This is the future, and I don’t get it. I am now officially old. Via Boingboing: Quantum computer solves problem without running program (From eurekalert.org) Utilizing two coupled optical interferometers, nested within a third, Kwiat’s team succeeded in counterfactually searching a four-element database using Grover’s quantum search algorithm. “By placing our photon in a quantum superposition of running and not running the search algorithm, we obtained information about the answer even when the photon did not run the search algorithm,” said graduate student Onur Hosten, lead author of the Nature paper. “We also showed theoretically how to obtain the answer […]

Inspector Gregory: “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Inspector: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Holmes: “That was the curious incident.” The analogy to global warming is that those who can understand the evidence, even when it doesn’t make obvious noise, understand the problem. Those who don’t, don’t. Where’s the proof? Hurricanes, fires, and droughts notwithstandng, the evidence for global warming lies in statistics. No single weather event can be pinned on global warming, any more than a specific price […]

This is my favorite subject. Why aren’t I in London? Why? The exhibit will run for four months, and then “travel,” says the BBC. But where? They don’t say. Here? Huh? Huh? In the meantime, those of us who don’t live in the center of the universe have to make do with pictures. (This dreadful-looking thing is actually rather graceful when alive. It’s a pycnogonid, probably from the deep sea since those are the only ones to reach large size. The abdomen extends into the legs, allowing the whole body to be thin and spindly enough for a supermodel. Digestion […]

From a biologist, a rant on what works and what doesn’t for H5N1. Below: fiction, then fact, then what to do. I apologize in advance for the hectoring tone, but I’m fed up with the balderdash I keep hearing. Eat tamiflu, and barricade yourself into Fortress Wherever with a gun to keep out the feverish hordes. I mean, honestly. (Nov 1, update, at end) Fiction 1: We’re all going to die. It makes for a good movie script, but this is not the way diseases work. The most lethal disease on record, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, causes death in over 90% […]

Slightly changed from an LA Times letter to the Editor of the Sunday Magazine, regarding an article by Matthew Heller, Healthy, Wealthy, but Wise? The article concerned the controversy about regulation of ephedra and ephedrine, which speed up metabolism, and therefore help weight loss, as well as cause heart problems and even death in some people. I was an ethnobotany (Special Concentrations) major as an undergrad, have a naturopathic doctor’s degree, and a PhD in botany, so herbs and drugs are subjects I feel very strongly about. Hence the rant. The hoopla over weight loss drugs is just the beginning. […]

[This is a re-posting of an earlier post, with the comments turned on this time. Unfortunately, current events–read: “Kansas” [Oct24, 2005: good grief, and now Dover!]–keep making it relevant. It’s amazing that almost a century after the Scopes monkey trial, we STILL have to argue about this nonsense.] Evolution is said to be one dogma among many, nothing more than part of the orthodoxy known as science. Other beliefs are just as valid, and they deserve equal time because anything less is unfair. There is only one thing wrong with this viewpoint. Evolution is not a belief. Even though nobody […]

(SpaceShipOne: First Private Launch, 21 June 2004) by Mia Molvray, photos by Paul J. Kores (c) 2005 SpaceShipOne’s rocket runs on rubber and laughing gas, and two days later I could still feel the laughing gas. Watching the ship reach for space was a charge that just doesn’t go away. It didn’t start that way. It started with being turned away from Mojave Airport in the middle of the night while a gale like a tornado in training pounded the car. “The parking lot isn’t set up yet,” said the polite man whose job it was to guard the entrance […]

Rights of embryos | Cell lines and other scientific issues | Are stem cells really that good? | Prop. 71. [Written October 20th, 2004. The proposition passed, despite deficiencies in funding oversight, public ownership of eventual patents, and conformity to California’s sunshine laws. The industry, unfortunately but not unexpectedly, has jumped on these loopholes. Whether this ruins the whole initiative remains to be seen.] [Comment added approximately December 2004.] Stem cells have become the umpteenth topic in the culture wars. The Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign made it something of an issue (although maybe they acted in haste and are now repenting […]