“Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives?” NewScientist Health. 11/27/2008.
That is weird.
[off-shoots]
Words - tumblr of reading material quotes
News Watch - tumblr of videos related to current stories
[columns]
[news]
[science news]
[non-English news]
[misc]
The Science Creative Quarterly
270ToWin.com, election strategy map
“Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives?” NewScientist Health. 11/27/2008.
That is weird.
Washington City Paper. “Obama: First Trekkie President.” 11/7/2008.
This article amuses me. :)
This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.
In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. …
What I wouldn’t give to have half the opportunities they were born with!
Nature. 10/1/2008.
“In 1998, researchers reported the isolation of HIV-1 sequences from a blood sample taken in 1959 from a Bantu male living in Léopoldville — now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Analysis of that sample and others suggested that HIV-1 originates from sometime between 1915 and 1941.”
The methane time bomb | The Independent
‘The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.’
‘The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.’
(via BoingBoing.)
Scientific American. 9/15/2008.
“The immature cells [the stem cells] trigger adult brain cells to switch gears and block a stroke-induced immune response that causes nerve damage.” They prevent further damage.
“Obama To Palin: What’s Wrong With Being A Community Organizer?”
They’re talking about the three years of work that I did right out of college, as if I’m making the leap from two or three years out of college into the presidency.
I would argue that doing work in the community, to try to create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job training programs in areas that have been hard hit when the steel plants closed — that that’s relevant only in understanding where I’m coming from. Who I believe in. Who I’m fighting for. And why I’m in this race.
And the question I have for them is, why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? They think the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives, is somehow not relevant to the presidency? Maybe that’s the problem.