Catablogic Blathering
bushwells | July 18, 2006As an avid fan of pop culture, I do not hesitate to induce neural necrosis by watching all manner of television and film. The SciFi network gets my business, particularly for their goofy SciFi Originals with their bad special effects and has-been actors in lead roles. So, I am quivering with anticipation as the premier of Eureka nears. Here's the premise:
Welcome to Eureka!
Nestled in the Pacific Northwest, Eureka is a seemingly ordinary town whose residents lead ordinary lives ... at least to the naked eye. Shrouded in secrecy, the picturesque hamlet is actually a community of…
bushwells | July 5, 2006I'm on the road and visiting the Midwestern homelands. This evening, I'm in Madison where a former classmate (and longtime friend) and I will join our grad advisor and his wife for dinner. The newly minted professor emeritis doesn't know that we're showing up so the element of surprise should be entertaining. In lieu of fresh bloviation, I'll recap a classic rambling Bushwellian essay which touches upon ticks, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Singer, and Jersey devil deer.
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July 2005
Although I still pine for my former…
bushwells | June 23, 2006Taking a cue from Coturnix's Weird Sex Friday fun entry (har), here's a snippet from Ananova which is making the blogosphere rounds. The world's oldest surviving condom has gone on display at the Tirolean County Museum in Austria. From the article...
The reusable condom dates back to 1640 and is completely intact, as is its orginal users' manual, written in Latin.
The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases.
Warm milk? Warm milk? I expect that said soaking would increase the pliability of the condom for milady's pleasure. The…
jfiore | June 14, 2006I just saw a few minutes of Fox's Bill O'Reilly being interviewed by Matt Lauer on The Today Show regarding President Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad along with other issues of the Iraq war. Undoubtedly, there will be some folks who will parse and critique every word that Matt and Bill uttered, some positive, some negative. There will be the Fox minions who hang on O'Reilly's every "non-spun, fair and balanced" word as well as those who agree with Keith Olbermann's ongoing assessment of BO'R as a multi-time candidate for "Worst Person in the World", whether it involves gross distortions of…
bushwells | June 11, 2006 I have the great fortune of attending yet another protracted managerial development class for the entirety of this coming week. I can't tell you how delighted I am to be doing this. Do I need to add another scoop to the pile of steaming sarcasm? Most scientists I know in the corporate world view such management training with biting world-weary cynicism although we pony up and check off the boxes by enrolling in the classes. However, the marketing and sale types enthusiastically feed off these corporate training buffets for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The scientific aspects of my job are…
bushwells | June 10, 2006Yikes! An "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question already? Well, had I been a SciBlog some weeks ago, I would have quickly answered in response to the question (paraphrasing here), "Which modern technology should not have been invented?" My answer: pantyhose. They are the garments of pure unadulterated torture. Oh, wait, now what is today's question? Here we go:
"Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
In an alternate universe with stretched time and dollars, I would be a botanist…
bushwells | June 8, 2006So here we are, ready and willing to amiably groom our readers or grimace at them in fierce display. But for now, we are pretty darned excited to be here, and hence, the pant-hooting.
In January, I slapped up some commentary pertaining to Science Blogs, advertising, and Leonardos on my now rapidly senescing blogspot. I was intrigued, and maybe even a little intimidated, by the offerings in Science Blogs as noted in this excerpt of my 01/20/2006 entry:
The Chimp Refuge may never qualify as a lofty enough addition to Seed's select group. After all, our contributions are a bit scurrilous…