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grrlscientist | May 9, 2006
Similar to the animation that I previously linked, this will keep you distracted while you are supposed to be working. But this is different (click image) because not only do you get to choose your own monkey from a cast of three possiblilities, but you also can dress your monkey up. As you can tell from this picture, my receptionist monkey has quite an eye for fashion.
Anyway, as true for the previous animation, the monkey's head and eyes will move to track your mouse and then you can also have your monkey say things from the prerecorded messages, or from text that you've entered, using…
grrlscientist | May 9, 2006
Above is a fascinating piece of real-time webbed animation that you will enjoy playing with (click image). When you move the mouse around, her head moves and her eyes follow it. When you write something in the space provided below the picture and then click the "say it" button, she says it. You can change the voice doing the talking and the language spoken, too.
What phrases did you have her say and which languages did she say them in? (no, she doesn't translate English into other languages).
tags: webbed animation
stcynic | May 7, 2006Okay, more like the exhausted return. We had a great time last night. Mickey is always a fabulous host for these semi-annual parties (though I think I'm gonna do one here this summer sometime and make a weekend of it, complete with lots of ribs in the smoker), if for no other reason than he always manages to lose lots of money to us at poker and pay for the gas it costs to make it to his house. He even had a huge list of songs from the 80s going on his Ipod, which brought back lots of memories. We went to the Moose Preserve for dinner, then 6 of us played poker until about 4 am.
The trip…
tsmith | May 7, 2006Just another reminder-- I'm hosting Grand Rounds next week. I'll accept entries until Monday at 8PM EST. Remember that this carnival isn't just open to doctors and nurses--if you've written a post about disease, or some new advance in basic biomedical research, send it along!
tlambert | May 7, 2006The LA Times has cancelled
Michael Hiltzik's column because of his use of sock puppets. Cathy Seipp comments:
No matter what you think of the mainstream media, journalists generally try to be honest and Hiltzik's fundamental dishonesty meant he was lucky he wasn't fired. Not as punishment, but simply because his behavior indicates he may be basically untrustworthy. All any journalist really has is his judgment and integrity. If those are compromised, then any publication he works for is compromised too.
One of Patterico's regular commenters pointed out that on submarines this is called "…
apalazzo | May 6, 2006Yes it's the speech that has gone around the world via email.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias
And did you see that Colbert thanked Bill Kristol for helping him write the address? I personally got 7 emails with links to the ifilm's compendium of Colbert's little gig at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. And someone very dear to me has fallen in love with Colbert and his young dshing looks.
Here are various blog entries on the subject.
Mike the Mad Biologist and comments on Richard Cohen's OpEd (another comment on Pharyngula)
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
Strange Fruit I and II…
grrlscientist | May 6, 2006The weather has been very warm and reasonably dry these past few days in NYC. However, things have been difficult because I made the unpleasant discovery, once again, that I am allergic to airborne pollutants. If you are familiar with NYC air quality, you will realize that the air quality here is poor on a good day but, thanks to the influx of tree pollens, it has been worse than poor these past few days.
It turns out that, due to the sudden shift to breezy, warm and dry weather, the pollen count went beserk over the past couple days. It went past 20,000 yesterday, which was the worst that…
grrlscientist | May 6, 2006The Seed Media Group has initiated a new feature called Ask A ScienceBlogger. This feature will have its own home on the new Sb homepage next month, but until then, it is being launched as a blog carnival style thing, hosted on Stochastic. The rules; every Friday, Seed asks a question and they will link to our responses on the following Wednesday. Our responses are limited to 300 words or less. Of course, reader questions are welcomed (feel free to send them to the mothership). Additionally, I am very interested in reader answers to this same question, so feel free to add your comments.…
stcynic | May 6, 2006I'm out of here for the weekend, so don't expect anything new. i'm headed to Bloomfield Hills for one of our semi-annual old debate buddies reunions. We get together, eat steaks the size of hubcaps, play poker all night and have interesting conversation. This time we have two college debate coaches coming (Will Repko of MSU, who just won the national championship, and Ron Stevenson of Wayne State, whose team made the semifinals of NDT), so I suspect the Liberty University team might come up for conversation. There will also undoubtedly be much reminiscing about the late 80s debate scene and…
grrlscientist | May 6, 2006
You Should Be A Poet
You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways.
And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery...
Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever.
You're already naturally a poet, even if you've never written a poem.
What Type of Writer Should You Be?
If this online quiz is accurate (doubtful), it would go a long way towards explaining why I cannot find a paying job doing anything at all because it effectively labels me as a misfit (have you known a poetic scientist? Have any of you known a poet who was employed as a poet?)
Okay, I showed you my…
stcynic | May 5, 2006It appears that the tornado ad is finally appearing on my blog. It's been on the other blogs for a couple days now and is now on mine. I know it's annoying, but it's only going to run through Tuesday. We've received tons of complaints about it already and they've all been passed on to the management, who are not at all happy about it. But they've got a deal for the ad and can't break it until it runs out. The overwhelmingly negative reaction makes us hopeful that the powers that be will refuse to run such ads in the future. So please don't bitch about it to me at the moment. We only have to…
stcynic | May 5, 2006There's quite an argument going on in the comments after my post yesterday about government crop quotas. Here's what I think those who disagree with me are missing: the government is doing what would be illegal if corporations did it. If oil companies got together and decided to all limit their production to keep the price propped up, that would be collusion and it would be against the law. Why? Because it screws the consumers. It destroys competition that helps keep prices down and results in higher prices than a free market would allow.
But this is exactly what price supports do in the…
ddobbs | May 3, 2006'Wow Factor': Humans Perceive More Than They Think They Do:
From the "Interesting If True" Department:
Faces tell the stories in UC Riverside Professor Larry Rosenblum's ecological listening lab, as volunteer test subjects show that they can 'read' unheard speech -- not just from lips, but from the simple movements of dots placed on lips, teeth and tongue.
They can also recognize people's voices just from seeing their faces, and vice versa, and seem to be able to distinguish among a variety of rooms on campus just from their echoes.
from ScienceDaily Headlines: Mind & Brain.
stcynic | May 3, 2006Mexico is on the verge of legalizing virtually all drugs for personal use. The LA Times reports:
Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a bill that would legalize the use of nearly every drug and narcotic sold by the same Mexican cartels he's vowed to fight during his five years in office, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The list of illegal drugs approved for personal consumption by Mexico's Congress last week is enough to make one dizzy -- or worse.
Cocaine. Heroin. LSD. Marijuana. PCP. Opium. Synthetic opiates. Mescaline. Peyote. Psilocybin mushrooms. Amphetamines. Methamphetamines.
And the per-…
grrlscientist | May 3, 2006The Carnival of Education, week 65, is available at The Education Wonks. This is a big one -- almost as big as Tangled Bank -- and it's packed with interesting stories and insights.
The Carnival of the Vanities is now available, too. Unfortunately, this particular edition is a truly sparse investment-free effort, unlike any I've seen before. But there still is good material there, it's just camoflaged by a listing that consists only of titles for each piece. So it goes.
tlambert | May 2, 2006H347h3r p1ck w4rn5 0f t3h d4ng3rz 0f 1337:
The language is morphing into a dangerous dialect that's completely foreign to parents.
"It gives criminals, kids, whomever, another way to communicate covertly with one another without maybe parents catching on to what the kids are saying," Westerville Police Department Scott Dollison explained.
stcynic | May 2, 2006This weekend was the Tournament of Champions, the most prestigious high school debate tournament every year. It's very difficult to qualify for. You have to win two "bids" to get an invitation, each one of which requires getting to the late elimination rounds of a prominent national tournament, so there are nothing but very good teams in it. It's the real national championship of high school debate. And one school from Michigan, Birmingham Groves, placed two teams in the top 17 (one of them made the octofinals and lost there, the other lost a playoff round to get into the octofinals,…
grrlscientist | May 1, 2006I know that some of you are very talented code writers, whereas my abilities in that area are rudimentary. So maybe one of you could help me? I would like to have a button that would, with one click, automatically redirect the clicker to Birds in the News, without me having to update it on a weekly basis. A button similar to this;
Of course, the button would be prettier (I hope), but the purpose would remain the same, and readers could copy the code to post on their own blogs, if they wish. Is there anyone out there who is willing to work on such a thing for me?
(Does this remind anyone of…
grrlscientist | May 1, 2006My friend, Shannon, whose poem I republished here yesterday, commented! So go take a peek to read what she said.
stcynic | May 1, 2006My pal DarkSyde is one of the major contributors to a new science book put together by the DailyKos folks. The book is called Kosmos: You Are Here. The foreword is by the brilliant Carl Zimmer and the illustrations by the equally brilliant Carl Buell, the same team that did At the Water's Edge. This looks like a top notch project by some excellent writers. Best of all, you can download it as an e-book. For more information, click here.