About student posts appearing here

I expected that my students would get a little trial by fire in the furious life of the public intellectual, and the commenters here certainly provided that. Maybe a little too much of that. Dial the ferocity back a notch, OK? Constructive criticisms are greatly appreciated, but the nasty stuff is not. I suppose it’s useful in the sense that it’s going to toughen up the students, but it doesn’t reflect well on you. One thing I’ll be doing in class next week is making up some lists and handing them out in class: a list of the jerks (“You can ignore these commenters, they’re wasting your time”) and a list of the good people (“These commenters say useful stuff, pay attention to them”). That’s right, we’ll be talking smack about you.

Here are some other clarifications and concerns.

[Read more…]

An Introduction

To be quite honest, I’ve never written for a blog before. That seems as good of a sentence as any to start off with. Each week my fellow neurobiology students and I will be writing about something to what we’re studying in class. We may write thoughts on our discussions of the non-fiction books we’re reading, or perhaps things in our everyday lives that pertain to neurobiology that we may not have noticed before. The only instructions we’ve been given are to have fun writing about anything that relates to neurobiology.

Backtracking a bit, I’m a college sophomore majoring in chemistry and biology. The reason I’m taking neurobiology is that I would like to learn more about the biophysics behind nervous systems. So far our neurobiology class is very interesting and enjoyable. I hope that everyone enjoys reading and/or critiquing our compositions over the next few months.

Bring back the OTA

Mark Hoofnagle is urging everyone to get behind a simple, non-partisan goal that would greatly benefit science policy: bring back the Office of Technology Assessment.

It used to be, for about 30 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to decide policy debates. In 1994, with the new Republican congress, the office was eliminated for the sake of budget cuts, but the cost in terms of damage to the quality of scientific debate on policy has been incalculable. Chris Mooney described it as Congress engaging in “a stunning act of self-lobotomy” in his book the Republican War on Science.

Spread the word. Build a drumbeat of support for this idea in the blogs. Write to your congresspeople. Write op-eds for your newspaper. It’s a simple idea that everyone should agree on: we want our government to be well-informed and to be able to make decisions based on evidence, and having an advisory office dedicated to providing information from the scientific community would be a real boon.

New kid on the block

Hello! I’m a student of Dr. Myers here at the lovely University of Minnesota Morris and will be blogging weekly for the next few months about whatever I find or dream up that relates to Neurobiology.

This week I suppose the most interesting finding I have comes from 89.3 “The Current,” an off-branch of the popular MPR radio station. There is a program called “Radio Lab,” in which a couple show hosts review scientific work done in broad categories while they converse and explore the work of scientists who actually did the research. One of the categories for the week was on sleep; why do we need it? What does it really do? The show hosts revealed that very little research has been done in this field (despite its necessity to all living things) except for Dr. Allan Pack, a biologist at the University of Pensylvania.

Pack has been looking at sleep from a cellular level and has found some interesting activity with proteins in cells inside the brain. He found that when we don’t sleep, proteins fold irregularly and lose much of their primary functions. However, when we sleep, the proteins are unfolded and allowed to work normally. Even more intruiging is that the folding of these proteins might be correlated to memory. For instance, when you memorize or think about a difficult math problem or guitar riff, you fold proteins. But that means that when you look at the grass and use your brain to determine the grass’s color and shape you are folding proteins as well.

When we sleep this unfolding of proteins allows some of the garbage memory, such as shape and color of grass, to be disposed of in the unfolding of proteins, which also amplifies the things we truly scrutinized all day on such as the math problems or guitar riff as these proteins are left folded. This may be why when you’re studying one day on a tough problem and can’t quite get it but go to bed and look at it again the next, the problem sometimes comes much easier. I thought that this was a cool idea, and well worth looking into.

If anyone finds any of this interesting and does some further (or actual) research on the topic, you should respond and we can exchange ideas. But untill that day, take it easy and God bless.
~Bright Lights

Can I be banned in Boston, please?

Massachusetts has a law on the books that could have gotten me in trouble: Chapter 272, Section 36. Blasphemy.

Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.

Blake Stacey and the Reveres missed their opportunity to turn me in last time I was in their state … although, come to think of it, we were probably more like a gang of outlaws together.

Proud prudes of America

Sometimes you just have to shake your head at the indignant, smug prudes who want to control what you read. Here’s a story of a young lady who wants to dictate what her peers are allowed to see.

Lysa Harding, 15, couldn’t believe the sexually charged prose of the novel she checked out from the library at Brookwood High School. Her grandmother was offended, too.

Now they’re refusing to return the book, “Sandpiper” by Ellen Wittlinger, saying other teens shouldn’t be exposed to it.

She read it, her grandmother read it, but you better not read it … because it’s about teenagers having sex (never mind that it is a cautionary tale), and grandmother and granddaughter are adamant that everyone must be kept in ignorance.

“I honestly believe that it should not be at school, because at my school they teach abstinence and no sex before marriage, but then all the book is teaching is how to do those things,” she said.

So far, it’s just a tale of boring bluenoses, but there’s also something subtle in this story…something that might require that you know a little basic arithmetic, so it might just sail over the heads of those who ought to think about it most.

“This book is sick,” said Pennington. “I’m 50 years old, and I’ve raised 11 sets of kids and been through many a library, and I’ve never seen a book like this in a school library before.”

Heh. This is a woman complaining that teenagers ought not to learn about sex, and she’s 50 years old with a 15-year-old granddaughter, and has had 11 kids. Were they all virgin births? Is she just jealous that no one ever told her about the consequences of youthful boinking?

My money woes are over

I have a daughter of marriageable age, and here is a useful service:

Marry Our Daughter is an introduction service assisting those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their daughters.

Those who wish to list their Daughters with our site should click on SIGN UP OUR DAUGHTER on our main page for a form to fill out.

Those who wish to propose to a specific Daughter should click on the PROPOSE button on the Daughter’s INFO CARD.

Each entry has a single snapshot, a short one-paragraph blurb, a link to let someone propose, and a bride price (it’s biblically justified!), which seems to vary between $4K and $100K. You can pick up a cute 14 year old girl for only about $8K. I don’t quite see how they set the prices, and suspect it must be like selling horses — the budget girls must have some ungodly flaws, while the high prices represents the parents’ perception of their own bloodline.

Alas, though, I don’t think an uppity godless girl could fetch anywhere that sum, so it hardly seems worth the effort. Also, the testimonials might make one a wee bit suspicious that one’s leg is being tugged upon.