Thursday evening roundup

While we're all condemning worker safety standards in Bangladesh, look at this California strawberry farm that expected its workers to not run from a fire.

Everyone's filling up with respect for Charles Ramsey for eschewing a hypothetical reward, which is fine, but we really ought to respect him for manning up to help someone in need, no matter who she was.

More low-level science vs. religion debating (and more sad signs of religion taught as science) but my rant from this morning (was it this morning?) holds: scientists are to take the high road, which means sticking to what's true and not telling people how to think (and what to think of GMOs). If you have a problem (as the author in the second link does) with the imposition of religious beliefs on society at large, deal with the imposition, not the religious beliefs. Ironically, a few science blogs have recently addressed the importance of story-telling to the human experience (but not in any way that was worth posting), and there's also this gathering of eminent scientists--some of whom are rabid atheists--discussing the importance of storytelling. So let people have their stories, as long as they don't pass them off as science.

You may be wondering where I get this stuff--where I've been getting this stuff--and the short answer is, mostly Twitter. The long answer is, I use Twitter to follow things of interest for work (I do not, however, in any way associate my Twitter account with my employer). Anyway, if you looked at my Twitter feed, you'd come away with the impression that scientists own Twitter. Anyway, this is how my attention, since I really figured out how to use Twitter, has been drawn to sciency stuff.

Ladies and dudes can now wallow in our collective (or is it respective) hormonal afflictions together.

Is it scariest that the banana bunker (1) exists; (2) sells; or (3) is absurdly phallic?