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random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
[T]hough some of us like adventure travel, most prefer to sit in the sun like a rack of spareribs, basting ourselves regularly with sauce, and quietly frying, taking care to turn over so we'll be cooked on both sides.
The judge also finds that the two adult stem cell researchers who brought the case would suffer imminent and irreparable harm without the injunction because they would have to compete with embryonic stem cell researchers for research funds. That is absurd. Adult stem cell research is funded far more generously than work with embryonic stem [...]
The Petermann ice shelf in Greenland (the northern-most glacier in the world) has lost a quarter of its mass, calving a 100 square mile iceberg now known as the “Petermann Ice Island (2010)”. Note that there is a “2010″ designation to distinguish this one from a smaller iceberg calved in 2008. Ed Markey had a [...]
One of the best articles I’ve read on the math used to estimate Gulf Oil Spill quantities: Jenn Kepka’s “Putting the Gulf oil spill in perspective”, Salon.com, 5/28.
A health blog (why a health blog?) at the NYT covered research showing that as the 20th century progressed, more and more women followed in their father’s footsteps, career-speaking. Men have for a long time followed in their fathers’ footsteps at a rate of about 30%; women born in the 1910s followed in their father’s [...]
The New York Times covers research showing that marital happiness increases when the kids leave home. Contrary to popular opinion, which has suggested that parents — particularly moms — suffer depression from “empty nest syndrome”, research published in November in Psychological Science found that “marital satisfaction actually improves” when the kids leave home. But if [...]
Yes, yes, the Inauguration is a big deal. And I am soooo glad that our long national nightmare is finally over. But. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our politics, fellow Horatios. Recent physics results help stitch together a number of findings, unexplained phenomena, and the usual bizarre [...]
A Louisiana state Representative is considering a plan to pay poor women to have their tubes tied, to stave off additional reproduction by undesirables. One wonders just how bad history classes have to be in Louisiana for John LaBruzzo to have actually failed to learn about the many, many times governments have tried programs like [...]
My father-in-law (in Massachusetts) was in town for his fiftieth MIT reunion — class of 1958! He took my partner and me to a couple of events, and we noticed among the red-jacketed men a few red-jacketed women. By various accounts, there were nine to fifteen women (out of a thousand students) in the Class [...]
Wow, after four men, a female human being’s genome finally got sequenced. Go Dutch. Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 27—Geneticists at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) have announced the first complete sequencing of a woman’s genome. The announcement was made at Bessensap, an annual meeting bringing together scientists and the press in the Netherlands. The DNA of [...]
Our cyberpunk future approaches: monkeys with brain implants can control robotic devices.
Yesterday I excitedly pointed to this io9 blog entry about vat-grown meat: “You see!” I told my partner. “You see! I was right. We are going to have vat-grown meat, in our lifetime !!!” The “I was right” or “you were right” is the gold ring of our relationship. The ch-ching it makes when one [...]
4/11: I had previously (3/27) drafted a brief commentary on Expelled‘s use of copyrighted material. Then, I unposted it while I checked on something, to try to make it more complete. I hadn’t gotten back to it, when the other shoe dropped: One of the copyright holders’ whose material was used in Expelled wrote a [...]
Starting yesterday, NIH’s new open access policy is in effect, mandating deposit of NIH-funded research (no, really, this time they mean it). See A Blog around the Clock for more info, including relevant links to info about the comments — open till May 1.
Natalie Angier began an article on sexual monogamy in the natural world by reference to the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. The entire article is a rebuke to the evolutionary psych hogwash that has been bandied about the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, although I particularly enjoyed the first sentence of the second paragraph: You can accuse [...]
I just love the imagery in these descriptions of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, in Friday’s NYT 3/13: Cassini Gets a Cool Shower From an Ice-Spewing Moon Then again, no other 310-mile-wide ice-ball moon in the solar system has a geyser of icy particles shooting out of its south pole. Geysers of ice. Truly, this world is [...]
the awesome new blog from annalee & charlie (and others) io9 profiled research today on growing extra fingers. think of the piano competition bump on the resume that aggressive yuppie parents can give their six-fingered offspring!
This is one of my favorite sets of photos from Michele’s Variationen von poker set. and my visit to the San Diego Zoo in January, 2008. (Feel free to engage me in a conversation about the ethics of zoos.) If I had more of these I’d make an awesome flip-book. Okay, call me puerile. The [...]
The seed vault I wrote about last year has opened, ahead of schedule. (NYT 2/26) Bent Skovmand would be proud.
Last weekend I was listening to a program on “Testosterone” on “This American Life” (archive) and, predictably, my interest in the topic was equaled or surpassed by my exasperation and annoyance at its handling. “This American Life” is a one-hour show, that aims to do something rather cool: Shed some light on a topic by [...]
Well, not only tonight, but only tonight for the last several and next few years. An amazing lunar eclipse will be highly visible in North America tonight (Wed., Feb. 20) — 10-11pm Eastern time, a total eclipse of the full moon. Sky and Telescope describes it as “America’s best lunar eclipse in years”. In addition [...]