Cockroach Hunters

I often say that there is always something to discover in New York City. I'm usually referring to pleasant things, but two Manhattan high school students discovered a new breed of cockroach during a DNA barcoding project at Trinity School.

"[Closely-related] species don't differ [by] more than one percent, [while] this cockroach is four percent different," agreed Professor Mark Stoeckle. "This suggests it is a new species of cockroach."
...
Further investigation is essential before it can be determined whether the students' discovery is a new species or a subspecies. If their finding is confirmed, it is traditional that the discoverers -- Ms. Tan and Mr. Cost in this case -- will be granted naming rights for the new species.

I hope this pans out for the students, it would be an impressive discovery. Now if I can only get them to test some of the crazy huge rats I see roaming my Bushwick streets.

Originally posted on CitizeNYC.

National Day To Ask God For Favors

Today is The National Day of Prayer, a day that celebrates the power of asking god to do favors for you and your friends and family.

In reality, prayer doesn't do anything.

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

In the study, the researchers monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery, in which doctors reroute circulation around a clogged vein or artery.

The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or might not receive prayers.

Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.

In another of the study's findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain.

The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer group — 18 percent — suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers.

At least one earlier study found lower complication rates in patients who received intercessory prayers; others found no difference. A 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving 40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse.

The most amusing finding is that people who were prayed for tended to do worse than people not prayed for at all.

Read the whole article at the The New York Times.

Being 27.

I turned 27 today. I've been dreading it since I read this article a few weeks ago,'Old age begins at 27: Scientists reveal new research into ageing.' Apparently, "our mental abilities begin to decline from the age of 27 after reaching a peak at 22." Looks like it's pretty much all downhill from here. This morning, I expected to wake up and get lost in my apartment but so far I seem okay.

London's Telegraph says that "Twenty-seven has long had negative connotations," because it is the "age at which many popular musicians died, including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain." Feeling lucky I don't have any musical ability.

Good things have happened to 27 year olds too, Kurt Vonnegut quit his job at GE to become a full-time writer and Henry David Thoreau went to live in a cabin on Walden Pond. Maybe I'll try something like that.

Odds & Ends

Vote is going extremely well. Yesterday we stumbled through Act 2. Today, we spend the entire rehearsal polishing the choreography. Broadway producer Ken Davenport blogs the Vote musical backstory of how we ended up workshopping in Indiana at his blog, Producer's Perspective.

-- Michael Feingold, of The Village Voice, reminded me via e-mail that both Broadway World & Talkin' Broadway got the theater community involved in resurrecting California's canceled RENT production.

-- Another scientist goes after Bobby Jindal. "So what do we call a supposedly bright person who is a creationist and believes that an exorcism cast out cancer?"

-- If you looking to lose weight - cutting calories is the only real deal. "The lesson, researchers say, is that people lose weight if they lower calories, but it does not matter how."

-- The police arrest a suspect in the Bushwick gay-hate murder.

Ray Kurzweil Film Trailer

Just released trailer for a new biographic documentary, Transcendent Man, on major-futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Opens in select theaters in late March. I've blogged in the past about Kurzweil's new university and book, The Singularity is Near.

(h/t Blogging The Singularity)

Late Night Odds & Ends

We're nearly halfway done staging Vote!

Yesterday, Aly (my choreographer) and I were staging "Ambition," one of Mark's big numbers. Mark is one of the candidates running for senior class president in the show and is a mix of Alex P. Keaton & Karl Rove. David Coleman, who is playing Mark in the Bloomington production, is a freshman at IU and is doing quite a nice job in the part.

During one moment we had Mark try a crane kick. David knew exactly what to do and it was really funny. But, he didn't know what the reference was from! It made me feel pretty old. I thought everyone grew up on Karate Kid.

-- David Axelrod says Obama plans to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research sometime soon.

-- Kissing really matters. - "Saliva is like a chemical cocktail, and hooking up may have evolved to help us quickly tell if someone is a good mate or not." And, there is probably more to it than that:

"There may be more to this chemical assessment than just kissing," Fisher said. "I think kissing is the tip of the ice berg. I think we'll find that all kinds of other chemical systems are in play that we don't know about."

Goodbye freewill.

-- We've got a Stimulus Package! More on that tomorrow, but watch SNL go after the GOP this week.

-- NY Times: Five NYC economists on the state of the city's economy. Money quote:

“New York City isn’t like Elkhart, Ind.,” Ms. O’Cleireacain said, referring to a city that President Obama visited last week, one that largely depends on a single industry, recreational-vehicle manufacturing, and where unemployment has soared to 15 percent. New York, she said, “is a magnet for talent: for smart, enterprising, ambitious, innovative people, not only from this country but from around the world. Everyone wants to be here, and I think that sets us apart from virtually any other city.”

-- 71% of Americans believe there should be an investigation by either criminal prosecutors or an independent panel into the actions of the Bush administration.

-- Just what will White Spaces give us?

New cellular phones are being planned that would operate independently of existing networks, and would instead access the Internet through white-space technologies and send and receive calls over the Web. High-definition TV broadcasts and movies can be streamed through white spaces directly to a person's laptop, BlackBerry or iPhone.

"It takes images and sound and sends them great distances with no distortion," said Jake Ward, a spokesman for the Wireless Innovation Alliance.

-- Time's Joe Klein on the Israeli Election.

-- Thank you for the link NY Daily News!

Early Morning Odds & Ends

I went to bed early last night, so for some reason I had to get up at 5am. So much for catching up on sleep.

Vote! rehearsals are going very well, we're moving right along blocking the show. The cast has been a blast to work with. Here they are, during rehearsal Wednesday night.


-- My thoughts are with the families and friends of victims of last night's plane crash outside of Buffalo. 49 people died.

-- Obama's speech last night honoring Lincoln was a beautiful tribute to the man and the Union that he kept together. Watch it - Part 1 and Part 2.

-- Seattle's Police Chief is on his way to being our next Drug Czar. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said "He’s likely to be the best drug czar we’ve seen. Not that that’s saying much.” Seattle is a city known for fairly progressive drug laws.

-- Obama is quickly learning that anyone who calls themselves a Republican these days is bound to be useless. Judd Gregg is a childish asshole, who should never have been given the honor of serving in Obama's cabinet. James Boyce has a great idea for Commerce Secretary - Bill Gates.

-- These new special edition extra-Lincolny pennies are really cool.

-- Scientist have taken skin cells and reprogrammed them into heart cells. They actually made them beat in the dish - there is even a YouTube video of it.

-- Google and friends have started a White Spaces group to advise the FCC on starting a database. Mobile internet is about to get really fucking fast. No more 3G bullshit.

-- Designer babies have finally arrived.

The Hill: Bad Science

The past few days haven't been good for vaccine-autism conspiracy theorists.

Earlier today, the Special Court of Federal Claims ruled that no evidence existed that the MMR vaccine contributes to autism. One of the judges said that the parents had been misled by physicians pushing the theory, who were guilty of "gross medical misjudgment."

The ruling comes on the heels of The Times of London's report that Andrew Wakefield, M.D, the chief charlatan behind the anti-vaccination movement, fudged his data to reach his discredited conclusion.

Wakefield's lies have made well-meaning parents question vaccinations. The U.S. has experienced large outbreaks of measles in recent years. "What concerns me is the trend of more and more people not vaccinating their children because of fears that vaccines cause autism -- although no studies have proven this to be true," said Dr. Joseph Rahimian, an infectious-diseases specialist at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. Kids don't have to get measles; it's outrageous in 2009.

On Tuesday night, Keith Olbermann correctly named Andrew Wakefield the worst person of the day for lying to the world. I was shocked to see him backpedal on the story last night, citing conflicts of interest in The Times's reporting. A bizarre move, more worthy of Rush Limbaugh than Keith Olbermann.

Perhaps Keith got a call from conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. that made him change his mind, or maybe he just hates science. Either way, shame on you, Keith -- you're my worst person of the day for questioning solid and important reporting. (Unlike anything on your entire hour last night.)

Obama has promised to restore science to its rightful place. That means opposing nonsense like creation science, global-warming denial and autism-vaccination links. It's all the same kind of bad science.

Originally posted on The Hill.

Early Morning Odds & Ends

I'm up early, getting ready to leave for my flight to Indiana to direct the musical Vote! I'm a little worried about making it through airline security with this orange plastic bag from a Halloween store full of colorful costumes, but I guess it doesn't make me look like a terrorist... just crazy.


Jeff, Kevin,& Me

--Last night Kevin and I went to see People I Slept With Who Never Called Me Back at Ars Nova. The show, written and performed by my friend Jeffery Self, was part of Ars Nova's Residency Encore series and was extremely funny. You missed this run, but Jeffery is one half of YouTube's VGL Gay Boys and blogs daily. So, keep up.

-- This women, a lesbian denied seeing her dying partner in a Florida hospital, is an example of why the gay movement needs to focus on federal civil unions asap. It's not enough to protect gays who live in liberal states. Federal unions are the only way to protect the rights of gays and lesbians in conservative states where there isn't a path to full marriage in the near future.

-- Human cloning is finally viable. "The research is the first step toward therapeutic cloning — making embryonic stem cells from a patient's own DNA capable of replacing diseased tissue, failing organs and even lost limbs. And, theoretically, the same technique could be used to produce a cloned person."

-- Cablevision's internet service continues to be less reliable than the 28.8 modem I used in 7th grade and even makes AT&T's cell service look acceptable by comparison.

Singularity University

Both Google and NASA are financially backing Ray Kurzweil's new Singularity University. The nine-week program focuses on topics out of Kurzweil's best-selling books The Singularity is Near & The Age of Spiritual Machines.

The main premise of the Singularity is that the continuing rapid advance of computer technology will lead to a merger of human and computer intelligence. If this is accurate, then computer speeds will have to continue to double every year to eighteen months. Which, is at least true up to 2012, as IBM has recently announced a supercomputer 19 times faster than any previous model.

There are critics who think Kurzweil is overly optimistic, but Ian Douglas backed up Google's decision in a piece for the Telegraph yesterday:

Not so fast. The Age of Spiritual Machines, published in 1999, put some dates next to the predictions so we have something we can test. By 2009, said Kurzweil, computers will connect wirelessly (WiFi), rotational storage will be replace by electronic storage (flash memory rather than hard discs), computers that cost $1,000 would be capable of one trillion calculations per second (achieved in 2008 by an ATI Radeon graphics processor), high resolution displays range in size from a few centimetres across to the size of a book (have you looked at your mobile phone screen lately?), routine business transactions will be done between people and computers (this has been the case for some years), computers would be capable of language translation (translate.google.com is not perfect but it's a useful tool, and Altavista were doing this for years before Google muscled in) and bioengineered treatments for cancer and heart disease will be arriving.

Unless we see a real slowdown in development, I'm siding with Kurzweil and the good folks at Google.