j7uy5 | December 3, 2007
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j7uy5 | December 2, 2007
A calendar celebrating the aesthetic qualities of marine
invertebrates is available now at
href="http://www.cafepress.com/dorid.196100014">Dorid Designs,
along with a full line of items relating to marine biology, evolution,
paleontology, and rationalism. She also has tons of
href="http://theradula.blogspot.com/2007/11/squidmas-q-and.html"
rel="tag">Squidmas
href="http://www.cafepress.com/dorid/4190352">merchandise.
Perhaps the whole Squidmas thing seems silly (it is...that's the
point!) but the calendar is just a nice, straightforward piece of
artistic work.
j7uy5 | December 2, 2007
There is a whole series of photos illustrating this unusual
relationship. It originally was posted in the Boston
Herald, but that page is no longer with us. The
text and photos still can be found at
href="http://freshpics.blogspot.com/2007/03/unusual-friendship.html">Fresh
Pics. Some additional text and photos can be found
at
href="http://www.honewatson.com/03/02/baby-orangutans-tiger-cubs/">Hone
Watson.
A pair of Sumatran tiger (
href="http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/about_species/species_factsheets/tigers/sumatran_tiger/index.cfm"
rel="tag">Panthera…
j7uy5 | December 1, 2007In the book, The Blind Watchmaker,
Richard Dawkins makes a statement that led one reader to feel the need
to check up on him:
I've been reading through Richard Dawkins'
books and am currently half way through The Blind Watchmaker (2006
paperback edition) and on page 119 he writes:
In my
computer's ROM, location numbers 64489, 64490 and 64491, taken
together, contain a particular pattern of contents---1s and 0s
which---when interpreted as instructions, result in the computer's
little loudspeaker uttering a blip sound. This bit pattern is 10101101
00110000 11000000.
Of…
j7uy5 | December 1, 2007Uprising Radio reports on an item of social justice:
href="http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=2134">San Diego
County Searches Welfare Recipients’ Homes
Published on 28 Nov 2007 at 12:06 pm
GUEST: Eric Isaacson, Partner in the law firm,
Coughlin-Stoia, and cooperating attorney with the ACLU of San Diego
& Imperial Counties
If you live in San Diego and are a welfare
recipient, investigators from the County’s DA office can show
up unannounced and without a warrant to search your home in order to to
confirm that you are eligible for government aid. Failure to submit to
the…
j7uy5 | December 1, 2007You would think it would take a sociopath to put
rel="tag" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos">asbestos
in a children's toy. You'd be right. Yet, it has
happened. Stranger yet, Canada has adopted legislation that
explicitly permits this.
Asbestos became infamous when it was linked to
href="http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec05/ch057/ch057c.html#sec05-ch057-ch057c-1022"
rel="tag">mesothelioma, an otherwise rare form of
cancer affecting the lining of the lung cavity. It is
considered to be incurable. It takes an average of thirty
years to show up, after exposure to asbestos…
j7uy5 | November 29, 2007
href="http://www.researchblogging.org/">A great
deal of evidence has accumulated that there is a problem with
regulation of cortisol levels in persons with posttraumatic stress
disorder. Several years ago, it
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/157/8/1252">was
demonstrated that adult offspring of persons with PTSD had
lower circulating cortisol than others, and it appeared that the lower
cortisol was a risk factor for the development of PTSD.
Now, it has been shown that, at least in some persons, lower cortisol
levels can be seen in infant offspring of patients…
j7uy5 | November 29, 2007For years, universities have struggled to find ways to move
esoteric technologies from the lab to the commercial sector.
Now, scientists at UC Merced have begun to grapple with
another problem: how to move technology from the toy shop into the lab.
Chemical & Engineering News has a
href="http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i49/8549news2.html">cute
little article explaining how a new professor began using
Shrinky Dinks to make molds for microfluidic devices.
Apparently, the usual photolithography rigs are expensive,
and take time to set up. But it turns out that it is possible
to…
j7uy5 | November 27, 20071. Good music can neither be created, nor destroyed.
All the good music already exists. It does not matter how
many hours you spend at the keyboard trying to come up with something
new. All of your efforts are in vain.
2. The degree of disorganization in music increases to a maximum.
From now on, all music will be increasingly cacophonous. Any
new musical instrument that is created will be even more frightening,
unsettling, and disgusting than all preceding instruments.
3. As the tempo of music approaches absolute zero, the entropy of the
audience approaches a constant...
...a…
j7uy5 | November 26, 2007I've rarely linked to Kos before; this is probably the
second time (I'm a liberal, just not that kind of
liberal). However, the recent post on the reality of the Iraq
war demands some commentary. Plus, there is no point in being
one out of >100 commenters. Note: the
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/26/world/main3539432.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_3539432">sub-quote
is from CBS News.
href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/26/17716/535">Freedom
Isn't Free. It charges interest.
by Kagro X
Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 02:17:41 PM PST
President Bush on Monday…
j7uy5 | November 26, 2007Using my new Firefox search box to search ScienceBlogs, I
learned that
href="http://www.nursece.com/onlinecourses/9012.html" rel="tag">Fetal
Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/02/children_of_alcoholics_have_re.php">retards
neural growth,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/12/fetal_alcohol_syndrome_affects.php">screws
up the circadian clock, is the
href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/02/everything_i_know_about_the_dangers_of_d_1.php">subject
of moralistic cartoons, and that it
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/…
j7uy5 | November 25, 2007
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alt="Attribution" title="Attribution" border="0">
src="http://…
j7uy5 | November 25, 2007
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agomelatine" rel="tag">Agomelatine
is a new chemical entity that is nearing approval for treatment of
depression. It was developed by
href="http://www.servier.co.uk/aboutus/history.asp" rel="tag">Servier
Laboratories; they have entered into an agreement with
href="http://www.novartis.com/" rel="tag">Novartis
for commercialization of the product (
href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/85521.php"
rel="tag">Valdoxan®).
This represents a new approach to the pharmaceutical treatment of
depression. The putative mechanism of action…
j7uy5 | November 24, 2007
The treehuggers at
href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/are_you_kidding.php">TreeHugger
saw right through this one. Safeway is now selling "organic
water."
I find the last point especially amusing: "No Genetic Modification."
Greenwashing
to the extreme.
HT:
href="http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/organic_water/">J-Walk
Blog Beta
j7uy5 | November 24, 2007On 24 November, 1859, Charles Darwin's
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Species">book,
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, was
href="http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1859/november_24_1859_54077.html">published.
Things haven't been the same, ever since. For
example, the cost of a new copy, then, was 15 shillings. Now
it's 97.55 shillings for a hardcover copy (or it would be, if the Brits
still used shillings). That is the main difference.
The biology is still the same.
j7uy5 | November 23, 2007Apparently, it is not only possible to run a household with
a battery,
but to run 25,000 with a battery: a battery that uses uranium hydride.
The device is being developed from technology from
Los Alamos National
Laboratory, by a
company called
rel="tag">Hyperion Power Generation. In
an article in the
href="http://sfreporter.com/articles/publish/outtake-112107-nuke-to-the-future.php">Santa
Fe Reporter, it is explained:
cellspacing="8" width="200">
height="3" width="1">
Invented
by scientist
Otis Peterson, Hyperion’s patent for a hydride reactor is…
j7uy5 | November 23, 2007Turkey is considering adding the letters "Q," "W," and "X"
to their alphabet. The idea is that it would appease the
Kurds.
href="http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=127794">
class="detaybaslik-font">Gov’t reform envisages
including X, Q, W in Turkish alphabets
Changing
the Turkish alphabet to include the letters Q, W and X to appease
Turkey's Kurds, who have previously faced prosecution for using these
letters, might be amongst the "surprise reforms," mentioned by Foreign
Minister Ali Babacan earlier this week, says a senior official from the…
j7uy5 | November 23, 2007Why use Google, which will give you ten million irrelevant
hits, when all you really want to do, is to find the juicy stuff on
ScienceBlogs?
Well, you can navigate to the ScienceBlogs home page, and search there,
or go to any of the blogs and use the search boxes there. Or,
to simplify things a bit, use can use a Firefox extension.
First, you have to get
Firefox, if you don't have it already. The install
the "Add to Search Bar" extension (
href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3682">install
here). Once it is installed, you have to restart
Firefox.
Then, go to the…
j7uy5 | November 21, 2007MTV is taking some heat for its refusal to broadcast an
advertisment for Buy
Nothing Day.
MTV, the channel that markets itself to
hip youth, has decreed that our Buy Nothing Day public service spot
"goes further than we are willing to accept on our channels". Gangsta
rap and sexualized, semi-naked school girls are okay, but apparently
not a burping pig talking about consumption.
The single best way to blunt the impact of climcate change is to get by
with less of everything. Mostly, what it takes is a
willingness to ignore peer pressure.
j7uy5 | November 21, 2007We found a recipe for pecan pie that does
not use corn syrup. I would not try to argue that this
confection is salubrious, mind you, but at least there is no corn syrup.
Most pecan pie is so sweet that it is annoying.
That is
unfortunate. We are hopeful that this will not have that
defect.
Here is a close-up.
The recipe?
Pecan Pie With
No Corn Syrup
INGREDIENTS:
* 1 cup light brown sugar
* 1/4 cup white sugar
* 1/2 cup butter
* 2 eggs
* 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
* 1 tablespoon milk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup choc chips
* 1 1/2 cup chopped pecans (toast in oven…