Miscellaneous
jrosenhouse | April 23, 2009You might have noticed that the overlords have updated my blog template. That was very nice of them! Alas, it does mean that some maintenance is required over on the sidebar. I'm not likely to get to that for a day or two, so you will just have to put up with a distorted view of my smiling mug. Sorry about that. I assure you I look far worse in person.
jrosenhouse | April 13, 2009Happy news from the Boston Globe:
Let's just say that in these days of digital shock and computerized awe, Jay dazzles us the old-fashioned way: with his hands. He last appeared in Boston eight years ago in the Mamet-directed off-Broadway hit "Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants." On Friday Jay brings his new theatrical work, "A Rogue's Gallery: An Evening of Conversation and Performance," to the Somerville Theatre, and the show marks a number of firsts for Jay - among them, serious audience participation and the introduction of materials from his personal collections (show bills of singing mice…
jrosenhouse | April 7, 2009I have not been blogging much lately, a state of affairs likely to persist until the end of the semester at the start of May. This is partly a consequence of blogger burn-out; I just flat haven't felt like blogging. Mainly, though, it is because this semester has been an unusually busy and stressful one. The reason I have not felt like blogging is that I have been inundated with other work, some self-inflicted, some inflicted from without.
EvolutionBlog will make a triumphant return, but until then I thought I would unburden myself by telling you what I have been up to this term. What,…
sheril | March 2, 2009Picture it. A bridge in Connecticut, January 2004. Having left New York at 4:30 am, I settled into my Honda hoping to reach Maine before nightfall. The first couple hours were uneventful until... suddenly the wheel locked, the brakes failed and my car spun haphazardly across three lanes to face oncoming traffic. Yet somehow, we didn't suffer a scratch between us.
I was lucky, and I want to encourage readers in the northeast to keep black ice in mind as you brave the roads this morning. And since this is scienceblogs, what causes the slippery stuff anyway?
Black ice is ice that forms…
sheril | February 25, 2009Research just published in Nature links Alzheimer's disease and prion diseases. The prion protein is the receptor for amyloid-beta, the peptide that makes up Alzheimer's plaques. It's not my area, but Ed's explanation is fascinating. This could be big, so go read the details at Not Exactly Rocket Science:
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia in the world, affecting more than 26 million people. Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD), another affliction is far less common, but both conditions share many of the same qualities. They are fatal within a few years of diagnosis, they…
jrosenhouse | January 26, 2009Writing in Slate Ron Rosenbaum has a very funny, but very mean, polemic against...Billy Joel. What the aging pop star did to deserve this I don't know, but for anyone who grew up in the eighties it's worth a look:
But let's go through the “greatest hits” chronologically and see how this “contempt thesis” works out.
First let's take “Piano Man.” You can hear Joel's contempt, both for the losers at the bar he's left behind in his stellar schlock stardom and for the “entertainer-loser” (the proto-B.J.) who plays for them. Even the self-contempt he imputes to the “piano man” rings false.
“…
jrosenhouse | January 15, 2009By now I am sure you have heard that Ricardo Mantalban and Patrick McGoohan have died.
Mantalban is being remembered primarily for playing Khan in Star Trek and Mr. Rourke in the godawful-but-strangely-watchable Fantasy Island. For me, though, his best role was as a murdering bullfighter in a memorable episode of Columbo.
Be warned: some minor spoilers ahead.
Columbo, vacationing with his wife in Mexico, gets into some low-grade trouble with the police. The local inspector offers to clear things up for him if he will help with an investigation. The bookkeeper to the legendary…
cmooney | January 12, 2009Kenneth Chang continues the Pluto blogging by asking readers to select a preference among the following planetary options:
The Current Answer: Eight. The current situation dictated by the I.A.U. where Pluto is a dwarf planet, not a planet.The "No Planet Left Behind" Option: 13. If a planet were any round object in orbit around the Sun, that would include not only Pluto, but also the asteroid Ceres and three Kuiper Belt objects, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. The number of planets would continue to increase in the coming years.The Historical Precedent Choice: 10. If Pluto were set as an arbitrary…
sheril | December 12, 2008
The auto bailout collapsed in the Senate, failing to pass the $14 billion stopgap measure and possibly dooming GM and Chrysler to bankruptcy.
"It's disappointing that Congress failed to act last night," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto. "We will evaluate our options in light of the breakdown in Congress."
Now what?
jrosenhouse | December 2, 2008My main intellectual activity today was to rotate curves around various axes, and then explain how to find the volumes of the solids that resulted. Doesn't put me in the mood for heavy, thought-provoking blogging. But I did recently come across this interesting bit of movie news. Why am I not optimistic?
For more than 100 years, Sherlock Holmes has been the world's foremost detective mind; a profound genius capable of unlocking even the most intricate mysteries. So how would he unravel this minor puzzle: A man known for his brain is about to showcase his brawn?
How do we know? Elementary…
sheril | December 2, 2008Give this video at least a minute and you'll see some spectacular shadow art. I particularly like the last style (1:15) using sculptured mass to create recognizable form:
thusspakezuska | November 23, 2008I've been essentially caffeine-free for about five years now. After my stroke, when the migraines got progressively worse, all sorts of things that never bothered me before suddenly began serving as migraine triggers. Peanut butter. Bananas. Yoghurt. Onions.
And caffeine.
Now, caffeinated soft drinks I can do without. In fact, I can do without soft drinks altogether. But I love, love, love coffee. So, I switched to decaf, 'cause I couldn't go without. Over the past five years - no regular coffee, no caffeinated soft drinks, very rarely here and there a cup of tea. I know there…
jrosenhouse | November 21, 2008I will be visiting the 'rents in my New Jersey office tomorrow, and I will be there through the Thanksgiving holiday. EvolutionBlog will make a triumphant return in December. See you then!
jrosenhouse | November 12, 2008Christopher Hitchens can be infuriating, but he certainly has a way with words. I laughed out loud while reading the first paragraph of his new column for Slate:
Yes, yes, yes. I, too, took pleasure in standing in line and in exchanging pleasantries and greetings with the amazingly courteous staff at my polling station and the many citizens of my delightfully diverse Washington neighborhood. I, too, am still wearing my lapel sticker, with the jaunty words “I Voted.” And I found it pretty easy to cast a vote that told the Republican Party, for which I recommended a vote last time, not to try…
jrosenhouse | November 12, 2008Ever wonder if anyone responds to those spam marketing e-mails? Wonder no more:
The researchers used two of the most popular ploys currently used by spammers - firstly offering a fake pharmacy site and, secondly, offering a herbal Viagra-style remedy to boost libido.
“After 26 days, and almost 350 million email messages, only 28 sales resulted,” says the research paper.
Yet even with this apparently abysmal response rate of less than 0.00001 per cent, the researchers still estimate that the controllers of a network the size of Storm are still bringing in about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or $3.…
jrosenhouse | October 1, 2008News first: The New York Times has reached dizzying new heights with today's magnificent crossword puzzle. Sadly, finding a New York Times here in Harrisonburg is rather like finding two identical snowflakes. Hard to do. So I haven't actually seen the puzzle yet. But I know it is excellent because it was constructed by my cousin Barry. This is his second puzzle for the Times.
Now for the Blues: How badly are things going for the McCain campaign? Even the crossword puzzles are out to get them:
On Jan. 8, 2005, I purposefully and unapologetically became the first person to ever…
neurophilosophy | September 29, 2008This scanning electron micrograph of diatoms attached to an invertebrate host won first place in the photography category of the 2008 Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.
Other winners and honorable mentions can be seen in this slideshow.
jrosenhouse | August 1, 2008The all-consuming, all-devouring, ScienceBlogs collective has assimilated another victim. Go say hi to Matt Springer, who blogs about physics over at Built on Facts. Matt is a graduate student in physics at Texas A & M university. He writes:
New posts generally appear every morning, including weekends. I can't promise the schedule will be absolutely rigidly adhered to, but it's been a while since I've missed a day.
Why do I feel so lame all of a suuden?