Tag Archives: research

How to drink without getting drunk: does the yeast method work? (Food & Drink Week)

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Esquire blog discusses a famous brewer’s secret for staying (relatively) sober. We test it out.

You may have seen Aaron Goldfarb’s recent Esquire blog entitled “How to Drink All Night Without Getting Drunk.” Great headline, and how cool would that be, right? I was skeptical, for obvious reasons, but it turns out that what is proposed is an idea developed by Joseph Owades, who Samuel Adams co-founder Jim Koch calls “the best brewer who ever lived.”

I figured I’d test the method myself, and not just because it would give me an excuse to drink too much.

First, how does it work? Read more

Getting a PhD was the best decision I ever made. And the worst.

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American businesses are anti-intellectual. American universities are anti-relevance. The gods help the overeducated schmuck stuck in the middle.

Hi. I’m Sam, and I’m a PhD.

Hi Sam!

CATEGORY: EducationFor those of you who don’t know me, I have a doctorate. Communication, University of Colorado, 1999. Some days it’s the thing I have done in life that I’m most proud of. Other days I think it’s the worst mistake I ever made in my life. There are days where I think both things more or less at the same time.

A couple of recent articles address my frustration and ambivalence. Read more

And the Nobel Prize for Sticking Your Fingers in Your Ears and Yelling “I Can’t Hear You” Goes To….

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Case 1: In 1997 a prominent scientist made a bet with a colleague over a complex black hole issue that physicists were trying to figure out. This bet was very public and given the egos involved in the field of advanced quantum science, the stakes were huge.

Case 2: In a climate-related thread on S&R, a “skeptic” was asked point-blank: “What evidence would you accept that global warming is real? What tests would you have to see, in order to change your view?” This is a straight-up establishment of terms for consideration of any scientific question: what is evidence in favor of the hypothesis and what evidence disproves the hypothesis? Read more

Business and social media: American companies growing up, sort of

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Ever since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in no particular order, Facebook (not that Facebook has gone away, of course), CRM, mobile (SMS, smart phones, apps), blogging, RSS and aggregation, Digg (and Reddit and StumbleUpon and Current and Yahoo! Buzz and Technorati and Del.icio.us and seemingly thousands more), targeted e-mail, YouTube, SEO, SEM, online PR and, well, you get the idea.

We certainly hear examples of businesses getting it right with new media, but in truth these cases represent a painfully small minority. Read more

War and Postwar: a look at LIFE and technology

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Part three in a series.

In an age and a culture dominated by scientism, the word “sample” tends to invoke the adjectival “representative,” and I cannot begin to imagine culling a meaningful representative sample from LIFE’s 400-plus issues. Still, it seems important to devote a few pages to what happened with LIFE and technology between the Fort Peck Dam and Apollo 17. I will center this discussion on innovations and events that, from our perspective here at the end of the century, appear to have left significant marks on history.

The Medical Morality Play

LIFE’s coverage of medical technology began early and covered, through the decades, the research, development, and application of treatments for a variety of diseases and disorders afflicting humanity. Read more

Has the University of Colorado sold its soul to the devil?

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I’m worried about the University of Colorado, the school where I earned my doctorate. Last night, in one of the more controversial moves in some time, the CU Board of Regents elected Bruce Benson to be the university’s new president. The 6-3 vote fell along party lines and marked the first time in nearly 35 years that a president has been approved by a split vote.

The main point in favor of Benson seems to be his reputation as a fund-raiser, and there’s no question that CU needs somebody to bring more money into the system. CU has been hamstrung ever since the early 1990s, when perennial pigfucker Douglas Bruce managed to get Amendment 1 passed. Read more

Why Don’t Journalists Understand Science?

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Friends have lately had to endure my ranting about how pathetic and irresponsible the media is when it comes to reporting on things scientific and statistical. The issue that has most commonly set me off lately has been the way the US press has turned SARS into the Black Death, damned near annihilating the Ontario economy in the process.

Fact is, if you go to Toronto, SARS does pose a threat to your health. If, while there, you fight your way past security, break into a respiratory quarantine, and French-kiss an elderly patient who suffers from the disease. If you’re just walking the streets, you have a better chance being run down by a taxicab than you do of contracting SARS. Read more