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purepedantry | July 19, 2006Keith Richards pardoned for crimes he cannot entirely recollect:
The state of Arkansas is prepared to pardon Keith Richards for being a reckless driver, 31 years later.
The state Parole Board on July 3 approved an application for clemency submitted on behalf of Richards, the 62-year-old guitarist for the Rolling Stones, by Gov. Mike Huckabee.
The board posted the official notice Tuesday, and the pardon will be forwarded to Huckabee within 30 days. When the governor signs it, it will clear Richards' record in Arkansas.
I suspect Richards can no longer identify the state of Arkansas. In fact,…
stcynic | July 19, 2006Someone hunted down this post by DaveScot's biggest fan that contains all the posts that led the Blog Czar himself to be deposed (ironic, since Dembski likes to compare "Darwinists" to the Soviet commie bad guys and here he is overthrowing his own self-appointed "czar"). I missed the thread completely at UD, which was subsequently - stop if you've heard this one before - deleted as though it had never existed. The original post was by Dembski himself and it was about evolutionary psychology, specifically about Desmond Morris' notion that brilliant men are, by nature, philanderers and skirt…
grrlscientist | July 19, 2006The Tangled Bank, issue 58, is now available. Tangled Bank is an established blog carnival that links to the best science, nature and medical essays published recently on a blog.
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tags: blog carnival
stcynic | July 19, 2006And wouldn't you know it, he's making ignorant statements again. I know you're as surprised by that as I am.
Finally, I noticed Ed Brayton is back complaining about anti-gambling laws again. Now he's up in arms about the arrest of a Carruthers (there's an English name), a UK citizen who runs a vast online-gambling empire... the gentleman in question was arrested while switching flights at a US airport. To quote Ed, "they're already engaging in vast overreach by arresting foreign citizens for doing something perfectly legal in their countries." Now, there may be perfect valid reasons to allow…
cortex | July 19, 2006My new Seed article is now online. I wanted to use the neuroscience of learning to draw some connections between a lot of different things, from mirror neurons to Algebra teachers to Toyota factories. Take a look, and tell me what you think.
goodmath | July 19, 2006Issue number 58 of [the Tangled Bank][tb] is now live at Salto Sobrius. Head on over, take a look, and plan to spend some time reading some of the net's best science blogging from the last two weeks.
[tb]: http://saltosobrius.blogspot.com/2006/07/tangled-bank-58.html
purepedantry | July 19, 2006Huh:
Representative Jim Kolbe wants to do away with the penny - and for a second time has introduced legislation that would effectively kill it.
The Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (COIN) Act would force the rounding off of all cash transactions to the nearest 5 cents, making the penny coin useless for everyday transactions.
The move is in part a reaction to the rising cost of zinc - the penny's main ingredient - which at current prices brings the cost of making the coin to 1.4 cents each.
Kolbe introduced similar legislation in 2001 when prices for metals weren't as high. The…
tqa | July 18, 2006OK, I've been behind the times lately. I've got to admit it. I haven't had the time to check the news as much as usual. I haven't been able to keep up with the blogs. I have virtually no idea what's been going on in the world lately, except for a vague sense that the entire Middle East is just a tad less stable than usual.
So when I sat down for a couple of minutes tonight to watch the Daily Show, I have to admit that I thought Stewart had finally gone over the edge. It's good to be funny, after all, but there have to be limits. Accusing the President of the type of thing that could be…
purepedantry | July 18, 2006You have to read this post at The World's Fair. It is too funny. It is summaries of exhibits at a 2001 Creationist Science Fair.
retrospectacle | July 18, 2006The Senate voted in favor (63-37) of increasing federal funding to embryonic stem cell research, and the vote is now to Bush.
"The simple answer is he thinks murder's wrong," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research."
My opinion is this: holding up life-saving therapies is more "murderous" than deciding utilize fetal tissue that would be discarded anyway. I believe that Bush, and people who follow this line, are actually much more immoral than those who…
purepedantry | July 18, 2006I am doing Western blots today, and none of them are working.
For those of you who do not know what a Western blot is, a Western blot is a technique to detect proteins in a sample of cell lysates. First the proteins are purified. Then the protein in the sample are suspended in loading buffer that contains a detergent called SDS and boiled. This denatures the proteins and coats them in a negative charge (SDS is negative). The proteins are then separated by weight in an electric field (bigger proteins move more slowly through the gel) and transferred to a sticky membrane. Finally the…
purepedantry | July 18, 2006I actually care little about Paris Hilton's antics. I find it difficult to become interested in someone's career when the origins of that career are based on a sex tape that shows that she performs oral sex poorly. There I said it. I have seen that tape, and Paris Hilton is not gifted. Not that anyone was describing Paris Hilton as gifted in any regard. In my opinion, the only reason she isn't riding the short bus is that Daddy has a bagillion dollars.
However, I did not bring you together today to talk about Paris's limited mental acumen. Rather I have a more productive proposal. In…
ddobbs | July 18, 2006From the Department of Fairness and Balance:
Marrow stem, by Spike Walker
For an elevatory antidote to the grimness of my previous post (about global warming cracking the Eiger), see the lovely collection of images from the Wellcome Trust's Biomedical Image Awards contest.
As the site puts it, the gallery provides "a striking display of shapes and patterns [that] show a wide variety of subjects, most invisible to the naked eye, revealing new layers of complexity.... The winners of the Awards challenge the public perspective that scientists don't have an artistic side. "
Another example…
stcynic | July 18, 2006CNN carried the story of the arrest of BetOnSports.com CEO David Carruthers and it adds some detail. This was not a spur of the moment decision, this was planned out.
Carruthers was in custody in Fort Worth, Texas, after a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Missouri returned a 22-count indictment charging 11 individuals and four corporations on various charges of racketeering, conspiracy and fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
The founder of BETonSPORTS.com, Gary Stephen Kaplan, 47, was also charged with 20 felony violations of federal laws, it said. A…
purepedantry | July 17, 2006Sleep is an underappreciated thing. Not only does it improve your memory, but now we find it would appear lowers your risk for obesity:
Research by Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick has found that sleep deprivation is associated with an almost a two-fold increased risk of being obese for both children and adults.
Early results of a study by Professor Francesco Cappuccio of the University of Warwick's Warwick Medical School were presented to the International AC21 Research Festival hosted this month by the University of Warwick.
The research reviewed current evidence in…
purepedantry | July 17, 2006I love that there is somebody even researching this, but what I love more is that it is imminently more interesting than anything I do. The next time I am at a cocktail party, I am not talking about oligodendrocytes; I am talking about this:
You're ordering dessert and know exactly what you want -- the lavender crème brulee that was reviewed in your favorite food column. Even if it's the most expensive item on the dessert menu, you'll probably order it. But what about those times when you don't come armed with advance recommendations? A study in September issue of the Journal of Consumer…
stcynic | July 17, 2006My house got hit by a huge thunderstorm this afternoon, which knocked out the power. I'm at my brother's house, where he still has power for now. Hopefully things will be back up and running at home soon.
Update: The electric company is estimating that the power at my house will be restored by 10 pm on Thursday. I sure hope they're just estimating a really long time to be safe and it'll really be on today. But just to be safe, I went and unloaded my freezer and brought it all over here to my brother's and put it in his freezer.
stcynic | July 17, 2006Reason magazine has an interview with Alex Kozinski, perhaps the most libertarian-minded judge on the Federal bench. He is an appeals court judge in the 9th circuit. Kozinski is a fascinating guy. On the subject of growing up in Romania, Kozinski had this to say:
I was a very committed communist when I was there. I believed in communism, and I thought it was the wave of the future. When my parents applied to leave, I thought it was a good thing because I'd be able to educate the workers of the West that they were being enslaved by capitalist exploiters.
When we arrived in Vienna, I discovered…
tqa | July 16, 2006Ever have an almost perfect day?
I'm not talking about a perfect day - there are lots of those. I'm not talking about the kind of day where everything was fantastic, right up until cousin Jimmy puked in the punchbowl - those happen with alarming regularity. The kind of day I'm talking about is the day where everything works beautifully, and everyone has a fantastic time, and the whole thing would be absolutely perfect, except for some little nagging detail in the background, sitting not quite entirely out of sight.
That was yesterday.
Our little clan headed out to Bellows Air Force Base for…