I Can't Help Myself...

I just realized that my child will be born in June into a world where Kentucky has a winning streak against Tennessee. All my UK brethren understand how important this is. Also, to my Texas A&M colleagues on the site, all I can say is, WELCOME TO THE SEC BITCHES!!!!

PS, UK is #1 in basketball...

Lynn Margulis Came to Kentucky

Since beginning my journey into the wonderful world of science as a graduate student, I have been fortunate enough to meet and spend a great deal of time with some big names in science. I've met Nobel Prize winners, been to dinners with large names in the fields of genetics and have drank bourbon/recorded a podcast with Jerry Coyne. Every big name in science that I have met are nothing but gracious and kind in their dealings with a snot-nosed graduate students such as myself. Except for one, Lynn Margulis.

Margulis

I have been going back and forth over whether or not I should write this post given my standing in the world of science --at the very bottom. With her recent passing, it has been an even more difficult choice for me. Everyone that has heard the story encouraged me to put it on the site, saying that it is too good to not have on our ridiculous science blog. That being said, I think it is important to get out if not for the humor of the story, but for the cautionary tale that is included.

I began my graduate career in 2007, and during that first year I was excited to hear that a prominent biologist, one that revolutionized how we thought the origins of the eukaryotic cell occurred, would be coming to my school to give two talks. The first talk was to be a graduate student only talk, with just the basics to give a good amount of background for her large public talk the next day. Now, allow me to set the scene so you can get the best idea as to what occurred over the next hour.

The graduate student only talk took place in a small auditorium, with tall ceilings. Margulis took the stage and immediately requested that all the lights be turned off so the videos she had could be viewed better. The room is in a relatively new building on campus, so some of the lighting in the room included security lights that could not be turned off. Margulis lost it. I am about six foot tall, and she was requesting us to stand on top of the tables to unscrew the lights from the 20 foot ceiling making the room completely dark so you could view the videos. She refused to start the talk until those lights were off and even wanted the lit 'EXIT' sign covered. The faculty member who was hosting her finally convinced her-- after 15 minutes-- that the lights could not be turned off, no matter how hard she protested. The videos that she claimed needed to be seen in complete darkness looked like they were shot in the 1970s with the original video camera-- no amount of darkness could have made them look better. Lynn was miserable during the entire presentation, continually taking shots at the room and the host because those lights could not be turned off. She at one point made a threat that she would not give her public talk the next day unless ALL LIGHTS were off.



Her public talk the next day began the same way, only this time in a different room. Again there were security lights, and again she used the first ten minutes of her talk to complain about how she needed complete darkness to show her videos. Needless to say I had never seen anyone act the way she acted --especially someone of her fame-- during what little time I had been in her presence. I tried giving her benefit of the doubt, maybe she was having a bad week? After spending a little more time finding out more about her, I came away truly believing that is just how she is. I soon discovered that Margulis is contrarian almost to the point of obsessiveness, she was an HIV/AIDS denier and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  Margulis' idea of symbiosis was ridiculed and thought to be junk for a very long time and it took someone with Margulis' personality to keep pushing it into the mainstream until molecular data verified her hypothesis. As Jerry Coyne said 

Margulis’s legacy in science is secure: because she walked among us, we understand much more about nature than we would have otherwise.  Her pushing the theory, in the teeth of doubt and criticism, that some cellular organelles descend from ancient bacteria, is a major advance in our understanding of life.

Being contrarian and not pleasant is not the easiest way to garner respect from peers, colleagues and impressionable minds such as myself. No matter how famous a scientist-- or anyone-- becomes, just remember the golden rule, and the respect you deserve for your discoveries will be much easier to come by. Also you will never be as famous as Justin Beiber. Humble Pie.   

Walking Tall: Initial Steps in Evolution?

Check out this neat video.  

This blows my mind. Can you envision the early amphibian ancestors doing this millions of years ago, giving rise to mammals, insects, birds, etc.  And here we are 2011 and we can see it actually happen.  Pretty neat video.

Fruit Bats Are Not Shy...

This post goes out to all our fellow graduate students who are having one of those bad days, weeks or possibly year; thinking that their project sucks and is worthless.  It really could be worse.  The study is slightly older (from 2009) but this goodie was tipped off to me by a good friend from Belton, Texas.  The title says it all, "Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time".

Below is the video that is part of the supplementary materials.  Yes, a poor graduate student had to sit with night vision goggles to video tape this. You are looking at a pair of fruit bats (Cynopterus sphinx) in the act of coitus inside of a cage, most likely near the graduate student's desk.  In the video you can watch as the female bends over to fellate her mate.

The results of the study?  It turns out the average length of copulation with fellatio was a full 100 seconds more, which turns out to be nearly twice as long.  Other statistics include the average time a female spends performing fellatio to be 19.2 seconds or 8.7% of the total time the couple is mating.  Interesting, eh?
 
And if that doesn't make you feel better, let's briefly discuss the four hypotheses to explain why fellatio during coitus of the fruit bat would be beneficial.

1) Saliva from the female might provide lubrication for the prolonged activities that may or may not assist in sperm transport from vagina to oviduct.  Unless there is a special concentration of salts in the saliva, the latter is unlikely beneficial.

2) The prolonged coitus allows for "mate-guarding" by preventing other males from mating with the same female.  Doubling the time with a female would do this.  But what does this say about the bat population?  They might be addicted to sex.

3) The saliva may actually contain anti-microbial molecules that help prevent the spread of STDs among the [already ravenous] bat population.  The most plausible and interesting hypothesis.  Just think if human saliva was more like a fruit bat's....

4) There might be pheromones released by the penis, picked up by the tongue that allows for MHC-like compatibility of mate choice.  Another interesting hypothesis, but one might think a little foreplay would get around this.  What does this say about the bat population?  See 2.

Personally, I like how the authors try to personify the bats by including the possible evolution of human fellatio behavior in their discussion.  Now seriously, if we were like fruit bats, I envision something like this happening in the cave.  So fellas, the next time you are trying to convince your significant other, remember to drum up some of the above hypotheses. 

Now doesn't this make you feel better that this is not your project?

Cheers to the authors and their "observation assistants": Guangpeng Wang, Qian Yao, Dewei Li, and Dongmei Yu.

What if Greenhouse Gases were visible??

Kinda scary, right?

The reason why you don't remember his or her name the morning after...

Coming to an office party everywhere....

A story starts off with the classic line, "So, a 54 year old woman walks into a hospital claiming she lost bits of her memory after having sex..." and I immediately think the punchline "she wanted to forget it--I hear the same from all of Cliff's female encounters". This does not seem to be the case however, as reported in the September issue of The Journal of Emergency Medicine, the female patient experienced transient global amnesia. TGA is the loss of short-term memory, and doctors said the woman could not remember the 24 hours prior having sex with her husband, and she did not exhibit any physiological conditions or emotional trigger that may lead to the event. Dr. Carol Lippa, a professor of neurology at Drexel University Medical School says,

“In post-coital cases, transient global amnesia may be related to changes in blood flow in the vessels that feed the brain’s memory formation areas — sort of a remote consequence of the altered blood flow that occurs during sex.”

 In fact, the problem may not be with the brain at all, it could be the loss of blood to the brain starting at the neck. In 2010, Sebastian Ameriso, a neurologist at the Institute for Neurological Research in Buenos Aires, published a report that looked at 142 TGA patients and found that 80 percent of the patients had insufficiency of the valves in the jugular vein. Although when commenting on this particular case study, Ameriso pointed out that we perform tasks many times a day that would cut off the blood supply to the head from the neck in a similar manner that intercourse would, and yet we rarely experience TGA. While causes may not be important, Ameriso stresses that correct diagnosis is. Quick and accurate diagnosis of TGA can save patients a great amount of time and be much easier on their pockets.

My neck, my back.........

UPDATE: Thinking 4th Dimensionally

Ok....I was wrong-ish...at least for the moment.  The "infamous" neutrino experiment that proved Einstein's theory of special relativity incorrect has been replicated.  Yeah.....and the statistical significance is greater than the previous physics-world-altering experiment done a couple months back.

Schematic of experimental protocol. Courtesy of BBC news.

The controversial experiments are still the subject of debate among physicists, with many still believing that there must be a fundamental flaw or error.  Either way, these results keep the debate ongoing.  I will keep ya updated.

Transgenerational inheritance of lifespan: take care of your parents (and your grandparents...)

This is all I could come up with; sorry for the eye rapeage

New story in the latest release of Nature, Greer et al., of Stanford Genetics Dept. and Harvard Medical School have found a specific gene that, when removed from the first generation of a C. elegans (worms) lineage, results in a longer lifespan.  3 generations later, descendants of those worms, which do have the gene, also have a longer life.  That shit cray.

Smokin' Geoffrey

From Multiverse

Nature Corner: Grey Tree Frog

Since I didn't have a sciency post prepared.... Here's a pic I dug up on the good ole' hard drive.  Enjoy!

Allow me to set the mood...  It was in Northern Ontario, deep in the Canadian bush.  Dad and I were removing a fairly large sliver breech tree adjacent to the tool shed, outside of strike distance (aka, tree crashing into the garage during winter and fracking some stuff up).  I climbed the tree, chainsaw in hand and begin work.  I look up and see this little guy staring back at me!

Ah, the tree just moved!  Oh wait, it's only Grey Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor)

I whip out my camera and snap said picture...  Don't ask me why/how I had a camera handy, in a tree with a chainsaw...  DO NOT attempt readers!  Sorry bud, your breechy home still has to go.

No Grey tree frogs were harmed in this story, but were relocated.

  

Nat Geo, send job offers to the comments section... 

Cheers,

Better Know Your Unit: Beard Second

 No-Shave November's installment of EVERYONE'S favorite post category is: the BEARD SECOND!

Long units of measure are well represented by the light-year, mile, km, furlong.

FINALLY, someone thought of those of us more naturally predisposed to shorter units!

The "Beard-second" is defined as the length a normal beard grows in a single second, or somewhere between 100 angstroms, or 10 nm. Others, including some webpage called Google, defines it as 5 nm.

Remember this so you can quickly re-establish science in your image when you time-travel.

Cow Magnets

Magneto-reception is an interesting/observable phenomenon seen in a variety of species including bacteria, sharks, lobsters and insects (especially this one). How each detect the Earth's magnetic fields is poorly understood, but I am sure the half of the blog that works circadian rhythms would wave their hands screaming about the cryptochromes. There is some evidence that humans have the ability to detect magnetic fields, although the presence of a Y chromosome may be essential (mine works best while holding a compass).

Found on every fridge south of Dixie.

In 2008, a publication in PNAS (please beg for a Jiffin PNAS rant) from Bengall et al. looked at grazing and resting directionality of two ruminants, cows and deer. The group showed that herds of deer and cattle seemed to perform each activity while having a preference for facing magnetic north or south. A later study from Burda et al. confirmed this finding, and goes further to show that ruminants grazing near power lines lose their ability to sense direction.

Enter some of fashioned science C-O-W troversy. The original Bengall study was interesting, not only for the outcome, but for how the data were obtained. The group used pictures from Google Earth and looked at over 500 locations featuring herds of either cattle or row deer that the group claims show the animals aligning their bodies with the magnetic lines. Nature is reporting that a group from the electromagnetic-field department at the Czech Technical University in Prague have been unable to replicate the data from pictures acquired from Google Earth. The authors from the 2008 study refute their refuting:

In response, Burda and his colleagues reanalysed the replication attempt by Jelinek and his colleagues. Burda says that half of the Jelinek team's data should be excluded because some of the pastures are on slopes or near high-voltage power lines, for example, or because the images are too poor to make out cattle, or appear to contain hay bales or sheep instead. “One half of their data is just noise,” says Burda.

The Czech group denies the claims, “Sheep, horses, hay bales, rocks, cows with unsatisfactory resolution, cows near a track, settlement or feeder, were not taken [in the analysis].”

I tried very hard to find some of the images either group used in their analysis, but was only able to find one from the Czech group:

How either group was able to distinguish cow from sheep from horse from alpaca is beyond me. So I did a little Google Earth'n of my own. I grew up on a cattle farm and because of that, I didn't put much weight into the 2008 study. Being the scientist that I am, I gathered my own data using my farm and this is what I discovered:

THAT'S RIGHT! Angus cattle are seemingly invisible to the Google Earth Satellite! PNAS paper, and DOD grant coming my way, baby!
 
I don't really see why domestic cattle would have conserved directionality --grazing would seem to me to be random based upon food availability. Deer I could see having a magnetic sense of direction, it was probably left over from their ancestors who needed to find their way back to the North Pole.

I promise to keep everyone up-to-date on magne-gate. Stay tuned....

Penny Pinching

Start saving your loose change and reusing lab supplies, it looks like 2012 is going to be a rough year for research funding. I could just recap everything in the article over at Science, but I'm busy, and I've also given myself two chemical burns already today. So just follow this link and see how high spending and low revenue equals no money. Come back later, I have a story about cows you are going to love.

Break On Through To The Other Side!

After reading a short article on the topic, I decided to post this abridgment of some interesting and very recent medical advances involving getting therapies past the blood brain barrier and into the brain.  Could these studies mark the beginning of new widespread methods of drug administration to the brain? 

   

Toxins and infections are able to pass through the bloodstream, and spread throughout the organs of the body, with the exception of the brain.  This is because of the endothelial cells lining brain blood vessels that fit very tightly together, allowing some compounds to cross, but others not. More commonly, this is referred to as the blood brain barrier (BBB).  While this is beneficial in that it can prevent infections or other factors that may harm organs, from entering the brain, it can also prevent medicines from getting through that could treat brain ailments including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

PODCAST EPISODE 17: Rant

We discuss things which upset us:

• Steve Jobs as a technological genius
• The "student as a customer" mentality

It's short!

Cop it on iTunes, our external site, download the file, or stream right here:

Stay away the gay?

The Toronto Star is reporting that two male African Penguins will be separated from one another soon because the two seem a little too cozy. Buddy and Pedro have paired and have been displaying mating behaviors toward one another, their keepers state, and the torrid love affair is coming to a swift end so they can spread their seed. Zoo keepers claim that the two have strong genetic backgrounds, and therefore are ideal for breeding, the only issue has been the lack of copulation with a penguin of the opposite sex.

“It’s a complicated issue, but they seem to be in a loving relationship of some sort,’’ says Joe Torzsok, chair of the Toronto zoo board.

Alas, the zoo is sticking with it's guns and looking out for the survival of the species rather than let these two grow old together. You can watch a video of the two here, but be warned, the penguins are cute and the narration is awful.

Surprise! Fox News spreads confusion about climate science, but not the way you think...

The not so "fair and balanced" new team.

In a world where one man gets his news from Comedy Central and his comedy from Fox News... [epic Michael Bay back ground music]

It comes as no surprise that I, and the rest of the Evolving Scientist team, are not particularly fond of Fox News (aka Faux News) for several reasons.  They endorse pseudoscience, spread science denialism (particularly about Climate Change) and make a mockery of science in general.  And lets not forget these anecdotal gems from Bill Nye "the Science Guy"!

However there has been some debate as to whether Fox News is actually spreading confusion among the public on science issues.  In a recent study, a group of researchers have compiled a fairly extensive evaluation of major cable news channels (Fox News, CNN and MSNBC) showing that Fox News is subject to systematic bias when presenting/framing issues regarding science and conclusions from the scientific community.  Yeah, big shocker there.  However, the results do get a more intriguing as you read further...

The Call of the Beaver

Hominds: always huntin' for some beaver. Note that now C. ohioensis was thought to not have such large teeth

The ancient beaver-ancestor Castoroides ohioensis had a hollow passageway in its skull that ended at the nose. Caroline Rinaldi of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine performed CT scans on the skulls found of this species to discover this mysterious beaver cavity. The inner cavities of beavers have confounded scientists for many years. Rinaldi and her colleagues speculate the hole was used for vocal communications!

The beaver relatives lived during the Pliestocene era (#thingslongerthankimswedding) and died out 10-12 thousand years ago during the most recent ice age. Some predict they could grow up to 8.5 feet long and weigh as much as an average human. Despite the fact that they share a general morphology and it was covered in fur, this extinct-genus of beaver is far from the modern beaver (Castor fiber or canadensis), scaled up. The modern beaver's large teeth and wood-munching ways were likely not present in Castoroides, although they are thought to occupy a semi-aquatic niche (#occupyrivers).They also likely had squat legs and did a poor job of cruising around on land. Paleontologists compare their likely behavior and lifestyle more to the modern hippopotamus than beaver.

Modern hippos even have a variety of sounds that are audible both on land as well as in water. Soft tissue is not available on the located tissue, but Rinaldi imagines the beaver's cavity was filled with it to modulate the sound. She imagines the giant beavers would stop the air from the throat and "whoosh" air around to create their bellow, emitting noises that may have been "whirs, rumblings or maybe even whistles."

Great, now I have something to add to my mega-budget soon-to-be-blockbuster: Pliestocene Park.

I love a good opportunity to learn a little something about an exotic beaver.

Why do folks believe people with no cred?

Over at the blog 'Jesus Creed' is a nice review of the book, "The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age." From what I gather from their review this should be an interesting look into the rise of creationism and why there has been a widespread movement of anti-intellectualism since the mid-1960s beginning with Henry Morris leading up to today with the likes of Ken Ham, AIG and the Discovery Institute. I won't dive into a detailed review of the book, mostly because I haven't read it and you can get that from the link above, but what I would like to discuss is WHY DO WE NOT BELIEVE THE EXPERTS?!?

This has always been frustrating fascinating to me, that in matters of science, people will believe Ken Ham about human origins and Rick Perry on climate change, rather than Ken Miller and NASA. Chris Mooney had a great article about this topic over at Mother Jones that I think everyone should take a look at. Chris opens by describing a study done in the mid-1950s by Leon Festinger looking into the doomsday cult, The Seekers. The leader of the Seekers had proclaimed that the world would end on December 21, 1954, and that those believers within the cult would escape this heavenly body on a spaceship with the alien reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Obviously, Dec. 21 came and went without fail and Festinger was with the cult on Dec. 22nd and documented how people deal with a belief they hold as a complete truth, once it is proven to be false.

At first, the group struggled for an explanation. But then rationalization set in. A new message arrived, announcing that they'd all been spared at the last minute. Festinger summarized the extraterrestrials' new pronouncement: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction." Their willingness to believe in the prophecy had saved Earth from the prophecy!
From that day forward, the Seekers, previously shy of the press and indifferent toward evangelizing, began to proselytize. "Their sense of urgency was enormous," wrote Festinger. The devastation of all they had believed had made them even more certain of their beliefs.

Instead of letting go their beliefs, they clung even more tightly to them. Chris then goes into further detail outlining that when presented with facts, a person will take that fact and mold it into their pre-existing beliefs about the subject. Chris outlines wonderfully that this all begins with motivated reasoning. But my question is, and always has been, what's the motivation??  

A paper earlier this year from Tracy et al. in PLoS ONE looked into such motivations and found that the fear of death seemed to be a major motivating factor in rejecting scientific facts. This seems to be understandable for the most part, critics of evolution have always said that a natural process explaining human origins takes the 'purpose' out of our existance and would possibly indicate that there is no afterlife. That would scare people who hold the existance of an afterlife as the largest tenet of their particular belief system to the core I suspect, so I have never really questioned the motivations behind denying evolution, even though the actions of a majority of creationist infuriates me. What I have deeper issue with is the denialism of climate change. The only seemingly legitimate motivations for denying climate change that I can think of is either 1.) We aren't all buying ocean front property in Cincinnati yet, so an average temperature increase of a degree or two is hard to convience someone that the Earth is warming, or 2.) the belief that as humans, we have been given complete rule over the Earth and should be able to do whatever we please, polar bears be damned. I think it's more than likely a combination of the two.

The denialism of known facts is something that will continue to shock, frustrate and fascinate me. What say you, loyal readers?

BAD BAD BAD

Diederick Stapel.
(Credit: Tilburg University)

A preliminary investigative report filed on October 31 details extensive fraud and data manipulation by world-renowned Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel. Pim Levelt, the chair of the committee that investigated Stapel's work, is quoted as saying "We have some 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals where we are actually sure that they are fake, and there are more to come."

WOWZERS

Stapel has routinely published in top-tier journals, with seminal (or at least thought to be at the time) studies published on aspects of social behavior, such as power and stereotyping.  Stapel's work was highly published, highly cited, highly respected and had collaborators across the globe.  However, in early September, Stapel was suspended from his position as dean of the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences over suspicions of fraud.  The best part: researchers working under Stapel's supervision were the ones that noticed irregularities in the published data, and notified the proper people.

To be brief: The report says, among other things, that Stapel would claim to have collected data when he would actually produce a fictitious data file.  On other occasions, Stapel received co-authorship after producing data that he claimed to have collected previously that exactly matched needs of colleagues.  Additionally, the report claims that the data were often suspicious, with rare outliers, missing data, and large effect sizes.  The investigation in ongoing.

It's a darn shame to hear of things like this...however, I see silver lining.  The very process of science (reproducibility, skepticism, etc) put an end to Stapel's fraudulent ways.  Onward and Upward.

GO SCIENCE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ882QYzr-M

Coyne/Haught vid

Well, after some pushing and a TON of emails, #Freethevideo movement has finally led to this.


2011 Bale Boone Symposium - Science & Religion: Are They Compatible? from

Blogger Love: DIY science on a Cheapass budget!

Chalk up another application for LEGOs, Science!

 In the past we've covered a couple of 'Do It Yourself (DIY)' science endeavors including cost effective thermocyclers and stove-top nuclear reactors.  My co-writers and I have also briefly discussed the the idea of 'Biopunk' (which I plan to explore in the future).  Last week I came across an interesting blog that, like us, was created by a graduate student in stem cell biology from CSU: Sacramento.  Cheapass Science is a site dedicated to science on a budget, and a DIY resource for both the laboratory and at home.  Not to mention if your a teacher on a budget or having to pay out of pocket for student lab equipment/ activities (like most teachers do), this could be a good resource.

 Working in a lab, you quickly discover how expensive science can be.  And many researchers are cheapos, building their own custom equipment due to budget constraints, running very specific experiments or because they just don't want to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for 'shit they can make on a dime' equipment.  Some equipment such as shakers and DNA or protein electrophoresis setups are relatively simple, but carry EXPENSIVE retail prices. 

Mr. Elsbernd has even made, my personal favorite, a DNA electrophoresis apparatus from LEGO blocks.  Now I can go into the LEGO store with some purpose!  I imagine the conversation going like this...
"Good afternoon sir, can I help you?"
"Yes, could you point me in the direction to your 2 x 10 flat pieces?"
"This way.  What are you building?"
 "Gorramit (10 pts if you name the source :P), no time to talk!  I'm trying to separate DNA!" 

Other interesting posts include gel boxes costing a whopping $21 (compared to this guy for 350 steamboats!), salad spinner centrifuges, custom racks for orbital shakers (aka, highly overpriced piece of equipment that shakes/ rocks things...), and microscope incubators from a hair dryer.  I suggest you check it out for yourself, it's fun and extremely absorbing.  I spent a couple of hours just skimming through build journals.

Cheers,

Debate Debacle!

Sign the petition to have this video freely available to the public!!

UPDATE Haught has #FreedCoyne!! Our petition got almost 700 signatures! Amazing thing that internet.

Now, I say. I say! If you ever lose a debate, delete all der evidence, John!

We had rather extensive coverage of the 2011 Bale Boone Symposium in the Humanities here at our own University of Kentucky early last month, hosted by the Gaines Center for the Humanities. Jiffin and I went to all three of the talks and thoroughly enjoyed them; I even briefly converted to Islam, but only "for the cool points." I thought maybe if I talked about Muhammad and numerology a lot and had a thick, salt-and-pepper beard, I would be cooler. Then I found out all of the limitations it would set on me and quickly performed apostasy.

The final night featured Jerry Coyne vs. John Haught. Coyne had a post-debate post, and joined us for a podcast. Both that post and podcast operated under the assumption that the recorded video of the debate/discourse/talk whatever would be posted.

But it wasn't.

Dr. Coyne is not pleased.

Dr. Robert Rabel, the head of the Gaines Center and the moderator of the discussion, at the bequest of Dr. Haught,  is refusing to post the video, edit the video, or have it edited. Coyne offered to have it shipped to himself and taken care of on his end.

We'll do it! We'll walk the 2 blocks over to the Gaines Center and edit it, and host it, for free. We can run it by Drs. Haught and Rabel before posting it. I doubt this will ever happen, but the offer is on the proverbial table.

If not, I may have to resort to the timeless art of seduction to procure the tape (so we're hopeless).

****UPDATE****
Some crafty commentors on Jerry's post have noted that Rabel may be in violation of his NEH grant. Michael Fisher and Kevin have pointed out that because the event was sponsored by monies from an NEH grant, Bob may have a legal obligation to release the video for public viewing.


Dissemination of Project Results

Recipients are expected to publish or otherwise make publicly available the results of work conducted under an award. Unless otherwise specified in the award documents, two copies of any published material resulting from award activities should be forwarded to the appropriate NEH program officer as soon as it becomes available. This material should be labeled with the identifying NEH award ID number.
All publication and distribution agreements shall include provisions giving the government a royalty-free, nonexclusive and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish or otherwise use the material for federal purposes and requiring the acknowledgment of NEH support. The publication shall also include the disclaimer contained in Article 3 of these General Terms and Conditions for Awards.