• S E M P E R • P H A G E •

	• publications • • research interests • • bacteriophage ecology • Stephen T. Abedon • microdude+@osu.edu • • photo • welcome wave • • school • links • • weather •
© Phage et al.

• S E M P E R • P H A G E •

(more below)

                                                         
                 Stephen T. Abedon, Ph.D.                
                                                         
          "Man of 1000 Faces and Hair Styles!"           
                                                         
             Assistant Professor Microbiology            
                The Ohio State University                
                                                         
         /            /              /           /       
         \            \              \           \       
    [:<]==[  -->  [:)]=[-  -->  [:)]==[  +  [:)]==[      
         /            /              /           /       
         \            \              \           \       
                                                         
    address: 1'   MicroDude+@OSU.edu                     
             2'   Abedon.1@OSU.edu                       
             3'   SAbedon@pop.service.ohio-state.edu     
             4'   297 Bromfield                          
                  1680 University Dr.                    
                  Mansfield, OH 44906                    
             5'   (419) 755-4343 (phone)                 
             6'   (419) 755-4327 (fax)                   
                                                         
    office hrs:                                          
    appointment:                                         
    drop in:      same as immediately above              

(more below)

Evolution of Man

Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science

Microbiology and Immunology at OSU

Safe Sun?

Sounds Like Science

Additional Links

evolvefish.com	Scientific thinking is simply a semi-efficient means by which one avoids wasting one's own time and that of others. Non-scientific thinking takes longer at discovering truths, with lack of rigor and infinite time scales proceeding hand in hand. If you insist on viewing the world without rigor, that's fine, just don't waste my time with your irrational actions or rantings. - Nodeba Bob -
So what is the hurry to apply our notions so quickly? Often we make discoveries simply because our knowledge base is so tiny that we are bound to learn new things. This means that our ignorance is so great that we have virtually no capacity for prescription, that is, little capacity to recommend ways to correct problems that we encounter. - David Suzuki - (the answer, by the way, is that it's a Prisoner's Dilemma out there and if we don't defect to gain the glory, money, or reproductive edge, then somebody else will)	dyehappy.com
waldonet.com	What features of your daily life do you expect to be improved by a further increase in population? - Garrett Hardin -
The LCV scores range from 0 to 100, where high scores represent pro-environmentalist positions. . . Attitudes toward environmental legislation are clearly apparent in party voting patterns; the average Republican score in the House is 24, compared with 72 for Democrats. In the Senate, party differences are even greater: Republicans there average 12 and Democrats 86. - The League of Conservation Voters -	Alistar B. Fraser
dharmatrading.com	So, so you think you can tell, Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field, from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? And did they get you to trade, your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange, a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage? - Roger Waters -
. . . almost anything an experimenter does to increase the internal validity of a test situation (e.g., controls for experience, order, appropriateness of model, etc.) compromises the external validity of the test (e.g., the extent to which the results can be generalized to other situations). - Stephens, Nishimura, and Toyer (1995, J. Theor. Biol. 176:457-469) paraphrasing A. C. Kamil -

(more below)

(more below)

[1998, press for enlargement]	Is such a virus living? The question is unanswerable without a definition of 'life'. And any definition of life must be arbitrary. - George W. Beadle -
With millions of species, each one with an almost unimaginably complex history and genetic makeup, we would have a source of intellectual and aesthetic enjoyment for generations to come. - E. O. Wilson -	[1997, press for enlargement]
[1990, press for enlargement]	. . . we live in the Age of Bacteria (as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, until the world ends) . . . - Stephen Jay Gould -
Ecologists who are not thoroughly familiar with the organisms involved risk wasting a great deal of time. - Nelson G. Hairston, Sr. -	[1995, press for enlargement]
[1995, press for enlargement]	Is it responsible for scientists to hold out the hope that endless population growth can be matched by endless doublings of world food production? At some point, probably sooner rather than later, we are going to run into the limits set by the law of conservation of stuff. The people of the world would be better served if we scientists gave our primary attention to the achievement of zero or negative population growth, first in the United States and then worldwide, so that further increases in agricultural production could be devoted to substantially improving diets worldwide. - Albert A. Bartlett -
A more valid ecology of U.S. science might start from the fact that the world's most productive scientific community exists within the world's most robust total economy. The notion that such a science- and technology-based economy can be maintained in the long run with a smaller investment in research is the assumption that should be 'critically examined.' Those who argue that the complex process of scientific inquiry can be bypassed in favor of immediate 'problem resolution' or 'measurable results' might well consider the fate of the goose that laid the golden eggs. - Roger Geiger -	[press for enlargement]
[1987, press for enlargement]	...scientific observations and discoveries don't necessarily require giant government grants and huge teams of researchers with specialized degrees. Small science still works, and it often works during off hours, weekends, and holidays when professionals are generally at home or on vacation. - Forrest M. Mims III -
Amazon, you had so much and now so much is gone. . . What a lucky man to see the earth before it touched his hand. . . A greedy man never knows what he's done. . . A natural beauty should be preserved like a monument to nature. - Neil Young -	[early 80s, press for enlargement]
[1998, press for enlargement]	There is nothing more rewarding than watching someone change their behavior toward the environment. - Sylvia Mitraud -
When Bertrand Russell was sent to prison for opposing England's entrance into the first World War, the warden asked him what his religion was. Russell replied "agnostic." After asking Russell how to spell it, the warden sighed and said, "Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God." "This remark," Russell adds in his autobiography, "kept me cheerful for about a week. - Martin Gardner -	[1998, press for enlargement]
[Erlan Ramanculov et moi, 1998]	The biological sciences are moving away from the era of analytical reductionism... from taking biological systems apart to see what the pieces are and how they work, to putting the pieces back together to understand how the totality works together. - National Science Foundation Task Force report -

...I have to be molecular. Who is not?

- André Lwoff -

Is an experiment an experiment without audio input? When NPR gets redundant, then what?

The Allman Brothers Band , The Beatles , Beethoven , WCPN's Blues with Fitz [SIC?] , Ray Charles , Charlie Byrd , Concrete Blonde , Counting Crows , Dire Straits , Donovan , Elvis , Stan Getz , Haydn , Jethro Tull , Led Zeppelin , Mazzy Star , Midnight Oil , Tom Rush , Frank Sinatra , Neil Young.

About three a.m., the end of a 15 hour day, gobs of data, so tired I've begun to hallucinate: Gregorian Chants!

The Face of the Phage

Five things you should do to reduce the rate at which you contribute to the environmental rape and impoverishment of planet Earth:

1. plant trees
2. do not support the development of undeveloped land
3. have one or fewer children
4. reduce the environmental impact of your travels
5. live sustainably and with low impact: think before you buy/destroy/discard/kill

Defectors, please at least acknowledge your selfishness, and stop pretending that personal pleasure or reward is synonymous with virtue. It's not.

- Nodeba Bob -

...belief in the sort of miracles that constitute suspension of the ordinary laws of nature is destructive of the ability to approach ordinary life rationally. Not only that, but it is destructive of belief in a rational God, which to my mind seems a kind of blasphemy.

- Albert Rogers -

Unfortunately, despite our cultural prowess, we as a species are still locked into a pattern of enhancing our own short-term fitness (e.g., our immediate comfort and personal reproductive output) at the expense of the fitness of our descendants, our species, and our planet--with every hedonistic evolutionary impulse further converting our metaphorical Garden of Eden, a.k.a., planet Earth, into one big, polluted, weedy, desertificated mess.

- Nodeba Bob -

Bacteria and other microbes have been central to the rapid development of our understanding of both biochemistry and molecular biology, and I predict that they will prove to be of similar importance in helping us better understand the fundamental principles of ecology as well.

- Val H. Smith -

10 really poor excuses for having a child/more children

1. We really like babies/want the experience of having a baby (that is, babies don't stay babies forever)
2. We come from big families
3. We are too ignorant/lazy/horny to use birth control
4. We want to get it all over with as soon/fast as possible
5. We are trying for a boy/girl this time
6. We already own all of the stuff
7. We never really think about it
8. We don't want our child to be an only child/lonely
9. Our parents want grandchildren/more grandchildren
10. Everybody else is doing it

10 really good excuses for having a child/more children

1. We want to increase the political power of our race/ethnic group/religion/family
2. We want to maximize our family's exploitation of the world's resources
3. We want to constrain the reproductive choices of others
4. We are into habitat destruction
5. We don't "believe" in evolution/ecology/environmentalism (Malthus, what?)
6. We honestly believe that the world still doesn't have enough people (6 billion and still increasing as of October 12, 1999)
7. If we don't, somebody else will
8. Might makes right
9. Hey, it's a free country
10. We really don't care

- Nodeba Bob -

If we could shrink the world's population to a village of 100 people, maintaining all the existing ratios, the village would look like this: 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the western hemisphere (North, Central and South America) and 8 Africans. Seventy of the 100 would be nonwhite. Seventy would be non-Christian. Six people would control 50% of the world's wealth and all of them would be citizens of the U.S. Seventy people would be unable to read, more than half would suffer from malnutrition and 80 would live in substandard housing. Only 1 of the 100 would have attended college. Some believe we do not inherit our land from ancestors but borrow it from our children. What we leave them will be determined by an increasing population and the calendar. Our failure to solve the population problem will no longer be a fault; it will be a judgment.

- Val H. Smith -

The process of life is to question how you live it. Nobody takes the time to do things right.

- Yvon Chouinard -

Acquisition without commitment is the primary enabler of over-consumptive materialism, which in turn is the root of our affluence-driven, throw-away-society, over-exploitation of Earth's non-renewable resources.

- Nodeba Bob -

We do not know exactly how language might have emerged in one local population of H. sapiens, although linguists have speculated widely. But we do know that a creature armed with symbolic skills is a formidable competitor-and not necessarily an entirely rational one, as the rest of the living world, including H. neanderthalensis, has discovered to its cost.

- Ian Tattersall and Jay H. Matternes -

People rarely act without knowing why. We almost always have something to say about what we do--even if, as is usually the case, the explanation is inadequate and influenced more by ideology than by the truth.

- Ian Tattersall and Jay H. Matternes -

It is only since the 19th century that families have routinely seen more than two children survive to the next generation-otherwise there would have been a population explosion centuries ago. Large families are a recent, and temporary, anomaly. Small families reduce stress on the environment, benefit economies-and gain directly themselves... Ultimately, we have to construct a world in which we take no more from the environment than it can replace and put out no more pollution than it can adsorb.

- Malcom Potts -

Many of our major advances in science were based on an element of chance, such as the discovery of penicillin. From a statistical perspective, then, the greater the number of scientists working on diverse projects, the greater the chance of the important, unexpected discovery.

- Donald S. Dwyer -

How could one understand the intricate processes of life with experiments that examined only one phenomenon at a time?

- Manju M. Hingorani -

It isn't self-evident that mankind is really progressing, at a level deeper than machines, any more than it is that any of us is wiser than our parents.

- Pico Iyer -

It does not matter. No one knows.

- Thomas A. Edison -
(Edison, as he was dying, gave this answer when asked if he had ever thought about a life hereafter)

Peace, social justice and defense of the environment are a triad to pit against the imperial triad of war, economic exploitation and environmental exploitation.

- Jonathan Schell -

Engineers look at problems and try to find answers; biologists look at answers and try to find out what the problem was.

- Julian F. V. Vincent -

Haze won't distill.
- Randy E. Keith -

Contact Steve Abedon (microdude+@osu.edu) with suggestions, criticisms,
comments, or anything else that might help make this a better site.