gregladen | June 26, 2009There are two ways to go to Antarctica. One is like my friend Elle, who is at this very moment in an underground bunker at the south pole with a broken limb and inadequate medial attention, where she is working on a NASA scientific expedition where they thing somehow it is a good idea to spend the WINTER there.
The other is to wait until summer then go when the weather is nice.
Well, Grrrl Scientists, from Living the Scientific Life, is currently in the running for Plan B, the summer trip to Antarctica. Go here and find out how you can help her get there! Seriously, go!
gregladen | June 26, 2009The coroner's preliminary report has come out, and it is vague.
Rather than reporting, for instance, a simple heart attack/stroke, the coroner indicates that there is no obvious cause (some physical, visible thing) of such a thing, and that actual 'cause of death' will be specified only after toxicology screens and other tests.
The word on the street (well, actually, on my TV) is that the multi-week delay the coroner indicates will mainly be caused by being really really careful so they don't screw this up.
In other words, SOP plus.
Various sources are also indicating that Jackson has…
gregladen | June 26, 2009I have my own theory, but for now have a look at this discussion at Quiche Moraine.
gregladen | June 26, 2009Biologist Robert Full studies the amazing gecko, with its supersticky feet and tenacious climbing skill. But high-speed footage reveals that the gecko's tail harbors perhaps the most surprising talents of all.
gregladen | June 26, 2009PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's long-lived Mars Odyssey spacecraft has completed an eight-month adjustment of its orbit, positioning itself to look down at the day side of the planet in mid-afternoon instead of late afternoon.
This change gains sensitivity for infrared mapping of Martian minerals by the orbiter's Thermal Emission Imaging System camera. Orbit design for Odyssey's first seven years of observing Mars used a compromise between what worked best for the infrared mapping and for another onboard instrument.
"The orbiter is now overhead at about 3:45 in the afternoon instead of 5 p.m…
gregladen | June 26, 2009 Actual missionaries As you may have noticed, I have written a series of posts about missionaries in eastern Zaire in the 1980s and early 1990s, focusing on my own personal experiences. These seven posts represent only a small number of these experiences, but they are more or less representative. They are meant to underscore the down side of missionary activities in Central Africa. To some extent, the negatives you may see in these essays are part of the reason for missionary activity being illegal in many countries (although the reasons for those laws varies considerably). It is my…
gregladen | June 26, 2009As I've mentioned previously, the study site I worked in was beyond the Peace Corps Line. It was beyond the Blender Line. And it was beyond the Beer Line. Out here in this arguably very remote area, we were never short of remoteness. Every year the study site become more and more remote, as roads deteriorated, air strips grew over, bridges became more and more questionable. Over the previous decades there had been more of a missionary presence in this area, but the missionaries had withdrawn and now only passed occasionally down the ribbon of mud we laughingly referred to as the "road…
gregladen | June 26, 2009The new study identifies 27 loci that have rare copy number variations, where there are more or fewer repeated DNA segments than expected, common to the genomes of several children with autism spectrum disorder. These variations are not present in controls without autism spectrum disorder.
The peer reviewed paper is available in the Open Access journal PLoS Genetics.
The sample included 2,832 individuals distributed among 912 families that had multiple autistic children. The control group consisted of 1,070 samples of disease-free children who presumably are not clustered from a smaller…
gregladen | June 25, 2009I have only one Michael Jackson story.
Michael Jackson was an international pop icon for a very long time, because he started his career so early. He was also African American. Bob Marley predated Jackson, and was Afro-Caribbean. For these and various other reasons, the face of Bob Marley and the face of Michael Jackson adorned the walls and backbars of clubs and taverns throughout Zaire in the 1980s. Moreover, these were the ONLY faces one saw in these contexts.
Now, you have to understand that Zaire is to Afro Pop music what New Orleans is to Jazz. Or more so. Actually, Afro Pop…
gregladen | June 25, 2009LA Times:
[Updated at 3:15 p.m.: Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times.]
gregladen | June 25, 2009Not many details available, but it sounds like he was found 'not breathing' and rushed to hospital. UPDATE: The word is that Jackson may have been not breathing and unresponsive at the time the paramedics arrived.
He was taken to UCLA medical center. This happened 2.5 hours ago, and there are no other details available.
The best information for now is probably the LA times.
UPDATE : TMZ is reporting that Jackson has died.
gregladen | June 25, 2009In an unprecedented move, former vice presidential candidate and intellectual leader of the Republican Party, Sarah "my daughter can have your baby" Palin has ruthlessly attacked a blogger who was being funny.
From an official Palin office email:
Recently we learned of a malicious desecration of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother's love for a special needs child.
Desecration? Doesn't that word usually refer to damaging holy things and stuff?
The mere idea of someone doctoring the photo of a special needs baby is appalling. To learn…
gregladen | June 25, 2009The current I and the Bird blog carnival (it is about birds) goes into extra innings. This is a particularly good version of the carnival, which is always good anyway. Check it out here.
gregladen | June 25, 2009Eight to one? Any guesses as to which of the nine supreme court justices think it is OK to get a 13 year old girl to strip down and shake out her underwear so you can see if she has TWO ASPIRIN ON HER???
The Supreme Court said Thursday school officials acted illegally when they strip-searched an Arizona teenage girl looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.
In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches when they ordered Savana Redding to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear.
Redding was 13 when Safford Middle…
gregladen | June 25, 2009... At age 62. Updated:
Of cancer, details here.
She was a pop/cultural icon who invented an entire hair do. Her image was so caught up in one of her main roles as an actress that her other work, including health care related work, has been somewhat ignored.
(That role was in Charlie's Angels, BTW.)
gregladen | June 25, 2009It was a rare day that I was at the Ngodingodi research station at all ... usually I was off in the forest with the Efe Pygmies, up the road excavating an archaeological site. It was also rare that Grinker, my cultural anthropologist colleague, was at the research station. He was spending most of his time in the villages learning language and waiting around for the other shoe to drop (he studied conflict, so on the average day ... not much conflict).
But then an even rarer thing happened.
As we sat, being rare and chatting about the weather, we heard a the sound of a distant truck…
gregladen | June 25, 2009I have friend who has been trapped in a mostly underground research facility at the South Pole since early winter. She recently broke her foot, which is just tough luck because nobody gets out of there until spring, which is, I think, in October.
This will remind you of the stroy of Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who was at an Antarctic research station and diagnosed herself of having breast cancer, and was rescued rather dramatically back in 1999. Nielsen died, by the way, Tuesday. (Of breast cancer.)
Well, my friend at the South Pole is not going to die of a broken foot. (Though perhaps other…
gregladen | June 24, 2009Surgeon and inventor Catherine Mohr tours the history of surgery (and its pre-painkiller, pre-antiseptic past), then demos some of the newest tools for surgery through tiny incisions, performed using nimble robot hands. Fascinating -- but not for the squeamish.