Blatant Nerdery

Along with Shelley, I am a graduate student in the Neuroscience Program at UM. The last three years my labmates and I have made a trilogy of satirical neuroscience posters poking mild fun at the mystical art of brain science. Shelley has kindly invited me to write on said trilogy. Also in any spare time remaining I punish myself with some rather difficult neural engineering experiments. (Tim Marzullo) Episode 1: Spurious Correlations You know the experience. To quote Allen Ginsburg, "everybody's serious but me." You walk around the massive meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, with 30,000…

...unless it occurs in Oregon Trail. Then its hilarious. You too can proclaim your malady to the world via Tshirt, here. (Hat tip darkman, who has a raging case of dysentery)

While not as shockingly unusual as the knitted teratoma I reported on a while back, this knitted brain (located at the awesomely-titled 'Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art') is equally amazing. Regions are knitted with varying colors, and the corpus callosum is a zipper! Here's a view of the brain from above, and "opened-up" (the hemispeheres seperated with yarn spinal cord trailing.) Artist: Karen Norberg, Location: Boston Museum of Science "Building a brain with yarn and knitting needles turns out to follow many of the same pathways as actual brain development," says Norberg…

In comparison to other science shows, Brainiac is quite effective at appealing to the visceral compulsion to play with fire. In this case, they pitted scorching hot thermite against molten metal. What could be better than a battle between two of the most enjoyable science demonstration tools of all time? Thermite is a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum. When ignited, the aluminum is oxidized and the iron oxide is reduced. If you put it in a terracotta flower pot with a sheet of metal covering the hole at the bottom, the thin strip will melt just as the reaction has completed and allow a…

This past Saturday, dozens of computer programmers descended upon a mansion in Cupertino, California to enjoy massive troughs of Indian food, camaraderie, and 12 hours of working on a diverse array of projects alongside one another. I visited the event, called SuperHappyDevHouse 20, as an observer. It made me wonder: What if all scientists worked this way? Granted, it would be immensely difficult, and possibly dangerous, for a hundred chemists or biologists to bring all of their instruments to a suburban home and set up shop for the weekend. All scientists have conferences that they can…

Some say nothing quite says "I love you" like a diamond ring, but *I* say nothing quite says "I'm a huge geek" like these rings. You know, there's so many times I've wished I'd been able to generate random numbers between 1 and 20. Wait! Now I can with this cool D20 ring, *and* look fashionable. Righteous. Are you the type that needs to know your Google vanity score at all times, have it updated on a daily basis, and use it as mad digital bling? Then this Google Vanity Ring is for you. It must be the only ring that come with a docking station. (More geeky rings below the fold...) These…

Occassionally, and by this I mean very, very rarely, geeks find significant others and get married (in the real world, not Second Life!). When such an noteworthy event happens, blissful geeks have been known to go all out on their wedding cakes, creating frosted confections of such phenomenal nerditude that I had no choice but to reproduce a few here for your gawking pleasure. In addition to the link above (check it out for more cool cakes), I had to do a bit of my own investigating and find some more nerdcakes. (Continued below the fold....) Its-a meeeeeeee........ A circuit-board cake…

How about some Nintendo underwear? Continued below the fold.... Think Geek has HttPanties Trouble getting into those panties? Keyboard pants? These have the structure of estrogen..

PhDs are useful for all kinds of things. Some people become faculty, others go into industry, and some decide to market ridiculously nerdtastic neurologically-based gifts via the internet. Sure, the latter kind may be rare, but a good idea is still a good idea. Welcome to Neuromart, online purveyors of parapanalia related to my favorite organ (the brain, of course!). From brain models (you always wanted one of your very own, didn't you?) to brain candy (the sweet stuff, not the Kids in the Hall movie), Neuromart is sure to keep the dopamine flowing.

If you've walked into any large bookstore lately and browsed the "Science" section, you may have been appalled by what passes as science literature these days. In addition to being minuscule (and often sandwiched between the 'Occult' and 'Self-Help' sections), it is often peppered with 'mislabeled' books. These books are the subject of an interesting blog project called Biologists Helping Bookstores. In a nutshell, the aim is to re-shelve religion and philosophy books to the correct part of the store--and out of the science section. Obviously, some people have a lot of time of their hands.…

Everyone's baring their souls.....oh i mean mugs, so thought i'd contribute. This is the mug I was drinking out of at lab. Not really sure where it came from, except that those are suppost to be hair cells on the mug. Hair cell for comparison: More below the fold...... Got this one in Tong Li, China the first time I went there. It has a nifty ceramic tea strainer and lid. I used to work in the New College admissions office and picked up this in my tenue there. Transparent mugs are rare and its funny how much I love this mug because of that.

The Matrix movies have a lot of religious undertones, from 'Neo' as a Christ-figure, the Nebuchadnezzar as their ship, Trinity as his side-kick, the name of the rebel city (Zion), and much more. Then, I suppose it was only a matter of time until a "real religion" emerged based on the tenets of the Matrix story: Matrixism. What are the tenets of Matrixism, you might ask? 1. Belief in the prophecy of the One. 2. Acceptance of the use of psychedelics as sacrament. 3. Recognition of the semi-subjective multi-layered nature of reality. 4. Adherence to the principles of one or more of the world's…

How did I ever miss Steven Pinker getting wasted with Dr. Steve Steve? C'mon people, you're suppost to tell me about these things! Should I include a question for him regarding his favorite brew? I KNOW I'm going to have to ask him about his membership in the esteemed Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club For Scientists. Cause I think I might want in too. "Luxuriant hair is always pleasing, possibly because it shows not only current health but a record of health in the years before." Steven Pinker, LFHCfS

This morning I received a one-in-a-million phone call from a friend: "Shelley, you're going to hate me if you don't get this. Your one and only love of your life is at Angelo's right now." Now, Angelo's is a little cafe across the street from my lab. But, could it be? Could my one true love REALLY be there? As I walked past Angelo's and looked into the window, my young heart skipped a beat. Imposing profile.......well-shined head.....booming Shakespearean voice???? It was him! Jean-Luc Picard! Well, actually, Patrick Stewart. Ever since I was a kid I made no bones about the enormous crush I…

Toby! None of us could ever aspire to his level of nerd-dom. (Although he makes it more of an ethos.)

A lot of ScienceBloggers in these parts have been getting their panties and manties in a wad over who's the nerdiest nerd of all. There has been some some excellent hand-flailing-at-the-head-of-the-class-type posturing (myself included). To recap the nerd highlights: Tim Lambert (Nerd God like me) of Deltoid assembled all the SciBlogger's Nerd Scores together. Janet of Adventures in Science and Ethics gives props to the female geeks among us. Pink pocket-protectors anyone? Orac of Respectful Insolence insolently suggested that I be disqualified, but I quickly forgave once I observed his…

Janet and Chris have declared a nerd-off, ostensibly in response to the sci-hottie awards that so cruelly snubbed them. So, I feel that I must assert my Nerdelicious-ness by posting what I was wearing yesterday (under my labcoat, of course!). Back in the twilight of my nerd-hood in the early 80s, my father (an electrical engineer) brought home a most wonderous contraption. It was my very first computer, a TI99 made by Texas Instraments. Check these stats and drool! Processor speed a blazing 3.3 MHz, memory was an ample 256 bytes, PLUS 16 KB RAM. Can we say SAH-WEET???? It ran on Basic of…

Link Save Pluto Link Link How about: "Pluto is For Lovers" "Pluto: Voted Off the Solar System" "I'd Rather Be an Asteroid Anyway. No, Really!" "Sorry, We Just Had to Make it A Nice Even Number of Planets." "One Word: Planet" Off Topic: Everyone go see Beerfest! I saw it this weekend and it was AWESOME!

John over at Stranger Fruit has posted an infogram from Science, which ranks 34 countries acceptance of evolution. I have hijacked it below: John notes that only Turkey has beaten us in evolutionary ignornace. But I immediately was struck by how similar this list looks to one I posted about last week regarding the happiest countries in the world! To summarize: The 20 happiest nations in the World are: 1. Denmark 2. Switzerland 3. Austria 4. Iceland 5. The Bahamas 6. Finland 7. Sweden 8. Bhutan 9. Brunei 10. Canada 11. Ireland 12. Luxembourg 13. Costa Rica 14. Malta 15. The Netherlands 16.…