Blue Streak Science Podcast

Our Jackass of the Week is Dr. Ben Carson

Ben Carson is a retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon and Republican Party candidate for President of the United States. He has become popular figure in the right-wing political media for his views on social and political issues after a speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast.

This year on the 4th of May at a rally in Detroit Carson announced he was running for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election.

On 30 September, last week, Carson was asked by a voter in New Hampshire to explain his disbelief in climate change.

The question was: "You don't believe in evolution or climate change, I believe. And I was just wondering, do you seriously not believe that climate change is happening?"

The New Republic’s Rebecca Leber reported on Carson’s response, and it was: “Is there climate change? Of course there’s climate change. Any point in time, temperatures are going up or temperatures are going down. Of course that’s happening. When that stops happening, that’s when we’re in big trouble.”

He then added, “Just the way the Earth rotates on its axis, how far away it is from the sun. These are all very complex things. Gravity, where did it come from?”

Dr. Carson seems confused about what is weather and what is climate. Weather is temperatures going up and down, is it raining or not, and will it rain today. Climate, especially global climate, is a long-term phenomenon that cannot be observed directly in the short term.

That fact seems to be lost on him.

Carson continued, “As far as evolution is concerned, you know, I do believe in micro-evolution, or natural selection, but I believe that God gave the creatures he made the ability to adapt to their environment. Because he’s very smart and he didn’t want to start over every 50 years.”

For a neurosurgeon, Dr. Carson hold some remarkably unscientific views. In fact, in his view science itself  is just another religion, and one that he rejects. Regarding science, he stated, “I just don't have that much faith. But they are welcome to believe whatever they want to believe. I'm welcome to believe what I want to believe.”

This rejection of the foundation of science would be unacceptable for anyone holding public office, let alone the Presidency.

Oh, and we actually do know where gravity comes from. It comes from the bending of space-time by massive objects. I don't see a Nobel Prize in your future. Just sayin'.

Ben Carson, you are the Blue Streak Science Jackass of the Week.

NotSciShy blog
Twitter: @Ivyhish
Email: [email protected]

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Cambridge, England; Sydney, Australia; and Santa Rosa, California.

Our Jackass of the Week is Martin Shkreli.

Shkreli is a 32 year old hedge fund manager specializing in healthcare companies. Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to the toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim last month, and from his responses to the outrage it seems he is embracing his title as the most hated man, and the Blue Streak Science Jackass of the Week.

He’s taken to Twitter and hurled insults, calling people “morons”, criticizing Twitter itself by saying that it “seems to be a great medium for socialist and liberal rage”.

On 28 September he took to the news shows and argued that Daraprim was grossly underpriced. On Bloomberg he stated, “The price per course of treatment to save your life was only $1,000 and we know these days, [with] modern pharmaceuticals, cancer drugs can cost $100,000 or more, rare-disease drugs can cost half a million dollars.”

He seems outraged that the drug was affordable!

A reporter reminded him that the pill costs about $1 to manufacture.

Hillary Clinton tweeted: "Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous. Tomorrow I'll lay out a plan to take it on. -H"

Shkreli also has a checkered past with a previous company he was the CEO of...even alledgedly harassing the wife and children of former employee of that company.  A sworn affidavit was submitted by this employee to the Supreme Court of the State of New York regarding the alleged harassment.

The PhD Movie 2: Still In Grad School
phdcomics.com/movie

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Sydney, New South Wales; Atlanta, Georgia; and Santa Rosa, California.

Conversation with William S. Shafer, Ph.D. Host Kellie Vinal discusses antibiotic resistance, its history, current state and future implications with Dr. William Shafer of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

William Shafer received his PhD degree in Microbiology from Kansas State University in 1979 where he studied the genetics of enterotoxin synthesis by Staphylococcus aureus. After postdoctoral studies with P.F. Sparling  at the University of North Carolina where he studied the genetics of antibiotic resistance expressed by Neisseria gonorrhoeae, he moved to Emory University School of Medicine where he now Full Professor. He is also a Senior Research Career Scientist at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. He has been continually funded by the NIH and VA since 1984, has published over 115 manuscripts, serves on multiple Editorial Boards and served on several NIH, VA and international study sections.

For more information about Dr. Shafer please visit his faculty page at the Emory University Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Dr. Shafer's publications.

Blue Streak Science News

Hidden Superchain of volcanoes discovered in Australia

Making 3-D objects disappear

Dramatic Rise seen in Antibiotic Use

My, what big claws you have

Huge relative of first fish to crawl on land has a lung

A vaccine to shield threatened honeybees from disease

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jl_txxYQEA

The Jackass of the Week

Our Jackass of the Week is Volkswagen

Volkswagen and Audi are brands that have sold many Americans on the idea that “clean diesel” is a viable alternative to other green technologies such as hybrid engines.

Consequently, Volkswagen, who owns Audi, has taken the lion’s share of the market in the U.S. for diesel cars.

For the owners of these cars I have some bad news.

They have been pumping 40x the legal amount of nitrogen oxide into our atmosphere. This is all because of software that Volkswagen installed in these cars to intentionally cheat on emissions tests.

VW will have to recall all the vehicles and modify the emissions systems at its own expense, regulators said. Additionally it could face a fine of about $18 billion, or $37,500 per car, according to environmental officials.

Nitrogen oxide is nasty stuff. It’s one of the primary components of photochemical smog.

Smog is not just something that ruins the view of the city. Smog is deadly, and deadly in a big way. It’s particularly harmful for the elderly, children, and people with heart and lung conditions such as asthma. Photochemical smog has been linked to greatly increased rates of low birth weight babies, birth defects, various cancers and the overall death rate.

In the province of Ontario, according to the Ontario Medical Association smog is responsible for an estimated 9,500 premature deaths in the province every year.

It’s bad stuff, that is bad for all of us.

But Volkswagen thought they could get away with cheating their customers and the rest of us into have their pollution machines running right under our noses.

Here’s what VW did:

They rigged the car’s on board computer and sensors to detect the exact conditions of when an emissions test is occurring. Then the computer changed the performance of the car to behave itself during the test and not be spewing pollution as it does in normal operation.

Volkswagen is already on record admitting that the cars had “defeat devices”. But this was only after the EPA and California air regulators demanded an explanation.

For deceiving your customers, regulators, and wantonly harming the health of millions of people, Volkswagen, you are the Blue Streak Science Jackass of the Week.

Shout-outs and Acknowledgments

SAGE Initiative (Science in Australia Gender Equity ) is a program that recently launched involving decreasing gender inequality in the Research sector in Australia.

Fossils of a new species of human, Homo naledi, discovered in South Africa. Ivy gives her expert view on a story about researchers who reawaken sleeping HIV in patient cells to eliminate the virus. Hawk species invisible force shield protects hummingbirds from jays...very nice of them. A new robot has crown of thorns star fish in its sights. Great news in conservation: sea turtles set new nesting record in the United States! Physicists show 'molecules' of light may be possible...whaaaat? 5-Million-Degree Plasma 'Tornado' Rages on the Sun (Video). The wait for more Pluto data is almost over. 

The Shout Out goes to the makers of the Foldscope.

Our two esteemed hosts, Kellie Vinal and Sophie McManus are not with us for this week's podcast.

Kellie is currently in the beautiful Black Rock Desert of Nevada attending the annual Burning Man festival. We are looking forward to her return and a report of this year's happenings on the playa.

Sophie is pulling up roots and moving from sunny Sydney, Australia to the green lawns and hallowed halls of the University of Cambridge. We expect to hear back from Sophie in early October.

We are proud to introduce our new co-host, Ivy Shih.

Ivy is an HIV researcher based in Sydney, Australia, studying early events of HIV infection in immune cells and capturing those events with high-resolution microscopy. After completing her Honours Thesis, she is now completing a PhD at The Kirby Institute about HIV infection in skin. Ivy loves writing about science with articles in Riaus and Biodetectives.

A self-confessed bibliophile and dinosaur enthusiast, in her spare time Ivy enjoys watching science fiction movies and drawing cartoons.

Read her Science Communication adventures at her blog Not Science Shy

Our Jackass of the Week is Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. 

It has been ten years since the flooding of Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans. The storm made landfall in southeast Louisiana as a category 3 hurricane. And although there have been many stronger storms to strike the Gulf Coast states Katrina exposed decades of neglect of the infrastructure. Levees failed and people died, over 1,200 people. Katrina also exposed the incompetence of a Presidential administration who was more interested in appointing unqualified cronies to emergency management jobs than serving the people of the United States when they most needed their help.

Ten years later and it’s been a week of cable news retrospectives and analysis. In the Big Easy it was a week of remembrances and mourning.

In a letter to President Obama on 26 August, Governor Bobby Jindal wrote, “This week is a time to mourn the loss of loved ones and the passing of a period in our history. It is also a time to celebrate those whose future has become brighter in the storm’s terrible wake.

There is a time and a place for politics, but this is not it.

It is therefore with disappointment that I read of the White House’s plans to make this visit part of a tour for your climate change agenda. Although I understand that your emphasis in New Orleans will – rightly – be on economic development, the temptation to stray into climate change politics should be resisted.

While you and others may be of the opinion that we can legislate away hurricanes with higher taxes, business regulations and EPA power grabs, that is not a view shared by many Louisianians.

I would ask you to respect this important time of remembrance by not inserting the divisive political agenda of liberal environmental activism.”

Oh, where to start.

First, climate science is not politics.

It was politics that left Louisiana defenseless against a category 3 hurricane. If it wasn’t for the all-too-human failure to have basic preparation in place then the name Katrina would only be associated with walking on sunshine.

But that’s not climate science. That’s politics.

You know what else is political?

Doing nothing about climate change when the world’s climate scientists are doing everything in their power to warn us. We’ve been shown the evidence over and over again. Anthropogenic global warming is real. It is happening now, and our children are going to pay dearly for our inaction.

Climate science is not politics. It is science. What we do or don’t do about it is politics.

Telling the President to shut up about science?

Bobby Jindal, you aren’t fooling our listeners here at Blue Streak. You’re running for President in a crowded field for the GOP nomination. And as such you need to appeal to the Republican voters who have become fodder for your party’s elite. If you can get those mouth-breathers who listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on your side then perhaps those deep-pocketed GOP donors may take notice and begin writing checks. And what better way to do that than to take an anti-science stance and admonish the President. Red meat for the low-information voters you need for the GOP nomination.

So, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, for taking a cynical and anti-science position on climate change you are the Blue Streak Science Jackass of the Week.

The Completion Backward Principle is the sixth studio album from the rock group The Tubes.

This was The Tubes' first album for Capitol/EMI and paired the band with producer and songwriter, David Foster in search of a more commercial sound. Many of their A&M albums had been very strong but failed to ignite the charts or build much fan interest beyond their rabid cult. The Completion Backward Principle changed all that with "Talk To Ya Later" (an AOR radio smash) and the chart success of the single "Don't Want To Wait Anymore."

A favorite of many Tubes fans, this is a unique album in their catalog in that it married their quirky songwriting and stage persona with a commercial appeal that would be emphasized more heavily on their next project. The breakout that the band had been searching for with their backs to the wall had finally arrived.

Sources:
Iconoclassic Records
Wikipedia

The hashtag #scienceamoviequote

The origin of the hashtag dates back to a November 2014 tweet by neuroscientist Ben Saunders.

It is the beautiful combination of hard truths of science delivered through famous movie lines (twitter really has become the perfect outlet for hilarious and wry commentary of science truths)

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks, the renowned neurologist and author of over a dozen books including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, died of metastatic uveal melanoma in New York on 30 August. He was 82.

His most famous book, Awakenings, published in 1973 was a memoir on his experiences using the new drug l-dopa on post-encephalitic patients who survived the encephalitis epidemic of 1917 to 1928, but remained in a persistent catatonic state .

The New York Times writes:

"As a medical doctor and a writer, Dr. Sacks achieved a level of popular renown rare among scientists. More than a million copies of his books are in print in the United States, his work was adapted for film and stage, and he received about 10,000 letters a year.

"Dr. Sacks variously described his books and essays as case histories, pathographies, clinical tales or 'neurological novels.' His subjects included Madeleine J., a blind woman who perceived her hands only as useless 'lumps of dough'; Jimmie G., a submarine radio operator whose amnesia stranded him for more than three decades in 1945; and Dr. P. — the man who mistook his wife for a hat — whose brain lost the ability to decipher what his eyes were seeing."

Dr. Sacks treated his patients with dignity. To him they weren’t merely just patients with neurological deficits. Each one was a human being with a life, rich in experience and memories, stories of love, of triumphs and tragedies.

In February Dr. Sacks announced in the New York Times that the melanoma in his eye had spread to his liver and that he only had months to live.

"It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can,"

And, in an opinion piece published in the Times earlier this month, Sacks wrote:

"[N]ow, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one's life as well, when one can feel that one's work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest."

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Sydney, Australia; and Santa Rosa, California.

Sarah Moffitt is an ocean and climate scientist with the University of California at Davis’ Bodega Marine Lab in Bodega Bay, California. Dr. Moffitt is an expert in the marine ecological consequences of abrupt climate warming. She received her doctoral training in paleoceanography, climate change, geochemistry and marine ecology from the University of California at Davis. Dr. Moffitt is interested in using past events to understand modern anthropogenic climate change.

We talk about how scientists study the global climate and how they build robust theories on how and why the planet warms. We then move to Dr. Moffitt's research in paleoceanography and marine ecosystems in the context of abrupt warming.

For a full list of her publications you can visit her website at sarahmoffitt.com

Bodega Marine Lab

Our A------ of the Week is President Barack Obama.

The Obama Administration has given final approval for Shell Oil Company to drill in the Chukchi Sea. Say it ain’t so!

This comes just two weeks after the release of the Clean Power Plan, a strong plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The President is also going to visit Alaska later this month to highlight the impacts of climate change, which he recently referred to as "one of the greatest challenges we face this century."

And now this. I don’t get it.

The United States is more self-reliant on energy now than it has been for many decades. The price of oil is bottoming out. There is a glut of oil on the world market. What is the impetus to drill in the Arctic?

Again, I don’t get it.

Hillary Clinton said in response, “The Arctic is a unique treasure. Given what we know, it’s not worth the risk of drilling.”

Exactly, it’s just not worth the risk.

President Obama, your record on protecting our natural heritage has been the greatest in the history of the United States. But like the Arctic itself, it can all be spoiled with a bad decision...just one bad decision.

So, for putting the once pristine Arctic at risk for no good reason at all, President Obama you are the Blue Streak Science A------ of the Week.

The Can I Pet Your Dog Podcast!
Twitter: @CIPYDPodcast
iTunes

Every Tuesday, dog owner Allegra Ringo, dog wanter Renee Colvert, and producer Travis McElroy talk to guests about their dogs, discuss dogs they met this week, and brief you on dogs news. They go on assignment to dog events and report back with what you need to know. If there's a dog, they're gonna pet it!

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Seattle, Washington; Atlanta, Georgia; and Sonoma County, California!

In the United States there is a war going on. This time it’s the war against science.

It’s no secret that among American conservatives scientific illiteracy has become a source a pride. When faced with science that runs contrary to their cherished views the default position is belligerent denial. From former Senator Todd Akins’ infamous “legitimate rape” statement to virtually anything pumped out by the Heritage Foundation, conservatives have turned the anti-science position from a liability to a winning political strategy.[read more]

When you think of a typical science denier, who comes to mind? For me, it’s a conservative who toes the party line on anthropogenic global warming. But the greatest distance between science and the general public is actually over one of the far left’s favorite causes, genetically modified organisms, GMOs.

Last January a survey was released by Pew Research that showed 88% of AAAS scientists, think that GMO food is safe to eat, but only 37% of the public agrees with that.

Let’s look at a few other places where the extreme left have checked their brains at the door and put on the tin foil hat. I mentioned anti-GMO. There’s also the infamous anti-vaccine crusade, acupuncture, biodynamic agriculture, even most organic agriculture, and homeopathy.

One very broad form of science denialism embraced by many in the far left is “chemophobia”. Think The Food Babe. But this chemophobia can have deadly consequences for its adherents.

Ariane Forster, better know as Ari Up, of the influential punk band The Slits died in 2010 from breast cancer. According to her stepfather, John Lydon, who himself fronted Sex Pistols. Yes, her stepfather was Johnny Rotten. Lydon told Sky News, “Ariane didn’t need to die. She knew she had cancer and she deliberately ignored it and went for lunatic left-wing crackpot theories. And that will kill you stone dead every single time.” 

There are countless more examples where innocent, but scientifically illiterate people have suffered terribly and died needlessly because they eschewed the science and instead opted for what some celebrity or website told them. They did their research on the Internet.

Is there a progressive war on science? No, not really, insofar the anti-science sentiments on the left are disorganized and have little influence on public policy like it does among conservatives.

Climate science denial carries great weight in national Republican politics as evidenced by its prominence in the GOP platform. No equivalent anti-science stance exists in the national Democratic platform.

But don’t be fooled. Science denialism and willful ignorance are alive and well on the liberal side. It’s up to us to go where the science leads us, wherever it lead us./read]

Today the Blue Streak Science Jackass of the Week, another collective JOTW, are the anti-science moonbats of the political left, wherever you may be.

"Never Mind the Bollocks" by the Sex Pistols

The Story Worthy Podcast at www.storyworthypodcast.com

Please visit BioDetectives as they track life science stories from Down Under to Up North.

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Sydney, Australia; Atlanta, Georgia; and Sonoma County, California!

Please visit BioDetectives as they track life science stories from Down Under to Up North.

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Sydney, Australia; Atlanta, Georgia; and Sonoma County, California!

See you again next week!

I just read a piece by John D. Sutter on CNN’s website titled, “Woodward County, Oklahoma: Why do so many here doubt climate change?” This county has among the highest rates of those who do not accept climate change as real.

From his conversations in Woodward County Mr. Sutter assumed that between 70-90% of residents believed climate change is a myth. Most of the residents of the county believed that number, too...that the great majority of their neighbors just don’t buy into the idea that climate change is happening.

The reality on the ground is that according to Yale research only 30% of people there think climate change is bogus. But because the anti-science voices tend to be the loudest, the average person, the majority, stay silent. When you remain silent you give the impression of agreement, of complicity. And nationally, only 18% of people refuse to accept the scientific consensus on climate change.

What we have here is a tin-foil hat wearing, conspiracy-believing minority...a small minority. A radical fringe. Like anti-vaxxers.

You are the majority. You understand how science works and you understand the consequences of doing nothing.

So it’s time to talk about climate change around the dinner table. Take the initiative. You are surrounded by others who will be inspired by your courage to take on the tin foil hat brigade. You can raise your voice. You can shout down that crazy uncle of yours. Silence is no longer an option. You have science.

Now go out there, tiger and go get ‘em!

Thomas Arnold @_ThomasArnold

Please visit BioDetectives as they track life science stories from Down Under to Up North.

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Sydney, Australia; Atlanta, Georgia; and Sonoma County, California!

See you again next week!

Recently NASA announced the discovery, for the first time, of an Earth-like planet orbiting a star like our own Sun 1,400 light years distant. The planet is a bit larger and older than earth, and it occupies the “habitable zone”, where conditions are optimal to make life a possibility.

Right now I’m sure that spectral analysis is being conducted to see if this planet has an oxygen-rich atmosphere, a strong indicator of life. Moreover, I’d bet good money that radio telescopes are being pointed toward Kepler 452b in hopes that maybe, just maybe there’s an intelligent species there who are using radio signals for communication.

Perhaps these creatures are like us in many ways...just a little more than a century from the discovery of broadcast radio and now maybe they’re enjoying technologies similar to our satellites, Internet, and smartphones. Perhaps they’ve sent astronauts to their moon or nearby planets, and have a space probe that has recently made a flyby to their outermost planet, even arguing about whether it’s a real planet or not. And perhaps, just perhaps, they’re analyzing data from one of their space telescopes and have just announced the discovery of planet similar to their own, only smaller, a bit younger, and 1,400 light years distant.

In other words, they’re looking right back at us.

Right now their scientists are pointing radio telescopes to listen for radio signals to determine if a civilization exists on Earth. What’ll they hear? Crickets. And what will we hear when we listen to them? Space crickets.

Those radio signals, even if we both have the technology to hear them, won’t reach our respective planets for almost 1,300 years. We could be staring right at each other and never know it.

Mind blown.

Greg Laden was born in Albany, New York and subsequently lived in the Boston area and Milwaukee and spent a total of several years in Zaire (now Congo) and South Africa. He now lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

Greg is trained as an archaeologist and biological anthropologist, has taught at Harvard University, Boston University, the University of Minnesota and elsewhere. He writes about climate science, human evolution, science education, and politics at Greg Laden's Blog on National Geographic's Science Blog network and elsewhere, and maintains a website at www.gregladen.com

Last week the discussion paper by James Hansen,  "Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms..." was published to the Internet. Greg shares his expertise to help us interpret this complex and critically important paper.

Please visit BioDetectives as they track life science stories from Down Under to Up North.

This episode of Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from Atlanta, Georgia; and Sonoma County, California!

See you again next week!