j7uy5
Posts by this author
June 25, 2008
Radio Frequency IDentification tags (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_frequency_identification">RFIDs)
are little devices that communicate with other devices, sending an
identification signal. You've probably seen them on various
items purched in stores. They commonly are used for…
June 23, 2008
Sometimes I see news about upcoming drugs, and hope that it
works out. Sometimes, I don't see the point.
Rarely, I actively hope that it does not
work out.
Staccato® alprazolam is one that I hope does not work out.
It's a form of
href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster…
June 20, 2008
The old
riddle goes: you were granted three wishes, and you have one
wish left. What do you wish for? Everyone over the
age of 6 knows: more wishes.
When we figured out that there was oil under the ground, and figured
out how to use it, it is as though we had been granted three wishes.
Now the…
June 18, 2008
This
article in the Onion was supposed to be a satire of the 2001
Bush inaugural speech. It was not satire. It was
prophetic:
Bush: 'Our Long National
Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'
January 17, 2001 | Issue 37â¢01
WASHINGTON, DC-Mere days from assuming the presidency and…
June 18, 2008
Gardasil is the vaccine from Merck that greatly lowers the risk of
infection from some human papilloma virus (HPV) infections. The
href="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/06/hpv_vaccine_approved_daughters.php">first
big controversy had to do with the practice of giving the
vaccine…
June 16, 2008
I scarcely need to mention it, but today is the big day: Firefox 3 is
out, so be sure to download
it. The Mozilla folks are
href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/firefox3">shooting
for a world record for the most downloads in a single day.
href="http://www.internetnews.com…
June 15, 2008
Ohio has just
href="http://www.env-econ.net/2008/06/electric-vehicl.html">approved
certain smart
cars for
use on roadways. This may strengthen our country by reducing
use of fossil fuels.
In other news, Blackwater
USA is
href="http://www.archive.org/details/…
June 14, 2008
The Wiki
Bible Project is a Wikipedia-like project from
href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikisource,
that aims "to create an original, open content translation of the
source text of the Bible that will be in the Public Domain."
But some see problems. According to a recent…
June 14, 2008
href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ODD_LIGHTNING_STRIKE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-06-13-20-47-33">Girl
survives lightning strike, then wins $20
Jun 13, 8:47 PM EDT
BLANCHARD, Mich. (AP) -- No one quite understands the term "striking it
lucky"…
June 12, 2008
A study published in
title="Journal of the American Medical Association">JAMA
indicates that treatment with bright light alone (1,000
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux">lux), or
bright light combined with
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin">melatonin,
can improve…
June 10, 2008
That graphic is only a teaser, it is only peripherally related to theis
post, and is not scientifically valid. Still, it is nice to
see. It is from an article on msnbc.com,
href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10561966/">Spying,
the Constitution -- and the 'I-word'. The
article is from 2005…
June 9, 2008
This won't make much sense unless you watched at least part of the Bill
Moyers video of his speech at the National Conference for Media Reform.
(I posted the video on 7 June 2008.)
In this follow-up video, Moyers is confronted after the speech, by a
reporter from Fox News. Needless to say,…
June 9, 2008
In 1996, the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996
("Freedom to Farm Act") called for elimination of government stockpiles
of grain. I'm sure someone thought it made sense, at the
time.
Now, the United States government has no reserves of butter, cheese,
dry milk, barley, corn…
June 8, 2008
Welcome to the Lake Wobegon Scientific Society Journal, where
all research studies are "authoritative", all scientists
"experts", all findings "breakthroughs". Not to mention
"above average".
That happens to be almost a direct quote from a recent article in the
the Guardian. (HT:
href="http…
June 7, 2008
Consolidation of media is but one step in the consolidation of power,
another brick in the wall.
It is a grave threat. Watch Bill Moyers, speaking
at the National
Conference for Media Reform, give an
impassioned speech about this topic.
Seriously, consolidation of media is more of a threat to…
June 6, 2008
Roy, writing at Shrink Rap, has a post about the
prospect of online access to prescription records in the State of
California. The attorney general is proposing a database of
all prescription records, that could be accessed by doctors and
pharmacists.
href="http://psychiatrist-blog.blogspot.…
June 5, 2008
After the
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/27/AR2008052703679.html">release
of Scotty McClellan's book, What Happened: Inside
the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception,
there was a big media/blogosphere splash about the supposed failure of…
June 4, 2008
The Internet was abuzz for a bit today, when Engaget
href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/hitachi-maxell-claims-new-li-ion-battery-with-20x-the-power/">reported
that a lithium-ion battery was in development, that could store 20
times as much energy as existing batteries, with lower cost…
May 28, 2008
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/images/rbicons/ResearchBlogging-Medium-White.png"
height="50" width="80">Just as
we learn of favorable studies about rTMS (see yesterday's post on this blog), studies that suggest
that…
May 27, 2008
Jonah posted an
href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/05/tms.php">interesting
video of
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation"
rel="tag">Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
on The Frontal Cortex. That got me to
wondering if there was anything new…
May 26, 2008
I'm harping on the same string. A month ago, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/05/poisoning_ourselves.php">noted
how it was not necessary for terrorists to figure out how to poison us.
Our own companies are doing it for them. Now, our
government is doing a heck of a job to…
May 25, 2008
I am not sure that it would make sense to grow artichokes, if the
garden were serving to supply food in a crisis. But we are not having a crisis yet, so we can have fun.
Artichokes are good, but the amount of food you get, per unit
of garden, is not great.
The artichoke was sort of an impulse…
May 25, 2008
Despite a chorus among citizenry and punditry to end oil company
subsidies, it turns out that yet another has been foisted upon us.
What is worse, it was created under the guise of a populist
program:
Households will spend about $90 billion more this
year on gasoline if fuel prices remain at…
May 24, 2008
Sleepdoctor (Michael Rack) alerts us to a new pharmaceutical product in
development: BGC20-0166. He doesn't say a lot, except to
dismiss it out of hand. That is appropriate, but I thought
I'd add a bit of explanation.
His post:
Saturday, May 03, 2008
href="http://sleepdoctor.blogspot.com/…
May 22, 2008
alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/images/rbicons/ResearchBlogging-Medium-White.png"
align="left" border="0" height="50" hspace="3"
vspace="3" width="80">I have to admit, I
retain some skepticism about the concept of
href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/04…
May 21, 2008
Politics: ON NPR today, they were talking about
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90696947">the
"mistakes" of the Clinton campaign. I was annoyed
by that. Framing the issue in that way implies that a) the
race was hers to lose, and b) the outcome is not really up to…
May 14, 2008
I realize that in the spectrum of boneheaded moves by the
Administration, this one is not the most extreme. Still, it
was a pretty dumb thing to do.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/washington/13tsa.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">Blunt
Federal Letters Tell…
May 12, 2008
A while back,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2007/11/sherwin_nuland_a_history_of_el.php">Gred
Laden and
href="http://ectweb.blogspot.com/2007/10/video-of-lecture-on-electroconvulsive.html">Dr.
Shock independently linked to a remarkable video.
In it, a famous author-surgeon-…
May 11, 2008
Make echinacea tea, fairly strong. Refrigerate it.
Get some 100% pomegranate juice. Refrigerate that.
Wait until cold. Mix together in 1:1 proportion.
Drink.
There is no particular reason for this, other that simply to have the
experience.
May 10, 2008
There is an interesting article put out by Associated Press, authored
by Seth Borenstein. Mr. Bornstein suggests that scientists
are increasingly expressing an interest in running for office.
The involvement of scientists in politics is not new. Think
of Ben
Franklin. But many have been…