bushwells | January 10, 2007Here's a belated follow-up on my previous yammering about the SciFi Network's series Eureka. As I expected, the show blends the quirkiness of Northern Exposure with the Big Science of the Manhattan Project. I watched most of the episodes and would rank it in the "OK, I guess" category of marginal TV. Keep in mind that my pop culture entertainment bar is set low.
Colin Ferguson and Joe Morton are the saving graces of the show, and both are highly watchable. Ferguson's role is Jack Carter, the US marshal who, along with his quasi-Goth teener daughter, stumbles into Eureka where he is…
jfiore | January 5, 2007Man-o-manischewitz this is some hot sh*t.
Science is wonderous, intriguing, captivating, sublime, but as Frank Zappa said, Music is the best!
Check out VC about 7:05 in.
jfiore | January 4, 2007The latest issue of Freethought Today, the newsletter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has a bunch of goodies, including an article by Daniel Dennett, a transcript of Sam Harris' speech at the 29th annual FFRF convention this past October, and an article by atheist Brenda Frei who appeared on an episode of 30 Days, where she stayed with a family of evangelical christians for a month. High on my list of FFRF entertainment pieces are the cartoons by Don Addis and items by Philip Appleman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indianna University. This month, we're treated to Appleman's…
jfiore | January 3, 2007Mother Jones has an interesting article this month concerning hypermilers, that is, people who try to get the absolute highest possible fuel mileage out of their vehicles. Lots of folks are concerned about the environment along with high fuel costs, so I figured these drivers might be able to give me a few pointers. Boy, was I wrong.
As far as I can determine, this has little to do with environmental responsibility and everything to do with some sort of competition gone awry. Sure, some hypermilers have managed to get very impressive figures out of their vehicles, in excess of 100 miles per…
jfiore | January 2, 2007I'm what they used to call an audiophile. What with folks listening to music on cell phones, low bit-rate MP3's and the like, it's kind of out of fashion these days. That is, unless you're into music production. In that case, you can buy all manner of interesting goodies, including microphone preamps that will set you back a kilobuck and loudspeaker cables that could pay a semester's tuition. Unfortunately, just as it was true for hi-fi enthusiasts 30 years ago, there's a lot of misinformation floating around in the semi-pro or "prosumer" music field regarding audio circuitry.
I was reading…
jfiore | December 29, 2006After watching doc's Friday flower porn (below), I saw a link to this. When it finished, I saw a link to this. And that led me to this.
Yes, that's Kent Hovind explaining that the Big Bang is a Big Dud, and he isn't being self-referential. Here's a link to the first part of the six part series. After all, you might as well start the insanity at the beginning.
bushwells | December 29, 2006All this needs is a wakka chikka wakka chikka soundtrack...
This Paphiopedilum lowii was filmed by sameoldmike.
bushwells | December 28, 2006I moved from Cambridge MA about two and a half years ago but stay in touch with friends who still reside there. I try to visit my old 'hood a few times a year. Cambridge is right up there with Madison WI as my city to which I'd most like to return. I was not only one of the many biotechies who worked in Cambridge, but also a resident and actively involved in the community, particularly through the public schools. By meeting other parents and kids of diverse backgrounds and interests, my daughter and I stumbled upon North Cambridge Family Opera (NCFO) and got hooked. She sang and I,…
jfiore | December 27, 2006Living in central New York, and only a few miles from the Utica Marsh, the honking and flying V's (not this) of the Canada goose are a common sight in the Fall, and perhaps it's only a mild exaggeration to say they're more common than red or yellow maple leaves. Early on Saturday mornings I can be found with a few friends doing our weekly long run along a canal trail that borders the marsh. It is nothing for us to see several hundred or a thousand of these honkers, not to mention numerous ducks and the random great blue heron. Once, two years ago, we came across a group of perhaps two hundred…
bushwells | December 22, 2006Jingle my bells, baby!
Figuring out what plant this floral naughty bit belongs to should be about as difficult as knocking back a hot steaming cup of solstice glog.
Here's the full photo of the showy bracts of the Euphorbia pulcherrima which surround small central flowers. The history and diseases of poinsettia cultivars are reviewed here. These euphorbs have ethnobotany going for them since they were used for medicinal purposes by traditional healers in Central and South America.
Here's one of my favorite mutant poinsettias.
(Photos from my little Nikon CoolPix S9)
bushwells | December 20, 2006With the latest Big Pharma debacle ("Hey, let's shoot ourselves in the other foot") from the Prozacasaurus' overmarketing of Zyprexa (see Grrl's, Jake's, and David's (addendum, 12/21) blog entries on the subject), this recent (and free access) article from PLoS Medicine: Educating Health Professionals about Drug and Device Promotion: Advocates' Recommendations seems particularly relevant.
Nephrology News and Issues provided a good summary of the PLoS article:
A group of physicians and advocacy groups is taking on pharmaceutical promotions, calling in a journal article for an overhaul of…
bushwells | December 19, 2006From the Despair.com do-it-yourself motivational poster generator, here's a follow-on to the "Harsh Criticism: Help or Hindrance?" Ask a Science Blogger query.
Thanks to my expatriate physicist friend, "Ludwig 'The Swinger' Boltzmann", for allowing me to use his "game face" for this.
jfiore | December 18, 2006Every now and then I come a cross an advertisement that makes me say "What the #&$!?" I have seen the ad for the ROM machine in the back of Scientific American for some time but I never bothered to read it. Until yesterday. Then I went to their website. Yeow. My head is still spinning.
The ROM (Range Of Motion) machine promises a complete workout in only four minutes per day. Yep. Four, count 'em, four minutes per day. It's a bizarre looking device with a central seat, pedals, handles, chrome tubing and what appears to be a large flywheel or friction wheel, all for the amazing price of…
bushwells | December 18, 2006Re: Ask a Science Blogger - Harsh Criticism, Did It Help or Hinder? Warning. My response contains offensive material. Oh, you're not surprised? Well, OK, this is the Chimp Refuge. You already know that there are piles of bonobo scat everywhere. So let's get to steppin' and squishin'...
During my first "real" job out of my post-doc, one of my colleagues told me this joke, repeated here with my embellishments:
Two explorers stumble into a wild unknown land, and are captured in the bush by the fearsome indigenous inhabitants. They are brought before the tribal chief, who conveniently…
bushwells | December 15, 2006
This fearsome beast is a Puya raimondii, a member (har) of the pineapple family. The specimen was photographed by an unknown (to me) botanist in the high Andes of Peru.
Hat tip to my wandering co-blogger, Kevin "Just Me, My Banjo, and My Bonobos" Beck, for sending this along.
bushwells | December 14, 2006Wait! Don't answer that just yet. Please allow me to give myself a little Q&A pertaining to issue of "proportionately fewer hot women read sci-fi and fantasy."
Q1. So tell me, Me, do you read sci-fi & fantasy?
A1. Well, not so much lately.
Q2: How about your past flirtations with the genre?
A2: I burned through my older brother's Analogs and other pulpy sci-fi mags when I was a kid. I went on to read Poul Anderson, Harlon Ellison, Roger Zelazny, Larry Niven (my husband for whatever reason likes to call me Teela Brown), Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. LeGuin, Julian May, Marion Zimmer…
bushwells | December 14, 2006Peter Doherty (no, not that Babyshambles creature, but the Nobel Laureate) laments the use of pop music to teach science in the Australian school system. That and other mushy encroachments in the Queensland science curriculum, as reported in Pop songs are weird science would make it appear that like the US, science education in Oz is going to hell in a relativistic handbasket. Or is it? Is the use of song in science that egregious?
According to many primary and secondary school science educators, it's challenging to grasp the imagination of young students. If they haven't been "…
bushwells | December 13, 2006Ever the provocateur, Christopher Hitchens tells us Why Women Aren't Funny in the January 2007 Vanity Fair.
Mr. Hitchens believes that humor in men serves as an attractant to women, sort of a laff riot version of the male peacock's tail:
Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An…
bushwells | December 12, 2006I don't care if what kind of mono-, pan-, or a-theist you are. This here is funny.
Thanks to my best friend, who originally hails from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, for calling my attention to boymongoose's new video.
bushwells | December 8, 2006
Hat tip to Keith N. for calling my attention to Isabel Cuadrado's lovely photos.