Recent content by Arete

Just a snap from a Sunday drive.

I had almost exactly the same experience in Adelaide: "Hi I was hit by a car cycling to work yesterday and the hospital asked me to make a statement." "License plate?" "I was knocked unconscious and don't remember anything after breakfast that morning." "Well, I can't even take a...

Two points; 1) Don't get me wrong - on an individual basis it will prevent a particular offender from re-offending. Obviously if they're dead they can't re-offend, and if they can't control their urges, castration may allow them to no longer represent a danger to society. 2) I probably...

The problem with eugenics (and removing a certain behavior from a population through selective breeding is eugenics) is that it fails to adhere to basic population genetic principles. 1) The phenotype of an organism is a product of the environment it is exposed to, and its genetics. In the...

Our little guy just got out of the NICU yesterday after being born on 420. I feel like I'm just climbing out of a time machine made of shitty nappies, hospital alarms and clothes covered in baby vomit someone pushed me into last week sometime. What is this "riding" you speak of?

TL;DR I'm currently a uni professor in the US, and I say stick it out. So, I did environmental science at uni. It was ok, I didn't mind most of it, but I also didn't really get into it. I finished and immediately did a master's in conservation biology, which I hated, but stuck out. It...

Sorry, I fucked the link up. This should work. https://sistromlab.wordpress.com/research/

So, I recently accepted a tenure track assistant professor job at the University of California, Merced. Excited to be moving to the area, starting my own lab and teaching in a UC. Just got a new lab website up! https://sistromlab.wordpress.com

just don't buckle anything or you'll need a rimjob.

Thanks for the support. I'm starting a lab working on bioegineering viruses to attack antibiotic resistant bacteria, and teaching evolutionary medicine. My wife works on speciation in arid zones and will be teaching behavioral ecology. She recently appeared in a couple of new articles talking...

They are funded by the state government of California.

My wife and I just signed tenure track contracts in the UC system, permanently fixing our careers in the US. (we also just put an offer on 10 acres in the Sierra foothills right near Yosemite - if you're in Cali and want to ride, PM me) Some of our best friends, both senior research...

Yes. I totally spent 2 years of my life working on a disease which only affects the poorest part of sub Saharan Africa for the cashmonies. Public/academic scientists are all about the dollar dollar bills y'all. That's why our salaries are so huge, and the pay off is so immediate.

But if they used "the science" to confirm it, then who do we believe?!

No, no. vaccines are terrible for business - you don't want to prevent people getting sick, you want to treat their chronic conditions for the rest of their lives. The only thing vaccines are good for is making sure people live long enough to need a Lipitor prescription. Precisely. It's more...