maggie wittlin
Posts by this author
February 22, 2007
Global climate change may melt glaciers, slash biodiversity, and displace countless coastal dwellers, but there's one thing rising temperatures will never boil away: Our sense of style! That's the message Diesel (the jeans company, not the fuel) hopes to spread with its newest advertising campaign…
October 19, 2006
Only We Can Do That to Our Pledges
Labs are just one big frat party. Hey, first year, time to collect the stool sample...
Today's blog is brought to you by the letter R
These linguists hate America. Have you no decency, people?
Do Higher Eukaryotes Smoke More Weed?
RPM doesn't actually answer the…
October 17, 2006
I'm Bringin' Paxil Back: Timberlake SexyBack Remix
'Cause SSRIs are totally kickin'.
One° Climate Change
Churches are rallying around Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." What, disillusioned with Mel Gibson?
Super Monkey Poop Fight (the post you can play)
Yes, this is extremely educational. It mimics…
October 16, 2006
"Every 52 seconds": wrong by 23,736 percent?
How often do men and women think about sex? Well, there's only been one study on the subject, and that paper indicates that it's a few times a day, but please, feel free to put any frequency you want in your book. No need to source the figure.
Bad Graphs…
October 12, 2006
Living a Second Life
A psychiatry professor teaches his students about schizophrenia by making them live through hallucinations in a virtual world. Freaky. (via 3QD)
Einstein's High School Diploma
Yes, but how were his extracurriculars? (via boing boing)
Open Letter to Scientific Equipment…
October 11, 2006
Genetic Savings & Clone
If the $4,000 price tag on a hypoallergenic cat seems like too little to spend on a new kitten, perhaps you'd like to invest $32,000 in cloning your old kitten? Be sure to send them Puss's DNA while he's still alive! (via Ng)
No Abacus Handy? Use your hands.
OK, smarty…
October 10, 2006
I wrote a story for seedmagazine.com that got posted yesterday to much excitement. The excitement was largely for the unusually pretty composite face featured with the article (thanks, Face Research), but I'd like to comment on the theory proposed.
Over at Frink Tank, Mr. Orange is less than…
October 10, 2006
WNYC - Radio Lab: Musical Language (April 21, 2006)
Check out at least the first four minutes of this. You'll learn first-hand that a looped recording of speech takes on a musical quality, to the point where you can't hear it as anything but song. Wow. (via CV)
Homo floresiensis: Two Years Out
Carl…
October 9, 2006
Best. Mars. Picture. EVAH!
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographs Opportunity in the context of a beautiful crater.
Your Friday Dose of Woo: H2Ooooooommmm
It must be something in the water. Wait...can you see it?...it looks like...it has to be...woo!
Science Friday: Pipe Dreams
"Poppies!…
October 6, 2006
The Amateur's Revenge
Expert is as expert does?
Fungus
Grow a beautiful and thriving mushroom colony. (via inkycircus)
A Simple Show of Hands
Explore the science, the politics, and the social significance of hand-holding. Aw.
But We Feel Good About Ourselves
Some might call it "lack of humility,"…
October 5, 2006
Remember ... walking in the sand.
Come on, baby, do the starfish locomotion! (via PZ)
Product Warranties
Mental accounting cuts as many corners as real accounting, and it does so at your loss.
Yet Another Warm Fuzzy Disney Tale
They have deceived us about lemmings. Curse you, Disney!
I'm Going To…
October 4, 2006
Huzzah for Smoot and Mather!
In this comment, Momma Free-Ride discusses her time working on COBE (the project, not the satellite itself) with the newest Nobel laureates.
TEDTalks: Al Gore
Al Gore talks about averting disaster and shows off his bizarrely attuned comic sense. (via The World's Fair)…
October 3, 2006
Buying an Allerca Kitten
For a mere four grand (plus one extra for shipping and handling), a beautiful hypoallergenic kitten can be yours! Stop looking at the price tag ,and start looking at those adorable selectively-bred faces below the bullet points.
Welcome to the Blogger SAT ChallengeChad and…
September 29, 2006
Fun With YouTube: Zero Gravity Balloon Edition
A balloon pops in Zero G. Everything's more fun in orbit. Well, maybe not everything.
Celebrity Ecological Footprints - how many Earths would we need if we all lived like Tom Cruise?
"Come on, Matt. Matt, have you studied the history of…
September 28, 2006
Laser Challenge Game
A Nobel Prize winner has invented the laser: Let's get this party started! Hey, if it's put out by the Nobel people, it's not just a computer game; it's science education. (via Chad)
Three Lectures by Hans Bethe
The Man teaches quantum. Watch his magic. (via fark)
When crime-…
September 27, 2006
Anousheh Ansari Space Blog
Yup, she's blogging from space. Fan your jealousy flames several times a day.
Curious Pop Quiz #4 and E. coli
As Roughage-Gate continues, take this quiz on what delicious spinach dishes you should avoid. Then do what you know you must.
Quicktime Virtual Reality Apollo…
September 26, 2006
GMO Kimchi, Coming to a Korea Town Near You
They might have botched that whole cloned stem cells thing (what, should we not blame the whole country?), but the Koreans are blazing the trail of breath-freshening biotech.
Gabby guys: the effect sizeThe Female Brain author Louann Brizendine is coming…
September 25, 2006
Special Feature: Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge 2006Science features some very cool photos, illustrations and graphics. Check 'em out.
Your Friday Dose of Woo: If our intestines were lungs we could drink our oxygen!
We've already breathed in the woo, now we drink the woo. Next can…
September 22, 2006
Lawyers call for science to clear AIDS nurses in Libya
Declan Butler reports on the Tripoli Six, medical workers sentenced to die by firing squad for supposedly infecting over 400 children with HIV. The evidence points to their innocence, and their lawyers are calling for the science community to…
September 21, 2006
Charles Darwin and the Racing Asparagus
NPR dishes about how Darwin used food to his advantage...besides eating it. What ingenuity! (via Jonah)
Climate-controlled White House
"Oh no, we'd never control the information presented to scientists! We're all about open discourse on the issues." Right.…
September 20, 2006
Star-nosed mole has moves that put the best magician to shame
This dude, Kenneth Catania, just won a MacArthur. He may be a great researcher and all, but doesn't his subject deserve some genius recognition as well? Go to "story map" and then to "star-nosed mole theater" to watch this freak in…
September 19, 2006
Seed Video Feature: Noam Chomsky + Robert Trivers (Full Cut)
Watch two of the greatest living intellectuals discuss deceit for over a half an hour. Do you hear that tooting? That's our horn, baby.
'This Topic Annoys Me'
Female astrophysicist Janna Levin talks without an Adam's apple about her…
September 18, 2006
Welcome to the special ScienceBlogs version of Seed's Daily Zeitgeist! It's a lot like the seedmagazine.com version of Seed's Daily Zeitgeist, but it you can find it right here on Page 3.14. Feel our love for science on the web.
Royal Society Publishing - Journals archive from 1665
There have been…
September 13, 2006
When I think about global warming, I feel completely powerless. Is there any meaningful action I can take to help?
May 12, 2006
Steve Petermann of ID blog Telic Thoughts just posted (warning, link to ID blog) on Google Trends. He says:
Check this one out. Looks like interest in Darwinism has stayed pretty steady but ID had a big jump around the Dover trial. Also since then it doesn't appear that ID has dropped back to its…
April 27, 2006
You may have seen the rather exciting NY Times article this morning: "Judge Embeds a Puzzle in 'Da Vinci Code' Ruling." Apparently, Judge Peter Smith stuck 40 bold/italic letters into his ruling on a suit against Dan Brown (Brown won). The first ten letters spell out SMITHY CODE, giving us a clue…
April 21, 2006
Here's a question for all the ScienceBloggers in the house:
Which scientist (in your field or beyond) has been most seriously shafted? This could be taken two ways:
Who deserves to be more recognized, revered and renowned today than he or she is?
Who got passed over, ridiculed, etc. the most while…
April 12, 2006
I like Chad Orzel's True Lab StoriesTM series so much that I've decided to be inspired by (read: steal from) him and tell the only vaguely worthy story from my short researching experience.
Not too long ago, I was but a wee undergrad doing her senior research in physics. The project had started…
April 5, 2006
Hey there, budding Stochastic fans. If you're reading us now, you can officially say you listened to us when we were underground. I'm new to this whole blogging-and-being-read thing, so please be kind while I stand in the shadows of giants.
A couple of months ago the Blogosphere was abuzz with…