j7uy5
Posts by this author
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…
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…
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/…
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…
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!…
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…
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…
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…
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…