clock | June 24, 2006In chronological order, starting with tomorrow....[under the fold]
First The Synapse (neurobiology, brain and behavior) will be on June 25th, 2006 on Pure Pedantry.
Next Carnival of the Godless (religion from godless perspective) will be on June 25, 2006 on Silly Humans.
Next Tar Heel Tavern (North Carolina blogging) will be on June 25th, 2006 on My Blue Puzzle Piece.
First Radiology Grand Rounds will be on June 25th, 2006 on Sumer's Radiology Site.
Next Carnival of the Green (sustainability, environment, conservation) will be on June 26th, 2006 on Jen's Green Journal.
Next Carnival of Bad…
clock | June 24, 2006If you like my banner, you should also go and see what Carel did for his own blog! Gorgeous!
clock | June 23, 2006Sex While Sleeping Is Real, And May Be No Joke
It is a tiny study but the preliminary results are intriguing. The article does not go much into underlying biology, but it touches on possible legal ramifications. If walking, eating or driving while asleep is possible, why not having sex? After all, you don't even have to get out of bed. What do you think?
clock | June 23, 2006Sunday, May 28th
Keeping with our strategy of making sure the kids are having fun (instead of trying to see everything we wanted to see), we decided on Sunda morning to do what kids wanted to do. So, we checked out of the hotel early and took a long walk west towards the river. At the pier, we got on a Circle Line ferry and took a three-hour trip all around the island of Manhattan.
The guide was an obnoxious guy, inserting too much personal and political opinion, but he knew enough about the history and importance of various buildings for us to learn more. We got really close to the Statue…
clock | June 23, 2006
Since everyone is posting about spiders this week, I though I'd republish a sweet old post of mine, which ran on April 19, 2006 under the title "Happy Bicycle Day!" I hope you like this little post as much as I enjoyed writing it:
This week's theme for the Tar Heel Tavern is bicycle. I was wondering what to write about. Perhaps about crazy bicycle rides I had as a kid. Or a fun riff on "fish needing a bicycle". Then, I was saved! Because, today is the Bicycle Day! That's just great, because I can go on a scientific tangent with a local flavor.
If you do not know what Bicycle Day is,…
clock | June 23, 2006Is this what makes us scientists function on a daily basis? Are we just junkies for comprehension?
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix.
Hat-tip: Shakespeare's Sister
clock | June 23, 2006Just check out these recent posts by Karmen, Afarensis, Afarensis again, PZ and Tara.
clock | June 23, 2006This is a longish article, but I excerpted a few sentences for you. What do you think?
Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says
Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.
A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in…
clock | June 23, 2006From L.A.Times (you'll have to click - I am purposefully citing out of context for humorous purposes):
Military researchers are considering a study to see whether Viagra could help soldiers function better at high altitudes.
High altitudes? How high? Who/what needs to get that high?
None of the cyclists reported an erection during the trials, she said.
Self-reporting, self-schmeporting! What do you think they were thinking about while "cycling"?
"If we send a group of guys into the mountains of Afghanistan, they need to be able to deal with the altitude," Fulco said.
Eh, as if our boys…
clock | June 23, 2006Here is the fourth part of Kevin's journey. I have just realized that I posted the previous two in the wrong order, thus post #2 should be third and post #3 should be second. I was going by the order in which I received them instead of dates in the journal. And I am doing these things late at night (having them automatically published at a preset time - noon), doing all the HTML for italicising the species names, running the spellcheck, expanding IM-style contractions into full-length words, breaking long paragraphs into multiples of shorter ones for ease of reading on a computer screen,…
clock | June 23, 2006 This was an early post of mine building upon George Lakoff analysis of the psychology underlying political ideology. It was first published on September 04, 2004 (mildly edited):
I keep going back to George Lakoff's "Moral Politics", as I did "here"
and "here", because I believe this book provides very important insights into the psychological sources of ideology, or worldview, from which all political stances logically follow. As I stated "before", it is not a perfect book. First, it is written in a pretty dry academic style. Long lists, in my opinion, should be taken out of the main body…
clock | June 23, 2006Rozerem is a selective melatonin agonist. It acts on melatonin receptors at the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It is prescribed as a non-addictive sleep aid for people having difficulties with the onset of sleep, i.e., falling asleep in the evening.
While melatonin itself appears unlikely to be a molecule that directly induces sleep, it does have phase-resetting effects on the circadian clock. Thus, Rozerem appears ideal as an aid for extreme "owls" to help them fall asleep (if they need to wake up early in the morning, as some jobs require). By mimicking melatonin, it would phase-advance the…
clock | June 23, 2006Josh Rosenau tagged me with the 4 Meme and I cannot say No. Here it is:
4 jobs you've had (note: I've got a lot to choose from-29, to be exact):
1. Horse trainer and riding instructor
2. Translator of Disney comic-strips from English to Serbian
3. Assistant to the Handicapper and Racing Secretary, as well as the Finish-line judge at the Belgrade Racecourse
4. Biology teacher at various levels to various kinds of students at various schools.
4 movies you could watch over & over:
1. Enter The Dragon
2. Hair
3. Aristocats
4. Coyote Ugly
4 places you've lived:
1. Belgrade, Yugoslavia
2.…
clock | June 23, 2006There is a tradition in the blogosphere of posting something light on Fridays.
Some people do the Friday Random Ten, but I do not have an iPod, and keep my computer on Mute, so I do not listen to music or can generated a random ten.
Most people post pictures of variousanimals, mostly cats, but I do not like doing what everyone else is doing. And once I've posted pictures of my cats (and I did, a couple of times, though never on a Friday), what's the point of doing it again?
Some people got away from cats and pets and post pictures of cooler animals, like ants, or, well, ants. birds. Or…
clock | June 22, 2006Next edition of the Circus of the Spineless, the wonderful carnival of creepy-crawlies and everything living without a spine, will be hosted by David of Science And Sensibility, a wonderful New Zealand science blog. The carnival should appear on June 30th, so send your entries on time - about a day in advance - to: winda002 AT student DOT otago DOT ac DOT nz
clock | June 22, 2006I went to the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Bloggers Meetup today. Most of the usual suspect opted out tonight, so there were only four of us there, but that did not make it any less interesting.
Who was there? Jackson Fox, Dave Johnson, David Warlick and myself.
What did we talk about? I talked about how great it was for me to move to SEED's stable of science bloggers.
We talked about the future of book publishing and science publishing, about aggregating science-related blogging, about the BarCampRDU unconference, and the new way to blog a conference.
If you follow all of those links above, you…
clock | June 22, 2006This is one hundredth post since I moved to scienceblogs.com! Wow - that was fast! And only nine of those are re-published old posts from old blogs.
OK, tomorrow at noon will be the second septidieversary (two weeks, OK?) of this blog. Time to take stock again.
I got 183 comments in two weeks! Thank you all - that is great! Only a few of those I had to dig out of the Junk Folder. The spam-prevention software appears to be working just fine, especially for Trackbacks.
This blog is ranked 8th out of SEED scienceblogs in the total amount given by readers to the DonorsChoose educational…
clock | June 22, 200637th meeting of the Skeptic's Circle is now a Triangle with a distinctly marine flavour..as in...Bermuda! Go check it out at Autism Diva.