Search Content

Displaying results 4751 - 4800 of 87950

Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, Fall 2009 & Winter 2010

ISTL is a great resource for those of us in science and technology libraries. I'm happy to report on the tables of contents from the last two issues. Winter 2010 Evaluation of an Audience Response System in Library Orientations for Engineering Students by Denise A. Brush, Rowan University Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography by A. Ben Wagner, University at Buffalo Information Portals: A New Tool for Teaching Information Literacy Skills by Debra Kolah, Rice University and Michael Fosmire, Purdue University Are Article Influence Scores Comparable across Scientific…

OSHA throws book at contractor for trenching death. I hear lame excuses for ignoring risk

It is maddening to read yet again about a worker being killed in a trench cave-in. These deaths are completely preventable by using some pretty cheap equipment. The death of Donald “DJ” Meyer in December 2016 is especially tragic. The 33 year-old is survived by his son Ashten, 8. The youngster’s mother died unexpectedly two years ago. I learned this week that OSHA has thrown the book at Meyer’s employer. They issued citations against Arrow Plumbing for six willful and eight serious violations and proposed a $714,142 penalty. Arrow Plumbing was responsible for making certain its excavation…

Peak Oil, again

World oil supplies are set to run out faster than expected, warn scientists but this turns out to be the usual suspects. Its in response to BP: BP's Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough "proven" reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates. The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry. But the Peak Oil folk (well, Colin Campbell) say it's quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands. The glass starts full and…

Ask a ScienceBlogger: The Rapture for Nerds

The question for the week from the Seed overlords is: "Will the 'human' race be around in 100 years?" This is basically a Singularity question, and as such, I think it's kind of silly. But then, I think the whole Singularity thing is sort of silly-- as a literary device, it makes for some good SF, but as serious prognostication about the future, I think it's crap. Razib lays out the basic logic of the options: 1) Nerd Jesus arrives and spirits us all away in a cloud of nanobots, 2) We're all gonna diiiieeee!!!, and 3) We muddle along more or less as always. PZ is more pessimistic, and also…

Mechanisms Of Urban Decay

Downtown Kavalla's mix of well-kept properties and hopeless ruins confuses me. I've seen similar in the Baltic States, but there it has to do with uncertainty about the ownership after the Soviet period, I've been told. That doesn't apply here. So I googled real estate agencies and went visiting on my lunch break. The first clue was simply that I couldn't find most of the agencies at their stated addresses. One had closed down so recently that the sign was still there and the shop space hadn't found a new tenant. The real estate market here isn't exactly booming: demand is low. But eventually…

What Happens to Women in Academia?

Earlier, while noting greater rates of pseudonymous blogging by women, Morgan Jackson raised the topic of why the majority of tenure-track science positions go to men. It's a striking pattern, especially considering that at the graduate student level women predominate in many fields- including entomology. The obvious culprit is that women face discrimination in hiring decisions, as several of our commentators mention. And make no mistake- that does happen. But I've seen enough people drop out of science to realize that there's more than just individual gender-based discrimination at work.…

Silence is the Enemy: In my backyard

Recall that for the month of June, a group of bloggers are trying to draw attention to the horror of violence against women and girls across the globe. Along this theme, I could write about sex tourism in Mombasa (a direct result of increased regulations in Cambodia) or the conversations about legalising sex work so that sex workers can organize , or a continuation of the discussion on mass rapes in Liberia, or the case of a waitress in China who, in self-defense, stabbed a man who, prosaically, "was trying to force himself on her". (What the hell does that mean, anyway? Talk about…

Videos On Avoiding Counterfeit Drugs On Internet, Fentanyl Patch Safety

Like any regulatory agency standing between industry and the public, the US FDA has its fair share of detractors. So, it's always a pleasure to draw attention to their programs that serve public and professional welfare. Since February, 2002, FDA's MedWatch Drug Safety Program has produced short videos every month called FDA Patient Safety News (PSN). While these videos are generally prepared for the health professional community (such as, "Importance of Using Aseptic Technique with propofol (Diprivan)"), there are three videos this month that are of particular interest to patients…

What science ain't

Shortly before taking his last breath, the late William F. Buckley heaped praise on The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, a new book by mathematician and intelligent-design evangelist David Berlinksi. This will likely encourage certain segments of the population to buy Berklinski's book, which is a shame. The rest of us can take advantage of a cheaper alternative, and scan the first item in the April 2008 Harper's magazine Readings section. The excerpt from the book reminds those of us who fear a return to the Dark Ages of just what it is we're battling. To the…

I just won the Association of British Science Writers' Best Newcomer award!

What a night. Tonight, during the gala dinner of the World Conference of Science Journalists, I won the Association of British Science Writers' award for Best Newcomer 2009, collecting  a certificate, an award and prize money in the Natural History Museum's central hall. In front of me: hundreds of international science journalists and Dippy the Diplodocus. Behind me: a statue of Charles Darwin. If that isn't reward for efforts in writing about science, I don't know what is. Anyway, the award was a result of popular vote from members of the ABSW, so my heartiest thanks to anyone and…

Packing Up Again

For those of you who are wondering where I've been, we're currently in the middle of our third family move in the last 25 months. We're starting to get good at it, but it still takes a while. Since I've got a few minutes to spare this morning - and I'm fed up with boxes and tape - I thought I'd share a few of the tips I've picked up. Given how often academics move, I'd guess that some of you have your own hard-learned moving tips. Feel free to share them in the comments. U-Haul Rocks: Seriously. Yes, sometimes Budget is cheaper, but unless you're getting a 10' truck U-Haul has something…

Horrifyingly delusional anti-vaxxers in Australia

Take a look at the ad copy for this evil book by a friend of Meryl Dorey, the anti-vaccination kook. "Marvellous measles"? "Embrace childhood disease"? This is rank madness. Here is what WHO says about measles: Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available. In 2008, there were 164 000 measles deaths globally - nearly 450 deaths every day or 18 deaths every hour. More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures. Measles vaccination resulted in a 78% drop in measles…

Will hypertrading lead to floating tech cities?

In 2007, the smash-hit game BioShock told the story of Rapture, a city built on the Atlantic seabed dedicated to the pursuit of the free market. Now academic Alexander Wissner-Gross has revealed how the race for light-speed trading could fuel the development of something remarkably similar. High frequency trading (HFT) exploits tiny differences in the price of a commodity across two markets. As these discrepancies can last a fraction of a second, trading is carried out by computers that make thousands of transactions in milli- or even microseconds. At these speeds, the time it takes to…

Salty Beer

The Disgruntled Chemist was in Minnesota last week. He went out to a few local bars, and wrote about his encounters. Check out this one where met a girl who had martini olives in her beer. She claimed the olives were a substitute for the salt she normally put in her beer. Yeah, salt. SALT! In her beer. Salt. In. Beer. What's up with that? I was intrigued. Now, this practice wasn't entirely new to me; one time when I went out to dinner with family I saw a guy pour salt in his Budweiser. I've been trying to figure out why he would do that ever since. So, I did some research*. Here's what the…

De-windowizing Ubuntu: Turning off the terminal close warning dialog box.

Ubuntu, Imma gonna let you be my operating system, but first, I gotta ask you to stop acting more like Windows with every new release. K? ... as time goes by two things remain annoying about Ubuntu. One is off and on, and varies over time, and that is the lack of certain essential automatically installed apps and drivers and such. These are things that should be installed to make the system and software work for many users, but that are not included in the distribution because of some misplaced and rather perverse sense of "freeness" of software. For many potential Linux users, this makes…

Time for a new boss at the Smithsonian

Expanding on a report leaked a few days ago, the Washington Post's account of Smithsonian Head Larry Small's expenses is truly appalling. Compared to previous Secretary's of the Smithsonian, Small has taken an enormous housing stipend, has decorated his office with museum specimens – including a rhino skull, and hired interior designers to find furniture: Small spent nearly $160,000 on the redecoration of his offices in the institution's main building on the Mall shortly after he took the helm of the world's largest museum system in 2000. The expenses include $4,000 for two chairs from the…

Best Science Books 2010: Globe and Mail Gift Book Guide

Every year the Globe publishes a gift book guide separate from their regular list of notable books. Great for coffee table style books for that special someone. The list has a few non-science items that look particularly cool to me so I'll list those too. (Note that the online version is missing most of the books mentioned in the print version.) The Native Trees of Canada By Leanne Shapton Self Sufficiency for the 21st Century by Dick and James Strawbridge Atlas of the World by Oxford University Press Explorers: Great Tales of Adventure and Endurance by the Royal Geographical Society The…

New Articles: Water Treatment, Protein Mistakes and Scaling

Five articles (plus some photos from the recent Researchers' Night activities) are now online in the fall issue of Interface magazine (the Weizmann Institute's "friendly" science magazine). â¢Read about a new kind of water treatment system - one that breaks down such complex, man-made chemicals in water as cleaning fluids, flame retardants and pesticide residues, turning them into simpler compounds that can then degrade naturally into harmless substances. Today, there is little that can be done about these pollutants, which are considered dangerous even in tiny amounts when they get into the…

Idle griping about press releases supposed to look like "news"

A lot of things that seem on first glance to be "news" are really just reprints or slight edits of press releases written to tout a commercial product. This is also true of "Newsletters" that charge money for inside news. Datamonitor is a company that claims to be "the world's leading provider of online data, analytic and forecasting platforms for key vertical sectors. We help 5,000 of the world's largest companies profit from better, more timely decisions" (Datamonitor website). Some of the stuff they give away, since I see it and I don't subscribe to anything they sell. But based on its…

It is still Year of the Frog

Contrary to plans (you know how it is), I haven't had time to finish the phorusrhacid theme I started on Tuesday. Because it's important to keep it in mind, I feel we need a reminder about the fact that 2008 is Year of the Frog, and hats off to Carel for discussing this recently, and of course to Jeff Davis of Frog Matters for continuing to fight the fight... Among the latest froggy news is the auctioning of the name of a new species of Mannophryne (go here): you have until July 1 2009 to get an aromobatid species named after you (aromobatids are a recently recognised clade of dendrobatoid…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Size Doesn't Matter To Fighting Fiddler Crabs: A person's home may be their castle and in the world of the fiddler crabs having the home advantage makes it a near certainty that you'll win a battle against an intruder - regardless of your opponent's size. That's one of the findings of a new study by a research team from The Australian National University. The team, working from the University's Darwin research station, set out to discover why male fiddler crabs have an 'owner advantage' when defending their burrow that equates to a 92 per cent success rate. Related Researchers Use Magnetic…

Meeting a reader/commenter in RealLife is always fun!

Yesterday I had lunch (and coffee and another coffee - this lasted a while because it was so much fun) with Tanja and her husband Doug. Regulars here probably recognize the commenter who goes by the handle "tanjasova" - that's her. They just bought a nice house in Winston-Salem and will completely move to North Carolina next month, so we'll get to meet each other and indulge ourselves in Serbian cuisine often in the future. They have three teenage boys (from their respective first marriages) and they live on his salary as she is still looking for a job. Now that she will be here, she can…

Cynical Boardgame About Archaeology

Thebes is a multi-award-winning 2007 German board game by Peter Prinz. I just bought it on a tip from my buddy Oscar, who found a good offer on-line and thought of me because of the game's theme. It's about archaeological expeditions in the early 1900s. The box is big, the production values are lavish, and I really look forward to learning it. But before I can say anything about its qualities as a game, I have to share an opening paragraph from the rule book with you (and I translate from the Swedish version). The players travel as archaeologists through Europe to gather needful knowledge…

Loyal Rue vs. (?) PZ Myers

At some time, a recording of our 'debate' will be available online, so I won't try to do a play by play now. I will say that I found this one pretty much impossible to prepare for — there was no way this debate could be shoe-horned into a good vs. evil or smartness vs. ignorance conflict, making it a much more complicated discussion, rather than a television wrestling storyline. We'd had a few conversations in email and there were several points of disagreement, and in fact Dr Rue showed those points in a slide, but you know, he had good reasons for all the stuff he got wrong. I read his book…

Random sn and tech news

There will not be a Mark Zuckerberg action figure. After being told it can no longer sell its Apple CEO Steve Jobs action figure, M.I.C. Gadget has been ordered to kill off its Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg action figure as well. The lifelike Zuckerberg doll was available for $70 online, but now Facebook has had it banned, just like Apple did for the Jobs doll. This time around, M.I.C. Gadget made a point to call the action figure the "Poking Inventor" and not "Mark Zuckerberg." It wanted to avoid Facebook getting involved, since Apple threatened it with legal action if it didn't stop selling…

New Developments in Inscrutable Chemistry

Eurekalert has a press release from Yale proclaiming that: Chemists at Yale have done what Mother Nature chose not to -- make a protein-like molecule out of non-natural building blocks, according to a report featured early online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Nature uses alpha-amino acid building blocks to assemble the proteins that make life as we know it possible. Chemists at Yale now report evidence that nature could have used a different building block - beta-amino acids -- and show that peptides assembled from beta-amino acids can fold into structures much like…

Banking in the Future

I'm currently the president of the local chapter of Sigma Xi (an honor society, not a fraternity, thankyouverymuch), and as such have been collecting RSVP's and dues for this year's new inductees. As part of this process, I've been struck by how many students don't have checks-- I've had a couple of students give me cash, one cashier's check from a local bank, a couple of checks drawn on parental accounts, and one check from the roommate of a nominee. The first couple, I wrote off as individual eccentricities, but after a few more, and a little thought, I realized that this pattern is…

Angry

Apparently either Jo-anne or I share a name with, or similar to, someone on the U.S. government's secret terrorist watch list.  I can't say which of us it is; no one at the airport is authorized to tell us that. All I know is we were prevented from checking in at the Tucson airport on Thursday without additional identification. We can no longer check-in online or use the electronic kiosks until we go through a months-long process to try to clear whichever one of our names causes the problem.  During which time we're advised not to travel.  This latter bit is unfortunate, since both of us…

Any advice to medical/science journalism students on interfacing with science & medical blogs?

I am about to lead a discussion of science and medical blogs with a group of journalism students in a course entitled, Medical Journalism. While many of the students are specifically majoring in medical and science journalism in a master's program, some are undergraduates in general journalism and mass communications looking to get a flavor for medical writing for print and broadcast. My question to the valued readers of this humble blog is: What would you tell these young, knowledge-seeking minds about how science and medical blogs and bloggers might contribute to their future careers as "…

Academic medical journalism leader joins blogosphere

I'm happy to report that physician-journalist, Tom Linden, MD, has begun blogging over at Dr Mike Magee's Health Commentary. Dr Linden is currently Glaxo Wellcome Distinguished Professor of Medical Journalism and director of the Medical Journalism Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill J-school. As an example of the visibility of the program, one of Tom's current students, Kelly Rae Chi, just had an article posted at The Scientist on the history of the biotech industry in San Diego. Tom recognized early the power of the internet for health information and in 1995 co-…

Creationists unclear on the concept

While online polls are generally worthless when it comes to generating representative statistics - see this post and ensuing dicussion (sorry for being cranky, girlscientist) -- they can at time produce quite curious results. This self-described unscientific poll from the Australian science magazine COSMOS really has me wondering about the publication's readership. "Are humans still subject to natural selection?" asks COSMOS. Fair question. And more than three quarters of the respondents selected one of two quite similar variations on a theme of "yes." But then there were the other responses…

NSF Panel on Scientists, Journalists, and Climate Change

On January 8, NSF will be hosting a very important panel discussion on climate change and journalism. Details are below. NSF to Host Panel Discussion on Communicating Climate Change 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. January 8, 2009 Leading journalists and climate scientists will headline a January 8, 2009, program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, Va., to discuss a newly released book on climate change science and journalism. Andrew C. Revkin of The New York Times and John Carey, senior correspondent for Business Week, will participate on the panel along with climate scientists Michael…

Indirect Truths: Gore Aims to Go Beyond His Base

I'm hitting the road for talks at Princeton, but a quick post on Gore's new ad campaign, launched officially with an appearance last night on 60 Minutes. I haven't see the ads yet and I didn't see last night's program, but from news reports, the campaign appears to incorporate the types of necessary strategies that I've written about at this blog, in articles, or that I have highlighted in talks over the past year. Gore and his Climate Alliance specifically: a) Attempt to reach non-news audiences, the type of people who have been tuning out the really good science coverage. b) In commercials…

Where exactly does food come from? I fear this artist's take on it might be all too real for many these days.

Coming off of Ben's recent hat tip to the paper published at PLoS ("The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact"), I was reminded of some great artwork by Marc Trujillo. I first heard of this artist by reading a nice profile of his work at a newish online literary journal called "/ONE/" (link). Marc Trujillo is an urban landscape painter who depicts the big box retail stores, self-service gas stations, and fast-food chains that make up a large portion of the urban environment. Free of political or moral overtones, these works function both as modern…

Colour is a universal

It seems that we do see colours the same, despite cultural differences. [The spelling of "colour" is not a universal, though, as Americans don't know how to spell it properly.] From Abidji to English to Zapoteco, the perception and naming of color is remarkably consistent in the world's languages. Across cultures, people tend to classify hundreds of different chromatic colors into eight distinct categories: red, green, yellow-or-orange, blue, purple, brown, pink and grue (green-or-blue), say researchers in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

The Machinery of Hair Cells

The Scientist has a fastastic illustrated feature on the workings of cochlear hair cells in their current online issue. In addition to pointing out the different cell types in the inner ear, there are a few informative blurbs about mechanotransduction and how stereocilia are organized and linked. This is part of the larger theme "Focus on Neuroscience" issue, which has lots of short articles about from channel dynamics to Alzheimer's disease. The hair cells of the inner ear are unique in that they are sensory epithelial cells, and not neural tissue themselves (like olfactory receptors or the…

Original Steampunk

This is a photo of the controls in the cabin of the Mallard, a steam locomotive built in 1938.  The Mallard was capable of traveling 202.7kph (126 mph), a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A14609333">record-high speed at the time.. The picture is from a series by href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/nov08/6928">David Mindell, posted at IEEE Spectrum Online.  Below is a photo of the Mallard, photographer unknown, from the Artehouse at trains.com. One of the stations served by the Mallard was Paddington Station (London), which opened in 1854 ( href="http://www.designmuseum.org/…

How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer: The thinking person's Blink

Review by David Dobbs, from Neuron Culture Originally posted on: January 25, 2009 10:45 PM The book opens so thrillingly -- a plane crash, a last-second Super Bowl victory, and a first chapter that comfortably reconciles Plato and Ovid with Tom Brady and John Madden -- that it spawns a worry: Can the book possibly sustain this pace? "How We Decide" delivers. Jonah Lehrer, -- author of "Proust Was a Neuroscientist," blogger at Frontal Cortex, and (full disclosure) an online acquaintance and sometime colleague of mine for a couple years now (I asked him to take over editorship of Scientific…

Wine is good for you

Grapes of gnash: Pomace, the residue of red winemaking, may help prevent tooth decay Red wine has long been known to contain a substance, resveratrol, that is heart-healthy. Now research shows that both red wine grapes and winemaking residue, known as pomace, contain substances that may help prevent tooth decay. A study published online in November in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry suggests that specific polyphenols -- chemicals present in large amounts in fermented seeds and skins that are cast away after grapes are pressed -- interfere with the ability of bacteria to…

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like to read my blog.

So I've been bumping into this idea on several blogs (idea? or is it a cult? ... I refuse to call it a meme, sorry Richard). I have some trouble understanding what it all means. Is it hard, as in hard core? To help us understand the meaning of all this rhetoric, they (a bunch of hard core German Science bloggers) even have a manifesto: I am a hard bloggin' scientist. This means in particular: 1. I believe that science is about freedom of speech. 2. I can identify myself with the science I do. 3. I am able to communicate my thoughts and ideas to the public. 4. I use a blog as a research tool.…

Best of Deep Sea News 2006

Our Best of the Abyss awards were conceived to recognize important deep-sea happenings around the world, and intended to pay our humble respects to all the hard working scientists, technicians, and policy makers that make our postings possible here on the blog. If it wasn't for these people, we would have precious few good things to report. This post, the "Best of Deep Sea News 2006", is a little different because these awards are intended to recognize our best attempts to deliver something fun and interesting. However, rather than turn the contest into a mutual self-admiration society, we…

The Whale Hunt Project

In the department of amazing photojournalism projects we have The Whale Hunt by Jonathan Harris. "The Whale Hunt is an experiment in human storytelling. In May 2007, I spent nine days living with a family of Inupiat Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost settlement in the United States. The first several days were spent in the village of Barrow, exploring ramshackle structures, buying gear, and otherwise helping the whaling crew to prepare for the hunt. We then traveled by snowmobile out onto the frozen Arctic Ocean, where we camped three miles from shore on thick pack ice, pitching…

Some Sunday Links

Merry Columbus Day! Here are some links. The science-related stuff: Go buy schoolkids science stuff. It will make ya feel good... After you're done with that, go wash your hands. Senator Clinton joins the Coalition of the Sane and details her science agenda. Giardia is one more reason why intelligent design creationism is really stupid. The environmental science of parking: some commentors came up with really interesting ideas. All hail our giant jellyfish overlords!! The Voltage Gate discusses the best kind of rhodopsin: bacteriorhodopsin. Here's a cool new technology: nanobodies.…

Is the Discovery Channel Store Run By Sexist Pigs?

A colleague looking to buy Christmas gifts went to the Discovery Channel store page and noticed that boys and girls had two different pages. It's nice to see that a company supposedly dedicated to scientific inquiry has decided that girls don't like or want science. What do I mean? Well, here's the first five gifts for the boys: Discovery Whodunit? Forensics Lab Discovery Fingerprint Lab Discovery Speed Detector Radio Control Equalizer Stunt Car Discovery Remote Control Chromashift Roboreptile Here's what the first item looks like: Very sciency. Now for the girls: Discovery Ultimate…

The Real Flaw with Scratch Lottery Cards

Wired has a fascinating article about a statistician who figured how to beat the odds on the scratch-off lottery tickets--that is, pick cards that are more likely to produce winning combinations. And "more likely", I mean getting it right up to 95 percent of the time. But the article mentions only in passing the real problem with lotteries: While approximately half of Americans buy at least one lottery ticket at some point, the vast majority of tickets are purchased by about 20 percent of the population. These high-frequency players tend to be poor and uneducated, which is why critics…

People are inconsistent and crazy

So the alties hate real medicine. They come over here and bemoan modern medicine's failure to address behavioral changes that affect health, such as diet and exercise. Then I write a long post about internists' duties viz public health and health behaviors, and the gun nuts think I want to disarm them and PRY TEH WEAPON OF GUNZ OUT OF OUR COLD DED HANDZ!!111!222!!!11! I think of my writing as "reality-based". I have opinions, and where my opinions intersect with real-world activities, I try to back up my opinions with facts. I don't (usually) resort to wishful thinking, religion,…

Roy Zimmerman: You're Getting Sleepy

I've been following Roy Zimmerman's output of musical satire since his 2004 album Faulty Intelligence, and I was certainly not disappointed by the recent You're Getting Sleepy. The CD's title is shared with the opening song and refers to the hypnosis that must be going on when half of the US electorate votes for the increasingly insane Republican Party. (Remember, Mitt Romney is their low-key, sensible and uncontroversial alternative!) As resident of a country whose entire spectrum of mainstream politics lies to the Left of Barack Obama, I of course have no problem with Zimmerman's stance.…

Another Review of the BECB

Another day, another review of of the Big Evolution/Creation Book. This time it's Matt Young over at The Panda's Thumb. His verdict? Among the Creationists is well written, well formatted, and well organized (though I thought that most of the content of the endnotes should have been incorporated into the text). It has a good list of references and a good index. It is barely 230 pages long, and it is a pleasure to read. May I recommend that anyone with an interest in creationism go straight to your local independent book dealer, buy a copy, and read it through? Score! As with yesterday's…

How homeopathy works

Follow this link to the amusingly bizarre webcomic about homeopathy behind it. I'll just share with you the story behind the artwork: So this might seem to make very little sense at all. Fair enough, it's sort of supposed to. But this did actually happen to me at work — A guy came in to buy some homeopathic tablets, and was quite insistent that I not let them touch the large tub of ice-cream that he was also purchasing. Assuming that it had something to do with astronomically minute quantities of poison that such remedies are reputed to contain (they don't, by the by — it is entirely water,)…

Bioware wishlist

Here's a list of things I want to be able to buy in the near future: Better eyes. Check this news at beebs on a man with bionic eyes. I am very hopeful. Spectacles suck, contact lenses suck. I want a pair of bionic eyes. Better memory. No news on this. Cognitive enhancement drugs will not cut it. I want a prosthetic that adds to the sorry excuse of a memory that evolution has endowed me with. If we can interface with the optic nerve (above), we can interface with any nerve, the brain included. Better legs - so I can run to the office a dozen miles without breaking a sweat. Sitting inside a…