Following on from the private lives of snails, I bring you: slugs! (The first part of this post is largely a repost of something I wrote back in 2009.) Leopard slugs, like other terrestrial slugs & snails, are hermaphrodites. They produce both eggs & sperm, but must exchange sperm with another slug in order to […]
Continue readingMonth: January 2016
words and ecology, ecology and words
I love words (to the extent that I've been known to peruse dictionaries for pleasure). The Story of English was one of my favourite TV programs, back (long way back) in the day. So of course when I saw positive reviews for Robert Macfarlane's book, Landmarks, of course I had to get hold of a […]
Continue readingmore moo woo
Once I started paying attention to the woo around milk I realised how much of it there is. And how ready people are to accept it. I've written about the notoriously non-scientific Food Babe before. Someone with a high pain threshold could probably manage a daily blog post on this young woman and the way she […]
Continue readingthe moo woo train has left the station
This image popped up again on FB the other day. It was originally posted, with the comments I've pasted below, on a page run by/for someone called 'Dr Sebi'. I do not recommend asking his advice. After all, I'm doubtful that someone who could say something like this, in advising people what not to eat […]
Continue readingsnail s*x toys
This morning when I went out to feed the goldfish, I encountered a pair of snails in flagrante delicto. I resisted the urge to step on them 🙂 However, I was reminded of a post that I wrote several years ago, on the sexual habits of snails, and thought it was worth a repost. So here goes: […]
Continue readingthe dangerous delusions around use of ‘black salve’
Black salve. A slightly ominous name, but to some people it seems to be the best thing since sliced bread. A colleague has just pointed me at a discussion (on FB, where else?) around the use of 'black salve' to heal a self-diagnosed melanoma. (That bit's important – the person concerned never saw a doctor […]
Continue readingcritiquing another thesis on vaccination
Given the fuss occasioned by her PhD thesis, I was interested to look at the document produced for Judy Wilyman's MSc (available here on-line), largely to see what attention had been given to the science content and perspectives. Having examined or adjudicated a number of Masters theses in the sciences, I've a reasonably good idea […]
Continue readingdragonfly eyes
Dragonflies are ancient: with damsel flies, they were among the earliest flying insects. An analysis based on molecular data and fossil evidence suggests a date of 480mya for the first insects, around the same time that land plants evolved, and includes a rather impressive family tree for the taxon; the earliest dragonfly fossils are around 325my […]
Continue readingthe wilyman thesis on how smallpox is transmitted
I had another head-desk moment today, on reading a bit more of Judy Wilyman's PhD thesis (a bit at a time is quite enough). The document has quite a bit to say about smallpox. I've already noted the ill-considered statement that the vaccine has never been subject to clinical trials – a statement unaccompanied by […]
Continue readingwollongong thesis has this to say on smallpox
This is the human face of smallpox: Photo Credit: Content Providers(s): CDC/James Hicks This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #3265. Smallpox is now extinct in the wild: the last known case was in 1977. And this is what Judy Wilyman has to say about the vaccine that […]
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