retrospectacle
Posts by this author
September 25, 2007
One of the more, uh, interesting culinary experiences I have had in Asia was ordering fugu (pufferfish) sushi at a Japanese restaurant in China. A few moments after my order, a plate was sat in front of me that contained lots of fresh, white sushi slices...positioned just below the still-gasping…
September 24, 2007
Glendon Mellow of The Flying Trilobite just finished this beautiful banner (currently rotating with Carl's) for me this weekend, and I thought it might be interesting to show the stages and though process behind his art. Our initial conversations about what I wanted in a banner were along the lines…
September 21, 2007
One of my favorite authors is Margaret Atwood, the Canadian sci-fi writer who has penned "The Handmaid's Tale," "The Robber Bride," and "Oryx and Crake." The first on that list is the book that initially hooked me, but I think "Oryx and Crake" holds a special place on my bookshelf for perhaps the…
September 21, 2007
Call me an old-fashioned granny, but I do love knitting. I'm not very good (getting better), and what I can knit is limited to hats, mittens, scarves, and the obligatory pot holder. So I think that knitting this complicated and grotesque teratoma is still a bit beyond my skill level......wait!?! A…
September 20, 2007
Perhaps you might have noticed my brand spanking new banner up there! It was just recently finished by my friend Carl Buell, blogger at Olduvai George and a phenomenal natural history illustrator. I love it, and hope you do too. At the moment, its slightly oversized so I'm gonna have to figure out…
September 18, 2007
There's a discussion I was clued into recently, taking place over at a spiked, a reporting website, which describes it self thusly:
spiked is an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice…
September 18, 2007
Perhaps some of you may remember me mentioning the plight of the Florida manatee a few months back, specifically that their status as an endangered species was being petitioned by the powerful boating lobby. This would have meant that many of the special protections that manatees enjoyed, such as…
September 17, 2007
What would happen if a handful of bloggers started asking questions about the impact of blogging on the "Real World"? What would change if the Academy was made more aware of science blogs, and that they may have an impact of science (for better or worse)? What would happen if a lot of people were…
September 14, 2007
So, looks like I'll be giving a talk in Antwerp, Belgium during a conference on hearing research October 19-20th. I'll be flying into Amsterdam on the 15th, taking the train to Antwerp for the conference, and then spending the 21-24th in Paris, flying out of Charles DeGaulle. I'm so psyched! Please…
September 13, 2007
Saw this over at Wired Science a couple days back, an interesting article about an unusual, uh, herb called Diviner's sage which has hallucinogenic properties and could spark a new class of drugs. Reports of people curing themselves of depression and treating pain with this form of sage are common…
September 12, 2007
The popular press loves to harp on iPods, and their potential to cause hearing loss due to loud music pumped through embedded earbuds. Looks like there's something else, a little more drastic and a lot less common to worry about in regards to your hearing: getting struck by lightning while wearing…
September 10, 2007
Well, just heard that the necropsy of Alex was performed and that no discernible cause of death could be found. This is puzzling and sad, since it would have been better to have some sense of closure, but I suppose we may never know what killed Alex.
I was also sent the official obituary of Alex…
September 10, 2007
A few months back, I was interviewed for the University of Michigan's med school magazine "Medicine at Michigan," which made me feel like quite the star seeing as how I had my picture taken in dramatical black and white. The interview, which just came out, was about the "kerfuffle" with the fair…
September 8, 2007
This is a repost from July of 2006. I thought it was appropriate, given Alex's passing. Please check out Friday Grey Matters in my archives for many more reports on Dr. Pepperberg's work with Alex.
Alex is a 28-year-old African Grey parrot who lives in the lab of Irene Pepperberg, in Brandeis…
September 8, 2007
On Friday, I received an email letting me know that the world's most famous African Grey, Alex, had passed away. For those of you who have read this blog for some amount of time, you probably realize that I was a huge fan of Irene Pepperberg's work with Alex and even dedicated a weekly series (…
September 7, 2007
I came across a good article in the New York Times which highlights the need for hearing tests for newborns: without them it is difficult to predict what might be wrong if the child is not speaking or reaching other developmental milestones.
Hearing tests are mandatory in 40 states, and routine…
September 7, 2007
Ok, but you're gonna have to fight me for it.
A non-profit organization, Collegescholarships.org, is holding another student blogging scholarship contest. You may remember it from last year, I was actually a runner-up (and yes, still eligible this year). This year the prize money is increased to…
September 6, 2007
A few months back, the folks from the blog City Parrots shared these beautiful photos with me of a wild parrot population (red-masked parakeets and Amazon parrots) in Ocean Beach, far from their native home in Mexico and South America. One of them (under the fold to preserve the mirage of decency…
September 4, 2007
Yahoo News reports on a recent study by Dr. Francois Carre of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes, France, which found that almost all cyclists competing in the Tour de France had enlarged hearts. The size increase was on the order of 20-40% larger than normal! He thought it would…
September 1, 2007
Occassionally, and by this I mean very, very rarely, geeks find significant others and get married (in the real world, not Second Life!). When such an noteworthy event happens, blissful geeks have been known to go all out on their wedding cakes, creating frosted confections of such phenomenal…
August 31, 2007
I came across a story on Digg.com that describes an interesting dilemma for universities: how to reconcile the needs of their students while maintaining delineations of church and state. Specifically, the University of Michigan-Dearborn (I go to the main campus in Ann Arbor) has come under…
August 29, 2007
Ah Sasha Cohen, pokin' fun at the silly creationists. Its a bit like shooting fish in a barrel isn't it?
Heh, still hilarious.
August 28, 2007
There's a total lunar eclipse which is taking place right before 6am Eastern time, and as nocturnal as I am, there's no way I'll be up in time to see it. So, I've decided to stay up to watch this rare event. A total lunar eclipse is rare: it happens less than once every two years--but since you can…
August 28, 2007
The German composer Beethoven, considered one of the most gifted composers of all time, died inexplicably at the age of 57 in 1827. He had been quite sick in the months leading up to his death, and in the past few years, research has determined that Beethoven likely died of lead poisoning. Studies…
August 28, 2007
An unfortunate, but amazing case: a 25-year-old schizophrenic man shoved a 14.5-cm-long ballpoint pen through his eye socket, all the way to his cerebellum (in the rear of the brain). Hospital staff found him lying in a pool of blood, and the man told doctors he 'had torn his eyes because it…
August 27, 2007
As noted around the science blogosphere, something wicked this way comes. PRISM, or the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (created by the Association of American Publishers), is setting up a strawman argument against Open Access publications, claiming that the tradition of…
August 26, 2007
When I threw a going-away party for my friend Lisa on Friday, I made some of that jiggly party staple: jello shots! Little did I realize that some awesome (and bored) sciency-types have a website dedicated to a series of experiments to determine how much vodka can be added to jello shots before…
August 24, 2007
Last week I blogged about the unique properties of cone snail venom. Now take a took at that venom put to use:
I wish I could slow it down enough to see the moment where the snail impales the fish with the venom barb, but its too quick.