clock | August 2, 2008McCain: The original political celebrity:
It's a striking line of attack for McCain, who's accepted without complaint the "celebrity" epithet from journalists for four decades.
"John's been a celebrity ever since he was shot down," former McCain strategist John Weaver told The Atlantic earlier this week, "whatever that means."
Who does he think he is to portray Obama as a celebrity in a negative way? Oh, the hypocrisy! But he is on his way out (not just due to age, but also due to his despicable behavior over the past several years), and he is peeved that he is not on the top any more. Sorry…
clock | August 2, 2008CNN creates blogging policy, encourages employees to engage in sockpuppetry:
Chez Pazienza, a former CNN producer who was fired six months ago for having a personal blog, obtained a copy of the new blogging policy that his former employer sent out to all staff (I've also copy and pasted it below). While it allows employees to blog, they have to get it approved by a supervisor and it bars them from mentioning anything that CNN would cover -- in other words, it keeps them from talking about just about anything but their own belly lint. And even that would be ruled out if we all found out…
clock | August 2, 2008The Power Of Peter Piper: How Alliteration Enhances Poetry, Prose, And Memory:
From nursery rhymes to Shakespearian sonnets, alliterations have always been an important aspect of poetry whether as an interesting aesthetic touch or just as something fun to read. But a recent study suggests that this literary technique is useful not only for poetry but also for memory.
Evolution Of Skull And Mandible Shape In Cats:
In a new study published in the online-open access journal PLoS ONE, Per Christiansen at the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, reports the finding that the evolution of skull…
clock | August 2, 2008This may take a couple of years, but I'll be patient. And as soon as the okapi arrives, I'll be off to the Zoo! I've only seen okapi once in my life, in the early 80s in London.
clock | August 2, 2008I got a million and a half invitations to the Big Blogger Bash in Raleigh the other day, but unfortunately I could not make it.
At the bash, Ginny Skalski and Wayne Sutton unveiled their brand new project - a website called 30Threads, which will cover all sorts of locally interesting stories and engage the local community. It certainly already has interesting stories and an interesting and novel layout. Looks like the media of the 21st century should look like (especially after all but hyper-local newspapers die out or completely move online).
I bookmarked it and will keep an eye - it looks…
clock | August 2, 2008Melissa nails it, as always: McCain blows the dog whistle. Obligatory reading of the day.
clock | August 2, 2008White denial: Obama, race and America's selective memory by Hal Crowther:
A lot of Americans are like German tourists, who never harmed or perhaps even met a Jew, and are amazed to find a chilly reception in Tel Aviv. Though Jim Crow was considerably more recent than Adolf Hitler, lapel-pin patriots and insulated media hypocrites experience acute shock--or feign it--when they hear the heated rhetoric of black pride and empowerment from people like Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I'm still shaking my head over a Wright-bashing column by Time magazine columnist Joe Klein, invoking "liberal masochism" and…
clock | August 2, 2008Bob read this and sent me some even better stuff:
Completely in verse:
Joseph F. Bunnett and Francis J. Kearley (1971). Comparative mobility of halogens in reactions of dihalobenzenes with potassium amide in ammonia (pdf). Journal of Organic Chemistry 36(1): 184 - 186; DOI: 10.1021/jo00800a036
In verse AND musical notation:
HM ShapiroFluorescent dyes for differential counts by flow cytometry: does histochemistry tell us much more than cell geometry? (pdf). J Histochem Cytochem, 1977 Aug;25(8):976-89.
Now I need to rewrite my old papers in verse...for instance:
There once was a quail flock…
clock | August 2, 2008Apparently, there is a Sitemeter upgrade that makes many sites displaying Sitemeter invisible for users using Internet Explorer. I have now swapped the old Sitemeter for the new, and you should be able to see my blog just fine, at least in more recent versions of Internet Explorer.
Now, the big question is: why would anyone still use IE? It is most security-breachable of all browsers, and does not do nearly as well as Firefox and other browsers (have you never experienced the beauty of various Firefox plug-ins?). Yet, see how many readers of this blog, supposedly tech-savvy for the most…
clock | August 2, 2008Dan drew this (click here to see big):
Explains why Siegel is utterly wrong.
Related...
clock | August 1, 2008Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
clock | August 1, 2008How do I try to beat jet-lag:
- book an overnight flight that lands at the destination in the morning, if possible. This really helps.
- start gradually shifting my daily schedule of meals, activities, sleep, a few days in advance.
- once I pass security and have about an hour before take-off, I take clonapen (not sleeping pills and no, not melatonin, though some people swear about it - it makes me depressed because of my extreme owl-eness and SAD). This (as I am a little anxious of flying) helps me fall asleep very quickly, sometimes before we are airborn, sometimes right after they serve…
clock | August 1, 2008Just like last year, this year again, the Union of Concerned Scientists is running a contest - go and pick the best cartoon that depicts the way US government is interfering with science. You can place your vote here.
clock | August 1, 2008Brain Tweak Lets Sleep-deprived Flies Stay Sharp:
Staying awake slows down our brains, scientists have long recognized. Mental performance is at its peak after sleep but inevitably trends downward throughout the day, and sleep deprivation only worsens these effects.
Aging Impairs The 'Replay' Of Memories During Sleep:
Aging impairs the consolidation of memories during sleep, a process important in converting new memories into long-term ones, according to new animal research in the July 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings shed light on normal memory mechanisms and how they…
clock | August 1, 2008....who likes limericks.
His article - Writing Science: The Abstract is Poetry, the Paper is Prose - makes me wish to have something to submit to FASEB just so I could submit the Abstract in the actual form of a limerick. And see what the Editor says.
I actually like it when a paper starts with a short verse. Or a good quote (that's how I started collecting interesting quotes).
But to include controls in the Abstract? That's insane! There is no way to even mention all seventeen experiments in the abstract, let alone the details of materials and methods, even less to bother with controls,…
clock | August 1, 2008At TED talks:
At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?