German Homeschooling Family Seeks Asylum.
An update on the disease that threatens the worlds wheat crop.
Something for auto workers to do (read till the end)? I don’t know how well these things will really work. But it is important to remember that when you keep companies from going broke you often make it harder to shift resources to where they will do some real good.
From a fascinating post on the latest attempts to make a drug to treat schizophrenia…..
Now, there’s been a lot of argument about whether the current generation of antipsychotic drugs is really better than the older ones. But I believe that they’re all supposed to come in better than a placebo. As Lilly points out, though, “inconclusive trials are common in neuroscience”, and they’re going to run another one and hope that the patients don’t all start improving again on powdered sucrose or whatever the placebo was. But this is especially surprising (and disappointing) because an earlier Phase II trial, run in a very similar design to the latest one, showed the compound working very well indeed. How do you go from such impressive results to no better than placebo in the same sort of trial design? Easy – just make sure that you’re developing a drug for schizophrenia. Or depression. Or chronic pain, or Alzheimer’s. Stick with the central nervous system, and your drug discovery career will never be boring.
A mysterious illness is causing calves to bleed to death on German farms. Veterinarians are stumped over what is causing the deaths: vaccines, genetically modified feed or perhaps even the first mother’s milk?
What can a cattle farmer do when he sees blood running from his calves like water, when they become lethargic and febrile and, by the next morning, are lying dead on the floor, their coats covered in blood?
“Our calves from last summer looked like they had been beaten,” says farmer Robert Meyboom, who is still shocked and perplexed today. “The animals’ bodies were covered with drops of blood, and their eyes were bloodshot.”
Just watch this video for long enough to get to the end of the sheep story if you want a good laugh. Anyone who knows anything about sheep knows those stupid rubber bands are inhumane. But there are other ways of castrating sheep besides the way that he was taught to do it. After you get past the sheep story, the rest is just blather.
I already know that white collar people don’t know much and yet think they can tell us how to do our jobs. I already know that most safety regulations can’t be followed in the real world. And as far as a PR campaign for work goes, give me break.
Someday I want to learn all about lock-picking. I think it would be terribly fun.
Actually, I will try to be sure never to learn more about lock-picking because I am not sure I could stop from picking locks once I knew how. Just for fun.
H/T Hip And Thigh.
Here is a cool little game that makes an important philosophical point. Sadly the game can only be played once. That is because they never change the underlying rules so each time you play the game will get easier even if you do not read the explanation at the end. Still, I only got 3 errors so all you competitive people can see if you can do better on your first try.
Live Not By Lies is thought to be the last thing that Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote before he was arrested for the last time. As such, it is a bit of history. But it also addresses an issue that is timeless.