Uncategorized
ddobbs | August 28, 2008You can't make this stuff up. From Very Short List: Science
Brian May, the bushy-haired guitarist for Queen, recently completed his astrophysics thesis, which he began in the early 1970s as a grad student at Imperial College in London. Although May was a promising young scientist, he decided to take a break from research in 1974 so he could go on tour with a little-known singer named Freddie Mercury. Within a few years, Queen would become one of the biggest rock bands in the world.In 2006, while rummaging through his attic, May, now 61, discovered his long-neglected thesis and decided to…
ddobbs | August 28, 2008A couple of the shinier stones I've come across on the web lately:
Somatosphere is a new blog about medical anthropology (think sociology and politics of medicine, only with a bit more critical distance; it's about how culture shapes medicine) written by McGill University post-doc Eugene Raikhel and others. They're just getting started but already have some nice posts on a 1966 ad for Ritalin as a Mother's-little-helper antidepressant, a "Critical Neuroscience" workshop at McGill, and some gleanings from the web that included some stuff I didn't run across elsewhere -- an increasing rarity…
mspringer | August 28, 2008
Nine dayes they fell; confounded Chaos roard,And felt tenfold confusion in thir fallThrough his wilde Anarchie, so huge a routIncumberd him with ruin: Hell at lastYawning receavd them whole, and on them clos'd,Hell thir fit habitation fraught with fireUnquenchable, the house of woe and paine.- Milton, Paradise Lost
The biblical description of Satan's fall is sparse. Like lightning, says Luke's gospel. Milton's poetry fleshes this out with his typically beautiful and dramatic imagery. A fall of nine days into Hell.
Maybe it's just me, but the physicist in me is immediately curious at this…
petnoyer | August 28, 2008Our expedition to the Twilight Zone is still on hold because of generator problems on the RV Nancy Foster. Now we've got Hurricane/Tropical Storm Gustav bearing down on us from the Caribbean. The storm is expected to enter the Gulf of Mexico Sunday morning. So, even if we made it out to the shelf break by Saturday morning, we would only have a day or two of survey. We'll take it! When do we board?
But honestly, if it wasn't for this thing with Discovery Channel, I would feel hexed. Gustav is far away in the Caribbean, but already causing heaps of trouble here in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil prices…
gregladen | August 27, 2008The current track places the storm dead on New Orleans. But this is many, many days in advance so you can't expect this to be accurate. But, this is worth keeping an eye on.
Speculation: RNC opens on September 1st. Gustav hits the Gulf Coast September 1st. RNC second and third day play out with the Republicans following tradition, which involves making stark and insensitive statements about people in need, landing bloody punches, or at least trying to, on their competition. As typically happens, the Republicans are seen as insensitive. This insensitivity is underscored by the choice of…
kevin z | August 27, 2008While we give you more details about the BIG NEWS.
Japanese researchers publish there super duper extremely important must kill all whales research. They are getting skinny! Though they cite global warming as the cause in their paper, Anthony Judd thinks they might be forgetting something...
The Daily Mail report on a rare albino great white shark. Majestic. Beautiful. Awe-Inspiring. Until it rips your head off...
Glassbox-Design has the absolute most beautiful collection of hermit crabs I have ever been witness to!! A must see.
mspringer | August 27, 2008Physics professors have this annoying habit. They'll present a problem to be solved, figure out how to describe it in mathematical terms, and declare that the physics is done and the rest is just math.
Well yeah, but that's kind of like drawing a blueprint for a house and then declaring to your trainee workers that the construction itself is a trivial exercise. At risk of sounding like Barbie, math is hard. Sometimes professors are particular drill instructors and they'll do the physics part of the problem for you, leaving you to only practice the math.
But math is the language of physics…
kevin z | August 26, 2008"I have made an important discovery... that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effect of intoxication."
gregladen | August 26, 2008But please, avoid Minneapolis, OK?
With the Democratic National Convention going on in Denver, and the Republican Convention about to start in Saint Paul, I thought I'd pass on some helpful advice for Republican delegates and others who may be coming to town.
This is for your own good. Pay attention.
People always hear that "Minneapolis and St. Paul" are "different cities" and you'all know we don't like people to conflate the two. But I do believe that most people assume that this is the result of local pride, a kind of cultural quirk we Twin Citeans have. How quaint.
But I'm here to…
cmcclain | August 26, 2008the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
cmcclain | August 26, 2008...once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
cortex | August 26, 2008The latest Men's Vogue has a rather interesting article (not online) by Jay McInerney on a small group of real estate moguls who like to drink very, very expensive wine. For these oenophiles, a 1982 Romanee-Conti is a young wine - even their champagne is typically several decades old - and a $500 bottle is borderline plonk. It's not uncommon for these winos to consumer $30,000 worth of rotten grape juice at a single dinner.
Not surprisingly, these expensive wines are often highly praised, with descriptions that feature some very purple prose. And while I would certainly love to drink a 1945…