaster,” tracked the effects of organic and conventional diets on the health of fruit flies.

The long and the short of it? The fruit flies fed organically grown bananas and potatoes grew bigger, lived longer, exhibited more fertility and had better resistance to stress than than fruit flies fed conventionally grown diets.

And although fruit flies are not human, this settles it for me. Here's a link the the New York Times Health and Science article where I picked this up.

The Magic Of Vedic Math

Take a math lesson from Gaurav Tekriwal in this TED Ed video.

Travel Photo of the Week

Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia

Grow An Endless Supply Of Celery

I really like celery. I like it a lot and often consume two or three stalks (sometimes more) a day. From the blog 17 Apart comes this easy way of always having fresh celery in your kitchen without having to go buy it at the market.

You just grow it yourself from from the end of an old piece! It takes about five months from start to edibility, so you will have to start several batches over about four months to keep you in a steady supply.

I'm working on my first batch now.

New Drug Fights Down's Syndrome

From New Scientist comes news that Roche Pharmaceuticals has developed a drug that improves the cognitive function of individuals with Down's syndrome.

RU1662 "reverses the effects of a chemical messenger in the brain called GABA – a neurotransmitter that inhibits brain activity. The drug acts on a specific type of brain receptor found mostly in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory. It is thought that it will reduce excessive inhibition in the hippocampus, thought to underlie memory and learning problems commonly seen in people with Down's."

The drug is currently in trials with 33 adults with Down's assessing its safety.

"A is for Ampere" - Circuit Playground Episode 1

A while back I had an entry about Adafruit and their Youtube production, Circuit Playground, using puppets to teach children the principles of electronics. Here is their first episode, "A is for Ampere."

Fun Time! Make Things Look Like They're Under Water!

To create the underwater illusion, stare at the animated gif below for 30-60 seconds. Then look at the image below it. If the image isn't moving, click on it to get it started.

Ah, Washington D.C. after global warming has had its way with us.

US Rivers Polluted And Will Stay That Way

The news from the Environmental Protection Agency concerning the state of America's rivers is not good.

During 2008 and 2009 the agency sampled almost 2000 waterways looking for for such things as physical disturbances, mercury levels in fish, faecal bacteria and nutrients from fertilizers.

From the report....

"Twenty-one percent of the nation’s river and stream length is in good biological condition, 23% is in fair condition, and 55% is in poor condition, based on a robust, commonly used index that combines different measures of the condition of aquatic benthic macroinvertebrates (aquatic insects and other creatures such as crayfish). Of the three major climatic regions (Eastern Highlands, Plains and Lowlands, and West) discussed in this report, the West is in the best biological condition, with 42% of river and stream length in good condition. In the Eastern Highlands, 17% of river and stream length is in good condition; in the Plains and Lowlands, 16% is rated in good condition."

It also seems that nutrients from fertilizer runoff is one of the major problems with levels of phosphorus and nitrates that will persist for decades.

Leonard Lauder Cubist Art Collection Given To The Met

A collection of Cubist art has been given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. And not just any old collection. It is the collection of Lauder Cosmetics heir, Leonard Lauder. Containing works by Picasso, Braque and others, the 78 pieces in the collection are valued at over a billion dollars.

Below the selections I've included is video from the PBS Newshour about the gift and I found one exchange to be particularly telling.

MARGARET WARNER: "Could any museum, even with a large budget for acquisitions, go out on the market today and acquire a collection of this kind of size and depth in one field?"

 REBECCA RABINOW: "It would be absolutely impossible to replicate Mr. Lauder's collection. These important cubist works are simply not on the market, in private hands, because his collection is not only about fantastic works of art. He bought the best of the best."

I'll be in line when it shows, next year.

'Nude Woman in an Armchair' Pablo Picasso 1909

'The Scallop Shell' Pablo Picasso 1912

'The Smoker' Fernand Leger 1914

'Bottle of Rum' Georges Braque 1914

Travel Photo of the Week Special Edition. Paolo Soleri and Arcosanti.

Yesterday we lost one of the great minds of our time. Paolo Soleri was an architect, artist and philosopher. His greatest achievement was Arcosanti, an experiment in urban design and culture in the Arizona desert. This photo collection is in honor of his life and work.

The Nine Core Beliefs Of Truly Horrible Bosses

Have you ever worked for a THB? A Truly Horrible Boss? I have.

You know the type: arrogant, narcissistic, short sighted, ready to kill everyone in sight as long as they survive.

Well now, thanks to INC., there's a list of their common traits. I won't go through the list here, but I will tell you which behavior I think is the most egregious and telling trait of the THB.

Number 6. I own the success and you own the failure. Horrible bosses take the credit when things go well and point the finger when things go poorly.

Smart bosses know that their real job is to 1) fix the failures before they happen and 2) publicize the wins that employees achieve.

Sundown In America

I like hard facts and real numbers, the kind that usually don't come from government budget offices and economists. This report from David Stockman is full of both. Stockman was Budget Director under President Reagan and over the years has gained only more respect for his non-partisan and clear eyed view of the economy.

Perhaps the most salient quotes here are....

"Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too."

And...

"When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth."

Although I do not agree with him 100% about the cause and the cure, his trenchant "pox on both your houses" analysis is well worth the read, especially if you want to live out the next few years comfortably.

For Those Who Believe Graffitti Isn't Art

Fun Time! Acme Klein Bottles!

Do you need a zero-volume bottle? Are you searching for a one sided surface? A container that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside? Get a Acme Klein Bottle!

 As their website States, "At last, Acme has conquered topological and engineering frontiers to manufacture genuine glass Klein Bottles. These are the finest closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifolds sold anywhere in our three spatial dimensions."

Climate Change Will Harm Mekong Basin Harvests

Although monster storms are getting all the press coverage these days, the real problem so few are talking about is the effect of global climate change on the production of food crops.

This article from the website Climatecentral.org discusses the impact global warming is having on the production of maize and rice in the Mekong Delta. Dr. Jeremy Carew-Reid, the study's lead author, has said that some of its findings are “very shocking.”

“We’ve found that this region is going to experience climate extremes in temperature and rainfall beyond anything that we expected”, says Dr. Carew-Reid.

From the article: "Hotter and wetter rainy seasons and more long-lasting dry seasons in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam will jeopardize the region’s reputation as one of the world’s major producers of crops on which hundreds of millions depend. Climate change will also have a profound economic impact in the region."

Admiral Samuel Locklear, who heads the U.S. Pacific Command, has said that social upheaval related to the warming planet "is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen… that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about. If it goes bad, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly."

State-by-State Map Of Bank Branch Closures

Want to know whether your state is going bust yet? Tracking bank closures helps.

Travel Photo of the Week

Tenorio Volcano National Park, Costa Rica

Freelancers Union

Now here's an idea. Many professions have unions, but what can an independent freelancer do to get
healthcare and other benefits that other workers have been long entitled to?

The answer: Freelancer's Union.

42 million Americans are contract workers (also known as freelancers). That's about a third of our workforce. Freelancer's Union offers them not only health, dental, disability and life insurance plans, but also offers other valuable resources, such as corporate discounts, political action and networking.

They have a "Client Compass" so you can post your experience with jobs. It also let's you out deadbeat clients.

3D Printing Human Organs With Stem Cells

As a follow up to yesterday's post about growing organs in the lab, today's post is a video about 3D printing organs with stem cells from Reuter's TV.