Western thought, from the sciences to the arts, have been based upon the rich mythology and history of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.  One which seems to guide the subconscious thought of many of our political and financial leaders is the myth of Saturn (Chronos).  Saturn, the Roman name for the Greek God Chronos, became the ruler of the deities after overthrowing his own father.  However, Saturn, like most power hungry individuals, quickly aged and forgot the crimes perpetrated by his own father -- 

Does it take effort to tell the truth or are you naturally honest? In other words, are you truthful or a liar? A Harvard neuroimaging study showed that you're wired to be one or the other.

The study watched subjects' brains as they were presented with the opportunity to win money through lying. When honest people told the truth, their brains were at peace. When dishonest people lied, the control centers of their brains crackled to overwrite the truth with a lie. And here's the cool part: even when dishonest people happened to tell the truth, researchers watched their brains actively override the temptation to lie.

Icon for Cosmic Embryo: Erupting star V838 Monocerotis 

”On 2010-09-26, at 5:01 AM, Frithjof A.S. Sterrenburg wrote:

Dear Richard!

Sorry to hear you have been in the claws of the barber-surgeons.  Hope everything is well now!… As for your itinerant existence, you begin to resemble the mathematician Erdös! Cheers, boy, get well soon!"

I am 21% of awesome.  But the rest, well, as with last year, I thought I'd let everyone know what you hated. My two worst columns from last year, the only ones to get under 400 visitors, were:

1) AGU Meetup? (San Fran, Dec 13-17), at 154 visits.
2) Dating Advice or disaster in the making?, an anemic 257 visits.

Yeah, I can see it. Neither calls to me. The first is just reaching to regular readers who might be in San Francisco, the second is a reblog of someone else's bad dating advice.

On August 21, 10:25:20 and 10:51:16, a mid-level aid on my opponent's staff signed up on my Political Action Committee's website to "Turn out voters, Make policy, Fundraise, Volunteer in general" on both occasions. 

This occurred only 4 days after an annoucement was sent to the broader Columbia Alumni Community.  A few days later a lobbyist from a large Albany Law Firm asked for a call.  "What do you want kid?" He asked me.  "You can't be serious about trying to unseat a sitting speaker.  There are easier ways to get into public office." 

What is the most popular form of Citizen Science?

Some want to make us believe it is SETI@home, 8 year olds being pressured by overenthusiastic teachers, or people in their backyards looking for comets.

The Political and Financial Leaders of today have ransomed our future.  No one is innocent.  People of the earth you have all been poisoned.  The only antidote is a drastic program of retraining, retooling, and
reform.  Short of this, a Jeffersonian call to revolution is the only alternative, and one which I do not relish.  Our debt per capita is more than most people's retirement accounts.  A quick reading of history will show that the French had the same problem before their problems started a few hundred years ago.  As they say, "the only war the french have won since then has been the French Revolution."  Our atmospheric and oceanic  environments have degraded to the point where ecosystems are soon to be

Last Wednesday, this paper, published in PLoS ONE, hit the popular news in the medicine/science category, with articles such as this one from MedPage Today and this, from Reuters.

Jonah Lehrer in The New Yorker about the slipperiness of the scientific method:

"The Truth Wears Off: Is There Something Wrong With The Scientific Method?"

The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws.

It's no secret that humans are not the only species with circadian rhythm - a biological clock.   Studying red bread mold may teach us how our own internal clock works and by experimenting with the fungus’ response to light and darkness, researchers can explore its reaction to different substances, food and temperatures.

Basically, giving mold jet lag may help us mitigate it in humans.