bushwells

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February 5, 2008
Frankly, I think the Pan troglodytes pictured here could do a better job than some of our congress critters, but never mind that cheap shot of a slippery banana peel. However, I wonder if our presidential candidates could identify the genus and species of our close primate cousins or if they…
January 30, 2008
From Lumosity Brain Games: Are you as smart as a chimp? Ayumu is a 7-year-old chimpanzee... Can you beat Ayumu in this memory test? Inoue and Matsuzawa from Kyoto University used the 'limited-hold memory task' to show that their chimps can out-perform college students. Watch Ayumu, then take the…
January 17, 2008
Luskin's latest "overrun" by angry "dinosaurs."* * Refresh (within the link) by clicking "Go" in top menu bar. Select the web site of your choice for mayhem and destruction here. ETA: This comes with sound effects! Be sure to turn on the volume your computer's speakers. Up to 11.
January 16, 2008
Judah Folkman, a most extraordinary scientist, died Monday at age 74. Orac (Respectful Insolence) posted a fitting tribute which I highly recommend. See also Alex's (Daily Transcript) entry and this New York Times article. Thanks to the intricate academic vascular network between Harvard and…
January 14, 2008
Two juicy grubs were found wiggling recently in the Chimp Refuge inbox: one on an offensive vanity license plate and the other on severing appendages for the Lord. After reading my post on Air Guitar Hero Cranks It to 11, correspondent J.M. of California passed along this tale of hilarity. Keith…
January 11, 2008
So I dusted off the Pitiful and Laughable Intelligent Design Creationist Dissemblers links today and found a classic Luskinism in which Casey takes Nature to task for its brown-shirted propaganda campaign to defend evolution at all costs (scroll down to sidebar for link). Excerpted from Luskin's…
January 11, 2008
Finally, the much anticipated return of Friday Flower Porn! For you debauched botanical voyeurs, I have two offerings for you today: a purple posy and turgid Darwinian prose. Here's a violet blooming in Princeton's Marchand Park where a fair number of specimen trees and shrubs hang out. Just look…
January 10, 2008
The 2008 Consumer Electronics Show wraps up today. As one might imagine, the show's replete with the coolest and most dubious of technology for the "Entertain Me!" masses. This Air Guitar Hero offering from "Nitrous Roxide" is a fine example of the dubious. Here's the explanation of the…
January 4, 2008
Forgive me. I'm going to channel Sally Field here by way of Shelob. I received an e-mail earlier this week notifying me that The Tolkienian War on Science (TWoS) placed second in the non-fiction category of the Middle-earth Fan Fiction Awards 2007 (MEFA). Here's my bitchin' plaque, courtesy of…
December 31, 2007
So John Lynch (Stranger Fruit), Chad Orzel (Uncertain Principles - edited for egregious spelling error *smacking my forehead*) and PZ (Pharyngula) already tacked up The 50 Most Loathsome People for 2007. Because of crossreadership (the Refuge begging for scraps from aforementioned blogs) or…
December 17, 2007
This past weekend found a denizen of the Chimp Refuge brachiating, feeding and feeding yet again, grooming, being groomed and otherwise socializing in the home of its grizzled old matriarch. The photo below the fold illustrates one way in which godless atheists (and bonobos) celebrate Christmas -…
December 16, 2007
On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and filmed by Josh Timonen. I must say that Hitchens is looking…
December 15, 2007
Courtesy of Salon. "Snit" is ever so much cuter than Huck. Tee hee!
December 10, 2007
So does anyone want to lay odds on how long it will be before "discovery of the gay gene" gets spread like a crazed rhinovirus through the popular media? A recent press release announces the discovery that male fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) with mutations in the GB (genderblind) allele…
December 10, 2007
Through the initiatives of citizens - and voters - who take a keen interest in science and technology and governmental policies directed toward these, a proposal for a presidential candidates' debate on issues of science and technology is now on the table. The background for this initiative may…
December 3, 2007
Guido Daniele is a superb illustrator. I've seen some of his sportswear bodypainting, for example, check out this track suit: Yes, he is naked. I had not encountered his hand critters. This really gives a whole new meaning to flipping the bird. If you can tolerate the barrage of advertisements,…
November 20, 2007
When the word "stinker" was bandied about in reviews, I should have known better. Yet at happy hour last Friday, my two gal-pals and I made a date to see a Sunday matinee of Robert Zemickis' Beowulf. My friends, a biologist and a chemist, had taken medieval literature as undergrad electives so…
November 16, 2007
Please allow me to assure you that with this entry, I will not be veering into regular essays on the trappings of banal domesticity. However, I think this is a damn fine minestrone. I typically make it during the cooler months of the year, so as a nod to the recent autumnal weather here in the…
November 15, 2007
I am pleased to welcome a guest bonobo to the Refuge. You might recall Professor Doctor Eye as the model for this fine motivational poster: Dr. Eye is a physicist on the faculty of a university in a certain European Union country where something smells rotten and it ain't Havarti. Maybe it's a…
November 13, 2007
Salon has jumped on the bandwagon that acknowledges the two year anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decision on the teaching of intelligent design as equal to the theory of evolution. In the The evolution of creationism, Gordy Slack writes that intelligent design adherents…
November 12, 2007
On many occasions, I have made apparent my predilection for viewing some of the worst crap televised. Ever. I land on it like a fly on fresh feces (and not just monkey feces), so this past weekend was no exception when a friend turned me on to America's Most Smartest Model, one of the plethora of…
November 6, 2007
Are you pondering what I'm pondering? One of my favorite sites, Technovelgy: Where Science Meets Fiction, entertained in 2005 with Mouse With Human Brain May Live. (If you're not accustomed to seeing nude mice with xenografts, be cautioned when you open this link). Excerpted from the article: Now…
October 29, 2007
This latest news item courtesy of New Scientist a.k.a. the London tabloid of science journalism (1), is worthy of Bora's (Blog Around the Clock) Friday Weird Sex Blogging but what the heck - there's nothing more uplifting that a four-headed phallus on a Monday afternoon. As noted in the article,…
October 24, 2007
Gakked from Technovelgy: Here is a new cell phone that sports a replaceable scented strip on its body. Although it doesn't transmit odors to the recipient of a phone call, it's not a far cry from Fred Pohl's joymaker, a fictional form of PDA described in The Age of the Pussyfoot: The remote-access…
October 23, 2007
I'll hop on the sea cucumbers bandwagon along with Sheril of The Intersection, Coturnix on Blog Around the Clock, and Benny of Zooillogix (be sure to check out the boffo cartoon in Benny's article). In that netherworld between undergrad and graduate school, I thought to become a marine natural…
October 23, 2007
One of the more recent offerings in the pernicious practice of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising from Big Pharma is a tortoise and a hare hawking a smoking cessation med: Chantix. The drug, varenicline tartrate, has a dual action in that it acts as both a partial agonist (enhancing activity but…
October 15, 2007
In the same spirit as OBJECTIVE: Ministries, I give you Telco Powered⢠Products. New Patented Technology allows you to use Power from the Phone Company to operate everyday items that you have to use -even if the power is out. The product line is truly amazing. I'm torn: should I order the Telco…
October 12, 2007
I have a hodge-podge of old National Lampoons stored away in the basement. Periodically, I scan a few selected items (articles by P.J. O'Rourke and Chris Miller, various cartoons) for digital posterity. All are highly irreverent and culturally insensitive, and yes, I hoot raucously at them. Among…
October 11, 2007
One of my to-do tasks includes making some revisions to a standard operating procedure draft document for lab notebook policies for our division. I'm a member of an "executive lab notebook committee" or as I fondly like to call my assignment, the stinking albatross that hangs around my neck. The…
October 4, 2007
Last Saturday (09/29) found me ambling around the DeCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln MA. When I lived in Cambridge and indulged in hobbyjogging with a few other women, the sculpture park was a frequent pit (bathroom) stop during our long weekend runs on the Lincoln Conservation Trust trail…