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Someone has to put a stop to href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/semantic-stopsi.html">this.
Health care is shaping up to be one of the big issues in the upcoming elections.  No big surprise there, it was a highly -ranked issue in the last election, too.  It's just that last time, voters failed to see how health care is more likely than terrorism to affect their health.  …
alt="ALT" src="http://images.forbes.com/media/2007/03/15/labels_6.jpg" border="1" height="280" width="400"> Product: Midol Menstrual Complete Label: Ask a doctor before use if you have difficulty urinating due to an enlarged prostate. Sound advice from Merck. But should sufferers of…
The Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires the federal government to publish climate-change research plans every three years, and assessment reports every four years.  Both are now overdue.  The research plan is one year overdue, and the assessment report is three years overdue.…
Senator rel="tag">Dick Durbin has started a project using an innovative method of writing legislation: href="http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=318">What should be America's national broadband strategy? by: Dick Durbin Sun Jul 22, 2007 at 13:06:58 PM EDT (This diary will…
In 2005, there was a plague.  It started inadvertently, as most do, but spread rapidly, resulting in many deaths.  Officials scrambled to find a solution.  Eventually it was contained.   The plague was caused by a miscoded spell ( href="http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/gadgets/…
Made with Legos. This was dreamed up by their development team, but never merketed.
style="border: medium solid rgb(204, 204, 255); padding: 5px; text-align: center; background-color: white;" cellspacing="5" height="351" width="500"> href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2007-08-19" title="Wikipedia:Picture of the day">Wikipedia Picture of the day href…
I just love things like this.  An open-access article in title="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences">PNAS reports on a previously-unknown method of signaling employed by squirrels.   The squirrels have a way of enhancing a tail-flagging movement with an IR signal.  …
These things are hard to photograph.  They are faster than I am, that is for sure.  Out of about 30 shots, at least a few were decent.   These are said to be the smallest birds in the USA.  They are href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliope_Hummingbird">named after…
Hard to know what to make of href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3499544">this.  The American Psychological Association considered a proposal to ban participation in military interrogations.  Specifically, APA members would have been prohibited from assisting in…
Spent part of the afternoon trying to get better pictures of the woodpeckers, but I am not happy with any of the pictures I got.  So here is someone else's picture: I think it is easier to get pictures of birds when they are in a confined space. href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/…
No money down, but the payments go on forever.  The only people who win are the bankers and the contractors.  We make it easy to get in.  But like herpes and condominiums, it is hard to get rid of. When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Starship Troopers, (1959).  It…
How refreshing: a Presidential appointee speaks out unequivocally against Administration policy.  This is from a Medscape News article (free registration), which is from  Reuters Heath Information. The report quotes a professor of Immunology who is on the href="http://deainfo.nci.nih.…
Not much commentary needed on this graphic.  HT to href="http://flprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/08/progressivism-is-not-dead-but-its-on.html">Blast Off!.  Most of the liberals are actually conservative.  Some of the Republican candidates are close to being as authoritarian as…
At first you would not think that pirates would try to establish a base in Utah.  There are not a lot of coves or bays there.  Even so, it is the first State to have an official pirate base.  They have a logo.  They are even circulating a petition to gain official recognition as…
Next to the headline "Corporate America Braces for Market Fallout," is a photo, selected at random, of a guy diving in front of some skyscrapers. It is not intended as an illustration for the article, but at first glance it appears to be. The actual photo is less alarming, when you can see the…
This is from a small study, so it would be inappropriate to draw a broad conclusion from it.  Still, it is kind of interesting. href="http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=searchcitationsresults,2,2;"> href="http://baywood.metapress.com/app/…
Some people did not believe that the picutre of the href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/photo_of_surfing_dog.php">surfing dog was real.  I can't prove it either way, with respect to that particujlar dog, but I did find a video of a different dog surfing.  This might…
An article in Forbes documents exorbitant commuter costs in some communities.  In and around Houston, for example, the average commuter spends 20% of their household income on commuting.  That, together with housing costs, adds to more than 50% of household income.  The author ends…
Here it is again, with unsharp mask applied, and increased contrast.
I am now sure this is a ladderback.  The photos are not very sharp, having been taken through a window screen, but it still was fun. The cat was going nuts.  That's how I knew there was something outside.
src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_VbG-d6SeGuA/RePVVb_nxrI/AAAAAAAAAD8/6QbLROwzDEk/s400/anandita-tamuly-eats-bhut-jolokia.jpg" align="left" height="344" width="238"> face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">I had not seen this when I first posted about the href="http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/…
The headline: href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081001204.html">Federal Deficit Sharply Lower. The text: The lower year-to-date deficit was the result of a record of $2.12 trillion in revenues. Spending, however, was higher -- $2.27 trillion, which…
That, by the way, is a cobra's head in the man's mouth. Courtesy of href="http://news.sky.com/skynews/picture_gallery/0,,70141-1279060,00.html" rel="tag">Sky News "We've scoured the globe for some of the best, strangest and most dramatic photographic images..." They quipped that snake…
It is reasonably well established that treatment with bright light is effective for href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/07/seasonal_affective_disorder_th_1.php">seasonal affective disorder (SAD).  The standard treatment is to have someone expose their face to 10,000 href="http://en…
A while back, Shelly wrote a nice introduction to title="Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder">ADHD at Retrospectacle: href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/07/the_neuroscience_of_adhd_1.php">The Neuroscience of ADHD.  Read that first, for background, then consider…
Since the last one of these I did was kind of scary, I decided to do one that is not so scary.  It is just plain weird.  But there is an interesting story to it. The female is on the left; the male is on the right.  These are the genitalia of mallards: href="http://…
When unemployment is high, there is more penetrating trauma (bullets, knives).  When employment is high, there is more blunt trauma (automobile crashes). href="http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Health/2007/08/09/unemployment_predicts_hospital_trauma/5157/">Unemployment predicts hospital…
The problem, specifically, is that patients with insurance have higher copays and deductibles.  According to an article on Medscape (free registration required): href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/560983">U.S. Hospitals Struggle Over Who Can Afford to Pay By Kim Dixon CHICAGO…