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grrlscientist | September 12, 2009Another competitor in the competition has endorsed me to be your official Antarctica blogger: Rooth MacMillan, from Canada! She writes;
I wanted to say a big thank you to all of you who made it through the onerous voting process and were successful in casting a vote for me - I know it's been a trial for many of you and I appreciate your perseverance.
I have however, decided to bow out at this point and ask that if you have a second, login and switch your vote over to Devorah Bennu here: http://www.blogyourwaytoantarctica.com/blogs/view/152
She sounds like an interesting person who would…
grrlscientist | September 11, 2009
Image: Sneer Review.
The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 6123 - 1903 - 1859 - 1279 - 1234 out of 589 candidates registered. I am in third place and sloooowly creeping up on second place. With only 2 weeks remaining, things are heating up and voting is changing rapidly as previous voters reassign their votes and new voters cast theirs for the first time. [Yes, you can change who you voted for, even if you voted weeks or months ago! All you have to do is log in using the account you created to cast your original vote, a process that takes only seconds] Many tens of thousands…
gregladen | September 11, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
grrlscientist | September 11, 2009
Image: courtesy of Bob O'Hara, author of Deep Thoughts and Silliness.
Since I have recently developed quite a history of visiting cold and snowy places, often during the winter (remember Morris, Minnesota in January? Or how about Helsinki, Finland in November, then again in February?), I wish to preserve that tradition. I am competing for the opportunity to go to Antarctica in February 2010 -- a dream adventure that I've always wanted to pursue (and almost did pursue when I was an undergraduate researching Fin Whales and Crabeater Seals at the University of Washington). To enter, all…
grrlscientist | September 11, 2009One of the competitors, Andrew Evans, who is in the official Antarctica blogger contest with me just talked to me on the phone and says he wants to donate all 500 of his votes to ME! He is going to write a message on his blog to this effect on Monday, after he returns from a writer's retreat being held on a tiny island in the state of Maine. So please everyone, VOTE VOTE VOTE for me!! The momentum is growing rapidly, since there's only two weeks remaining in this contest!! And I would love love love to have this job!!
cortex | September 11, 2009The human brain, it turns out, is even more efficient than previous estimates:
Fifty-seven years ago, Nobel laureates Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley came up with a model to calculate the power behind electrochemical currents in neurons--a great step forward in understanding how the brain worked and how it divvied up resources. The only problem was that their subject was not a person, or even a rodent, but a giant squid. Today, researchers announced that they have found a more accurate model for mammal brains, which elevates some of their transactions to three times more efficient than that of…
mspringer | September 11, 2009Eight years ago today a terrorist group attacked and killed more than three thousand people. Nothing I can say can improve on what other have said in the memory of this horror, and nothing I can say will change any opinions about what followed.
I would, however, like to express my bitterness and disappointment on the failure to do the one thing almost everyone agreed upon even before the smoke cleared. There was only one right, proper, and American thing to do: rebuild. Rebuild the twin towers as they were, with an extra few feet in height as an act of defiance. Even building a different…
pharyngula | September 11, 2009It looks like one of the staff at Liberty University has been caught.
A Liberty University chaplain is facing drug and burglary charges. Last week, a homeowner caught Scott Ray on surveillance video breaking into a home to steal painkillers. Ray, who is the chaplain for the men's basketball team and the Director of Convocation, is also suspected in other Campbell County break-ins. In 2005 he was arrested and charged with the same thing. Ray has been suspended by the school and it's believed he's checked into a rehab program. Investigators also say Ray has not yet been arrested but additional…
tlambert | September 11, 2009I've been looking through old photos that belonged to my grandmother and I really liked this one. (Click to enlarge).
This picture was unlabeled, but there is another picture of (I think) the same woman and it's labelled as Margaret Cascadden in Katoomba in 1927. I think she was a friend of my grandmother. I believe the car is an Austin 12 a 1927 Buick coach.
Update: I flipped the image so it is no longer reversed.
Update 2: The Buick club of NSW tells me:
The Buick is clearly very new when the photo was taken, perhaps not even yet registered as there are no labels or front number plate…
grrlscientist | September 10, 2009
Image: Sneer Review.
The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 6100 - 1899 - 1841 - 1264 - 1232 out of 587 candidates registered. I am in third place and sloooowly creeping up on second place. With less than 3 weeks remaining, things are heating up and voting is changing rapidly as previous voters reassign their votes and new voters cast theirs for the first time. [Yes, you can change who you voted for, even if you voted weeks or months ago! All you have to do is log in using the account you created to cast your original vote, a process that takes only seconds] Many tens of…
gregladen | September 10, 2009... (which means, in ADL, "Science For the People") ... is up and running at Southern Friedd Science.
gregladen | September 10, 2009Read the following text. As you read it, try to empty your mind. When you encounter grammatical errors or jargon that is impossible to understand, do not try to translate what you are reading. Rather, become one with the obscurity. Read slowly, thoughtlessly, with emptiness of purpose, as though the words were entering your eyes, traveling through your head, and leaving through your ears. The ultimate understanding will be achieved when you reach the end of the abstract and have understood nothing:
... a repost ...
Recent neuroimaging studies have identified a set of brain regions that…
sb admin | September 10, 2009by Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPR Blog
After weeks of sustained attack from the right-wing on issues that are marginal to the job the President asked him to do, Cass Sunstein has emerged from the nomination process bloody but apparently unbowed (here's this afternoon's roll call). He is now the nationâs âregulatory czar,â Director of the White House OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Although Professor Sunstein has been sitting in the Old Executive Office Building for months, he has undoubtedly been preoccupied with his nomination battle. Having survived the…
gregladen | September 10, 2009Australian scientologists have proposed that anonymity and criticism be eliminated from the intertubes. According to the scientologists:
Since January 2008, the Church of Scientology has been subjected to a continuing campaign of violence and abuse from a hate group calling themselves 'Anonymous'. This entity has been described as a group of "cyber terrorists" as its actions have previously focused on Internet harassment and other crimes. However, in the last 13 months they have also (i.e. as well as their internet based assaults) committed acts of harassment and criminal offences "in real…
gregladen | September 10, 2009
Zoom into a Leafby Weird_Weird_Science
Hat Tip Grrrl, and you should GO HERE AND VOTE