From the category archives:

science

“Scientifically Unsupportable”

March 16, 2010
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Last Friday, special masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims released their findings on the second phase of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, and found no evidence of a causal link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. (The first phase, decided last year, addressed the claim that the MMR vaccine caused autism. ) Test cases [...]

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Feeding the Maws of Doom

March 9, 2010
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It’s been three months since I set up my iTerrarium. I must be doing something right, because the Nepenthes alata has developed two fully-formed pitchers (front and rear in the photo), with a third (to the right) on the way.
I was advised by Paul Riddell, the iTerrarium’s creator and curator of the Texas Triffid [...]

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Try Reason, Not “Everything”

March 5, 2010
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Last week Time magazine published “The Autism Debate: Who’s Afraid of Jenny McCarthy?” As much as I’d like to rant about her, as I’ve done before, instead I’ll call your attention to this paragraph, buried halfway into the article:
There are dark murmurings from scientists and doctors asking, Was her son ever really autistic? Evan’s [...]

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Punching Your Ticket

March 4, 2010
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In the dark ages of computer programming, mainframes like the IBM System 360 relied on keypunch cards for both program and data input. Programs consisted of huge stacks of cards arranged in a specific sequence, which, if spilled, lent a new meaning to the phrase “system crash.”

My father’s entry into the world of mainframe programming [...]

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Printing Some Dinner

February 23, 2010
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It is inevitable that 3-D printers will find applications in the kitchen, especially as they become cheaper and more ubiquitous. The geniuses at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have already unveiled the CandyFab 4000, a device that prints forms with sugar instead of the usual plastic resins.
Chef Homaro Cantu of Moto restaurant in Chicago has been [...]

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Being Fergus Henderson

February 9, 2010
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I‘ve written before about chef Fergus Henderson, who has become one of my culinary inspirations. I learned a while ago that the onset and progression of his Parkinson’s disease required him to stop cooking in his own restaurant, taking on the role of conceiving new recipes for his talented staff to execute.
Two recent tweets from [...]

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Irresponsible and Dishonest

February 2, 2010
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Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about Andrew Wakefield’s falsification of data linking vaccines and autism, calling his behavior “irresponsible and criminal.” Last week the General Medical Council, the British medical licensing body, arrived at the same conclusion:
In reaching its decision, the Panel notes that the project reported in the Lancet paper was [...]

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Whole Lotta Umami

January 5, 2010
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The cooking buzzword last year was umami, the “fifth taste” responsible for our sensing “meatiness.” Before that taste had a name, however, cooks in the know had a pantry full of components they could add to boost a dish’s savory notes. A quick look through the Belm Research Kitchen turned up these (not including the [...]

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The iTerrarium

November 25, 2009
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I thought that my Macquarium was the finest example of what could be done with a Macintosh that had reached the end of its useful life. Then I saw the iTerrarium constructed by Paul Riddell of the Texas Triffid Ranch, and knew that I had another example to add to my collection. When Paul announced [...]

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The Botany of Desire

November 3, 2009
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The first time I saw the title of Michale Pollan’s novel about “a plant’s-eye view of the world,” I couldn’t help but think of the Either/Orchestra, a local jazz ensemble that had released albums titled The Half-Life of Desire and The Calculus of Lust. But The Botany of Desire isn’t about what goes on between [...]

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