Since Palin's comments on fruit fly research are getting some commentary, it's a good time to review the value of model organisms in basic research.

One of the things budding geneticists, biochemists and cell biologists learn very quickly when they enter grad school is that studying humans is usually not the best way to successfully tackle the most interesting research questions. You can ask questions about human biology, but to answer them you generally turn to an elite club sometimes called the Security Council of biology: the bedrock group of five model organisms.

Sarah Palin is opposed to the basic model organism research that forms the bedrock of biomedical research.

Over at Pharyngula, go listen to her mock the fact that we spend money on

projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Don't just read the quote - you've got to hear the mocking inflection of her voice as she says "fruit fly research".

From Cosmic Variance:

It’s usually not a good idea to have one of your parents call the department on your behalf.

I'm surprised this even needs to be said.

Spending all day reading from a computer monitor is a drag. By the end of the day reading from a monitor drives me crazy, which means that I end up printing out hard copies of way too many papers.

Amazon's Kindle looks like an intriguing solution, but I think this reader is going to be much, much better.

Andrew Sullivan on the extreme sport of blogging:

A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to the world. For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.