A perspective piece by Danielle Ofri of the NYU School of Medicine, in last week's New England Journal of Medicine (subscription required) nails the H1N1 vaccine hysteria:

After repeated delays, H1N1 vaccine finally arrived in our clinic earlier this month to the uniform relief of the medical staff. But my formerly desperate patients were now leery. "It's not tested," they said. "Everyone knows there are problems with the vaccine." "I'm not putting that in my body."

If you haven't watched NOVA's 3-part special on human evolution, you're missing out. It's all online, so you have no excuse for missing it. It's visually amazing and the science is explained clearly. The series gives an outstanding overview of where the field of human evolution is now - what the evidence is, what the outstanding questions are, and what are the most promising answers to those questions at present. After 3 hours, you'll have a great basic grasp of human evolution. Read the feed:

The 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species is coming up next week, and even the creationists are celebrating. In fact one of them is giving out free copies of Darwin's seminal book. The catch? It comes with a confused, incoherent creationist rant as the introduction. The creationist is Ray Comfort, who has decided to distribute copies of the Origin to "100 top U.S. universities," which apparently includes Washington University here in St. Louis. because Comforts foot soldiers were out in force, handing out books to students at the campus metro train station.