The Trouble with TED

An awful of of people seem to waking up to the idea that TED talks are not what they're supposed to be. They attract a lot of kooks who can speak well and exude enthusiasm. How many times have you listened to a TED talk in your area of expertise and wondered how the heck that person got on the stage?

TED talks are just big soundbites and soundbites are not good ways to explain complicated, and potentially revolutionary, ideas.

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Is WiFi Harmful to Children?

 

There are many things that are harmful to children—poverty and war come to mind. There's also superstition and ignorance.

Believe it or not, there are many parents who think that electromagnetic radiation from WiFi transmitters is harming their children. They want it removed from schools because their children are becoming sick when they are at school.

Steve Thoms at Skeptic North has a post on this issue [Why, Wifi? Why?]. He explains why some people believe stupid things and how they go about defending those beliefs in a scientific society. He also raises questions about the "evidence" of illness caused by WiFi.

Worth reading—especially for the students in my course.

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Next-Generation DNA Sequencing

 
There's a real revolution under way in terms of our ability to collect sequence information. The so-called Next-generation DNA sequencing technology relies on the ability to sequence billions of single DNA molecules simultaneously.

How does it work? I was planning on writing up a blog posting to explain the technology since so many experiments rely on it. I kept putting it off but that turns out to be a good thing 'cause others have explained it much better that I ever could have. Watch this video from Helicos.

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[Hat Tip: ScienceRoll]