Welcome, everyone, to the latest issue of The Tangled Bank. Everyone has sent in their submissions, and there’s been some really good stuff submitted to me. I now fully appreciate the efforts of all Tangled Bank Hosts, because it is a serious task evaluating several magazines-worth of articles to put together an issue. The Tangled Bank is a model science blog carnival, now let’s set the gold standard!

A long time ago, on a weblog far, far away…

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Take a look at this article in Forbes, assuring everyone that they may be better served not going to college. Yes, indeed! You are better served not going to college, and that you should invest the tuition money while you work your way to the top - that is their conclusion. Well, that sounds questionable, but their logic must be sound, I mean this is Forbes, right? Excuse me while I whip out my enzyme… Read More…

The 52nd issue of the ultra-cool science blog carnival, The Tangled Bank, is coming up right here at The Inoculated Mind mindlog! If you are interested in reading the latest and best science blog entries (as submitted) summarized for you, or have never read the Tangled Bank before, check out the last one, then come back here on Wednesday, April 26, 2006. Read More…

The controversy over “Dr. Doom” has taken an interesting and expected turn. After the Sequin Gazette-Enterprise broke the story that Dr. Eric Pianka advocated the deaths of 90 percent of the human population to save the rest of the biosphere from us, the creationists jumped all over it. Now, not only have most of the creationists totally abandoned their interest in Pianka, (expected) but when you try to access the articles on the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, they are coincidentally missing… Interesting. But I’ve got them right here for you. Read More…

At the beginning of my second year writing for The California Aggie, my new editor buttered me up with a danish and pitched to me this idea - that my column would be like a Dear Abby, but for science. “Dear Inoculated Mind.” On the other hand, I wanted to write Op-ed pieces about science, but I gave it a try agreeing that I would mix it up. I’ll write more extensively about my experience some other time, but to put it short, my voice was stifled and the format was silly. No one asked any questions until I abandoned the format, so I was making up silly questions and pressing my family for ideas. Some folks at the Aggie helped me out, too. But Op-Eds are what I do best.

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Greetings mindcast listeners. I wanted to let you know, in case anyone came here to check, I have not updated the mindcast in 3 weeks now. Read More…

The blogosphere (and the regular media) just hit a big firestorm, with people typing away like madness. Over what? The claims made by a creationist about an award-winning ecologist named Dr. Pianka, aka “Dr. Doom.” Forrest Mims, whom you see to the right sporting a hat embroidered with a higher lifeform, claimed that Dr. Pianka advocated the elimination of 90% percent of the world’s human population with airborne ebola. Did Dr. Doom do it? Read More…

A couple weeks ago I blogged about the Double Helix Nebula, making an educated guess about whether or not it coils the same way as DNA, (like a bolt or screw) or the retrograde Z-DNA. I also predicted that the Intelligent Design crowd was going to latch onto this nebula as some sort of example of design akin to what they believe happened in the origin of life. Was I right? Well, the UCLA scientist who discovered the nebula stepped in on both counts… Read More…