j7uy5

When the bees start buzzing around, it is past time to get started with the garden. The photo above shows a bee that is finding something of interest on a peach tree. Tomato seedlings are doing well. Notice that two of them are blooming already. They are growing in peat pots coconut coir…

href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyaroch/6705513045/" title="IMG_2804.JPG by Joseph j7uy5, on Flickr"> src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7015/6705513045_23cc0c3390.jpg" alt="IMG_2804.JPG" align="left" border="1" height="188" hspace="3" vspace="3" width="250">This is one of those medical…

Last February, we had a very unusual hard freeze. It killed a lot of plants. The prior year, I had gotten an agave from a local nursery. It was a nice specimen, about 12 inches wide; it cost $25. In the freeze, it died. So I removed all the dead matter above ground. In the springtime, I…

The good folks at Shrink Rap are conducting a survey about attitudes toward psychiatry. I would appreciate it is some of you would participate.

Agave lechuguilla, commonly called lechuguilla or shin dagger, is a type of agave that grows in northern Mexico and southwestern USA.  It is highly tolerant of drought and alkaline soil; it is somewhat tolerant of cold.  Each plant blossoms exactly once, then the entire plant dies.  I have read…

A little less than one year ago, the major environmental news pertained to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  From Wikipedia: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the BP oil disaster or the Macondo blowout)[4][5][6] is an oil spill in…

After the 2010 elections in the USA, headlines proclaimed, " href="http://www.theolympian.com/2011/01/08/1498746/with-new-republican-majority-let.html">With new Republican majority, let the investigations begin," and " href="http://www.mmail.com.my/content/59595-new-republican-majority-congress-…

This is a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jschroe/2213298226/in/photostream/">photo of a blonde zebra, or href="http://www.wildwatch.com/sightings/is-it-an-albino-zebra">albino zebra. title="Blonde Zebra 2 by jschroe, on Flickr"> src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2129/…

Ok, here's an idea. The Dervaes family have decide to make the phrase "urban homestead" a registered trademark (1 2 3 4 5; also see the EFF post). Presumably, they are doing this to make money. They have gone so far as to send DMCA takedown notices to other persons...persons who, presumably,…

This is decidedly ironic: Rolling outages affect most chilly Texans all day By ANGELA K. BROWN Associated Press FORT WORTH, Texas -- A high power demand in the wake of a massive ice storm caused rolling outages for more than eight hours Wednesday across most of Texas, resulting in signal-less…

Every clinician knows that careful observation is the foundation for all knowledge. Reading the account of how Nabokov correctly anticipated the outcome of DNA analysis of butterfly taxonomy, using only his acute powers of observation, I am reminded of historical accounts of physicians who could…

From Media Matters: It is difficult to understand how so many errors could be crammed into one simple chart, merely by accident.  It is even harder to understand how the artist could end up with a straight line, after incorporating numerous errors, unless it was an done with the intention of…

Sharron Angle has said some pretty obtuse things before, but for the most part, I've resisted the temptation to comment.  But href="http://bigthink.com/ideas/20647">this one is a gem: The 16-page flier, available href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/sharron-angles-independent-…

Clearly, this man is a candidate for the href="http://www.darwinawards.com/">Darwin Award.  K. Wayne McLeod has been charged -- posthumously -- with running a Ponzi scheme that victimized an estimated 260 law enforcement agents. He deliberately solicited hundreds of people, all of whom have…

(From five years ago!) There is a restaurant called Pelagos.  The name means "from the sea," in Greek.  It is underground, but has a patio open to the sky.  A staircase leads from the sidewalk to the subterranean patio.  The is a metal fence along the sidewalk.  On the patio, there are tables with…

This one is useful for very few persons. The story is this: I wanted to get one of those mats that goes under a treadmill, to protect the floor. So I went to Sears, where I got the treadmill, because I had seen an ad for the mat. Thirty dollars is what they wanted. Seemed overpriced. But that…

XKCD usually is pretty good; this one, however, is a brillant commentary on science journalism. People forget that once an event has happened, the probability of that event is exactly 1, and the probability of all other outcomes is exactly zero. (Click image for full-size view.) (Source page.)

href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/05/repetitive_transcranial_magnet.php">Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is  a treatment for major depression.  It was approved ( href="http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf8/K083538.pdf">PDF) by the FDA in 2008. …

I just noticed this: the average workweek in the USA has declined to 34.1 hours (see the BLS report: Employment Situation Summary).   Last year, the average television viewing time increased to href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/24/us.video.nielsen/">151 hours per month, or 5.03 hours…

National Geographic href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100421-new-fungus-cryptococcus-gattii-deadly-health-science/">reports: A new strain of hypervirulent, deadly Cryptococcus gattii fungus has been discovered in the United States, a new study says. The outbreak has…

The article describes a technique that it said to show a priori which patients are at risk for developing suicidal thoughts after starting an antidepressant.  Of course the usual interpretive caveats apply: it is a small study, needs to be replicated, etc. href="http://www.technologyreview.com/…

Yes, this is old news.  I've written about it before, as have numerous other progressive scientifically-oriented bloggers.  But now that there is an opinion piece featured prominently in the New York Times, perhaps the issue is gaining momentum. href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/…

This is a pretty neat idea.  This technology, still under development, promises to enable the printing of skin grafts.  It uses a technology similar to inkjet printers: href="http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/cell-fabricator-prinks-healing-flesh-burn-victims">Inkjet Cell…

This is a nice little study in PNAS.  It is nice for a few reasons.  For one, it is the sort of thing that drives conservatives crazy, for it seems to be a highly detailed study of something useless.  Two, it could turn out to be pretty useful.  Three, when I searched ScienceBlogs for "karrikin," I…

Well, it is not the traditional flower, but it happens to be what is blooming right now.  The crocuses and daffodils are pretty much spent; the lilies and allium haven't blossomed yet. title="IMG_2414.JPG by Joseph j7uy5, on Flickr"> src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/…

I guess Fox News is starting a series of vignettes, hoping to show that stimulus money is being wasted.  In an early attempt, Hannity and Carlson track down an entomologist, at Michigan State University, who got a $200,000 grant from stimulus funds.  The scientist is href="http://www.ent.msu.edu/…

I've href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/it_wont_be_the_bhut_of_many_jo.php">written href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/bhut_jolokia_update.php">before about the world's hotter chle pepper: the bhut jolokia, rated at over 1 million scoville units. ( href="…

At first, I was going to title this post WSJ: Incompetent Ranting. Then I decided that was too strong.  Then I read the article again, and went back to the original title.  Mind you, this is not intended to be an ad hominem attack.  The author, href="http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/faculty/…

A few days ago, there was a minor ripple in the political world, when a media person tried to get John McCain to say that Obama is a socialist.  Even though McCain had hinted at that several times during the campaign, he would never state directly that Obama is a socialist.  Well, href="http://www…

We had little squall clouds today, such that there was interesting light and shadow in the yard.  This made for a nice opportunity to photograph the nectarine tree blossoms.  Emotionally uplifting, I would say.  The only problem is that we now have to watch for frost warnings, then run out and…