clock | July 21, 2007There is a museum at the Pier with many, many old toys and games found at arcades. All are perfectly functional. Some are more than 100 years old. Here is a sample:
clock | July 21, 2007I am obsessed with Alcatraz. I plan to go next week to visit the Rock and hear the CLANG sound of cell doors closing behind me in the dark. Pier 69/Fisherman's Warf is the closest point to it in the entire Bay, so if you wanted to escape and swim in this freezing cold water, this was the best destination - except that this was also the most likely place to be greeted by a uniformed and armed welcome committee...
clock | July 21, 2007I also saw some seagull chicks, learning to fly, but only took a picture of this cormorant at the Pier 39:
clock | July 21, 2007Of course I saw the Golden Gate Bridge (I see the Bay Bridge every day from where I live). I am too scared of heights to actually walk over the bridge, though...
clock | July 21, 2007Best beer and best books - where I also bumped into a few Plossians/Plossers/Plosinians:
clock | July 21, 2007A horse and carriage at the Pier 39 (a very touristy spot) and, of course, the famous streetcars. I believe that my father, when he came to San Francisco back in 1966 1961 [thanks, Mom] on his choir tour (they even cut a record then), rode on the streetcar, of course.
clock | July 21, 2007It was a tough, long and gruelling week at work, so i decided, after sleeping late, to do what I have not done yet - play tourist and go see famous sites in San Francisco. I took a cab to Pier 39, then spent a few hours slowly walking back home. In this and next few posts, you can see what I saw, but, for the benefit of people with modems, I will put most of the pictures under the fold, so keep clicking on the "Read More" button underneath each post:
clock | July 21, 2007Number Of Published Science And Engineering Articles Flattens, But US Influence Remains Strong:
A new National Science Foundation (NSF) report finds the number of U.S. science and engineering (S&E) articles in major peer-reviewed journals flattened in the 1990s, after more than two decades of growth, but U.S. influence in world science and technology remains strong.
Art And Music For The Birds:
Nature is a valued source of inspiration for artists. But what have artists offered the natural world? Would a bird even like rock and roll? Conceptual sculptor Elizabeth Demaray, an assistant…
clock | July 21, 2007Sleep. Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
clock | July 21, 2007Let's start with some Essential Facebook Readings of the day:
The Facebook Juggernaut...bitch!
Where are Facebook's Early Adopters Going?
Hmmm, Facebook: a new kind of press release
All your widgets are belong to Facebook
Why We're Like a Million Monkeys on Treadmills
Facebook: the new data black hole
What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook?
Why I Dropped Scoble and Seceded from the Hunt for Newer Shinier Things
My predictions for the near future, and I'll explain them below:
1) In a Clash Of Titans, Google turns iGoogle into something better than Facebook. Facebook is…
clock | July 21, 2007Duke University, after years of being behind the curve, is now striving mightily to establish itself as a leader in online science communication. As a recent news article shows, the school is activelly encouraging its students to keep blogs and make podcasts.
I have already mentioned Sarah Wallace and her blog about genomics research in Chernobyl.
Nicholas Experience is a blogging/podcasting group working on environmental science (OK, Sheril is their most famous blogger, but she did it herself, without being prompted by the Nicholas Institute).
At the Howard Hughes Precollege Program…
clock | July 21, 2007Russ reports on a new study of elephant communication via vibrations transmitted through the ground. It was documented before that elephants could detect these. It was also documented that they could send out infrasonic rumbles which travel faster and farther through the ground than through air. But this is the first study I know of in which there may be hints that this is really a mode of communication between elephants:
For the study, she used recordings of two calls that had been made to warn of hunting lions. One was taped at Etosha, the other in faraway Kenya. They were played at the…
clock | July 21, 2007Bjorn is going to the 8th International Congress of Neuroethology (ICN) in Vancouver this week (and I am so jealous, as the 1st Gordon Conference in Neuroethology was one of the most memorable meetings I ever attended and, IMHO, that is the coolest research in all of science). Any other bloggers going there? I'd like to compile a linkfest if there are a few more bloggers there who produce sufficient material over the next week.
clock | July 21, 2007J's blog
The Other 95%
The Ethical Paleontologist
Molecular B(io)LOG(y)
Science With Me
Media Realism
Midwest Teen Sex Show (sex education podcasts)
clock | July 21, 2007The first edition of the brand new paleontology carnival, The Boneyard, is up on Laelaps.
clock | July 21, 2007A January 20, 2006 post placing a cool physiological/behavioral study into an evolutionary context.
There are two main hypotheses - not mutually exclusive - for the adaptive value of having a circadian clock. One is the Internal Synchronization hypothesis, stating that the circadian clock serves to synchronize biochemical and physiological processes within the body. The second is the External Synchronization hypothesis, stating that the circadian clock serves to syncronize the physiology and behavior to the natural environment.
The prediction from the Internal Hypothesis is that circadian…
clock | July 21, 2007 Ha! Check out this brand-new blog! Ste is going to bookstores, checking out the Science section and moving pseudo-science, anti-science and nonsense books from it to the New Age section. Just a couple of Behe books in the La Jolla Bookstar, but I bet there will be more egregious miscategorizations in other stores. I wonder if this practice will spread virally to other cities and towns of the world...
(Hat-tip: Reed)
clock | July 21, 2007A good WaPo article: Pelosi takes heat for OK of farm bill
Ken Cook explains it very clearly: The Pelosi Farm Bill: A Corn Subsidy Windfall
clock | July 21, 2007Well, it's Thanksgiving tomorrow night so it's time to republish this post from last year, just in time for the ageless debate: does eating turkey meat make you sleepy? Some people say Yes, some people say No, and the debate can escalate into a big fight. The truth is - we do not know.
But for this hypothesis to be true, several things need to happen. In this post I look at the evidence for each of the those several things. Unfortunately, nobody has put all the elements together yet, and certainly not in a human. I am wondering...is there a simple easily-controlled experiment that…