The Corpus Callosum
Archives for December, 2006
Ambidextrous More Likely To Be Bisexual; Why Do We Care, Anyway?
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 16, 2006 Ambidextrous More Likely To Be Bisexual; Why Do We Care, Anyway? A new study coming from the University of Guelph. Dr. Michael Peters, a neuropsychologist, analyzed a survey of about 255,000 people, and come up with some interesting findings about human sexuality. Among them, is the observation that bisexuality was significantly more common in ambidextrous…
WTF — Texas Considers Allowing Blind to Hunt
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 15, 2006 From the Houston Chronicle: State Rep. Edmund Kuempel has authored a bill that would allow legally blind people to go hunting. They’d be allowed to use laser sights, which are prohibited for fully-sighted hunters. They also would have to have somone who is not bling go with them. At first I thought this was…
Antidepressant Warnings in Perspective
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 15, 2006 Since it seems to be a big deal to the New York Times (two articles in two days), I thought I’d comment on this. An FDA advisory panel recently voted to expand the warnings in the product labeling for antidepressants. Just to put this in perspective, the FDA makes many such changes. The most…
Thoughts About P4P
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 13, 2006 Pay-for-performance is one of the buzzwords in health care financing these days. I haven’t been following it much, but Dr. Gault has, over at retired doc’s thoughts. His latest: AMA President nails P4P for what it is at AMA Interim meeting. Needless to say, the President of the AMA is skeptical, as are many physicians. Dr.…
Sorry Folks, But…
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 12, 2006 This picture just cracks me up. I spent a fair amount of time growing up in Ypsilanti, and still have a fondness for the place. Anything that promotes a positive image is welcome. Somewhere, I saw a list that had been kept by a postman who made note of alternative spellings for “Ypsilanti”…
Significant Advance in Solar Power
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 12, 2006 Spectrolab, Inc. has announced that they have developed a way to nearly double the efficiency of solar cells. They’ve done it by creating semiconductor Dagwood sandwiches, with over 20 layers. The basic idea is to have different layers that respond to different wavelengths of light. This way, a greater amount of the total light energy…
Eating Disorder Websites May be Harmful
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 11, 2006 According to a study published in the medical journal, Pediatrics, girls and young women who visit eating disorder oriented websites may be harmed by the activity. The funny thing is, is does not matter if the sites encourage eating disorder behavior, or discourage it. Persons who visit such sites are more likely to end up…
New Concepts in Spin
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 9, 2006 So far, I have resisted commenting on the report of the Iraq Study Group. But this is too good to pass up. From DeLong, who got it from Alter Ego, comes a precious quote from a Presidential press conference: Q Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group said that leaders must be candid and forthright with…
Firefox In December
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 9, 2006 In June, I put up a post noting that open-source browsers accounted for more than 50% of the hits at ScienceBlogs. At that time, Firefox was 48.17%. Since then, Microsoft released IE7, which includes a tabbed interface, and other enhancements that Firefox (and others, e.g. Opera and Safari) have had for a long time. I…
Flying Carp and Homeland Security
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 on December 9, 2006 Flying carp, also called Asian Silver Carp (among others), present a significant risk to homeland security. The fish can grow to 50, even 100 pounds. Propellers on boats prompt the fish to jump out of the water, sometimes into boats, sometimes striking boaters. A video of this is available at the NPR site, here. The…