purepedantry | September 29, 2006The Synapse #8 is being hosted at Mind Hacks on Sunday. Make sure to get your submissions in before Saturday night so that they have time to read them. Details here.
purepedantry | September 28, 2006I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and I mentioned the phrase All Your Base Are Belong to Us (AYBABTU) and just got a really blank stare. This is a shame because not only is it a funny line, but it is an absolutely critical part of recent geek history. So I thought I would share it with you -- you meaning those of you who were not already aware of it.
The phrase All Your Base Are Belong to Us originates from a video game called Zero Wing that was translated poorly from Japanese to English upon its release here (apparently in Japanese it made a lot more sense). Here is…
purepedantry | September 28, 2006I love YouTube -- so many ways to waste time at work.
Check out this video of a popped balloon in zero gravity.
purepedantry | September 27, 2006Lee Smolin -- author of The Trouble with Physics -- was interviewed on the Leonard Lopate Show (on WNYC) talking about string theory and why he thinks we shouldn't change scientific standards because of experimental difficulties. A really interesting interview. You can listen here (it is a streaming mp3).
purepedantry | September 27, 2006Have you ever seen a cyst fly?
A team of French doctors planned to slice a cyst off a man's arm Wednesday in the world's first zero-gravity surgery, operating aboard an airplane soaring and diving in and out of weightlessness.
The experiment is part of a broader effort to develop robots for surgeries from a distance, in space or on Earth, the doctors said. The surgeons will be strapped to the walls of the Airbus 300 Zero-G for the three-hour operation.
The plane was scheduled to take off Wednesday midmorning from the Institute for Aeronautic Maintenance in Merignac, adjacent to Bordeaux in…
purepedantry | September 26, 2006So I am sititng in a movie theater the other day, and some teenagers sitting behind me are talking. Of course, they are talking. They are ALWAYS talking behind me. And what particularly irks me is that it is a Tuesday night during the school year, and I only come to movies at 10 pm on Tuesday nights during the school year for the slim chance of avoiding talking teenagers.
Why, I ask you? Surely, there is some explanation for this behavior?
One theory is that teenagers are actually from a separate barbarian race. However, I suspect that there is also an underlying neurological reason…
purepedantry | September 26, 2006Reason #1 why children are not cute:
A three-year-old boy has used his mother's computer to buy a £9,000 car on an internet auction site.
Jack Neal's parents only discovered their son's successful bid when they received a message from eBay about the Barbie pink Nissan Figaro.
Rachael Neal, 36, said her son was quite good at using the computer.
Mrs Neal, of Sleaford, Lincolnshire, said she had left her eBay password in her computer and her son had used the "buy it now" button.
The car is incidentally a Pink Nissan Figaro. I say they make him drive it when he turns 16 as punishment.
purepedantry | September 26, 2006Scientists in FL are trying to make a prosthetic tail for a dolphin, Winter, who lost hers after getting tangled in a fishing line:
Winter learned how to swim without her tail, amazing her handlers with a combination of moves that resemble an alligator's undulations and a shark's side-to-side tail swipes. She uses her flippers, normally employed for steering and braking, to get moving.
Winter can't keep up with wild dolphins that can swim up to 25 mph with strokes of their tail flukes. She will be a permanent resident at the aquarium, even if she gets a prosthetic tail.
In the tank, she…
purepedantry | September 25, 2006This Panda is not yet cute. It is in many ways precute. (It sort of looks like a fuzzy potato.)
In all its not-yet-cuteness, this baby Panda was born in the Atlanta Zoo to the proud Lun Lun. We can be confident that if biology takes its course, someday it will be cute -- allowing for swooning press coverage to ensue.
(Suck on that post, Cute Overload. I know your traffic regularly crushes us, but someday, SOMEDAY!!! we will defeat you.)
purepedantry | September 25, 2006Encephalon #7 is up at OmniBrain. Remember to submit to the Synapse this weekend to be hosted at Mind Hacks.
purepedantry | September 25, 2006James Gorman, writing in the NYTimes, laments the relative dearth of molecular biology colloquialisms:
Geology and ophthalmology may provide most of our overused metaphors (maybe that's what geopolitics is), but other sciences do their part. Anatomy has contributed the jaws of defeat, into which one could presumably fall after stepping off a brink and sliding down a slippery slope. Cosmology has contributed the black hole. I found a particularly good use of this astronomical phenomenon in an article in Macleans on Canadian politics. In it a politician refers to the "black hole of constituency…
purepedantry | September 22, 2006The trial for 6 medics in Tripoli who are being tried for infecting children with AIDS (and from what can be gathered were falsely accused) has been postoned til the end of October:
The retrial of six foreign medics facing a possible death penalty on charges they infected hundreds of Libyan children with the AIDS virus was adjourned on Thursday after a defense lawyer failed to show up in court.
"The trial was postponed until October 31," said the court President Mahmoud Haouissa, citing the absence of leading defense lawyer Othmane Bizanti.
The six medics have been detained since 1999.
A…
purepedantry | September 22, 2006Walmart is cutting prices on generic drugs in Florida as a test program:
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said on Thursday it would cut the prices of nearly 300 generic drugs to $4 per prescription starting in the retirement haven of Tampa, Florida.
Target Inc., which has faced increasingly stiff competition from Wal-Mart, said it would immediately match the drug prices in the Tampa Bay area as part of a long-standing practice of remaining price competitive with its larger rival.
Wal-Mart characterized the program as "part of its ongoing commitment to provide affordable…
purepedantry | September 21, 2006Hells yeah:
Modern, Cool Nerd
86 % Nerd, 56% Geek, 30% Dork
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.
Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent,…
purepedantry | September 20, 2006This is absolutely unacceptable. 6 medical workers are on trial in Libya under the accusation of infecting children with HIV, and if convicted they could be executed. While expert testimony and scientific evidence was presented at the trial, this evidence was thrown out from a combination of miscommunication and what appears to be political bias.
Declan Butler from Nature reports:
Lawyers defending six medical workers who risk execution by firing squad in Libya have called for the international scientific community to support a bid to prove the medics' innocence. The six are charged with…
purepedantry | September 20, 2006Check out this story ala Shelley about a drunk man who bit a panda. "Hey, pandas are not for biting buddy."
purepedantry | September 20, 2006I was kind of wondering when they would start something like this. For the uninitiated a Wiki is an online text that anyone can edit. It has links within it to other articles forming a web on constantly changing information -- sort of like an encyclopedia only better. The most famous Wiki is Wikipedia -- which I think is a wonderful resource, but since it is based on the premise that anyone can edit it can sometimes have notable errors.
Anyway, some professors from the University of Georgia are trying to applying the idea to textbooks:
So, what's this Global Text Project about?
It's an…
purepedantry | September 19, 2006I have talked repeatedly here about how I don't think that genetics provide an adequate explanation of the gender disparity in science. I haven't mentioned that this gender disparity does not overly disturb me, primarily because I think that some time in the next 10 years this is going to get fixed in profound way. Here is some demographic evidence why women will soon surpass men in science and more generally in academia:
Girls have long gotten better grades than boys in all levels of school. But while at one time few women used those academic skills to get degrees, new research suggests…
purepedantry | September 19, 2006I feel really bad for this guy:
Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.
Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year old man whose penis had been damaged in a traumatic accident.
The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Hu and his team removed it two weeks later.
"Because of a…
purepedantry | September 19, 2006Hi everyone. Sorry for the lull in blogging. I was moving into the quintessential New York apartment. I now have a room only slightly larger than my mattress and back problems from trying to lug a couch up a three story walkup. Never again.
Anyway, over the weekend GNIF Brain Blogger published Synapse #7. The next Synapse is being hosted at Mind Hacks on October 1st. Submission details here.