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In last week’s lively Science Tuesday comment stream, Matthew pointed out that one of the things that many scientists struggle with is communicating with the public. I think that he’s dead on target. Scientists, particularly academic scientists, don’t do themselves any favors by not learning how to talk to the average Joe or Jane. I [...]

The subtitle of this post my very well turn out to be “How I Alienated My Religious Readers” but I got a little something stuck in my craw while reading up for this week’s Science Tuesday. My last job, at Oxford, was working in a lab that focused on evolutionary developmental biology. This field of [...]

Science Tuesday is running a day behind this week, but better late than never. Those of you who know me will realize how difficult it is for me to report this research. I am a carnivore. I find any meal that lacks a large flesh component as unsatisfying. I am extremely suspicious of people who [...]

“Breathe in all the diesel fumes
Admire the concrete landscaping
And doesn’t it feel free?”
-Jay Farrar – “Feel Free”
There is nothing to induce a simmering fury in me on my morning bicycle commute like following a diesel exhaust spewing, and inconsiderately piloted, bus. The narrow streets of Oxford barely allow for two cars to pass side-by-side – [...]

Today at A Free Man: The Real Deal
One of the several things that I will miss about working in academia is unfettered access to academic journals. The cliche of academics locked away in ivory towers is reinforced by the unfortunate fact that many, and certainly the most important, of our journals are protected by a [...]

I feel a little bit like a traitor writing this post. I was trained as a maize geneticist and the recent interest, scientific and financial, in corn-based ethanol as a biofuel has been a boon to anyone in the corn business.
The problem is that an increasing number of scientific studies are indicating that corn-based ethanol [...]

Great Interview Week continues in a scientific vein today. In last week’s Nature, a paper coming out of Dee Carter’s lab at the University of Sydney described the discovery of a previously unknown marine species. That, in itself, is noteworthy. However, the organism they found – an unremarkable unicellular brown alga – turns out to [...]

“Your oldest brother was away at a home
and you didn’t meet him ’til you was nineteen years old
Old enough to know better, old enough to know better
but you took to his jaw line and long sandy hair…”
The Drive-By Truckers – “The Deeper In”
Geneticists love nothing more than a good inbred organism with which to work [...]

“Hey farmer farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot…”
Joni Mitchell – “Big Yellow Taxi”
A freshwater dolphin, known as the baiji, indigenous to the Yangtze River [...]