clock | August 1, 2006The second Festival of the Trees is up on Roundrock Journal. It's big and beautiful!
clock | August 1, 2006The Teaching Carnival is on summer break, but the school is going to start soon, so start tagging your posts with the 'teaching-carnival' tags and check out the Fall lineup of hosts. The next edition, exatly one month from today, will be on WorkBook.
clock | August 1, 2006 I posted this on the Edwards blog on Tuesday February 10, then re-posted it on JREG, then re-posted it again on my own blog here on August 25, 2004. It was a response to IM-like spelling in one-line comments by the newly-arrived Deaniacs who displaced the lengthy, well-written, thoughtful discussions we used to have on the campaign blog before Dean conceded in Wisconsin and told his supporters to support Edwards for the rest of the primaries:
Language is a mirror into a people's culture. English is a beautiful language, capable of imparting meaning with a sharpness of a stainless steel…
clock | July 31, 2006A couple of days ago I took my son to see "Monster House". The way the movie was not pushed hard by the marketers (compared to some other animated stuff), my expectations were low. However, I really liked the movie a lot!
It is not a non-stop slapstick comedy like Shrek, it is not as cerebral and political as Antz, but it is just as good as Nemo, or Robots, or Monsters, Inc. or Ice Age I, and better than Incredibles IMHO. The action is mostly happening in the second half, while the first half manages to really flesh out the characters well. I also like the fact that there are no…
clock | July 31, 2006First they came after evolution. They say they wanted to "teach the controversy".
Now, they are after history, and no controversy-teaching is allowed:
One way to measure the fears of people in power is by the intensity of their quest for certainty and control over knowledge.
By that standard, the members of the Florida Legislature marked themselves as the folks most terrified of history in the United States when last month they took bold action to become the first state to outlaw historical interpretation in public schools. In other words, Florida has officially replaced the study of…
clock | July 31, 2006Connect The Dots. Will they ever do anything if not for political reasons? Health? They don't care... Approval of a Bush appointee? Sure, let's sign what needs to be signed....
clock | July 31, 2006I saw a trailer for Night at the Museum the other day and I can't wait to see the movie (opens December 22). Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt - Priceless!
clock | July 31, 2006It has been known for decades that scheduled meals can entrain the circadian clock. In some species (e.g., in some birds), regular timing of feeding entrains the main circadian system of the body in the suprachiasmatic (SCN) area of the hypothalamus, the retina and the pineal. In other species (e.g., rodents), it appears that the food-entrainable oscillator is anatomically and functionally distinct from the main pacemaker in the SCN.
Researchers working on different species discovered different properties and different anatomical locations for the food-entrainable clock. Now, a study…
clock | July 31, 2006It takes two to vote....one to pull the lever, er., touch the screen, and the other to flip the switch.
clock | July 31, 2006Carl tagged me with a Book Meme and, since he is one of my most frequent commenters, I cannot say No. Although I have done four book memes before. This one is different and much harder as it asks for just one book in each answer, so I tried to do that, although each question really has many answers. So here it is:
1) One book that changed your life?
"Ontogeny and Phylogeny" by S.J.Gould
2) One book you have read more than once?
"Origin of Species" by C.Darwin
3) One book you would want on a desert island?
"Boat-Building and Sailing for Dummies"
4) One book that made you laugh?
Collected…
clock | July 31, 2006Carnival of the Green #38 is up on Treehugger (and I am so used by now to be called Boris, which is a Russian name...)
clock | July 31, 2006Circus of the Spineless XI is up on Words & Pictures - lots of ambushes and explosions!
And you still have a few hours to send your entries to Roundrock Journal for tomorrow's Festival of the Trees.
clock | July 31, 2006 I wrote this post back on January 23, 2005. It explains how clock biologists think and how they design their experiments:
So, are you ready to do chronobiological research? If so, here are some of the tips - the thought process that goes into starting one's research in chronobiology.
First, you need to pick a question. Are you interested in doing science out of sheer curiosity to discover stuff that nobody knew before (a very noble, but hard-to-fund pursuit)? Or would you prefer your work to be applicable to human medicine or health policy, veterinary medicine, conservation biology, or…
clock | July 30, 2006Talking about the need to have popular scientists out there, I think the term "rock-star" was an unfortunate choice. Some people in joking, some people in all seriousness, started looking for people with PhD's who can play musical instruments.
That is, of course, irrelevant. We are not looking for scientists who are also rockstars, but for scientists who are as well known, as universally respected and as seriously taken as the rock stars were back in the 1960s. The idea is to have a scientist or two or three being so well known that anyone and everyone in the country and the world is at…
clock | July 30, 2006Chad points to an article about the way book publishers are still clinging to the old ways of doing business and are, thus, suspicious of the whol Long Tail idea.
My copy of the book arrived a few weeks ago and is waiting (in a long line) to be read in the future, but I have read John Anderson's blog for quite a while now and I think I grok the idea of Long Tail. It applies to blogs, just as much as it applies to sales of movies, music or books.
As for books, the future is publishing-on-demand. No need for stokpiling books. If you use a publisher like Lulu.com, you can easily publish your…
clock | July 30, 2006Men's sleep apnea found alongside erectile problems:
Men who are sound sleepers have better sex lives.
A study published in a recent edition of Urology says men who suffer from sleep apnea syndrome also suffer a high rate of erectile dysfunction.
-----------------------snip---------------------
One theory, Dr. Atwood said, suggests that sleep apnea disrupts rapid-eye-movement or REM sleep -- a time when men routinely experience erections. Decreased REM sleep means fewer REM erections.
The possibility exists, he said, that REM erections are a necessary process for men to maintain healthy…