jfiore | July 28, 2006Not to be outdone by the good Doc, I have included a few quick flower porn snaps from the hot, lurid, sexually charged grounds surrounding my house. Well, to be honest, it's just plain hot, as in approaching 90F with more humidity than a swimming pool.
First on our parade of porn is the common tiger lily, resplendent in its plumage, showing off for all to see. It begs "Pollinate me! Pollinate me! Oh, god yes, pollinate me!!" Such a naughty one. No Spring tulip this trollop be.
And now we move on to the less common but still exhibitionist balloon flower. Note the distended veins of desire!…
bushwells | July 28, 2006
Here's an orgy, or to put it more chastely, a dance of Delosperma cooperi, common name, hardy ice plant.
This specimen, which grows happily in Einsteinville, is a member of the Aizoaceae family (stone plants), and related to Carpobrotus edulis, the ice plant which spread through California. The ice plants, whether of the type which line Highway 101 or survive New Jersey winters, are of South African origin.
jfiore | July 26, 2006The other day I picked up the September issue of Running Times and noted an item concerning the ACLI Capital Challenge. The Capital Challenge is a three mile road race open to teams representing the three branches of the federal government and the media. The proceeds benefit the District of Columbia Special Olympics. This year they raised a record $16,800. My reaction to this is two-fold. First, I think it's great that senators, congressmen, judges, etc. can get together and raise money for a worthy charity. Second, I am amazed at the miniscule amount they raised when compared to the sums…
bushwells | July 26, 2006When Gleevec hit the market in 2001 for chronic myelogenous leukemia , it was hailed as a major breakthrough in cancer treatment. Gleevec, which inhibits bcr-abl kinase, was the harbinger of targeted chemotherapy and represented a departure from the cytotoxics which, although effective, possess a broad array of adverse effects. A History of STI 571, written by Brian Druker, M.D., the principal investigator who championed the compound, not only illustrates the genesis of the drug itself but also the interdisciplinary teamwork required for drug discovery. Behind Gleevec came Iressa, Astra…
bushwells | July 24, 2006Last night's Simpson's episode was a repeat of "The Monkey Suit" (HABF14) which first aired in May, and I recall this was hashed over a bit here before SciBlogs bloated outwards in June. But hey, as the most boring woman on Earth, I'm inclined to be repetitive, redundant even. Here's the synopsis of the show courtesy of The Simpsons Archive
After visiting an evolution exhibit narrated by guest star Melanie Griffith, Flanders pushes Mayor Quimby to appoint Reverend Lovejoy as a "Mortality Czar" in charge of spreading the theory of creationism. Darwin's theories are quickly outlawed and…
bushwells | July 21, 2006Who says that only chimps, bonobos and other receptive primates sport livid pink genital swellings? Check out this Dragon's Wing begonia.
Photo courtesy of my 18 year old son who fortunately is of an age to engage in such lurid photography.
jfiore | July 21, 2006I have little doubt that George W. Bush likes to think of himself as a protector of the good and a promoter of life. As evidence, I offer his recent veto of HR 810, the stem cell research bill. His remarks indicated that he was concerned about destroying human life. So concerned, apparently, that it caused him to cast the first veto of his presidency, some five and a half years after taking office. A closer look, however, reveals that Mr. Bush is not so much a defender of life but a destroyer of it. I don't mean to imply that he wanders around with a gun shooting people, after all, he has a…
bushwells | July 21, 2006So the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a press release, and the media bleats "FDA Scientists Blast Agency Priorities." In the interest of brevity, the qualifier that these blasts emanated from 20% of those surveyed was omitted. Presumably, the other 80% were cowed into submission by their hyperpolitically charged overlords or were just too busy and overworked to be bothered. Of the 20%, various responses indicated various misgivings as noted in the survey summary on the UCS web site.
Job dissatistisfaction at the FDA? Undue influence by outside interests? Poor morale?…
jfiore | July 19, 2006HR 810. The president's only veto after six years in office. The failure of the House to override the veto with a 2/3rds majority due primarily to the muddy-headed thinking and religious dogma-addled brains of conservative Republican lap-dogs. One can only hope that rational people will remember this come November and vote accordingly. How anyone can place the importance of a blastocyst, a hollow ball of perhaps several dozen cells about 1/200th of an inch across, above the needs of millions of suffering humans, particularly when said blastocyst will most likely be discarded as medical waste…
bushwells | July 18, 2006As an avid fan of pop culture, I do not hesitate to induce neural necrosis by watching all manner of television and film. The SciFi network gets my business, particularly for their goofy SciFi Originals with their bad special effects and has-been actors in lead roles. So, I am quivering with anticipation as the premier of Eureka nears. Here's the premise:
Welcome to Eureka!
Nestled in the Pacific Northwest, Eureka is a seemingly ordinary town whose residents lead ordinary lives ... at least to the naked eye. Shrouded in secrecy, the picturesque hamlet is actually a community of…
bushwells | July 14, 2006Here's a salacious image from my little corner of the Garden State.
Just look at that yearning pistil and those turgid stamens. Ooooh, baby! Here's the full shot of the flowers.
Part of my rather checkered undergrad majors included botany. My interest in plant physiology shoved me in the direction of biochemistry and organic chemistry, but I retain an affection for plants. These Casa Blanca lilies are just a few of the flowers gracing my deck.
My undergrad research project involved 1,3-beta-glucan synthase (EC 2.4.1.34) which I more or less isolated (please don't ask me about protein…
bushwells | July 12, 2006Remember the Burma Shave ads which once lined the bygone US highways? The signs with such catchy poetry as...
It has a tingle
And a tang
That starts
The day off
With a bang.
Apparently the Champaign County Rifle Association is all in favor of starting the day off with a bang. While in Illinois last week, I spotted the CCRA's "public awareness" campaign, Guns Save Life, which gives a nod to Burma Shave's gimmick. This...
Dialed 9-1-1
And I'm on hold
Sure wish I had
That gun I sold
...just doesn't evoke the same sense of warm fuzzy nostalgia. Regardless of the morass that is gun…
jfiore | July 6, 2006I meant to post this shorty the other day, but as they say, better late than never.
As this is science blogs, I think it's fitting to remember what one of the founders of the USA had to say about July 4. The following is from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote in response to a request that he attend a 50 year anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1826. Jefferson was too ill to attend, and died on that date, within hours of fellow countryman John Adams.
The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that…
bushwells | July 5, 2006I'm on the road and visiting the Midwestern homelands. This evening, I'm in Madison where a former classmate (and longtime friend) and I will join our grad advisor and his wife for dinner. The newly minted professor emeritis doesn't know that we're showing up so the element of surprise should be entertaining. In lieu of fresh bloviation, I'll recap a classic rambling Bushwellian essay which touches upon ticks, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Singer, and Jersey devil deer.
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July 2005
Although I still pine for my former…
bushwells | June 28, 2006 "Most of the time, I work in a little glass jar and lead a very uneventful life. I drive a Volvo, a beige one. But what I'm dealing with here is one of the most deadly substances the earth has ever known, so what say you cut me some FRIGGIN' SLACK?"
Dr. Stanley Goodspeed's outburst to John Mason sent my friend, a medicinal chemist, and I into noisy guffaws which attracted the attention of the surrounding Cantabrigians on that rainy summer night. After a martini each, we weren't too discriminating and simply wanted entertainment so we chose to see The Rock at the Fresh Pond Cinemas. The…
jfiore | June 26, 2006OK, I've got nothing but good things to say about Warren Buffett's announcement that he's giving $37 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Well, other than that I wonder how we've managed to create a system where someone can amass that much in the first place, but I digress. $37 billion can do an amazing amount of good and is sorely needed when we've got an administration that seems to think that any government action (other than war) is bad, especially when it's aimed at people in need. But that's the rub. Buffett's gift amounts to around 4% of current projections of what the…
bushwells | June 23, 2006Taking a cue from Coturnix's Weird Sex Friday fun entry (har), here's a snippet from Ananova which is making the blogosphere rounds. The world's oldest surviving condom has gone on display at the Tirolean County Museum in Austria. From the article...
The reusable condom dates back to 1640 and is completely intact, as is its orginal users' manual, written in Latin.
The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases.
Warm milk? Warm milk? I expect that said soaking would increase the pliability of the condom for milady's pleasure. The…
bushwells | June 21, 2006and a nod to a new comic strip.
Yesterday evening as I drove along the allee of American elms which marks the passage from US Route 1 to Einsteinville's famous campus, I saw fireflies rising from the grass in the adjacent fields. On the eve of the summer solstice, here were the true harbingers of summer.
Fireflies at dusk invariably evoke the memories of my childhood summers. During the humid warm evenings of central Illinois Julys and Augusts, one could literally hear the corn grow as the fireflies blinked among the leaves and nascent tassels. Without the whiff of a breeze, rustles…
jfiore | June 20, 2006The question has been raised as to whether or not organized religious fervor will eventually win out over the Enlightenment ideals of humanistic atheism, and if it does, the consequence of America devolving into a theocratic hegemony. On their side, the humanist-atheist camp operates from a position of empiricism and rationality which appears to be a huge plus. On the other hand, as I see it, the main practical-structural difference between the devoutly religious and atheists like me is that atheists do not have weekly meetings or door-to-door membership drives.
Researchers at IBM and the…
bushwells | June 14, 2006Doc Bushwell here, pharmaceutical bogeyperson of the fast food-pharma-medical establishments' collusion against the fundamentalist fat activists (FFAs). Yes, that's right. We bench monkey pharma researchers lie awake at night, tossing, turning and vigorously scratching our nether regions, while we plot new ways of wresting money and adipose tissue from these hapless souls.
Truth be told, many large pharmaceutical companies have major obesity research programs which have fed, and intend to feed, the pipeline with compounds as clinical candidate hopefuls in the war against obesity. Some, like…