retrospectacle
Posts by this author
November 1, 2006
This morning I received a one-in-a-million phone call from a friend:
"Shelley, you're going to hate me if you don't get this. Your one and only love of your life is at Angelo's right now."
Now, Angelo's is a little cafe across the street from my lab. But, could it be? Could my one true love REALLY…
October 31, 2006
Vote for Pedro, oops I mean ME!
Yes, for some odd reason I've been selected as a finalist in the College Blogging Scholarship, but now I need some votes.
Please, I'm a poor broke college student and could really use the scholarship! Vote for me, would ya???
And if you're a blogger, and blog for…
October 31, 2006
Halloween has been branded satanic by some, but those of us who have all our marbles know that its just spooky fun revolving around old legends and trappings of fall.
As a kid I loved watching "The Great Pumpkin" episode of Peanuts that was ubiquitous around this time of the year. It never got old…
October 30, 2006
More shameless self-promoting!
Go check out some of my poetry, based on the Fibonacci sequence, now published in the Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ)!
SCQ is an amalgam of science, creativity, spontaneity, beauty, and absurdity reflected in the written word, operated under the auspices of our very…
October 30, 2006
First it was the World Series, now this? Adding insult to injury, Detroit must follow St. Loius yet again in the rankings, this time for most disgustingly crime-ridden city. I would have thought that "the D" as we fondly call it, would have had THIS competition in the bag. But no. The one thing,…
October 30, 2006
The "split-brain studies," done by Gazzaniga, Sperry, and others, long ago confirmed the lateralization of language and handedness. New research at the University of Michigan suggests that certain senses may be tied to handedness as well. In right-handed people, the dominant hand is more dependent…
October 28, 2006
I was stunned as I scrolled through this short Powerpoint presentation composed by the CDC, published in JAMA over the years. Its a compliation of obesity rates beginning in 1985, going up until 2005. What might be the cause for the surge in obesity rates? Possibly the over-availability of cheap…
October 27, 2006
Just thought I'd post this picture of me and Pepper as a sort-of Friday Grey Matters. And was afraid he might have felt a little left out lately. Sup fool!
October 27, 2006
The father of the Malawi orphan that Madonna wishes to adopt now says that he is entirely in favor of Madonna taking full permanent custody. This is in contrast to a statement he issued only a few days ago, where he said he wished to retain parental rights. But, in an entirely predictable turn of…
October 27, 2006
In addition to cruelty, the replacement of whale products, meat toxicity issues, and conservation, fellow SciBling the Island of Doubt brings up another great point against whaling:
For more than a decade now, genetic analysis of whale meat on Japanese markets has shown evidence of widespread fraud…
October 26, 2006
In a shameless act of self promotion, I direct you all to this week's ScienceBlogger interview on Page 3.14, which features meeeeeee!
October 26, 2006
Add one more nail in the coffin. A University of Central Florida professor, Costa Efthimiou, has mathmatically proven that vampires could never really exist. His logic goes:
On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a…
October 25, 2006
Two little gems from Bob Abu this morning (thanks!):
First is the Allen Brain Atlas, so named after the Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, whose goal is to create...
...a detailed cellular-resolution, genome-wide map of gene expression in the mouse brain. The completion of the sequencing of the mouse…
October 24, 2006
As has been reported by myself and others, Iceland has resumed commercial whaling, killing an endangered fin whale earlier this week. However, Norway and Japan have been engaging in commercial whaling, either blatantly or under the auspices of "scientific research," for quite some time. This is…
October 24, 2006
Men with blue eyes prefer women who themselves have blue eyes, according to a new study published in the journal of Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. The reason for this may be an (unconscious) desire to keep tabs of the partner's fidelity, as a blue-eyed couple can only have blue-eyed children…
October 23, 2006
This is us in a nutshell. I couldn't have said it better myself.
October 23, 2006
Did Iceland not get the memo, or what?
They just broke a 21-year international moratorium on commercial whaling by killing an endangered fin whale. Last week Iceland announced that it planned to resume commercial whaling (Norway and Japan already are doing it), flouting the ban put in place by the…
October 23, 2006
Sometimes I get excited by graphs. Take this one for example.
Mixing Memory goes into detail here, as to why the Dems are a shoe-in for a Congress majority.
Yay.
October 23, 2006
The military is investing heavily in labs which are studying genes related to regeneration---specifically, the ability to regenerate limbs and organs. The motivation behind this is clear. As soldiers in Iraq and beyond are surviving wounds that previously would have been fatal, often their injuries…
October 23, 2006
I've been trying to convince my friends for years that salvation could be found at Taco Bell. Now, I have irrefutable proof.
Valencia Phillips said she's not crazy, not so religious either. But even though Phillips was quite hungry one evening, she didn't dare bite into what she calls the "holy…
October 22, 2006
So, now the father of the Malawian boy, whom Madonna intends to adopt, was quoted saying that he did not want Madonna to adopt his son but rather just raise him on his behalf.
Banda's statement is a major shift from his earlier remarks last week when he railed against human rights groups that have…
October 21, 2006
Gwenyth Paltrow has one. So does Angelina Jolie, U2's Bono, Meg Ryan, and Mia Farrow. Now Madonna wants one too. No, I'm not talking about the latest Dior sunglasses or Fendi purse (although I'm sure it would look fab on Bono)---the "in" accessory lately seems to be African orphans.
And this is…
October 20, 2006
This urinal, shaped like a woman's mouth, was located near Vienna's national opera in Austria. But it won't be there much longer--politicians have demanded its removal because they think it is sexist.
"We think that it's tasteless, misogynistic and offensive," Marianne Lackner, media spokeswoman…
October 20, 2006
These photos from Brussels and Amsterdam are long overdue. I didn't take too many of Amsterdam as I *thought* I lost my camera for a little while. Although, I did find it when i got home.
After finally arriving in Brussels (and after an unplanned night in Paris, and a week in Montpellier), I made…
October 20, 2006
A talk I saw at SFN received a news release which was emailed to me by a reader (thanks!). I didn't take notes during the talk, so this was a nice piece of serendipity.
The title of the talk was "Role of Sleep in Human Memory Consolidation and Reconsolidation" (Sunday, Oct 15 2006 9:15 AM - 9:35…
October 19, 2006
These are a few of my friends in the UM Neuroscience Program. We went out to dinner at Dante's Down the Hatch, which was a fondue place in a PIRATE SHIP!
Left to right: Ben Johnson, Edny Gula, Me, Lisa Briand, Darren Opland. And the beautiful Jen Chikar was taking the picture!
Another dinner: Me…
October 17, 2006
CNN reports a new element, Element 118 as it is tentatively called, has been made using Californium. It is the heaviest element ever recorded, and was only in existence for 1,000 of a second.
The element was created last year in Russia using a minuscule amount of Californium provided by the…
October 17, 2006
Monday afternoon at SFN there was a very interesting symposia on oxytocin and vasopressin as mediators of stress and aggression called "Oxytocin and Vasopressin: Central Regulators of Emotion". 51 years ago, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Vincent du Vigneaud for the structure of the oxytocin…
October 17, 2006
Ever want to digitize everything in your life? (If you are a blogger, you may already be doing this....) Microsoft has a project in development called "MyLifeBits," which has been around for about 5 years and is headed up by computer engineer Gordon Bell. MyLifeBits would record all papers, faxes,…