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grrlscientist | July 8, 2006
Surprisingly, especially considering what was at stake, this was a rather uninspired game, don't you agree? But it appeared that Portugal could not get their shit together and they paid, terribly, for that; the final score was 3:1. There were a tremendous number of yellow cards awarded in this game, although I don't remember any red cards.
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tags: World Cup, soccer, futebol
tqa | July 8, 2006Over at The Island of Doubt, James Hrynyshyn has a brief post up about this Guardian article. The article in the Guardian discusses a large rockfall that is expected to happen in the next few days - about two million cubic meters of Mt. Eiger in the Swiss Alps are expected to take a short, quick trip down. The Guardian reports that a scientist monitoring the situation calls it an indirect result of global warming. James correctly notes that the article provides no explanation of why this might be the case, so I thought I would.
Increased erosion rates probably aren't the first thing that…
stcynic | July 7, 2006I'm in the process of moving thousands of posts from my old blog over to here and I just got an email from a reader who gets email alerts whenever I post saying he's getting bombarded with emails telling him I have a new post. That was not something I had even considered, since I've never had an email alert system on my blog before. So for anyone who gets those alerts, please accept my apologies. I've asked the techs at SB to take a look. Hopefully they can shut it off before they get any more posts moved over.
Update: The old posts through the end of 2004 are now up. I assume the rest will…
stcynic | July 7, 2006The TV news shows are all abuzz with rumors over why no pictures have surfaced of Tom Cruise's baby with his handmaid fiance Katie Holmes. One rumor has it that Cruise won't sell the pictures unless he gets more than was offered for the pics of Brangelina's baby. That's plausible. Another rumor has it that there is no baby at all, that this was all a ruse and that Katie just had a pillow under her shirt for a few months. I think they're missing the most obvious explanation. Remember when Tom told a reporter he was going to eat the placenta? I think he just ate the wrong part.
stcynic | July 7, 2006David Post has an excellent, uh, post at Volokh about how the media casually explains daily fluctuations in the stock and bond markets without a shred of evidence to support them:
Pretty much every day, in pretty much every newspaper in the country, there is a story that goes something like this [taken from todays WSJ]: "Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrials fell xxx points to yyyy on new concerns about interest rates and anxiety over North Korea's missile tests." Or the Dow rose, due to "increasing optimism about prospects for peace in the Mideast." Or whatever. It's complete and utter…
purepedantry | July 6, 2006The New York Times has a interesting article about the long term consequences to adolescent brains of early drinking. To whit:
In experiments conducted by the Duke team, the reformed rat drinkers learned mazes normally when they were sober. But after the equivalent of only a couple of drinks, their performance declined significantly more than did that of rats that had never tippled before they became adults. The study was published in 2000 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Other research has found that while drunken adolescent rats become more sensitive to memory…
grrlscientist | July 6, 2006I and the Bird, issue 27, the first year anniversary edition, is now available.
tags: blog carnival
purepedantry | July 5, 2006...I am just concerned that she needs to stay out of the sun because being a redhead she is at high risk for skin cancer:
Fair-skinned redheads are known to have increased risk of developing melanoma. Now researchers may have pinpointed one of the reasons: variations in a gene called MC1R. This gene assists in producing melanin pigment to help protect the skin against the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays (UV). However, some variations (variants) of MC1R are less protective than others. Two recent studies, from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Western General Hospital in England,…
purepedantry | July 5, 2006FuturePundit posted an article about the decline in American's social attachment that my Mom actually emailed to me. My Mom being a Mom has a continuing interest in my social health, particular where this is related to my reproductive success (just kidding Mom).
Anyway, this article is about a study that shows the Americans have declining numbers of friends and confidants:
It compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the mean number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.
Researchers…
stcynic | July 5, 2006Back in my standup comic days, I had a really brutal routine I did about Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold (this was obviously while they were still married). Among other things, I said that at their wedding they should have been pronounced host and parasite instead of husband and wife. I also referred to the restaurant that they owned in Iowa, which was managed by Tom's brother, making him a parasite twice removed - a virus in the stomach of a tick on the ass of a pig. In the comments on DaveScot's ridiculous attempt to turn Sandefur's words against me, we find a similar phenomenon - sycophant…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2006
This was the most exciting of all the World Cup games I've watched so far. But at the end, the French prevailed over the Portugese. Astonishingly, I predicted the score of this game correctly (see comments)!
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tags: World Cup, soccer, futebol
tqa | July 5, 2006I'm not the biggest Hillary Clinton fan on the planet, but this time she almost got it right. In a statement yesterday, Clinton said that while she hopes that Joe Lieberman wins his senate primary in August (OK, that part she didn't get right), she will ultimately support whoever does win the primary during the general election.
For those of you who haven't been following internal Democratic politics closely, here's a quick overview of the situation, and why Clinton's comment is both right and important - and why this situation proves that the party might just be hopelessly lost.
For the…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2006My favorite blog carnivals were published today.
The Tangled Bank, issue 56, is now available. There are lots of contributions for you to read as you recover from your holiday weekend.
The Carnival of the Vanities, 198th edition, which celebrates the best blog writing on any topic, also includes a contribution from me.
tags: blog carnival
revere | July 5, 2006Congress is helpless to immunize the American people against bird flu, but they were able to do the next best thing: immunize the vaccine makers against lawsuits. Now the respirator makers want to be next in line for the magic lawsuit vaccine.
Six companies that make respiratory masks want Congress to protect them from lawsuits, saying such a step would ensure that they could meet production demands in the event of a terrorist attack or flu pandemic.
The companies -- Aearo. Bacou-Dalloz, Inovel, Moldex, MSA and North Safety, which collectively have formed the Coalition for Breathing Safety…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006This weeks Ask a Scienceblogger is:
What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy?
I don't know if this is unsung but it bears repeating because it is truly a triumph of science over those who would prefer the research had not been done.
In 1964, the Surgeon General released the Surgeon General Report: Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking representing one of the first of the US governments comprehensive strategies to reduce smoking. The report occured in the teeth of public opinion and industry lobbying.
Periodic updates have been…
neurotopia | July 4, 2006HOLY FUCK.
Italy scores TWICE at the end of a 0-0 overtime!!!!!!!!
This game is amazing!!!!! To top it off, the refs actually did their damn jobs correctly for once!!!
Hats off to Germany for an excellent Cup. I hate to see you guys lose after such an effort.
I expected a dynamite game but wow, this was something else. Both teams played an intense first half, trading off control of the midfield. By 70 minutes, you could tell that everybody was starting to wear down. The second half did drag a bit. The substitutions picked things up a little and both teams played excellent defense…
stcynic | July 4, 2006I received the following e-mail from Larry Fafarman:
Ed,
It is easy for you and your pals to take cowardly potshots at me from the safety of your blog, where I am banned. So I am challenging you to either unban me on your blog or debate me on my blog.
Larry Fafarman
What is it about right wingers thinking that if you don't play by their rules you're a "coward"? Larry, Larry, Larry. You're banned here because you annoy me. It's my blog, which means I get to ban anyone I want for any reason I want. You started your own blog just so you could respond to me. I've even been nice enough to link to…
purepedantry | July 4, 2006In 4th of July related news, Takeru Kobayashi has yet again proven that stomach size and total body size have no clear correlation.
A 160-pound wonder from Japan set a new record by devouring a sickening 53 3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating competition on Coney Island.
More interesting as he usually crushes the competition someone actually came close to beating him this time:
His strongest competition was Joey Chestnut, a 220-pound civil engineering student from San Jose, Calif., who set an American record by eating 50 hot dogs during a…
neurotopia | July 4, 2006I've decided that as much as I want to see Germany win on their home turf, I'm still rooting for Italy. I want a France/Italy rematch/revenge for 1998.
Hear that, LeBleu-sers? You're going down!!!!
Good post here by The Daily Transcript.