On-Screen Scientist

First, the big news: OnScreen DNA’s price has been reduced by $30! The standard edition of OnScreen DNA is now $39, and the Pro edition, which empowers user-controlled simulations of gene transcription and DNA replication, costs $69. You can read the press release; but, if you haven’t already—just to get an idea of how much easier it is to visualize and understand DNA’s double helical structure and the chemical bonds that underly it when you have a three-dimensional model to play with—why not download OnScreen DNA Lite (it’s free)?

OnScreen DNA is a virtual model, of course, which is good from a number of standpoints. It costs a lot less than a hardware one, and it can be animated to show the essential three-dimensional details of how DNA works. If you know someone who teaches DNA at any level, please tell them about OnScreen DNA. If you’ve wanted to come to a deeper understanding of DNA and how genes work yourself, please note that it is now a lot easier and less expensive to do so.

As an extra inducement to readers of this blog to try OnScreen DNA, here’s a coupon code to save an additional $20: hs908. Just enter that code in the appropriate box on the order page to get OnScreen DNA for only $19. This won’t work forever, so don’t count on it being there a month from now. OK, commercial over.

I need to catch up on thank yous and acknowledgements. As always, another blog’s linking to this one implies no endorsement of views in either direction.

David, the Christian physicist and novelist who writes the He Lives blog, linked to Conversations in the Club of Truly Smart People. Thanks again, David. Another Dave, he of the Not the Religious Type blog, mentioned the same post favorably and linked to On the Breaking of Bad Habits Acquired in One’s Youth: Smoking and Atheism. Thank you, Dave. Ropata of the Earth is My Favorite Planet blog also linked to the Bad Habits post. Thanks, Ropata.

Denyse, a very busy Catholic journalist and author on topics of religion and science, keeps three blogs going. We have exchanged some emails, and she has added the onscreen-scientist to the blog roll of Colliding Universes, which I’d say examines physics and biology from a thoughtful Intelligent Design standpoint. She also (with comments) linked to the two previously mentioned posts related to atheism and to the one on animal suffering, Cries in the Night. Thank you, Denyse.

My post about the anti-LHC campaign, Large Hadron Collider: What’s the Risk?, coming as it did a couple of days before the first proton beam circulated in the LHC, drew more traffic than even the computer troubleshooting ones have in the past. John of the Refugees from the City blog linked to my aforementioned LHC post in two separate posts: Mixed Nuts, in which he makes a thorough exposé of the dishonestly exaggerated credentials of Walter Wagner, the main instigator of the doomsday hysteria, and also looks at Rainer Plaga’s background and work, and Whooooo Hoooooo!, which summarizes the credentials of all notable LHC opponents. Thanks, John.

I have also exchanged emails with JoWynn, who wrote to tell me how much she and her husband appreciated my Reading Proust for the Last Time post. JoWynn, in addition to being a voracious reader (including books on particle physics!), maintains a blog largely devoted to her embroidery art (Parkview 616), despite a disabling condition that confines her to one room most of the time. Thanks, JoWynn. Judy of the Reading Proust in Foxborough blog said good things about the Proust post and also linked to it. Thanks again, Judy.

Finally, I’ve decided that the predatory animal whose strange wild sounds I couldn’t identify in my Cries in the Night post was almost certainly a raccoon, based on some sounds I’ve found online. It’s funny that out of all the raccoons I’ve seen in my life, I’ve never heard one make a sound that I can remember. So, just to return to that disturbing death struggle I overheard in the middle of the night, I now imagine that it was a raccoon that had caught a squirrel. The raccoon, lacking big, powerful jaws like a dog, could have been holding the squirrel in its mouth waiting for it to die of blood loss, internal injuries, etc. The squirrel, being still alive, could have made its cries and also have mustered up the strength for a desperate struggle to escape every few minutes, which would explain the fierce raccoon sounds mixed with thrashing around that I heard periodically.

On the one hand, I’d just as soon get those sounds and speculation about what was going on out of my head, but it’s also good to have the drama linked to known animals. It changes my view of raccoons, which I had known to be scrappy fighters by reputation (able to drown dogs that were foolish enough to pursue them into the water, for example), but had never seen or heard in action.