After a year climbing the ivory tower (and getting really winded halfway through and having to turn back around), I have returned to the thing I used to call Life. Also, to Science Fair. This site will be revamped and relaunched in a month or so. Stay tuned.

Yes, I know there's not a damn soul reading this.

Alright. Fine. I admit it. I am still overworked and have no time to post. There's no point in pretending I do. Hopefully things will lighten up as the year goes on, but for now, Science Fair -- like my sanity -- is on indefinite hiatus.

A friend writes me e-mail with the subject: "Science Fair R.I.P. Mary, we hardly knew ye."

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

As you've (hopefully) noticed, I haven't been around much. As you've (hopefully) noticed, I've been posting to Gene Expression instead. I have to admit, my posting there hasn't been terribly prolific either. There is a good reason for my almost-absence, a reason involving a romance-novel hunk, a long stretch of sand, and a bottle of Absolut Mandrin.

Actually, I've just been really, really overworked. (So stop worrying, honey.)

But I'm happy to report that as of Tuesday, things should lighten up a bit, and I'll not only be increasing my presence on Gene Expression, but also returning to Science Fair. That should please all of you who can't get enough of me. All one of you. (Thanks, honey.)

Okay, here it is: the development that will solve the problem of my laziness in posting. It's a new tag-team blog called Gene Expression featuring (as the site says) "a geneticist, a writer, a capitalist, a biochemist, an economist...and a blender." As the only participant without "ist" attached to my title, I'm looking forward to some heated and very well-informed debates. Right now, only one of us has posted, but this, I'm sure, will change soon.

I'll still be maintaining Science Fair, but on a less frequent basis. In other words, it's unlikely the Daily Darwin feature will be daily anymore.

Terrorists in the Treasury? You can fold a new $20 bill a certain way to get an image of the burning Twin Towers. On the flip side is an image of the burning Pentagon. The second image isn't very convincing, but the "towers" do look like the towers. Bizarre...

If you have access to The Scientist, you can read more about the Santorum Amendment here...

I tried to warn people about the Santorum Amendment when it was on the table last summer. Nobody listened. Now look.

Note to New York men: We women don't all want you for your money alone. Just most of us.

Doesn't bode well for punctuated equilibrium: species evolve slowly.

A fun plaything: links to Darwinism across the disciplines.

Mitochondrial DNA gives up another secret: the origins of Eastern languages.

They're even more haunting than the cave paintings at Lascaux: exquisitely detailed 15,000-year-old human portraits discovered in a cave in southern France 50 years ago. Are they the real thing? Scientists didn't think so when they found them. But the tide in anthropological research is for pushing back the origins of culture. Perhaps, then, it's not surprising that Dr. Michael Rappenglueck is clamoring for a reassessment -- and apparently also claiming that the Pleiades may have held some ritual, religious significance for the same early moderns that drew the faces.

A schizophrenia treatment that makes sense -- the sort that might have kept Andrea Yates sane and her children alive...

Swamped again! But coming soon... a development that will solve this problem. Stay tuned. (No, I'm not getting laid off.)

Things you won't find at Victoria's Secret...