Random Thoughts

A post on the Science Codex caught my attention (You think of your dog as one of your children? You probably live in the city). Of course, my first reaction was that this guy clearly lived in the city to have such an opinion.  However on closer reading I realized that I had absolutely no idea what kind of research this represented beyond examining the obvious. ...who found that people who think of animals as children tend to have a city background. As someone who lives in a more rural area I can attest to the fact that this simply isn't true for a wide range of people.  While there…

About 18 months ago, in late January 2009, during the tempestuous cyclone Klaus in France, which killed 26 people and wreaked enormous damage to the nearby once ancient region of Aquitaine, a new island suddenly appeared, 7 miles out to sea in the mouth of the Gironde estuary in the Bay of Biscay. The French have called it the l'île mystérieuse or "the mysterious island," after the Jules Verne novel and film as depicted in youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os0l808oM9g but officially the newly formed mysterious island remains unnamed, and does not appear on maps of the region. The island…

Yesterday, I seemed to be under a giant cloud, with lots up in the air. A difficult ghostwriting deadline for an article about clouds loomed, but the Tortoise Cat signaled we were overdue for a territorial stroll. As late afternoon blew in and we set off down the block, those metaphors took shape. This towering cumulonimbus looked to me like a giant ghost storming away into the west. But, of course, the cloud was riding the prevailing westerlies eastward, billowing towards us briskly. Photo: Towering cumulonimbus, neighborhood tower and maple tree, one late afternoon in early August 2010…

Tears For Pakistan A great tragedy is unfolding in Pakistan.  There is not a single region of Pakistan unaffected by floods.  Whole villages have been wiped out and agriculture lost.  How will these people be fed.  Formerly, the USA and Russia could be relied on to to send food relief.  How will Russia send food aid to Pakistan when it has its own problems with grain supplies? The world gave and gave again for Haiti.  In terms of people displaced and without food, water and other supplies, the Pakistan tragedy is far worse. The United Nations is launching an…

The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS) has produced the ISAPS Biennial Global Survey(TM) of plastic surgeons and procedures in the top 25 countries and regions - representing 75% of all procedures in 2009.  They say this ISAPS Survey marks the first time reliable international plastic surgery data has been obtained and analyzed by independent statistical specialists.  Geographic Trends The ISAPS Global Survey revealed a new hierarchy of countries with the most surgical and non surgical cosmetic procedures. While the United States continues its dominance in…

LOS ANGELES, August 2, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation announced today the formation of the National Youth Leadership Committee for the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration. Each of these 38 young athletes, entertainers, and student leaders has been inspired in a personal way by President Reagan's vision of freedom and the example of his leadership. Committee members will participate in the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration representing America's next generation of leaders. "We need you. We need your youth. We need your strength. We need your idealism to…

"In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist." -- Hitchens Emotions are quick, here and gone, but moods settle upon us like cloaks of fog, obscuring the true lay of the land. Emotions, because they are fleeting, can be worked around, but moods linger, tacky at times, like the stickiness of a thick maple syrup or worse (because we could at least lick the sweet stickiness from our fingers) the flypaper tackiness designed to trap and kill (what positive is there in that?). Sometimes we awaken with the mood that will not lift, some tattered remnant of a dream…

Science 2.0, being about openness and outreach and participation,  can attract its share of kooks.  Depending on the whims of the community moderators around that day, goofy, speculative nonsense can even stay on the front page as a blog for a while.  It comes with the territory but people who spend money on cameras, lights and lawyers can usually be taken more seriously. Not always, as PZ Myers found with Expelled filmmakers.  Sometimes the anti-science contingent has both money and an agenda. Caltech theoretical physicist (and husband to Physics of the Buffyverse author…

No, this is not about Physics. No, you are probably not interested. No, this blog is not only about science. I sometimes use it as -guess what- a log book, a diary. A habit I have learned five years ago, as I walked my first steps in the world of blogging, here. They (the organizers of "Quantum Diaries") wanted me to write about my life, and they got it. I learned a job, and some weird habits, like talking about my private life in public. It never caused much trouble, not nearly as much as just writing good articles on particle physics! So, all the above just to introduce a few lines…

Discover Magazine, both print and online, has been sold to Kalmbach Publishing, which owns publications like Astronomy, Trains and Birder's World. Price: $7 million, says MediaWeek, for a company with 700,000 print subscribers and $14 million in annual revenue.    That, my friends, is not what we call an accretive acquisition.  It is a bloodbath for everyone else in science media.  Unless they were losing $5 million a month, it means that price is a disaster for anyone in science media that is not membership-funded, like Science or Nature.  If subscribers are 700,000…