Adopt a microbe

Couldn’t resist this next blog on the blogger home page: Adopt a microbe, indeed!

We are the HACEK bacteria.
We are a special group of Gram Negative rods.
The word “HACEK” is an acronym of our names.
We are Haemophilus aphrophilus (and Haemophilus paraphrophilus), Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Cardiobacterium hominis, Eikenella corrodens and Kingella kingae.

For a dose of painless education, visit Emma Lurie’s Adopt a Microbe frequently.

Six degrees of nothingness?

One of my favourite columnists, Robert Fulford, has an amusing sort-of review of the new TV programme, Six Degrees, referencing (of course) the John Guare play and Fred Schepsi movie, but also providing a bit of debunking of the whole six-degrees meme:

Judith S. Kleinfeld, a University of Alaska professor of psychology, suggested that all this effort seemed to prove that “six degrees of separation” is the academic equivalent of an urban myth.