retrospectacle | March 2, 2007 Mexico has a lot of problems on its hands: pollution, emigration, drugs, poverty, pollution, to name a few. But Mexico also plays host to many endangered species and habitats, providing a very dangerous home to the animals lucky enough to live there. And these endangered animals, including rare parrots, have price tags: what they can fetch at market.
At the Sonora Market, a bustling bazaar, traders illegally sell animals alongside exotic herbs and folk cures in the heart of Mexico City's often lawless center. Inside its labyrinthine corridors, conservationist Juan Carlos Cantu shudders as a…
retrospectacle | March 2, 2007Well, nothing good thats for sure. But my SciBling Dr. Charles has a interesting (if disgusting) post up on the inner life of a Twinkie.
I was most interested in the notorious "is it a liquid or solid?" filling:
*The Filling - primarily made of shortening (partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and beef fat). Also contains Polysorbate 60, a gooey chemical derived from corn, palm oil, and petroleum that substitutes for cream and eggs at a fraction of the cost. Cellulose gum gives the creme a "creamy" feel. Artificial vanillin is made in petroleum plants, avoiding the labor needed to hand-…
retrospectacle | March 1, 2007PZ notes a cataclysmic event: a bank actually turned down a $50,000 check written by the Almighty!
Kevin Russell found out it's not easy trying to cash a check from God. The 21-year-old man was arrested Monday after he tried to cash a check for $50,000 at the Chase Bank in Hobart that was signed "King Savior, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Servant," Hobart police Detective Jeff White said.
Perhaps even more hilarious is the fact that the man had more checks signed by God (including one for $100,000)...you know, just in case the teller actually fell for the first check.
However, God himself…
retrospectacle | March 1, 2007Maybe I'm just being snarky, but does anyone else find it somewhat amusing that this file photo of the iPhone using GoogleMaps has a big fat Starbucks as the point of interest? Hey potential iPhone users, now you can plan you next trip to Starbucks instead of just tripping over one every 30 feet! Brilliant I tell you!
retrospectacle | March 1, 2007
This is so unbelieveable, I had to watch it twice. Needless to say, cornstarch water behaves very strangely when shaken (but not stirred) by high-speed vibrations. The result are faraday waves.
Faraday waves are nonlinear standing waves that appear on liquids enclosed by a vibrating receptacle. They are named after Michael Faraday, who first described them in an appendix to an article in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1831.
If a layer of liquid is placed on top of a vertically oscillating piston, a pattern of standing waves appears which oscillates at half…
retrospectacle | February 28, 2007Just ask 1st Lt. Ehren Watada who's second court martial is coming up. He's refused to be deployed to Iraq and made (GASP!) critical statements of Bush and the war.
Watada has acknowledged making public statements criticizing the war and Bush. He has said deploying to Baghdad last year with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division would have made him guilty of war crimes by participating in an illegal war.
How DARE he???
He's being court-martialed for missing movement and for conduct unbecoming an officer. If convicted, Watada could get six years in prison and be dishonorably discharged.
I'm…
retrospectacle | February 28, 2007Ohhh this picture makes me crack up. I took it outside "The Sink," a bar in Boulder, Colorado when I was there a bit ago for a science conference. Yes, it says "STD Happy Hour." I forget what it was suppost to stand for, but it did have some other meaning.
retrospectacle | February 28, 2007Check out this interesting op-ed piece in the NY Times today, on a case being heard in the Supreme Court over Bush's faith-based initiatives.
The question before the court is whether a group seeking to preserve the separation of church and state can mount a First Amendment challenge to the Bush administration's "faith based" initiatives. The arguments turn on a technical question of whether taxpayers have standing, or the right to initiate this kind of suit, but the real-world implications are serious. If the court rules that the group does not have standing, it will be much harder to stop…
retrospectacle | February 28, 2007File this under "How in the Hell......"
No one would be foolish enough to claim that racism and discrimination doesn't exist to some extent. Its an unhappy result of worlds and societies colliding, and I truly believe that as societies evolve, the issue improves. Thats why when someone exhibits blatant, angry racism in a public forum like an op-ed newspaper piece, its like taking giant steps backwards. Such is the case of Asian-American columnist Kenneth Eng who writes for AsianWeek, a, asian-interest paper for San Francisco area residents. Mr. Eng's running column, entitled "God of the…
retrospectacle | February 27, 2007A "study" conducted for computing firm Hewlett Packard warned of a rise in "infomania", with people becoming addicted to email and text messages and this impacting (what else?) their IQ. This came in 2006, but I just stumbled upon it today and became predicably irate at yet another example of terrible science reporting.
The study, carried out at the Institute of Psychiatry, found excessive use of technology reduced workers' intelligence.
Those distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ - more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking…
retrospectacle | February 27, 2007Yeah, remote controlled birds.......crazy cool......
Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday.
Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology said their electrodes could command them to fly right or left or up or down, Xinhua news agency said.
"The implants stimulate different areas of the pigeon's brain, according to signals sent by the scientists via computer and force the bird to comply with their…
retrospectacle | February 26, 2007Everybody's talking about the firing of incompentent teachers today, and how difficult it can be due to union rigamarole.
Take this flow chart for example, which outlines the steps that must be taken to fire a bad teacher in New York City. It was so huge that it wouldn't fit on the page (below is just a snippet), so check out the file for the whole convoluted thing.
A good point was made here:
For current wages and under current working conditions, there's no ready supply of good teachers to replace those who would be fired if we made firing teachers easier. The California Basic Educational…
retrospectacle | February 26, 2007"Anyone studying Down's is going to have their socks blown off by this," says geneticist Roger Reeves, a Down syndrome specialist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, who was not involved in the study. "There hasn't been anything out there that we really could take to patients or that we had a strong possibility of taking into the clinic."
This, in response to a new drug candidate which has been found to reduce the mental retardation associated with Down syndrome. Mouse models of Down's syndrome (Ts65Dn mice) were given the drug, and after just two weeks performed as well as…
retrospectacle | February 25, 2007Its the brightest comet in 40 years, and is now visible to the naked eye to people in the southern hemisphere. For those of us in the northern side, we'll just have to make do with cool pictures.
retrospectacle | February 25, 2007India has almost 6 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the world's highest number of people in one nation (although the prevalence is lower than in Africa). However about 40% of women in India have not even heard of AIDS, let alone know what to do to prevent its spread.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the most extensive study on health and nutrition in India, said in its latest report only 57 percent of women have heard of AIDS.
In rural areas, where most Indians live, less than half the women -- 46 percent -- were aware of the disease.
In the past few years, there has been a…
retrospectacle | February 23, 2007Oh, yes, we all know that Senator John McCain gave a talk today at a luncheon in Seattle hosted by the Discovery Institute. What is said institute (I won't link them, so you can google if you like)?
"Despite its self-proclaimed position as an unbiased think tank, the Discovery Institute has played a central role in the religious right's national campaign to undermine science education," Campaign to Defend the Constitution co-director Clark Stevens wrote to McCain Thursday. "Under the guise of 'teaching the controversy' the Institute has strived to discredit the theory of evolution -- a theory…
retrospectacle | February 23, 2007
Its that time of the year again---when cute little girls ply you with unhealthy, delicious cookies. But this year, the makers of Girl Scout cookies are cutting out the transfat, which is a solid move. Hopefully they still taste the same, which they should, as I didn't hear mention of removing the crack. Man, I love me some Thin Mints!
"The Girl Scouts have marked their 90th year in the cookie business by getting most of the artificial fat out of all varieties of their iconic treats, which had been under attack by a few health-focused consumer groups.
This year, about half of all Girl Scout…
retrospectacle | February 23, 2007According to the Bischof-Kohler hypothesis, only humans can dissociate themselves from their current motivation and take action for future needs: other animals are incapable of anticipating future needs, and any future-oriented behaviors they exhibit are either fixed action patterns or cued by their current motivational state. Well guess what, thats a lot of BS. According to a paper published in the most recent edition of Nature details that birds--scrub jays, in this study--genuinely plan ahead.
(Continued below the fold...)
Two requirements for planning are:
1. the behavior involves a novel…