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grrlscientist | June 24, 2006
Okay, this is truly stupid, but being the crazy futebol fan that I am (I am defintely a "crazy futebol fan" by American standards, which pales when compared to international standards, I know), I had to submit my blog pseudonyms to this name generator for the Brasilian futebol team (Yes, I am rooting for Brasil to win the World Cup).
Can any of you out there pronounce that name? I sure can't, and I've had two beers already, too! And what is your Brasilian name?
Hattip: my blogsibling, Alex Palazzo.
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tags: World Cup, soccer
grrlscientist | June 24, 2006
I am sitting in my usual free-wifi watering hole in Manhattan, watching the "Round of 16" series in the World Cup. I am the only one here with a laptop, so I am "command central" for digging up streaming video from the other World Cup games. All of the video I've located thus far is terrible (pixelated and otherwise barely visible), by the way.
Right now, Mexico and Argentina are playing and the pub is jam-packed and people are even spilling out onto the sidewalk, into the rain. Unlike the Sweden-Germany game that was played this morning (Germany won; 2-0) -- a game whose only remarkable…
purepedantry | June 24, 2006World's oldest living turtle dies:
The giant tortoise, known as Harriet, died at the Queensland-based Australia Zoo owned by "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin and his wife Terri. Irwin said he considered Harriet a member of the family.
"Harriet has been a huge chunk of the Irwin family's life," Irwin said Saturday. "She is possibly one of the oldest living creatures on the planet and her passing today is not only a great loss for the world but a very sad day for my family. She was a grand old lady."
It was owned by Steve Irwin? He probably tried to ride it, and it had a heart attack.
goodmath | June 23, 2006
Dirty Three, "Some Summers they Drop Like Flies". I've mentioned the Dirty Three before. Just go get their CDs and listen. Amazing stuff.
Broadside Electric, "The Gardener". Broadside is a local electric fold band. Great music, really nice people.
Tony Trischka Band, "Feed the Horse". The first album by Tony's current band. A very cool song actually, although the lyrics are utterly incoherent.
Thinking Plague, "Consolamentum". Thinking Plague is, well, just plain weird. I'd probably put them into the same category as groups like the Dirty Three and the Clogs, but TP is a lot less…
cortex | June 23, 2006Sharon Begley has an interesting column today in the WSJ on the growing chorus of voices aiming to discredit string theory.
String theory isn't any more wrong than preons, twistor theory, dynamical triangulations, or other physics fads. But in those cases, physicists saw the writing on the wall and moved on. Not so in string theory.
"What is strange is that string theory has survived past the point where it should have been clear that it wouldn't work," says Mr. Woit. [Professor Peter Woit of Columbia University] Not merely survived, but thrived. Virtually every young mathematically inclined…
purepedantry | June 23, 2006Just reminding everyone that the first The Synapse (a neuroscience carnvial) is rapidly approaching on Sunday. To submit send your neuroscience related posts to the.synapse.carnival@gmail.com by 9 am Sunday. More information is available at The Synapse.
tqa | June 23, 2006In the latest news from the planet the Republicans wish we lived on, weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. This news comes to us courtesy of a couple of Congresscritters - Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan , and Senator Rick Santorum, Theocrat of Pennsylvania. Supporting their bold statement, these exemplary members of the surreality-based community have - wait for it - a newly declassified intelligence report, courtesy of Bush appointee John Negroponte.
I am shocked, shocked I say, to find the Republicans resorting to selective declassification of…
tqa | June 22, 2006Today's episode in the ongoing tragicomic farce that is the American Congress involves the renewal of several provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Over the years, the VRA has gained a wide base of bipartisan support, and renewal of the act has typically been relatively easy. This time wasn't looking all that different - the Democratic caucus, White House, and Republican Congressional Leadership were all in favor - but that seems to have changed rather quickly today.
Apparently, the Republicans are (again) having problems with their rank-and-file members. The revolt apparently revolves…
grrlscientist | June 22, 2006The Brazil-Japan World Cup game was amazing. Despite the lopsided score (4-1), the game was beautiful to watch, unlike the USA-Ghana game, which was mostly just a duty to watch because, you know, I am an American who really likes football (soccer). No; unlike USA-Ghana, the Brazil-Japan match was special; they made every minute of the game into something thrilling, exciting, fun; and they treated each other with such respect, too. It was a very clean game, despite the importance of the outcome -- no red cards, and few (no?) yellow cards, and no elbows in the eyeballs, for example.
Just as an…
nisbetmc | June 22, 2006I ran across this excellent short ten-minute film highlighting the persistent negative stereotypes of Arabs in Hollywood film and television. Watch it. Definitely worth checking out.
According to the film site, "out of 1000 films that have Arab and Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000) 12 were postive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 900 and so were negative."
grrlscientist | June 22, 2006This was not a pretty game. Neither Team Ghana nor Team USA showed any particular skill or passion; Ghana simply outlasted USA, and honestly, Team USA was its own worst enemy, so Team Ghana only had to sit back and allow the USA to destroy themselves. So easy. Mechanical.
If this game was a novel, it would have had a brilliant plot but would lack depth and character development, and the prose would have sucked, with the rare exception of one or two sentences (McBride, USA) .. but a good novel does not rest upon a few high quality sentences or paragraphs.
Team USA needs red uniforms. Okay,…
grrlscientist | June 22, 2006Uh-oh! Things are not looking good for Team USA in World Cup action: first, they aren't wearing red uniforms. Second, the American team captain, Claudio Reyna, was carted away on a stretcher after losing the ball to a player on Ghana's team -- who immediately scored a goal. I am not sure if Reyna broke a leg or if he was suicidal, but either way, he's under observation.
[A few minutes later]
Okay, my peeps, Team USA is still not looking good. They are playing as if the entire team is suffering from a hangover. Considering this is a "do or die" game, you'd think Team USA would be hothothot.…
neurotopia | June 22, 2006Yeah, and what's with the US soccer announcers on ABC/ESPN? Are they all Landon Donovan nut-huggers? Their annoying solution to EVERY problem the US faces is some splice variant of "Landon Donovan needs to step up". Got news for you idiots: Donovan isn't the whole goddamn team. Hell, he's not even the team captain, so every stupid "Donovan needs to inspire the team" comment doesn't even reflect the real world. We have a lot of good players and Donovan certainly isn't frakkin' Pele. I've started to realize that our commentators don't know shit about the game. Except for the woman, she'…
neurotopia | June 22, 2006The fate of the US in the Cup will be decided very soon, with 2 games I CAN'T WATCH. AAAAAAAHHH! Our only hope, as I see it, is attack, attack, attack. Pound the ball at the goal. Don't give their goalie a chance to recover. Don't give them ANY chance to move the ball to our end of the field. Remember that even if we win, an Italy/Czech tie means we have a big goal differential to make up. And from the look of it, Ghana is a tough, fast team.
purepedantry | June 21, 2006I can't manage to find anything related to Philosophy of Science. This may have something to do with the fact that it is now nearly 4 in the morning, and philosophy of science is not something I do at 4 in the morning.
Therefore I have a lovely cartoon that I found on my friend's desktop:
purepedantry | June 21, 2006CNN reports on Norway's new seed menagerie. This whole business smacks of a Raiders of the Lost Ark action movie. Too bad the payoff is a rare strain of alfalfa:
Norway's Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen has called the vault a "Noah's Ark on Svalbard."
Its purpose is to ensure the survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change, and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.
would be stored at such cold temperatures that they could last hundreds, even thousands, of years,…
purepedantry | June 21, 2006New Scientist's Invention blog reports on a new way to save lives during crash landings. An inventor in Bangkok thinks it would be a good idea to load the planes with explosives on one wing to slow the sliding of an out of control airplane:
Normally, when a crash landing is inevitable and no runway is in sight, a pilot would make a controlled belly flop to prevent the plane from ploughing into any buildings nearby.
But Polchai Phanumphai's idea is for aircraft to spin their way down instead. As a suitably fitted-out plane prepares to crash down, an altimeter would trigger explosive charges…
purepedantry | June 21, 2006I am doing an all-nighter at the lab -- I know, how deliciously freshmen history paper of me. I also have a lot of free time as I am waiting for RT-PCRs to finish. Thus, I have decided to post something in every channel of Scienceblogs in one flurry of all-night bloggery. So watch for them. I already got physical sciences (I know pretty pictures is cheating but maybe I will find something better).
Here's a question for you? Do you think being a good grad student requires committment-demonstrating-all-nighters? Do grad students who spend their lives at lab do better in the long run?…
mikethemadbiologist | June 21, 2006Lotsa liberal madness at the most recent installment of the Carnival of Liberals. My first ever post at that blog carnival.