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November 18, 2008
This is a sample from Euphoria Magazine's href="http://www.euphoria-magazine.com/nature/37-nature/287-nature-best-photography-of-2007">nature photography roundup for 2007.  I chose the most whimsical one; the others are more serious, but equally good.
November 17, 2008
The Cassini orbiter shows us what is happening in the final frontier: This is an aurora on Saturn.  It's false-color, obviously. The technique is explained on the href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11396.html">NASA site: This image of the northern polar region of…
November 17, 2008
Razib already did the href="http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/11/fear_of_a_black_president_miss.php">definitive post of voting trends in the South, looking especially at the influence of skin color.   Now, we see there is a peculiar correlation: those areas that had the highest cotton…
November 14, 2008
This is an illustration of Basilosaurus, a fossil whale discovered in Egypt by Phil Gingerich and colleagues.  Gingerich is the guy who taught me everything I know knew about collecting fossils. I wanted on the team that went to Egypt, though.  I had other priorities, like medical school.  Can't do…
November 10, 2008
Various alternatives to and offshoots from Wikipedia have emerged over the years.  Some readers may be familiar with Conservapedia, as an example.   Now there is an entity known as Christopedia.  Today the Featured Article is the one about href="http://christopedia.us/wiki/Barack_Hussein_Obama"…
November 9, 2008
Tiny houses.  Sensible way to live.  As long as everyone gets along. Much less resource-intensive.  Nothing wasted.   Not good for dog owners.  No room to wag tail.  Otherwise perfect.  Writers become economical.  No extra words.  No commas.  To Hell with semicolons. HT: href="http://…
November 7, 2008
Cat Power is pretty cool.  Like href="http://www.pandora.com/music/album/cat+power/what+would+community+think">What Would the Community Think. Music such as this has a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail">long tail.  It is the nature of cat power.
November 4, 2008
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081104/ap_on_fe_st/odd_vote_in_ambulance">SAN ANTONIO – Betty Owen is 92 and after a stroke four years ago, needs a feeding tube and can't walk. But she was determined not to miss Tuesday's election. She arrived at her polling place on a gurney in an…
November 3, 2008
This is an image of a human brain.  It is constructed using an imaging method known as diffusion spectrum imaging.  The technique has been discussed at href="http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2008/07/hi_res_brain_topology_map.php">Neurophilosophy and href="http://anthropology.net/2008…
October 30, 2008
Well, last week I finally did it.  I put up an Obama sign in the yard.  Not that anyone sees my yard. But now that the Editors of Seed magazine have come out with an endorsement, I may as well join the crowd and openly announce my anonymous support, here on the Internet. I don't like his plan for…
October 26, 2008
This little (19-second) gem is from href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/10/greenspan-and-simpsons.html">Calculated Risk (the other video there, Greenspan and The Simpsons, is good too): That says it all.  It is the short version. The longer armchair version is this: All economic…
October 21, 2008
This is one of those things that take a minute to figure out if it is serious, or a parody.   href="http://www.injesus.com/index.php?module=message&task=view&MID=CB007FA2&GroupID=2A004N9G&label=&paging=all">Block African witchcraft curses against McCain and Palin NOW! Jim…
October 20, 2008
Carborexia is not a word.  Any href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_%28computer_science%29">string that garners only six hits on Google is not a word.   But the string appears in the New York Times, so maybe it will be a word soon.  Perhaps even by the time you read this.Carborexia is a…
October 16, 2008
I'm sure I am not the only one who was underwhelmed by the series of Presidential debates.  Here is what the candidates and the moderators forgot... 1) Regarding energy problems:  Government should act more swiftly to promote solar and wind installations.  Specifically, they need to do more to…
October 16, 2008
NASCAR, for the non-TV-watching geeks out there, is an auto racing organization.  It operates the second-most popular televised sport in the USA.   In May, they were troubled, just a bit, by rising fuel costs.  One team, Hendrick Motorsports, href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/personal-…
October 15, 2008
Now we learn that AIG execs just href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3InVeHoYnmXZnM2ACXSgjG0-nIQD93R68VO0">spent $86,000 on a hunting trip. Oct 15th, 2008 | CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A handful of top executives from American International Group Inc. spent thousands of dollars during a recent…
October 15, 2008
This one is illustrated.  The photos speak for themselves.  Source It'll work about as well as the Paulson-Bernanke plan.  
October 13, 2008
href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/paul-krugman-wins-economics-nobel/?hp">Paul Krugman href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c61ac54-9922-11dd-9d48-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1">was awarded the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
October 13, 2008
The Archives of General Psychiatry has an open-access article about bipolar disorder in childhood ( href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/65/10/1125">Child Bipolar I Disorder).  I started to write about that.  But then, as often happens, I stumbled upon something else. The LA…
October 10, 2008
In this video, Hannity href="http://www.newshounds.us/2008/09/11/hannity_has_a_bullyboy_meltdown_at_suggestion_economy_is_in_trouble.php">tells us the economy is in fine shape, wonders if it is reasonable to think that people would really vote against the Republicans due to the economy.…
October 10, 2008
But not just any automobile.  It's the Maserati limited-edition 2009 GranTurismo S.  And the test confirms the result href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/06/autos/Aural_fixation_callaway.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008100810">only for women: Experts found that 100% of female participants…
October 8, 2008
Computer experts have been weighing in for years about design flaws in electronic voting systems.  Now a computer expert goes a step farther, saying the whole system is flawed. From href="http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/stranger-in-strange-land.html">Linus' Blog: That's when you…
October 6, 2008
This is a peculiar article: href="http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/7/1/16/abstract">Costs and effects of paliperidone extended release compared with alternative oral antipsychotic agents in patients with schizophrenia in Greece: A cost effectiveness study.  It's a open-access…
October 5, 2008
The photo shows the first commercial implementation of a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6851">new kind of solar-powered electrical generation station (source: IEEE Spectrum).  The problem, of sorts, is that it is not in the USA.  It is in Spain. The system uses parabolic reflectors to…
October 2, 2008
From the href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript/">vice-Presidential debate. "building our embassy, also, in Jerusalem" "That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so…
September 30, 2008
When I was 11 or so, I read Heinlein's novel, href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podkayne_of_Mars">Podkayne of Mars.  I wanted to go to Mars after that.  The thought never really left me.  But in June of this year, I began to have my doubts.  Scientists reported that the soil on Mars is href…
September 27, 2008
From href="http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2008/09/quotable-on-bank-balance-sheets.html">London Banker: "The problem with financial institution balance sheets is that on the left hand side nothing is right and on the right hand side nothing is left." It's pretty obvious that financial…
September 27, 2008
Large Wall Street independent investment banks had a nice thing going.  Because much of what they did was not depository banking, there was little Federal oversight.  Instead, the SEC let them run voluntary oversight programs. Now, the SEC chairman, Christopher Cox, has href="http://www.forbes.…
September 27, 2008
I can't top this, so I'll just quote.  It's from href="http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/09/so-who-won-debate.html">Mike Shedlock, the guy with the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau_word">portmanteau nickname, "Mish": Careful analysis shows both Obama and McCain…
September 26, 2008
Quote of the day, attributed to President Bush: “If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down.” --President Bush, 25 Sept 2008 He's an idiot.  Liquidity is not the problem.  If it were, the whole mess would have been solved by now.   href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/241162"…