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Guillermo Gonzalez tenure review goes to the Board of Regents today: updated

It's not certain there will be a decision immediately, though: From the Iowa State Daily: The Iowa Board of Regents will meet Thursday to discuss the tenure denial appeal of Guillermo Gonzalez, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State, at its regional meeting on the ISU campus. The meeting is at 8:30 a.m., with a one-hour closed session dedicated to discussing the appeal beginning at 8:35 a.m. The regents will emerge with either a decision on the case or a decision to postpone it. "The board does not have to decide within the hour time slot given for the meeting, and…

Everything you wanted to know about microbiology and epidemiology, but were afraid to ask

As Chad mentioned, in our super-triple-secret Scienceblogs hidey hole, we've been kicking around the idea of writing posts on some basic concepts in our respective fields of expertise. However, after studying this stuff for years and years and years, it's not always easy for us (well, OK, for me at least) to figure out what "basic concepts" would be interesting and useful to discuss here. I've written a bit previously on the difference between "infectious" and "contagious" disease, for example, but I can get much more basic than that. From those of you who commented here (and thank you for…

Now He Leaves?

John Browne, BPâs CEO has abruptly resigned over revelations about his sex life. For quite some time, Houston Chronicle's business columnist Loren Steffy has been writing about Browne and the safety debacle known as BP. Steffy's comments on Browneâs resignation are priceless: Let me see if I've got this right. BP's Texas City refinery blows up, killing 15 people. It's later determined that a primary cause was the company's desire to save money by scrimping on safety. That year, the company's chief executive, John Browne, got a raise. A year later, a BP pipeline in Alaska, corroded from years…

Occupational Health News Roundup

OSHA's failure to keep up with today's workplace hazards is the subject of two Congressional hearings and one New York Times article this week (see our post on the topic, too). Senator Kennedy is set to introduce new legislation, called the Protect America's Workers Act, tomorrow; earlier this week, Senator Patty Murray held a hearing and introduced a bill on domestic violence in the workplace. Also on the subject of workplace hazards and Capitol Hill, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization has posted a short video featuring John Thayer, supervisor of the crew of workers who were…

The 800 pound gorilla

Mike Hendricks from the Kansas City Star notes in a recent article that all-too-often, trench collapses happen when "work crews take shortcuts because they're in a hurry or think a trench box interferes with the job they're doing." While it may be true that workers are "cutting corners" to finish the job they are assigned to do, blaming the workers ignores the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Instead of blaming the worker for the tragedy that has befallen him, let's blame those responsible for making him cut corners in the first place. Workers hurry because their priority is getting their work…

Bookend: The real hot 100

Okay, one more post and I swear I'll stop talking about sex/sexiness for awhile. A reader sent me a link to this page: the real hot 100. We're tired of the media telling young women how to be "hot"! Maxim Magazine's annual "Hot 100" list exemplifies how young women are viewed in popular culture. The women featured in this leading men's magazine are chosen solely for their appearance. The REAL hot 100 shows that young women are "hot" for reasons beyond their ability to look cute in a magazine. REALLY hot women are smart. REALLY hot women work for change. REALLY hot women aren't afraid to…

Another extant squamate ticked off the life list :)

I was thrilled and delighted to encounter this amazing beast at a recent meeting. It's another of those creatures that you might know well from the literature, but (you assume) are unlikely to ever see in the flesh. Yet here it is... Your challenge: tell us all what it is. As usual, this is dead easy... so long as you know the answer. And, to those people who have already seen the photos on my Facebook wall: you are not allowed to play. It's a good time to feature neat lizards, what with today's publication of the paper on the new Philippine monitor Varanus bitatawa (Welton et al. 2010).…

Amerindian art shows that giant flightless pterosaurs survived into modern times

Yes, it's true. As revealed by my most redoubtable friend and ally Nemo Ramjet, Amerindian people knew of giant flightless azhdarchids long before their possible existence was hypothesised about here at Tet Zoo (follow-ups here and here). Depicting these animals in their artwork, they symbolised them as the great bird Kaloo: this was the most terrifying of all creatures, a stork-headed, long-necked, quadrupedal, flightless bird with long, three-fingered arms and slim legs. Wow. I am, of course, joking. Nemo discovered an illustrations of Kaloo in a book on mythology and thought that it…

An Update on the Bible Code Bozos

About 10 days ago, I wrote a post about a group of bozos who believe they've found a secret code in the bible, and that according to them, there was going to be a nuclear attack on the UN building in NYC by terrorists. This was their fourth attempt to predict a date based on their oh-so-marvelous code. Well, obviously, they were wrong again. But, do they let that stop them? Of course not! That's the beauty of using really bad math for your code: you can always change the result when it doesn't work. If you get the result you want, then you can say your code was right; if you don't get things…

One more plug for DonorsChoose

This is the last time I'm going to bug folks to remind them to donate to the SB challenges. The DonorsChoose fundraiser here at ScienceBlogs is just about over. Three more days for you to help some kids get a good education in math and science. The GoodMath/BadMath challenge is here; and Janet has a rundown on the challenges that are close to their goals. (If the challenge is met, DonorsChoose will add in an extra 5% bonus.) As an extra incentive, for the next 10 people who donate to the GM/BM challenge, if you send me a copy of your DonorsChoose receipt, I'll let you pick one topic for me to…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Personal Music Players: Scientists Warn Of Health Risks From Exposure To Noise: Listening to personal music players at a high volume over a sustained period can lead to permanent hearing damage, according to an opinion of the EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) released this week. New Gene Found That Helps Plants Beat The Heat: Michigan State University plant scientists have discovered another piece of the genetic puzzle that controls how plants respond to high temperatures. That may allow plant breeders to create new varieties of crops that…

DonorsChoose 2008 Challenge - update 4

My DonorsChoose board includes challenges like this one, for example: Animal Life Cycles Up-Close: Change you can believe in! That seems to be the motto these days. I want to teach my 2nd grade students about real change... animal life cycles. My goal is to provide students with hands-on opportunities for observation and discovery. Students will compare and contrast various life cycles, recording changes in their learning logs. I teach at a magnet school which has a strong Spanish emphasis. Our 2nd grade team shares most science materials so over 100 students will benefit from your…

Nature Network Hubs

Hubs on Nature Network are multiplying. First, there was a Boston hub, then a London hub, and now a brand new New York City hub. Toronto and Berlin are itching to be the next. On the other hand, the Research Triangle group is still pretty small. I think it's due to a different geography. Boston, London and NYC are huge cities with lots of people, including many scientists and bloggers. The areas outside of those cities - the 'countryside' - are really not that relevant to the sizes of those hubs - add a few people here or there. On the other hand, North Carolina is a large state, in area and…

Science Cafe Raleigh - Supernova: The Violent Death of a Star

Hosted by Museum of Natural Sciences: Supernova: The Violent Death of a Star Massive stars end their lives in spectacular supernova explosions, visible across the Universe, that blast material into space that contributes to future generations of stars, produces cosmic rays, and stirs up interstellar gases. Many heavy elements, including the calcium in our bones and trace amounts of copper and zinc in our bodies, are formed only in supernovae; we are quite literally made of star stuff. Some supernovae can even be used to gauge distances to remote galaxies; from these we have learned the…

Oregon or bust

Get ready, West coast: in two weeks I'll be in Ashland, Oregon, speaking in the Meese Room, Hannon Library, at Southern Oregon University, at 7:00pm on 23 April. If you aren't a student, you'll have to pay a whole $10 to hear me — that's more than I'd pay to see a Michael Bay movie, and I won't have any car chases or explosions! This is a talk sponsored by The Jefferson Center, and you should check them out if you want to know more. There may be other events around that date — I know I'm doing a radio program one morning, and I'll be there for a few days. The subject of the talk is the legacy…

Pushing Boundaries in Information Visualization

Pushing Boundaries in Information Visualization: Using Virtual, Immersive and Interactive Technologies in Research & Practice Saturday, September 13, 2008 9am - 4:30pm This workshop will showcase some of the innovative uses of technology in terms of virtual and immersive environments for interacting with information. The day's events will generate attendee discussion around the use, integration and evaluation of such tools (how do we evaluate the use of these technologies? how can research improve practice? how can practice inform research, etc.). The program will feature a colorful mix…

Meet The Parents SciBlings

Do you want to spend two hours chatting with Grrrl, Janet, Professor Steve Steve (or two or three of them), me and many more SciBlings and readers? If yes, this is where you should go: We'll be meeting at 2:00 pm on Saturday, August 9, at the Arthur Ross Terrace at the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park. Once there, please head to the cafe tables and chairs set by the trees on the upper terrace, facing the Rose Center. The terrace is accessible from the Theodore Roosevelt Park at 81st Street and Columbus Avenue. This is an outdoor location with tables and shade, which we…

Lee Siegel - who let him into a media room again?

Lee Siegel was on NPR's On The Media the other day, defending his sockpuppetry and painting all bloggers as unwashed hordes of fascists. Boo hoo. I listened to the podcast and it was too short to be of much substance. The interviewer has no idea how big of an offense sockpuppetry is, and Siegel demonstrated that, apart from comments on his own blog, he has never really taken a look at the blogosphere as a whole. If the comments on his posts are all he knows, he really knows nothing about blogs. The quip about editors who wink about nobody reading comments is just another proof how…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Understanding Hearing, Molecule By Molecule: Berkeley Lab scientists have for the first time pieced together the three-dimensional structure of one of nature's most exquisite pieces of machinery, a gossamer-like filament of proteins in the inner ear that enables the sense of hearing and balance. Marine Worm's Jaws Say 'Cutting-edge New Aerospace Materials': Researchers in California and New Hampshire report the first detailed characterization of the protein composition of the hard, fang-like jaws of a common marine worm. Their work could lead to the design of a new class of super-strong,…

Twitter is evil

James Hrynyshyn is completely missing the point. He has a post up where he tendentiously explains why twitter is evil, as if it should be a surprise. Why is the Pope Catholic? Why is the darkness dark? Why does Microsoft suck? These aren't interesting questions: the point is that they are. I have a Twitter account. I do not have a "My Little Pony" account. Think about it. Isn't it quite probable that I would leap into this technology precisely because it has great potential for evil? Be seduced, and embrace the evil. It's fun! One hundred forty characters is exactly enough room for a "…

When Clocks Go Bad

Today in PLoS Genetics: a nice review of some interest to my readers: When Clocks Go Bad: Neurobehavioural Consequences of Disrupted Circadian Timing by Alun R. Barnard and Patrick M. Nolan: Progress in unravelling the cellular and molecular basis of mammalian circadian regulation over the past decade has provided us with new avenues through which we can explore central nervous system disease. Deteriorations in measurable circadian output parameters, such as sleep/wake deficits and dysregulation of circulating hormone levels, are common features of most central nervous system disorders. At…

A high school at the zoo!

I rarely wish to be 14 again, but I certainly did when I read this news today, that N.C. Zoo and the Asheboro City Schools have just started something called AHS Zoo School. As Russ Williams explains: "Students have unprecedented access to a 1500-acre, world-class facility ideal for environmental and biological exploration. Beyond routine science, the zoo offers relevant experiences in zoology, horticulture, marketing, retail, hospitality and art as well as wildlife and plant conservation and research. The AHS program is only the fourth zoo school in the country with similar schools located…

Who put the hallucinogens in Pat Boone's ovaltine?

Pat Boone had a dream. He dreamed that he was president. It would be our nightmare; after going on and on about the usual far right anti-tax tripe and militaristic fantasies, he gets to education. As a man who intended to be a teacher myself, I issued an ultimatum to the teachers' unions: They would return to basic math, including arithmetic, and basic English (the mandated official language), and basic science devoid of unproven theories like evolution, sticking instead to factual evidence and not discounting "intelligent design" as the more scientific basis for life and existence. All…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Losses Of Long-established Genes Contribute To Human Evolution While it is well understood that the evolution of new genes leads to adaptations that help species survive, gene loss may also afford a selective advantage. A group of scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz led by biomolecular engineering professor David Haussler has investigated this less-studied idea, carrying out the first systematic computational analysis to identify long-established genes that have been lost across millions of years of evolution leading to the human species. The actual paper is here…

Science Blogging Conference 2007: Who is Coming? (Left-Handed Peg-Legged Pre-School Skateboarders with Lop-Sided Antlers), aka, "Twitting Bora"

Alan Kellogg has a cool contest for you: Bora still has some 55 days to go before the conference, and still he posts about the folks coming. Will he have groups and/or individuals to write about by the time the conference gets here? Not to worry, Bora will find conference goers to write about, the question is who? That is for us to make wild, inaccurate guesses about. In this contest,Twitting Bora, it is your goal to come up with the wildest, most outrageous, least likely participants at the Science Blogging Conference. Who (or what) will Bora announce as being at the conference this year the…

Breaking News: PLoS ONE Managing Editor visits the Chapel Hill office!

Yup, Chris Surridge, Managing Editor of PLoS ONE (and the author of the legendary comment) swung by the Chapel Hill office last night. Since my initial stint was in the San Francisco office, and Chris is working in the Cambridge UK office, this was the first time we met in person. Much fun was had by all. The pictorial story under the fold: After I picked Chris up from the airport and let him drop his stuff off at myplace, we went to my office in the wonderful La Vita Dolce, where Chris went wild with the camera taking pictures of me sitting at my table pretending to work: Then we…

High praise for British journalism

This is an amusing tale of creationist hypocrisy. Ken Ham is complaining that one of his staff members was "ambushed", because he wasn't given a solo interview, but had to share the discussion with a critic (meanwhile, Ham has no compunction about "ambushing", in the same sense, scientific discussions). What I found most interesting, though, were Ken Ham's complaints about the BBC. This past week, Dr. Jason Lisle--our astrophysicist*—was invited to be on a BBC radio program out of Southampton , England (where I spoke a couple of weeks ago). We were told that it was just going to be an "…

'Insomnia: A Cultural History'

Book excerpt in today's Wall Street Journal: Chapter 6: Wired: It is likely that insomnia will increase with the expansion of the 24-hour economy into more and more lives, and more of each life, because wakefulness and the wired world go together. The more interconnected we are, the more we communicate, and the more we communicate, the more we rely on our interconnected powers of thinking. In addition to work, many of our leisure pursuits, while seemingly soporific, actually undermine the likelihood of restful sleep, from drinking alcohol to surfing the net to watching thrillers on late-night…

Chipping Sparrow

Chipping sparrow, Spizella passerina The photographer writes; I like little brown birds. Seemingly frail, they shrug off drought and blizzard and remain resolute to greet the spring with their songs. While others flash extravagant colors and plumes, the LBBs simply endure. Here is the picture of a chipping sparrow from my back yard in Eastern North Dakota. Photographer: Justawriter. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the…

Moonrise

Atmospheric gases scatter blue wavelengths of visible light more than other wavelengths, giving the Earth's visible edge a blue halo. At higher and higher altitudes, the atmosphere becomes so thin that it essentially ceases to exist. Gradually, the atmospheric halo fades into the blackness of space. This astronaut photograph captured on July 20, 2006, shows a nearly translucent moon emerging from behind the halo. Image: NASA. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to…

Red-necked Wallaby

Red-necked wallaby, Macropus rufogriseus frutica. The photographer writes; Apparently wallabies are very, very cool with people. There was a paved path with gates at either end which wound through an area that had wallabies merrily hopping from one end to the other, casual as you please, munching on grass and jumping like little kangaroos. Image: grendelkhan. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there…

Squidly Light Show

The film captured the squid, Taningia danae, in action: 1 The squid swims towards the bait; 2 It spreads its arms wide; 3 It swims around the bait, twisting its body; 4 It grabs the bait with its eight arms. Japanese scientists have discovered that large deep-sea squids produce flashes of bioluminescent light on their tentacles as they attack their prey. These light flashes are thought to disorient their prey, making it easier for the squid to grab their potential victim with their eight tentacles. Writing in a Royal Society journal, the paper's authors say that squid are far from the…

Tulip

The photographer writes, "Shot from the hip in a flower patch in the aviary at Wickham Park. Most of the tulips had bloomed at this point, but this one was still a little shy. Because I'd been looking for birds, I had the 135 and the 2x TC on there, hence the lovely depth of field." Image: grendelkhan. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique…

Most Explosive Northern Cardinal Molt of 2008

tags: Northern cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, birds, Central Park, Image of the Day The results of the Most Explosive Northern Cardinal Molt of 2008 in Central Park are in. Papa Museum wins the competition hands, er, feathers down. Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George [larger]. The photographer, Bob Levy, writes; Note: No cardinals were injured in this competition. Hey, I know he looks like an explosion in a mattress factory but it is a "natural" occurrence. Also Note: There wasn't a large number of competitors. Actually, it only included the six males I regularly observe but that…

Hoofball

I know this sounds somewhat unbelievable, but there are some people out there who have taught their horses to play soccer. The game is somewhat unconventional (the ball is a little bit bigger than your typical soccer ball, for example), but it appears that the horses enjoy it. The linked website includes video. After horse trainer Renee Miller noticed that one of her skittish beasts enjoyed kicking her children's 50-inch rubber ball, she came up with an idea: horse soccer. Miller began inviting fellow equine lovers to her Rockin' Double R ranch for matches and then launched a league. "I…

Codeine Dreams

I had meant to write more about my experiences at NYU last night, dear readers, but that will have to wait a little while because I went home early last night (tired) and because I have been struggling with a pinched nerve in my back that acts up whenever I become exceptionally stressed out (or whenever something good happens to me). This time, my little demon decided to awaken me from my sleep at 203 AM, and refused to respond to one pain pill, so 45 minutes later, I took a second one, which did the trick. As you might imagine, at the moment, I am floating around mindlessly in a cloud of…

Rebecca Skloot is in the Triangle, NC

My SciBling Rebecca Skloot will be here in the Triangle for a couple of days this week promoting her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I'll be out of town for most of this (off to Boston in a couple of hours), but you should come to one or more of these events if you can: Monday night 3/22, 7:30 pm she'll be at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh just off the Wade Ave exit on I-40: Tuesday 3/23, noon, she'll be Frank Stasio's guest on The State of Things at WUNC-FM 91.5 Tuesday 3/23, 3 pm, she'll be the keynote speaker of a mini-symposium on African American issues in science, medicine, and…

Obituary

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment and the fine family dining communities. The Pillsbury Dough boy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71. Dough boy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours. Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Dough boy as a man who never knew how…

Hiya, Leonardo!

Ah, so that's what this scienceblogs.com thing is all about: we're a Vehicle for Upscale Ads. It feels a bit strange to be viewed as a "vehicle". I see this as more of a virus, with the corporate world as the host vehicle, and I'm exploiting them in order to get fast free network hosting. So that doesn't bother me in the slightest. This simplistic characterization of you readers, though, is a bit disturbing. The research has identified about 20 million Americans, 7 percent of the population, who are labeled in the study as "Leonardos," named after da Vinci for their avid, Renaissance-style…

Wanna Burn Shale for the Winter?

Randy Udall at The Oil Drum puts shale "oil"  in clear perspective: Let's try a redneck experiment. Winter's coming, and I'm willing to pay $1,000 to the first Coloradan who decides to heat their house with oil shale. I'll deliver it in October, free of charge. Such an experiment would teach you a lot. First, you'd learn that there's three times more energy in a pound of split pine or recycled phone books or cattle manure or Cap'n Crunch than in a pound of oil shale. Next, you'd learn that 85 percent of oil shale is inert mineral matter. This means that on a cold winter day you'd have to…

pet food contamination

As widely reported in the media, a number of cat and dog foods were recalled in the US after a common supplier decided there was a problem with their new wheat gluten supplier (a common additive). 10 animals (9 cats apparently) are known to have died, probably many more undiagnosed. Cause of death is kidney failure - symptoms include large frequent urination, vomiting, lethargy and weight loss. MenuFoods apparently switched suppliers (to a low bidder?) just before christmas '06, and food from early dec '06 to early '07 is liable. Reports are that tests on animals with known contaminated…

science underfunding

Ok, seriously, what are the most underfunded fields in science? I have to agree with some of the other responses: the single most underfunded field across the board, where significant extra funding could leverage major long term results - is systematics - good old fashioned field biology, doing collection, classification, taxonomy, storing samples and preserving. I'm hard pressed to think of fields in chemistry and physics where I can unambiguously say there is serious underfunding - not that there aren't a lof of fields which could use more funding, but most would be best served by steady…

iPod iChing: original proposals

bloomin' proposal week... Ok, them's the vagaries, but it is friday and it is the end of another and much fraught bloomin' proposal week, so we ask the Mighty iPod: how about them proposals? Woosh goes the randomizer. Woosh. The Covering: Friday Mourning - Morrissey The Crossing: Run Like Hell - Pink Floyd The Crown: Spanish Bombs The Root: Estampe - Jardins sus la pluie - Claudio Arrau The Past: Scenes from Childhood: Foreign Lands and Peoples The Future: Í Hlíðarendakoti - Fyrr var oft í koti kátt The Questioner: Mouse II - Spilverk Þjóðanna The House: Sealclubbing - Half Man Half…

iPod iChing: sacrificing to the stars

It has been a long time since we dove into the divinations of the Mighty iPod... but now, the spirit moves me, and we again spin the wheel: Oh, Mighty iPod One, what oh what will become of JWST? Whoosh goes the iPod. Whoosh! The Covering: The Hen - Jean-Philippe Rameau The Crossing: Once in Royal David's City - King's College Choir The Crown: Sweet Jane (Live) - Lou Reed The Root: Always Look on the Bright Side - Monty Python The Past: Cover Me - Björk The Future: Joy To The World - Irish Tenors The Questioner: Carol of the Bells - Barlow Girl The House: Hong Kong Garden - Siouxsie and the…

This is how we will lose

Palin scares me, but what worries me more is that we will screw up again and hand the executive office over to another gang of losers, and we can't afford that anymore. Now look at the open thread I set up last night, and you'll see why I'm concerned. What did people do? They got distracted by irrelevancies, such as the opportunity to exercise a little macho sexism, and then that turned into a nasty, full-blown knife fight with everyone snarling at each other. This is exactly what the Republicans want, writ small on this little tiny island of the blogosphere. That's not how we're going to…

Lying for Texas and Jesus

Texas now has a law that requires all public schools to offer an elective course in the Christian bible, thanks to a bill authored by Warren Chisum, who will for all eternity be remembered as the "Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa," a phrase by Molly Ivins. This is a tricky one; I'm not opposed to teaching the bible as an example of literature, since it is, and is a rather widely used source in addition, but there's more here than a Texas hick acquiring a sudden and previously unexhibited appreciation for literature. He may have to be remembered for something else — a palpable knack for…

Simple science teaching recommendations

Adam Savage of the Mythbusters (the second most easily recognized scientists in the US, right after Bill Nye) has a short article up on Popular Mechanics on how to fix US science education. He only has 3 suggestions, but they're really just two. The first is to let students get their hands dirty. Instead of just telling them what science is about, make them do it and work at it and see it being done. Working through an actual experiment is a very different experience from being told what the cleaned-up, simplified results are. The second is to actually spend more money on science education.…

North Korea nuclear test

North Korea is claiming a second, successful, nuclear device test. Coincident with a shallow medium magnitude earthquake in the test region. Earthquake is magnitude 4.7 or so on the Richter scale (Swiss are estimating 5.1). Very shallow, consistent with surface origin, 380 km north east of Pyongyang, close to the Chinese border. The North Korean's previous nuclear test was a fizzle, but this one is several times stronger and shallow enough there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to hide it. So, probably few kiloton equivalent yield, depending on the local geology and where exactly they…

Upon this Feast of Saint Thorlacius

Happy Feast of Saint Thorlacius. I hope everyone got some "cured" skate! It is the reason for the season, the excuse for all Manly Men, and Women, to go somewhere suitable (like the garage, your uncle's house, or a restaurant desperate enough to put up with the smell and serve the stuff) and eat the food traditional to this Eve of of the Day of Advent Yule. Þorlákur, the patron saint of Iceland, a truly novel game of Thor's to have one of his own be the patron Saint. His feast has been celebrated on this day for 808 years, by law. Party on. Tindaskata - from fauna.is Copyright Jón Baldur…

iPod iChing - exceptionally simple

thankfully it is friday, and we pose a big question to the Mighty iPod: is it a correct simple theory of something? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Torna a Surriento - Three Tenors The Crossing: Fashion - David Bowie The Crown: Venus in Flares - Half Man Half Biscuit The Root: Nobody Home - Pink Floyd The Past: Bought Me A Cat The Future: Jólasveinar Ganga um Gólf - Barnakór The Questioner: Song of Encouragement - Half Man Half Biscuit The House: Krummi Krunkar Úti The Inside: Wasted Reprise - Pearl Jam The Outcome: Der Vogelfanger bin ich - Mozart, Magic Flute "A…