Category: Biology

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By JOVE those dry protocols are all fancy!

As spotted on Sandra Porter’s never less than interesting blog here’s a wonderful idea to help you understand the science. A website devoted to visualising experiments/publications in video.

Journal of Visualized Experiments

I think you would do the site a great disservice if you described it as Youtube for the bench scientist, but in a way that’s exactly what it is. Except instead of inane comments (who reads Youtube comments?), it’s the publication, with enough information to repeat the protocol. Sometimes when reading a protocol, nevermind the sparse methods and materials of a paper, it’s hard to come to grips with some parts in enough details to do this yourself. Watching somebody do that is surely almost as good as visiting the lab, and surely a lot cheaper!

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Answers in Genesis – Creation, Evolution, Christian Apologetics

Answers in Genesis – Creation, Evolution, Christian Apologetics

This has got to be my favorite site of the last year! I am convinced. Raquel Welch was correct. Man did walk the earth at the same time that dinosaurs did, and I don’t mean via time travel in the way that Flesh books 1 and 2 described. I mean I trust anything a guy with a beard without a moustache says.

Seriously what are these guys problem? Do they think that pumping lots of money into a museum will convince people that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old? I mean does he think that 40% of Americans are not gullible?

I want to cry. Here’s to a God free Xmas!

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Dawkins: The God Delusion

So i got ‘the God Delusion’. Roughly halfway through now. Just after his =
entertaining idea the current(!) universe may have arose through a process =
not unlike natural selection. Hence why conditions (mainly physical =
constants) were just right for the formation of earth and consequently us! =
No need for a god in this model of the cosmos!
Quite impressed so far. Ok so he is preaching to the converted as far as i =
am concerned. But as usual he writes in a very entertaining way. Oh that he =
could have written some of the science books i had in school. He’s =
convincing too. The more i think about it, the more i struggle to =
understand how any educated person believes in a god. More importantly why =
they need to believe in one. Dawkins words show the overwhelming evidence =
that is out there. Cathedrals are nice, but what else could mankind have =
achieved without the waste of worship!

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Boing Boing: Richard Dawkins on the God Delusion

Boing Boing: Richard Dawkins on the God Delusion

All religion is bad. Imagine a world without religion (hmm where have I heard that line before?). Think of all problems at the moment, would they still exist? Would Israel and Lebanon be in such a pickle? Would Bush want to impose his own brand of neochristian democracy on Iraq et al? I think not.

I must get this book. I’ve read the Selfish Gene and Weaving the Rainbow. Both excellent books, and very much thinking along my thoughts. Although obviously much more nicely written than the jumble in my head.

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Bausch & Lomb Renu solution makes you go blind!!!

FDA says Bausch & Lomb plant inspection to continue – MarketWatch

Well I suppose I should stop complaining that my optician recently switched me to hydrogen peroxide rather than continue using ReNu. I quite liked that solution to, but I think I would prefer slight eye discomfort and longer cleaning techniques to going blind…….!!!

Bausch & Lomb themselves have now told opticians to remove this from there shelves. I wonder when UK opticians will do the same. I was previously on Dollond and Aitchson’s contact lenses by post service. Up to 3 months ago I was using Renu with Moisture loc. It seemed a fairly good product. The moistureloc addition made it a lot more comfortable.

I wonder if this will turn out to be a plant contamination. I guess so. But if the solution itself proves to be a sustainable environment for the fungus, I guess its anti-fungal properties are not too good. If the contaminant are spores, they are fairly hard to kill. Nonetheless a fairly unforgivable product failure!