Social Commentary
j7uy5 | September 3, 2006I remember thinking about this film, shortly after the fall of Baghdad.
After yesterday's University of Michigan win over Vanderbilt,
which happened on the anniversary of the surrender of Japan in 1945, I
was reminded again.
From Wikipedia:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared">The
Mouse that Roared is a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_in_literature"
title="1955 in literature">1955 novel by
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland" title="Ireland">Irish
writer
title="Leonard Wibberley">Leonard Wibberley that
launched a series of
title…
j7uy5 | August 28, 2006
murrmann_nolawounds_320.jpg
Originally uploaded by icki.
This is a photo from an Ann Arbor blogger, known to the world as Icki, who has been in New Orleans lately. This is from his Flickr collection; click on the photo to go to his Flickr page.
His blog is called Down on the Street. It is one of the better photoblogs I've seen.
For some reason, this photo got my attention. Icki's caption is: "Six months after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward, one of the worst hit areas, remains largely untouched by clean-up efforts."
I posted that six months after Katrina. I'm not…
j7uy5 | August 16, 2006The buzz right now on ScienceBlogs is about Pluto.
Specifically, about the fact that Pluto has retained its
official status as a planet.
Pluto, as we all know, was discovered by the late
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Tombaugh" rel="tag">Clyde
Tombaugh, a professor at New Mexico State University.
In 1990, a new elementary school in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
was named after him. After all, he is one of the very few
famous people with any connection to Las Cruces. And it was
the discovery of Pluto that made him famous enough to name a school
after him: Tombaugh
Elementary…
j7uy5 | July 31, 2006When I finished residency, I took a position at a University
clinic north of town. In order to get there, I had to cross a
bridge over a river. I drove over that bridge about 100 times
before the first snowfall.
On the first snowy day, while driving over the bridge, I noticed a
sign. The sign warned that the bridge could be icy.
Prior to that first snowy day, I had not noticed the sign.
Fast-forward to the present day. A
title="Quirky Outtakes" href="http://quirkynomads.com/wpt/">thoughtful
reader
sent a suggestion that I write about the subject of
title="Wikipedia link"…
j7uy5 | July 20, 2006This is
cool.
This is
not.
Reading the Undercover Activist Blog, published by
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), I learned of
the development of a new type of solitude assault vehicle: the
href="http://www.gibbstech.co.uk/mediacentre/quadski.php"
rel="tag">Quadski, by Gibbs Technologies.
Searching Google Image for "quadski" returns two types of results.
The top image is from the
href="http://www.disabledskiing.ca/national/eng_home.htm">Canadian
Association for Disabled Skiing. It shows a person
using adaptive aids in order to ski. That is cool.
I'm…
j7uy5 | July 11, 2006Medical interventions alway carry risks. So do other types of
interventions, such as those carried out in the name of national
security. Just as physicians must not let their enthusiasm
for healing carry them into the realm of medical misadventure, we, as a
country, must exercise prudence and restraint in the application of
force. We must be cautious about allowing our collective
might to be used in ways that defy that prudence and restraint.
Let us not forget, that in the interest of promoting national security,
we need to protect ourselves not only from external threats, but also
from…
j7uy5 | July 8, 2006
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-6232036444150437471"
allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" quality="best"
bgcolor="#ffffff" scale="noScale" salign="TL"
flashvars="playerMode=embedded" align="center">
href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6232036444150437471&q=How+To+Be+Popular"
onclick="setMyPlaylist()">
src="http://video.google.com/ThumbnailServer?app=vss&contentid=c79158189d625cc1&second=115&itag=w160&sigh=pcmnwty6Oc74LyNUiO-4ODNeT2k"
title="Are You Popular?" alt="" align="left"
border="0"…
j7uy5 | July 8, 2006Earlier, I wrote a post entitled
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/06/selective_moral_outrage.php#more">Selective
Moral Outrage, in that post, I discussed the fact
that some site, particularly conservative sites, picked on the New York
Times for reporting on the monitoring of international money transfers.
It wan't just two-bit pundits who got on this bandwagon.
href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,201549,00.html">Senator
Bunning openly accused the NYT of treason.
Now, we see a similar situation, but this time,
everyone is curiously silent.
I wonder if this…
j7uy5 | July 6, 2006Is
href="http://skepticrant.blogspot.com/2006/07/thirsty-for-truth-try-skeptic-cola.html">up
at Skeptic Rant. Really cool graphics this time.
Took a lot of work. Clever. Plus, it
seems that everybody is reading it.
j7uy5 | July 1, 2006{I actually started writing this weeks ago, got bogged down and
distracted, and never finished it. Now, I have decided to
just go ahead and finish it up, even though I am not entirely happy
with it. Hey, I am not getting paid for this, so so what if
it is not a polished piece of work.}
I just finished reading
rel="tag" href="http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/about.php">Chris
Mooney's column in Seed Magazine,
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/as_science_goes_so_goes_the_na.php?utm_source=SB-rightcol&utm_medium=linklist&utm_campaign=internal%2Blinkshare">As…
j7uy5 | June 27, 2006
Sarah Berga, et. al. presented a paper at
the
European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in
Prague, about the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy for treatment of
infertility. It this post, I elaborate on some of the details
that the mainstream media left out. I end by speculating
about what it might mean about our society, that such a simple solution
could have been overlooked for so long.
From a report on the Times Online:
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2235656,00.html">Learning
how to beat stress could be the best fertility treatment
by…
j7uy5 | June 26, 2006Fresh from a bout with the Press regarding disclosures of spying on
financial institutions, Vice-president Cheney has taken up a new cause.
The Reuters news agency has revealed operational details of
yet another spy plot:
href="http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-06-26T182447Z_01_L26701912_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-OCEANS.xml&archived=False">Scientists
seek to spy on world's fish
Mon Jun 26, 2006 2:15pm ET
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - Thousands of marine animals could be tracked under a
$150 million…
j7uy5 | June 26, 2006Project Mohole got underway in 1961, with undersea drilling off the
Pacific coast of Mexico. The idea was to get geological core
samples from a bore hole, to learn about the nature of
the Mohorovicic
Discontinuity (the boundary between the earth's crust and mantle).
The Project ended in 1966.
In 1971, our eight-grade science class was shown a film about Project
Mohole. I
distinctly recall that the film talked about how promising the project
was, and how much we would learn from it.
Now, I seek, and
href="http://www.ejge.com/iGEM/Articles/MoHole/MoHole.htm">find,
the truth, or at…
j7uy5 | June 23, 2006On tonight's edition of the PBS show, On Faith & Reason, Bill Moyers said:
Religion is the continuation of politics by other means."
This was in the course of a discussion with Salman Rushdie Of course, he was not referring to religion as it is supposed to be practiced; rather, he was talking about religion as it so often is practiced these days, in places such as Iran and the United States.
Both of them expressed the thought that there should be strict separation of church and state.
j7uy5 | June 17, 2006Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.
Teach a fish to write, and humans will eat forever.
This tuna is said to have a verse from the Koran on its side: "Wallahu
khayru razikiyna" (God is the greatest of all providers).
HT:
href="http://www.whatwouldjesussee.com/2006/05/how-do-you-tuna-koran.html">What
Would Jesus See?
Of course, to be fair and balanced, I should include the Jesus in the
asparagus root:
href="http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/newsbexley/display.var.754541.0.divine_vegetation_in_tutors_garden.php">credit
j7uy5 | June 16, 2006
ScienceBlogs visitors prefer
href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/" rel="tag">Firefox.
If you lump together all the open-source browsers, they
account for over 50% of the page views here.
Highly-educated users use Firefox.
j7uy5 | June 15, 2006President Bush got a lot of credit for designating the Northwestern
Hawaiian Islands a national monument. The
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/science/earth/15hawaii.html?ex=1308024000&en=ce5a20136199dc60&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">description
in the New York Times was especially glowing.
Reading it, you would have no clue that it was not his idea
in the first place. The Washington Post
is a little better,
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402455.html">giving
credit to the guy who came up with the idea…
j7uy5 | June 10, 2006
Memoirs are a big thing in the popular-book publishing arena these
days. It is a fad that is sure to pass. I intend to
hasten its passing with a micro-memoir of my own.
I am in Chicago. I have come to Chicago to visit the
University of Chicago, and to collect 23 of my chromosomes.
(They wandered off last September).
I have come from a spot near a decaying industrial city in the Midwest.
A minor item on my agenda for this trip, is to learn the
secrets of Prosperity from town where people still prosper.
My success in this venture is assured by my skill as a
Natural Observer of…