SCQ Journal Club: Part III

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Living the Scientific Life (link)
PHOTO OF A NICE SET OF BOOBIES WE SAW AT THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Photography piece...

The Island of Doubt (link)
ON THE ORIGIN, NAMING AND USES OF SEA HOLLY
During Atlantis' eighth invasion,
When that island nation had exhausted
Its supply of metal, the gardeners
Left their greenhouses, went to the warriors
And said, "We've made you coastal defenses--
Blades six inches long, divided triply,
Coarse-toothed, spine-edged, deep-rooted. They'll tangle
In the wrathful crab-men's chitinous claws
Rip the bellies from the Devil's dolphins
When they force their landings upon the beach."...

The Intersection (link)
HISTORY'S GREATEST MINDS TACKLE SCIENCE'S GREATEST UNSOLVED MYSTERIES
En route to Daphne's uncle's seaside cabin, Scooby Doo and the rest of the Mystery Inc. gang are waylaid at an abandoned amusement park - which, according to the kindly local innkeeper, is haunted by matter that cannot be detected from the light which it emits. So mysterious is this 'dark matter' that its presence can only be indirectly inferred from motions of astronomical objects...

Good Math, Bad Math (link)
THE CASE FOR THE CHURCH OF THE IMMACULATE INDUCTION
Recent political efforts to broaden the scope of science education and bring science into the mainstream have generated a great deal of controversy. One of the things that has been sorely missing is the relationship between mathematics and religion. Here we attempt to inject a greater mathematical essence into religion as well as explore one immediate implication, the Immaculate Induction Hypothesis...

Gene Expression (link)
THE BESTEST, MOST KICK ASS, HUMAN GENOME PROJECT
Mondo-Genetic-Services is proud to announce its latest venture, "The Bestest, Most Kick Ass, Human Genome Project." Hot on the tails of the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium and Celera Genomics, we present to you a novel approach in the elucidation of mankind's blueprint of life. Rather than using the frequently studied yet boring human cell lines, or samples from a small group of ethnically diverse, anonymous, and likely dull individuals, we propose a completely different strategy - that is, we plan to use the genomes of individuals handpicked by the editorial staff of People magazine, a move we feel will cater to the desires of you and your friends...

The Frontal Cortex (link)
EUPHEMISMS THAT ALSO SOUND LIKE STRANGE TISSUE ENGINEERING PROJECTS.
A list...

Framing Science (link)
WHEN THE LEADERS OF THE G8 MEET ON HALLOWEEN DAY
TONY BLAIR (PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN ISLAND) DRESSED AS BJORK DRESSED AS A SWAN: Hey Jacque. Nice dye job. Is that some yellow fungus growing off the top of your forehead? ...

The Examining Room of Dr. Charles (link)
WHITE COAT, WRONG TIME
Imagine you're at Starbucks. You're halfway through a co-worker's order ("half sweet, no foam, saffron-scented, opium-spritzed, ...") when two men wearing coveralls come in. You hear them talking about a car they're fixing. Their garb has grease on it, various stains of indeterminate origin. They saunter up to the till, place their orders, and get their drinks before you because the trainee taking care of your order is running to the Starbucks across the street to find more panda blood for your co-worker's beverage.

Evolving Thoughts (link)
A FABRICATED PAPER: MITOCHONDRIAL EVOLUTION: SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
The distinction between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell structure is still accepted today as the most fundamental discontinuity in the living world. In the process of analyzing the newly sequenced bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii it was discovered through a BLAST search that a non-coding region of DNA showed high homology to the importin-α gene of eukaryotes...

Evolutionblog (link)
TO TEACH THE CALCULUS, A PLAY
The recent popularity of math and science based plays and movies, such as "Proof", "A Beautiful Mind", and "Copenhagen", has catalyzed the recovery of lost plays from famous mathematicians and scientists themselves. Below is the complete text of "To Teach the Calculus," which was recently "recovered" from the notebooks of Max Planck. After winning his Nobel Prize in 1918 for work in radiation physics, Planck explored a variety of other fields...

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