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Female Sex Drive Booster

It's not viagra, which doesn't work for females, but like viagra for men, it promises to increase a woman's low sex drive nonetheless. Intrinsa is a clear patch that delivers a low dose of testosterone and is worn on the woman's abdomen. Intrinsa, manufactured by Procter and Gamble, will only be available to women who have had their ovaries removed as part of a hysterectomy due to conditions such as heavy bleeding or pelvic pain. Trials involving more than 500 women who had had hysterectomies found the patch led to a 74% increase in satisfying sex. "There are a variety reasons for low sex…

Rare Monkey Born in Zoo After Mother's Sight was Restored

Tolkein is a six-year-old howler monkey who lives at the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park near Hythe in the UK. When she was just a juvenile, she developed cataracts in both eyes and became totally blind, so she was completely dependant on her keepers for her needs. There was little hope that she would ever see her own hand -- let alone her own baby. However, eighteen months ago, the staff decided to try a cateract operation in an effort to restore her sight. The procedure was a success and after a period of recuperation she was introduced to Clyde, a male who had recently arrived from Singapore…

Gulf Fritillary

Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae incarnata. A Gulf Fritillary basks in the sun in early afternoon at the West 11th St. Park in Houston on 12 November 2006. It was cool the previous Sunday with temperatures in the 60s, so this butterfly, an ectotherm, was warming its wing muscles in the sun as a response to the low temperature. This butterfly's host plant is native species of Passiflora. The park has lots of P. lutea growing within the open canopy and, therefore, has a large population of Gulf Fritillaries. P. lutea favors lower-light locations. Image: Biosparite. I am receiving so…

Paypal Thanks

On a more serious note, I have been receiving donations from some of you to my paypal account. I am very grateful all of you and will be using these monies to purchase my meds, which are quite expensive, after I get out of the nuthouse. I am not sure if I will ever be in a position to pay you back, or if you ever want to be paid back for your generosity but I can pay you back for your kindness by showing my appreciation to you; I would love to write an essay for you about a topic or question of your choice. I will dedicate that essay, or an issue of Birds in the News if you prefer, to you…

Middle East Headed for a Regional War?

Oh great -- just when you thought it was safe to crawl out of your bunker, more troublke is brewing in the Middle East. According to a Saudi security adviser, the Saudi Arabian government said they will intervene to prevent Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from massacring Iraqi Sunni Muslims after the United States leaves Iraq. This is exactly what we don't want to happen, particularly in view of the fact that Saudi Arabia is primarily Sunni, whereas Iraq is a mix of Shi'ite and Kurds with a few Sunni thrown into the mix (Hussein was Sunni, for example). Nawaf Obaid, writing in The Washington…

Haughty

How many people do you know who have found a misspelled word in the New York Times -- that wasn't in a letter to the editor?? Well, now you can add me to that illustrious list! I found this word -- misspelled as "hautily"! -- in A Free-for-All on Science and Religion, by George Johnson in the New York Times Science section. I think the misspelling alone makes this word memorable! Haughty (haw-tee) [Origin: 1520-30; obs. haught (sp. var. of late middle English haute via Old French from Latin altus high, with h- < Gmc; cf. OHG hok high) + -y1;] adjective disdainfully proud; snobbish;…

America Loses One of Its Finest Modern Writers

I have some terribly sad news. William Styron, one of my favorite writers, died yesterday from pneumonia in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Styron is best known for his lyrical and tragic novel about a holocaust survivor, Sophie's Choice, a bestseller that was made into a movie with the same name, and for The Confessions of Nat Turner, the story of a black slave revolt that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. The last book that Styron completed, Darkness Visible (1990), was a short memoir of his descent into a deep depression that caused him to drink heavily and nearly ended with his suicide.…

White American Robin

tags: birds, "white" American Robin, Turdus migratorius, Image of the Day "White" American Robin, Turdus migratorius, on a sidewalk in Casper, Wyoming. Image: Norma Brown. [wallpaper size]. I am going to speculate here, but I think that, because this bird is pale colored everywhere it would normally be brown, grey or black, this bird's melanin-producing gene(s) have been deactivated. However, because the bird's breast is red, as is typical for this species, carotenoids (red pigments obtained from the bird's diet) are still being added to the bird's feathers when they are growing, as normal…

Best of the Blogs Award

tags: Bipolar disorder, manic-depressive illness, mental health, blog awards Wow, my blog was given another award! This time, Living the Scientific Life was recognized by Psych Central as being one of the top ten blogs to go to to read about bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness. The top ten list for bipolar disorder was compiled with input from readers, one of their associate editors, Sandra, and by John Grohol, PsyD. According to John, "[This award] reflects the excellence in regular writing of entries related to this mental health concern that we feel is consistent and…

Battered Neon Skimmer

tags: Neon Skimmer, Libellula croceipennis, dragonfly, Image of the Day Battered male Neon Skimmer, Libellula croceipennis. This dragonfly was apparently perched for the night when I photographed it at 6:30 p.m. in Houston along White Oak Bayou. Image: Biosparite [larger] This is a sexually dimorphic dragonfly species; males are bright red with amber wing color while females are paler with clear wings. Males appear to glow bright red in the sun, hence the name "neon"; females are gold-colored in the sun. These colorful insects are found throughout the southwestern USA, including southern…

Open Thread

What's on your mind these days? I'd like to read what you are thinking about these days, so feel free to share! Added 11pm ET: Some of my random thoughts: I need to open another Flickr account -- my fourth! -- to hold all my images so I can share them with you. This month, I filled up my two primary Flickr accounts, and opened a third, which I also filled up in just a few days. I guess this means I have an "image heavy blog." I inexplicably lost all of my images from the afternoon and evening of the 29th of August -- when I was in London visiting the Natural History Museum behind-the-…

Rappin' About the CERN's Large Hadron Supercollider

tags: CERN's Large Hadron Supercollider, physics, music, streaming video It is predicted that the world will end at 3am ET when CERN's Large Hadron Supercollider was turned on, creating a giant black hole that will suck the earth into it, destroying everything. Since we still exist, I guess it's time to sing a little, right? [4:49] Credits: There has been a lot of interest in the original mp3, lyrics, and vocals for remixing. You can find all that here. Images came from: particlephysics.ac.uk, space.com, the Institute of Physics, NASA, Symmetry, and Marvel The talented dancers doubled as…

Carnivalia

Several more blog carnivals have been published for you to read; Carnival of the Vanities, 14 August 2008 edition. This blog carnival links to the best writing in the blogosphere, regardless of topic. Oekologie, issue 18. This blog carnival focuses on ecological blog writing. The Boneyard, issue 22. Even though I've forgotten about this blog carnival, they haven't forgotten about me. On Giants' Shoulders, the second issue of this new blog carnival that focuses on the formative years of scientific research, upon which many of our current scientific paradigms have been built. Carnival Against…

Requests?

Some of you might know that starting tomorrow, a dozen or so of the ScienceBlog peeps are meeting in NYC. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you who they are (only they are allowed to reveal themselves), but most of them have told you they will be in NYC already, so you probably know who is here for the get-together, with perhaps one or two exceptions. Anyway, this year, I have a digital camera, so I am seeking requests from you -- what sorts of pictures would you be interested to see? Which ScienceBlogger would you like me to photograph wearing a lampshade? Would you like to see the Seed Offices?…

West 66th/Lincoln Center Subway Art 25

tags: West 66th street/Lincoln Center Subway Art, Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC This station was recently renovated with a "retro look" makeover, complete with new plaques and tablets in the original 1904 Heins-LaFarge style. The new plaques are made of faïence and look like restorations of original work (but they are not; Lincoln Center did not exist in 1904!). West 66th Street/Lincoln Center Subway tile mosaic art #25 as seen at NYC's Lincoln Center stop at Broadway for the uptown (northbound) 1 train. Image: GrrlScientist 2008 […

American Scientist pizza lunch - "Using Games to develop strategies and skills to thrive in a real-time world."

From the American Scientist: If you can, join us at noon, Tuesday, May 25, here in Research Triangle Park for our final 2009-2010 American Scientist pizza lunch talk. (Don't worry, we'll start back up in the fall the way we always do.) Our speaker will be Phaedra Boinodiris, a Serious Games Program Manager at IBM, where she helps craft IBM's serious games strategy in technical training, marketing and leadership development. She'll discuss: "Using Games to develop strategies and skills to thrive in a real-time world." Boinodiris is the founder of the INNOV8 program, a series of games focused…

Mothership Question #2

Late is better than never, as they say, and so it is with this new feature, Ask a Science Blogger. This week's question was late, arriving yesterday, but here it is; Question: Will the "human" race be around in 100 years? Um, YES. Even if The Rapture does occur, there still will be people on Earth since someone has to take care of the christians' pets that were so thoughtlessly abandoned. But I do wonder if the human race will still exist 1000 or 10,000 or 100,000 years from now? I think that's open to debate, particularly considering our tendency towards self-destruction and especially as…

Real Men Don't Use Maps

NYC subway map source. Honestly, I had no idea that straight men even used maps! According to a recent study, gay men and straight women have similar navigational strategies, which are different from those employed by straight men. Women rely on using landmarks to find their way around, whereas straight men rely on a compass, directions and distances. However, this study also revealed that gay men use the same strategies as straight men use. "Gay men adopt male and female strategies. Therefore their brains are a sexual mosaic," explains Qazi Rahman, a psychobiologist who led the study at…

What's Wrong With 42 Percent of Republicans?

Gallup Poll Results of Congressional Job Approval by American voters, 9-12 October 2006. If I was a republican, I'd be upset with the party leadership because they are clearly not listening to the average American voter. Instead of circling the wagons, key republicans should be asking difficult questions of their colleagues -- questions that are necessary to begin purging the party of those individuals whose blind ambition and personal corruption are trashing all republicans. As the midterm elections approach, members of Congress understandably can be nervous about being able to keep…

Welcome New SiBlings

I just wanted to welcome my new SiBlings to ScienceBlogs -- there are 43 of us now! Some of the truly amazing additions to our stable of superstars include some of my favorites, The Loom, Effect Measure, and Scientific Activist. Hopefully, my regular readers will wander over to say hello to them (but please wander back, of course. I don't want to be forgotten in all the excitement). We also have a new front page that was launched today at noon (EST) that you should check out. It was designed in response to reader feedback (well, and some feedback from us, too). I also wanted to let you all…

American Scientist pizza lunch - genomic and personalized medicine

From the American Scientist: Our American Scientist pizza lunch talk falls later than usual this month to accommodate our magazine's May-June issue deadline. Keep open the noon hour on March 30 and come hear Geoff Ginsburg, director of the Center for Genomic Medicine at Duke University, discuss genomic and personalized medicine. To keep you on your toes, we'll convene at a different spot: the easy-to-get-to headquarters of the NC Biotechnology Center here in RTP. Actually, as many of you know, there would be no pizza lunch this year without the support of the Biotech Center. In addition to…

I can't answer that!

What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally.... Er, Bladerunner? Forbidden Planet - if only for subversively introducing Shakespeare to teenage boys. Deep Impact had its moments, more bad than good, but it came out so well in comparison with Armageddon... Contact had some redeeming features. So did 2001 Space Odyssey (and not just the soundtrack, overrated!) The Day the Earth Stood Still? Fat Man and Little Boy? I've heard good things about Gattaca. The first…

iPod iChing - LIGO and IMBH ringdowns

Topical friday and so we ask the Mighty One a Topical Question: Oh, mighty iPod: will LIGO, now that it has reached phase I design sensitivity and is in double coincidence science run mode, detect the ringdown from the formation of intermediate mass black holes in the local universe? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Sofa Urtubörn Á Útskerjum - trad. The Crossing: Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir - Claudio Arrau The Crown: A New England - Billy Bragg The Root: My Youngest Son Came Home Today - Billy Bragg The Past: Good Man, Good Woman - Bonnie Raitt The…

Goats for Sale!

If you want to know what we've been doing these last few months, read the next post down.  But suffice it to say that nothing on our farm has really had the time and attention it deserves.  And since we're legally not permitted to feed our goat or cow's milk to any of our foster children (yes, no matter how we pasteurize it, we are still prohibited), we've decided that right this moment, we need fewer dairy animals.  Which is really great for you - I have a number of really lovely does from our herd (and some wethers if you are looking for a pet or brush clearing, and a nice buck as well)…

iPod iChing - ring a ring a cdm

It is windy friday and we ask the Mighty iPod One, in the spirit of the soon to be news: a ring of dark matter? Really? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Strax í Dag - Stuðmenn The Crossing: Wonderland - XTC The Crown: Splunkunýtt Lag - Stuðmenn The Root: Death or Glory - Clash The Past: Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? - Violent Femmes The Future: Sigurður er Sjómaður The Questioner: Út íVeður og Vind - Stuðmenn The House: Four Ruffles and Flourishes The Inside: Móðir - Ego The Outcome: Afgan - Stríð og Friður Hm, I forgot I only had the reduced set of obscure music on this…

iPod iChing - Free?

It is friday, sunny friday, so we spontaneously ask the Mighty iPod: do we actually have Free Will? Woosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Cry for Love - Iggy Pop The Crossing: The Boy Done Good - Billy Bragg The Crown: A Lover Sings - Billy Bragg The Root: Ashes to Ashes - Bowie The Past: Heil dir Prinz! - Mozart The Future: Everybody Loves You Babe - Billy Bragg The Questioner:While My Heart is Still Beating - Roxy Music The House: Estampe - Soiree dans Grenada The Inside: Riders on the Storm - Doors The Outcome: Seamus - Pink Floyd Love, Fate, Death. But, for the zodiacly…

iPod iChing

Friday again? Too much. So, mighty iPod one, let us know is there bleached life on Mars? Whoosh goes the randomiser. Whoosh. The Covering: Up the Junction - Squeeze The Crossing: Come Back to Camden - Morrissey The Crown: Run through the jungle - Creedence Clearwater Revival The Root: Street Corner Ambassador - Michelle Shocked The Past: Touch Me - Doors The Future: She - Green Day The Questioner: A New England - Billy Bragg The House: Savez-Vouz Planter les Choux?- Sien Diels The Inside: I've Been Working on the Railroad The Outcome: Jón Pönkari - Utangarðsmenn #11 is House of Fun -…

Trendspotting

Life at the American Astronomical Society meeting, in Seattle, is interesting. In addition to the science and jobs and collaboration meetings, there is socialization and politicking. At some level, a fraction of the guiding input into multibillion dollar multiyear national policies happen here. In particular to get support for mission concepts and science priorities, there is a lot of schmoozing and minor feelgooding - for example Northrop Grumman are building the JWST the multibillion dollar "successor" to the Hubble. It is over budget and late, of course, and the fallout from that is…

oh, we know where we're going...

...and now we know where we have been iSpy@home as you know, Bob, there has been some flap in the intertoobz and old media that the iPhone keep GPS logs, automatically, by default, unencrypted, that are downloaded during backups... Cool. Er, well, maybe they should be turned off as default and be selectively turned on only by user, and maybe some prudent default encryption would also be good. Or, you could just have told us, rather than let someone figure it out intuitively given that there is a GPS locator coupled to Apps. Anyway, here is a selected snapshot from my life over about 3…

Kepler-9: multi-planet transit

Kepler has a new discovery, coming out in Science tomorrow. Press conference is currently underway. Discovery is 2 Saturn size planets in 2:1 resonance in 19 and 38 day orbits. In addition there is a third signal suggesting 1.5 Earth radii planet in 1.6 day orbital period. Star is "sun like" [sic]. Paper comes out tonight. - Physical plant wants to put in my desk now, and my desktop is down and I have to clear out in a minute - - done, that was fast. No desktop till tomorrow tough. Transit Timing Variation should give the planetary masses soon, and few more orbits should confirm the third…

Inspired by Iceland

Inspired by Iceland wants you to know Iceland is bursting with energy! Yes, it really is, and often in a good way. Today is a social networking blitz to promote Iceland as a destination, since all ya scaredy cat potential tourists are suddenly deciding not to go there so much any more... What, you're scared by an itsy bitsy little volcano? Think of it this way: at least in Iceland we have an alert and prepared civil defence authority who know what they are doing and would keep you safer than most any place else in the northern hemisphere. We like to think. Anyhow, the promo video is…

linkedy links xix

Undecidable financial contracts, crowdsourcing nepotism and explaining the Nobel Prize. We got it all... Financial Derivatives - just intractable or formally undecidable? - see comment by "Ken" at 20 Oct 09 11:39 yes, it looks like you can do arithmetic and boolean algebra with financial derivaties, and create undecidable statement. Whose Kid Are You - ever wondered how your boss rose so quickly fromskipped the mailroom and took over? The Y-Ranter is starting a crowdsourced "Whose Kid Are You" - a pedia of nepotism and backscratching. Brilliant. I wonder if we can have one for Iceland. With…

Augustine Panel

NASA is due to name the 10 panel members of the Augustine panel on human spaceflight and NASA goals, possibly today. The Orlando Sentinel thinks it knows who most of the members are. The Write Stuff blog at the Orlando Sentinel names 8 names they claim to know will be on the panel. Chris Chyba (astrobio/policy - Princeton) Sally Ride (astronaut UC) Lester Lyles (USAF ex-general - NASA advisory cmt) Edward Crawley - (MIT engineer - earth obs.) Bo Bejmuk (Boeing/Sea Launch) Jeff Greason (Rotary/XCOR) Wanda Austin (CEO Aerospace Corps) Wow. I'm glad to see Bejmuk and Greason on the list.…

iPod iChing - turmoil at the top

Rainy friday. Wot? No Snow? Must be spring already. So we bounce over to the Mighty iPod and ask, most chirpily: WTF was going on down at HQ? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Money - Pink Floyd The Crossing: Introduction - The Lilac Fairy: Nutcracker - Tchaikovsky The Crown:Fun, Fun, Fun - Beach Boys The Root: Benjamin Franklin - Illinois school children The Past: Love Rescue Me - U2 The Future: Pull The Wires From The Walls - The Delgados The Questioner: Whiteness Thy Name is Meltonian - Half Man Half Biscuit The House: I Want Candy - Bow Wow Wow The Inside: Young Person…

liveblogging theorizationing of bimodal faculty blogging

Where are the faculty bloggers? asks RPM over at evolgen Er, mostly hiding pseudonymously from rampaging department chairs and deans... but Chad takes up the discussion, standing up for the physicists bloggers, and borrowing a couple of astronomers for the good cause hey, thought I, this is interesting, maybe there is a link with the two cultures - the focused vs the dabblers in academia>?! I know! (I think) Obviously it is us Dabblers who blog, since the Focused Faculty are totally monomanic, in the Lab learning more and more about less and less, as they say. Clearly the Focused don't…

I remember...

When there was a channel on television that showed music videos... ...nothing but. New and interesting, old and familiar. Brilliant it was. A news headline channel, 24 hour per day, continually updated news headlines from around the world. No opinion. No celebrity. No talking heads. Very handy. It was trusted. I remember bookstores that sold books. Coffeeshops that sold coffee. It was hot and black and liquid. You could have milk or sugar. I remember when sending unsolicited commercial e-mail was the ultimate sin you could committ on a network. When string theory looked like a promising…

iPod iChing - which came first?

Cool and busy friday, and we ask the Mighty iPod One: PNA or RNA? Which came first? Oh, and how will The Party go tomorrow? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Charlie - Red Hot Chili Peppers The Crossing: Mi-Aout - Henri Des The Crown: Pencil Skirt - Pulp The Root: Tangó - Utangarðsmenn The Past: Scenes From Childhood: Knight of the Hobby-Horse The Future: Misty Morning, Albert Bridge - Pogues The Questioner: Revenge! - Spoon The House: Jólasveinar - Ómar Ragnarsson The Inside: Bright Lights - Special AKA The Outcome: Accountancy Shanty - Monty Python Huh? Shouldn't ask…

Science education outside of the classroom at Alabama's HudsonAlpha Institute

The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology is a non-profit organization that opened it's doors in April, 2008. One of the great things about this institute is it's commitment to sharing biotech knowledge with the surrounding community. For the general public, HudsonAlpha has a ongoing written series on biology topics called Biotech 101. Teachers will probably find this useful too. There's a great description of Copy Number Variation written by Dr. Neil Lamb, their director of educational outreach. Some of the other pieces discuss Microarrays, Epigenetics, and RNAi. School programs…

iPod iChing - Hubble Trouble

drizzly dreary friday and we drag ourselves to the Great iPod, and we ask: will we ever see from Hubble again? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Það Vantar Spútur - Olga Guðrún The Crossing: Jingle Bell Rock - Bobby Helms The Crown: Lifetime Piling Up - Talking Heads The Root: Eleanor Rigby - Beatles The Past: Love You To - Beatles The Future: The Firebird VI: Lullaby The Questioner: Máríátlan Mín Mín The House: two and two - jesus jones The Inside: the tailor and the mouse The Outcome: brass in pocket pretenders The Covering hits the tone: "do you know those kids who sit…

Falcon down

Third Falcon launch failed also. Three satellites lost. From NASAwatch - with launch video - first stage engine performed, but stage separation failed. SpaceX homepage has comments - they have raised capital, have booked customers and plan multiple future launches including the Falcon 9 heavy launcher. I hope they get the bugs shaken out soon. Falcon 1 - 3rd launch attempt press kit - lets just skip over the section on stage separation on page 9... Payloads were Marshall's NANOSail-D - a solar sail demo Ames' PRESat - a biological experimental microsat and DOD's Trailblazer - a Jumpstart…

SMEX - six up

In case you missed it, NASA announced selection of the six SMEX concept studies that will be downselected to two launch missions in 2012-2015. And the winners are... CPEX: Coronal Physics Explorer - NRL Solar coronography - looking at flares and mass ejections GEMS: Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX - GSFC X-ray telescope looking at "highly magnetized matter" flowing into supermassive black holes. Bonus points for a self-referential two level acronym. IRIS: Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph - LockMart Dynamics of the Solar chromosphere and interface. JANUS:Joint Astrophysics Nascent…

Friday Fun: Batman's 34 greatest tweets

So, it appears that Batman is on Twitter. From the newly renamed Blastr site, I give you a selection of Batman's 34 greatest tweets: Watch out criminal scum, I'm trying to kick caffeine again. And we all remembered what happened last time, don't we? DON'T WE!!! Going to help with the clean up effort in the Gulf. And by "clean up effort" I mean breaking some BP exec's knee caps. Hey Tony Stark, there's a "Rich Drunk Douchebags Anonymous" meeting tomorrow. I'll sign you up for a seat. With my fists. Arkham is a disgusting, human rights-violating hellhole. It's like my Disneyland. What do I call…

Friday Fun: The Onion on the iPad

Following up on my Onion post a few weeks back on a Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple Tablet I thought I'd do an update on The Onion's article Apple Finally Unveils iPad. Here's most of what they say: Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's new tablet computer, the iPad, during a presentation in San Francisco last week. Here are some of its features: Awkward name enables Twitter users to make the same joke over and over and over again Super slick design makes it impossible to hold, pick up, or stop from sliding down the street Softly whimpers if left alone for too long…

Best Science Books 2009: Amazon.ca

Oddly and interestingly, Amazon.ca has a different list that the US parent. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity & Hope by William Kamkwamba Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann Green Metropolis by David Owen Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis by Alanna Mitchell This is one of the last lists I'll do for 2009 --…

Friday Fun: New Device Desirable, Old Device Undesirable

This amusing little gem from The Onion, published December 3rd, seems particularly relevant in the post-Christmas consumer orgy period. With the holiday shopping season officially under way, millions of consumers proceeded to their nearest commercial centers this week in hopes of acquiring the latest, and therefore most desirable, personal device. "The new device is an improvement over the old device, making it more attractive for purchase by all Americans," said Thomas Wakefield, a spokesperson for the large conglomerate that manufactures the new device. "The old device is no longer…

Friday Fun: The 10 Biggest Misconceptions We Learn In School

Actually, it's not really about misconceptions that we learn only in school, it's more about urban legend/zeitgeist stuff that eveyone knows. Anyways, The 10 Biggest Misconceptions We Learn In School is from Manolith, a site I've never heard of before. It's rude and crude and definitely not for the faint of heart. Some of the points hit their mark and some miss pretty badly. Don't say I didn't warn you. Nevertheless, some of them are also pretty amusing: 1. Einstein got bad grades in school Um... have you heard about this guy Einstein? Famous physicist? Relativity and all that? A genius,…

KITP: high z star formation and clusters

we have our usual triplet of people talking about recent research on some theme today we do first stars to first clusters as usual these have video and podcasts for the hard core to enjoy Matt on first stars - molecular association rates, accretion time scales onto protostars and reheating and shock dissociation of molecules, pre-enrichment and pop II.9 star formation random recent reference and Evan on Compact Stellar Clusters from galaxy outflows random recent reference oops coffee break, quick, before the String Theorists Eat All Our Cookies and Loren on archaeology of merger remnants…

fresh but classy

last class, and we got through 126 slides in the last two lectures... twice a week, for the last three months, except for the "few" odd times I was on travel, I have walked into our freshman seminar with a small cup of black coffee, and, if the grad students hadn't eaten them all, a cookie - lemon cream or oreo, usually. So, for the last class the students decided I needed to modernise, and get one of them new fangled healthy blended drinks: I think this is called a "strawberry island oasis yogurt cream smoothie"; not half-bad actually, in fact could get used to it... Not much caffeine…

Music Mondays: Forty-Four Blues

Forty-four or 44 Blues is a fairly well know blues standard and is certain a song that I really love. I was first introduced to it during an Eric Clapton concert a number of years ago, during his From the Cradle tour. It wasn't part of the album, but he did perform it live. It actually took me a while to figure out what the song was and to get a few versions of it. I don't believe it's ever appeared, live or studio versions, on an official Clapton album. And in the tradition of the One Song I Really Love post I did for Soulshine a while back, I thought I'd give a quickie for 44 for a…

She's gotten a little chunky over two millennia

Some Irish workmen were cutting down a tree, and lo and behold, the stump supposedly resembles the Virgin Mary, although how they found a hymen in that lump, I don't know. The real source of amusement, though, is the way it has put the local Catholic church representatives in a dither. Local parish priest Fr Willie Russell said on radio station Limerick Live 95FM yesterday that people should not worship the tree. "There's nothing there . . . it's just a tree . . . you can't worship a tree." I hope the Irish druids are going to be rightly upset at this horribly offensive slur against their…