A fog of panicked motivation has descended on me of late. You know it’s serious when you don’t even open up the bookmarked blogs of a morning. Also, I’m moving house, the academic year is re-starting, and what is my name and why am I here?

Back when there is calm.

Until then, a quiz on the weird world of allergies.

(Everything is funnier when you reference the Ultimate Showdown)
The Guardian technology blog links to EB’s response to the claims by that journal that EB was no more accurate than Wikipedia.

The 20-page EB response is an exercise in the most miffed sort of quibbling, especially the appendix where they address the reviewers point by point. Good on them for taking on Nature; good on Nature for starting the comparison in the first place. Can’t wait to see round three.

ETA 24 March: Nature’s response. Very terse and unapologetic. They say they provided EB with the requested information, which was a major point of criticism.

Articles of interest from today’s Guardian:

1. Over-counter or internet gene tests a waste of money according to research presented at a Royal College of Physicians meeting–there is no regulation beyond that the tests are safe and measure what they’re supposed to. The “what then?” factor is ignored. It may be so, but as long as the popular press like Newsweek keep headlining with spin like this, the public perception will be that genetic tests are a mine of information… and will be willing to pay for them.
2. This one irritates me: There is no stop button in the race for human reengineering, a piece about Meeting of Minds in Brussels last week. It begins with the tired trope of envisioning the near future and the variant nifty improvements we can make to ourselves with biological and technological improvements, and ends with the same old slippery slope questions. Yes, there are ethical issues, and they are legion. But do these Brave New Biologies work? How? On what timescale? Or are they mere scientific twinkles, like Star Trek-style teleportation envisioned from laboratory experiments where sub-atomic particles jump across a lab bench? Yes, there is no “stop button”, but we have been on the brink of these technological marvels (and their associated ethical dilemmas) for some time now, and I’m still relying on coffee to kickstart my brain in the morning.
3. This, though, is cool: The world in one country: a unique atlas of multicultural Britain. Proof that you can put any data on a map and I’ll think it’s interesting.