Category: Wonders of Science

Saturday round up, occasionally unsafe for work

Religious persecution quiz, scanged from a facebook/filking buddy.  Who himself was reposting it.

Statins have much worse potential side effects than was previously believed.

Wretched excess meets explosive cuteness.

I’m not posting a link, but one of the church women posted a youtube link to her toddler doing the Hokey Pokey with her, and I just wanted to mention that that’s what it’s all about.

We live in a culture which has little use for our basic instincts, and is thus breeding / punishing their existence out of us as fast as it can.  One can only wonder what the hell will take its place.  These days I wonder how some people manage to feed themselves.  As long as we are where our instincts don’t serve us, many of us will feel alienated.  I think church is a kind of hamfisted way of addressing that alienation. I can’t help thinking that we’re a step away from ‘customized religious experiences’ and I’m not just talking about going to rural Peru to have a drunken shaman pour ayahuasca down your throat and then count his money while you trip endlessly into a brightly painted bucket of existential horror.  I’m talking about thinking, “I want a religious experience that includes singing and labyrinth walking and drums this Sunday,” and if you live in a big town, actually being able to get it.  Virtually, perhaps.                  but if we do not breathe together…. if we do not conspire….. what are we?  That’s why we live from con to con, from dance to dance, from concert to concert, from gig to gig, from (please do NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK AT WORK or IF YOU THINK Lesbian or BDSM sexuality is icky) hookpull to hookpull, from Sunday to Sunday (or whatever your religiously mandated gathering day is).  Re hookpulls, I personally know two people who have attended and participated in these events, and I like ’em fine, so if you want to remonstrate with me about how sick it is I’m just gonna make a sad face and change the subject. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of them though, I ain’t going anywhere like that just to be a voyeur and I don’t need any additional pain in my body at the moment, thanks.  My complete incomprehension does not include disgust.

Extra solar planets for the win. Every time I look at it, there’s more.  Everything is on fast forward.

Of course, if I fail to mention the artificial life, people will wonder if I dropped off to sleep.

As I type this I am looking at the handwriting of my ancestor Henry Thomas Wake, and wishing I could have handwriting like that.  Copperplate. He actually made money from designing lettering.  mOm says he would be a blogger if he was alive today.  He records in his diary, March 1859, that we went to Euston Square Station to determine the cheapest way to go visit Carlisle, and also that a friend has kindly lent him a book on double entry bookkeeping.  (He was demoniac about self-improvement).

I’m going to take my chalky and somewhat premigraineous brain out for a drive now.  I want a drum.

Sunday Sundries

I saw one of these in knife edge flight over Lake Ontario in the first month after I met Paul.  So you know, it was a long time ago.

I saw this movie and loved it, I want to immediately see it again.  RIP.

Saw the girls yesterday and agreed to buy Kat’s vehicle.  I am the shallowest person on earth. Why else would I buy a purple car with a working sunroof?  Anyway, the car already has a name.  I am going to call her Ziva.

Update…. Seal eats octopus.

Mt Laundry has been conquered

Yeah, but that’s not what everybody will be talking about at work.  Sitting down to watch the amazing US-Canada gold medal game yesterday I knew the Canadians would win, but it was a nailbiter there for a while.

Foreigners who have covered 17 Olympics say that when it comes to public drinking at the Olympics, there is no second place.  On that basis I am very very very glad I never went downtown.

Watched Zombieland.  It’s got Sean of the Dead in a headlock for the title of the best Zomcom.  Woody Harrelson is fantastic, and I really liked Abigail Breslin, even if her character nearly gets everybody killed.

The start of the thing before the thing.

Here are the lyrics and here is the song that Katie likes the most these days.  Safe for work and utterly charming.  Katie says the song is about insomnia….  speaking of which she cured her insomnia.  She quit eating sugar.

My chance to dig out the garden plot was yesterday afternoon and it corresponded with the hockey game.  Sigh.

Saturday science links

Neutrophil chases down a bacterium and ingests it… in realtime.

Thought provoking article about human evolution.

Different set of nerves involved in fibromyalgia?

Other fibromyalgia research.

The ISS is nearly complete.

Initial results from the LHC.

How much biodiversity in one cubic foot?  It depends.

If gays don’t breed why is gayness in the gene pool?

Say we for a better marriage.

Lead is the culprit in ADD?

Remarkable science news culled from eurekalert.org

Our skin can feel sensation with more than one set of nerves.

Instant battery… just add paper?

There’s something deeply wrong with this story.  I don’t care about the radiation, I just don’t want to fly through a thunderstorm.

Fit teenaged boys are smarter. So go get some exercise, ya little punks.

As a result of our long childhood, which seems to get longer every year, parents are involved with their kids longer. Nodding, nodding.

This has implications for everything from analysis of disease outbreaks to making more robust computer networks.

Gender ender fender bender

Not much connection between the post title and the post.  Not really.  But what is going on with male fertility?  Is every sperm sacred?

Consider the following article on Herbivore Men from Japan.

And this article about bisphenol A.

And this one from 2006 in Japan.

And this one from Madsci.org from the last century.

And this one from India, which says sure there may be an identifiable decline in male fertility but there are issues with the sampling.

Here’s the wikipedia article, which contains the gem “testicular or penile insults” which is referring to physical damage, not “You d!ck, you n~tsack.”

The point I am trying to get to is that I believe it is possible that there is something up with estrogen like compounds and male fertility and hormonally driven changes in male behaviour, but I can’t prove it and I don’t know how I would.

Mathemagic

For some of my math geek buddies, here are some jokes.

Speaking of math geeks, I had a nice long call from LTGW last night.  He came perilously close to moving to California but decided to stay here and work on a business – a math related business, if you can believe it.  Then he described what he was doing and it sounds exhausting, creative and fun.  Then we traded bragging and complaining about our love lives and that’s probably enough specifics on that subject.

The parmesan herb bread turned out really really yummy, but the top of the loaf still hit the glass peephole at the top of the breadmaker, and I’m wondering just how little sugar I need to put in that recipe before it stops doing that.  It’s very irritating because that model of breadmaker does not have a removable lid, so cleaning it is a righteous pain.

Carrie and Tom are in town… I hope to see them tonight.

I played with Margot for about an hour last night.  That cat makes me laugh.  And she LOVES music.  She was attacking my laptop when I was playing something on it yesterday.

I get to interview one of the elders for church.  We’re having an “I’m not dead yet” program, where we talk to elders about their lives BEFORE they die, so we can appreciate them more fully and with less saying of things like, “Gosh, I wish I’d talked to him when he was still alive.”  I drew Denis, so I am very happy; Denis has one of the most beautiful and original speaking voices ever, and his passionate love affair with life and literature make him a good fit for me and that kind of work.

Jeff is back today.  Haunted House is now closer to being functional at Gadget House.  Yup, that’s Jeff, leaving a trail of order and repair behind him.