j7uy5
Posts by this author
March 17, 2012
When the bees start buzzing around, it is past time to get started with the garden. The photo above shows a bee that is finding something of interest on a peach tree.
Tomato seedlings are doing well. Notice that two of them are blooming already. They are growing in peat pots coconut coir…
January 15, 2012
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyaroch/6705513045/"
title="IMG_2804.JPG by Joseph j7uy5, on Flickr">
src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7015/6705513045_23cc0c3390.jpg"
alt="IMG_2804.JPG" align="left" border="1" height="188" hspace="3"
vspace="3" width="250">This is one of those medical…
August 14, 2011
Last February, we had a very unusual hard freeze. It killed a lot of plants.
The prior year, I had gotten an agave from a local nursery. It was a nice specimen, about 12 inches wide; it cost $25. In the freeze, it died. So I removed all the dead matter above ground. In the springtime, I…
April 24, 2011
The good folks at Shrink Rap are conducting a survey about attitudes toward psychiatry. I would appreciate it is some of you would participate.
April 24, 2011
Agave
lechuguilla,
commonly called lechuguilla or shin dagger, is a type of agave that
grows in northern Mexico and southwestern USA. It is highly
tolerant of drought and alkaline soil; it is somewhat tolerant of
cold. Each plant blossoms exactly once, then the entire plant
dies. I have read…
March 19, 2011
A little less than one year ago, the major environmental news pertained
to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. From Wikipedia:
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP
oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the BP oil disaster or the
Macondo blowout)[4][5][6] is an oil spill in…
February 27, 2011
After the 2010 elections in the USA, headlines proclaimed, "
href="http://www.theolympian.com/2011/01/08/1498746/with-new-republican-majority-let.html">With
new Republican majority, let the investigations begin," and "
href="http://www.mmail.com.my/content/59595-new-republican-majority-congress-…
February 26, 2011
This is a
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jschroe/2213298226/in/photostream/">photo
of a blonde zebra, or
href="http://www.wildwatch.com/sightings/is-it-an-albino-zebra">albino
zebra.
title="Blonde Zebra 2 by jschroe, on Flickr">
src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2129/…
February 21, 2011
Ok, here's an idea. The Dervaes family have decide to make the phrase "urban homestead" a registered trademark (1 2 3 4 5; also see the EFF post). Presumably, they are doing this to make money. They have gone so far as to send DMCA takedown notices to other persons...persons who, presumably,…
February 3, 2011
This is decidedly ironic:
Rolling outages affect most chilly Texans all day
By ANGELA K. BROWN Associated Press
FORT WORTH, Texas -- A high power demand in the wake of a massive ice storm caused rolling outages for more than eight hours Wednesday across most of Texas, resulting in signal-less…
January 25, 2011
Every clinician knows that careful observation is the foundation for all knowledge. Reading the account of how Nabokov correctly anticipated the outcome of DNA analysis of butterfly taxonomy, using only his acute powers of observation, I am reminded of historical accounts of physicians who could…
June 30, 2010
From Media Matters:
It is difficult to understand how so many errors could be crammed into
one simple chart, merely by accident. It is even harder to
understand how the artist could end up with a straight line, after
incorporating numerous errors, unless it was an done with the intention
of…
June 28, 2010
Sharron Angle
has said some pretty obtuse things before, but for the most part, I've
resisted the temptation to comment. But
href="http://bigthink.com/ideas/20647">this one is a gem:
The 16-page flier, available
href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/sharron-angles-independent-…
June 26, 2010
Clearly, this man is a candidate for the
href="http://www.darwinawards.com/">Darwin Award. K. Wayne
McLeod has been charged -- posthumously -- with running a Ponzi scheme
that victimized an estimated 260 law enforcement agents.
He deliberately solicited hundreds of people, all of whom have…
June 20, 2010
(From five years ago!)
There is a restaurant called Pelagos. The name means "from
the sea," in Greek. It is underground, but has a patio open
to the sky. A staircase leads from the sidewalk to the
subterranean patio. The is a metal fence along the sidewalk.
On the patio, there are tables with…
June 12, 2010
This one is useful for very few persons. The story is this: I wanted to get one of those mats that goes under a treadmill, to protect the floor. So I went to Sears, where I got the treadmill, because I had seen an ad for the mat. Thirty dollars is what they wanted. Seemed overpriced. But that…
June 6, 2010
XKCD usually is pretty good; this one, however, is a brillant commentary on science journalism. People forget that once an event has happened, the probability of that event is exactly 1, and the probability of all other outcomes is exactly zero. (Click image for full-size view.)
(Source page.)
May 11, 2010
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/05/repetitive_transcranial_magnet.php">Repetitive
transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a treatment for
major depression. It was approved (
href="http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf8/K083538.pdf">PDF)
by the FDA in 2008. …
May 8, 2010
I just noticed this: the average workweek in the USA has declined to
34.1 hours (see
the BLS report: Employment Situation Summary). Last
year, the average television viewing time increased to
href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/24/us.video.nielsen/">151
hours per month, or 5.03 hours…
April 26, 2010
National Geographic
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100421-new-fungus-cryptococcus-gattii-deadly-health-science/">reports:
A new strain of hypervirulent, deadly Cryptococcus gattii
fungus has been discovered in the United States, a new study says.
The outbreak has…
April 24, 2010
The article describes a technique
that it said to show a priori which patients are at risk for
developing
suicidal thoughts after starting an antidepressant. Of course the
usual
interpretive caveats apply: it is a small study, needs to be
replicated, etc.
href="http://www.technologyreview.com/…
April 19, 2010
Yes, this is old news. I've written about it before, as have
numerous other progressive scientifically-oriented bloggers. But
now that there is an opinion piece featured prominently in the New York
Times, perhaps the issue is gaining momentum.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/…
April 12, 2010
This is a pretty neat idea. This technology, still under
development, promises to enable the printing of skin grafts. It
uses a technology similar to inkjet printers:
href="http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/cell-fabricator-prinks-healing-flesh-burn-victims">Inkjet
Cell…
April 4, 2010
This is a nice little study in PNAS. It is nice for a few
reasons. For one, it is the sort of thing that drives
conservatives crazy, for it seems to be a highly detailed study of
something useless. Two, it could turn out to be pretty
useful. Three, when I searched ScienceBlogs for "karrikin," I…
April 4, 2010
Well, it is not the traditional flower, but it happens to be what is
blooming right now. The crocuses and daffodils are pretty much
spent;
the lilies and allium haven't blossomed yet.
title="IMG_2414.JPG by Joseph j7uy5, on Flickr">
src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/…
March 26, 2010
I guess Fox News is starting a series of vignettes, hoping to show that
stimulus money is being wasted. In an early attempt, Hannity and
Carlson track
down an entomologist, at Michigan State University, who got a $200,000
grant from stimulus funds. The scientist is
href="http://www.ent.msu.edu/…
March 23, 2010
I've
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/it_wont_be_the_bhut_of_many_jo.php">written
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/bhut_jolokia_update.php">before
about the world's hotter chle pepper: the bhut jolokia, rated at over 1
million scoville units. (
href="…
March 15, 2010
At first, I was going to title this post WSJ: Incompetent Ranting. Then
I decided that was too strong. Then I read the article again, and
went back to the original title. Mind you, this is not intended
to be an ad hominem attack. The author,
href="http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/faculty/…
March 8, 2010
A few days ago, there was a minor ripple in the political world, when a
media person tried to get John McCain to say that Obama is a
socialist. Even though McCain had hinted at that several times
during the campaign, he would never state directly that Obama is a
socialist. Well,
href="http://www…
March 7, 2010
We had little squall clouds today, such that there was interesting
light and shadow in the yard. This made for a nice opportunity to
photograph the nectarine tree blossoms.
Emotionally uplifting, I would say. The only problem is that we
now have to watch for frost warnings, then run out and…