Doc Bushwell
bushwells | October 29, 2007This latest news item courtesy of New Scientist a.k.a. the London tabloid of science journalism (1), is worthy of Bora's (Blog Around the Clock) Friday Weird Sex Blogging but what the heck - there's nothing more uplifting that a four-headed phallus on a Monday afternoon.
As noted in the article, Exhibitionist spiny anteater reveals bizarre penis, spiny anteaters (Tachyglossus aculeatus) ejaculate through only one half of their penis. This mechanism is similar to that of reptiles. Zoologists have wondered if monotremes might ejaculate via the same technique. Since the fine details of spiny…
bushwells | October 15, 2007In the same spirit as OBJECTIVE: Ministries, I give you Telco Powered⢠Products.
New Patented Technology allows you to use Power from the Phone Company to operate everyday items that you have to use -even if the power is out.
The product line is truly amazing. I'm torn: should I order the Telco Powered⢠Fan Cooler (When the Air Conditioning is out, it gets HOT in the desert. Fill the bottle with cold water, and spray as needed!) or the Telco Powered⢠Vibrator:
There's a lot of stress when the power is out!
Use our soothing Vibrator to relax your muscles after dealing with this serious…
bushwells | October 12, 2007I have a hodge-podge of old National Lampoons stored away in the basement. Periodically, I scan a few selected items (articles by P.J. O'Rourke and Chris Miller, various cartoons) for digital posterity. All are highly irreverent and culturally insensitive, and yes, I hoot raucously at them. Among my favorite bits of the NatLampPoo are Son-o-God Comics. Here's the cover of the August 1973 edition and its inner leaf.
bushwells | October 4, 2007Last Saturday (09/29) found me ambling around the DeCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln MA. When I lived in Cambridge and indulged in hobbyjogging with a few other women, the sculpture park was a frequent pit (bathroom) stop during our long weekend runs on the Lincoln Conservation Trust trail system. In the summer, these runs were often followed by a cooling plunge into Walden Pond. Sorry about the brief nostalgic reverie, but hey, I'm old. It happens.
The DeCordova highlights contemporary sculpture with some pieces on permanent display and others as temporary installations. Sculptures…
bushwells | September 29, 2007One of my spawn attempted to take a photo of our household araneidid. He eschewed the flash because he didn't want to frighten the spider, so the photo is blurred. However, the colors and patterns of the charlotte can be discerned and are kinda striking.
bushwells | September 28, 2007Gene Expression's Razib used a catchy little title for the article in which he referenced DNA Unraveled by Colin Nickerson for the Boston Globe. How overarching the role of RNA will be for the regulation of gene expression throughout the genome is still up for grabs, but one can't deny that there's fascinating and uncharted territory to be explored.
Predictably, the folks at the Discovery Institute leapt all over Nickerson's article as further implication that complexity = Intelligent Design, and the old "scientists don't know everything therefore the theory of evolution is not true" canard…
bushwells | September 27, 2007I mentioned in my previous entry the sense of transcendence I feel when I observe the green light passing through a tree's leaves. My neighborhood woods on Princeton Ridge is full of tall trees, including beeches which are my favorite arboreal species. Part of that sense of wonder stems (har) from my knowledge of the inter-relatedness of the tree and myself, my lack of chlorophyll notwithstanding.
John Stiller of East Carolina University contends that we humans are more closely akin to plants than we are to fungi. The following article from ABC Science (that's the Australian Broadcasting…
bushwells | September 27, 2007Richard Dawkin's Unweaving the Rainbow: Science Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder is on my active reading docket. The book has been around for a while (published in 1998), but it's proving to be a most enjoyable discovery as I continue to read it. So far, I concur with complete reviews' take on the book. It is a marvelous paean to the majesty and artistry of science. Dawkins' sense of wonder very much resonates with my own - that feeling of transcendence when I look at light shining through green leaves or the transformations of calculations that are revealed as a colorful abstract…
bushwells | September 25, 2007I previously confessed that I subscribe to that glossy hardcopy glut of advertising called Vanity Fair. Invariably, the mag contains photo spreads of ripple-ab'ed dudes hawking various men's cologne. All this to mask delicious or stinky or neutral 5alpha-androst-16-en-3-one (androstenone); based on one's genetic variation in the olfactory receptor that binds this steroid, it will smell sweet or icky or not at all. Razib at Gene Expression already covered the recent article in Nature - please see a world of sensory difference.
The Nature article addressed genetic polymorphisms of the…
bushwells | September 24, 2007Found scuttling around in my docbushwell at gmail inbox:
Needless to say, I was slightly disturbed when greeted with those images. My learned correspondent wrote the accompanying letter:
Dr. Bushwell:
My research has confirmed existence of several genera of the wolf spider Pardosa (Araneae, Lycosidae), such as the rabid wolf spider Rabidosa (Araneae, Lycosidae) and the oriental wolf spider Passiena (Lycosidae, Pardosinae). However, I have found no evidence of the FUCKING WOLF SPIDER! genus documented in Science Blogs. Ahem. Isn't science supposed to be about facts?
Nevertheless,…
bushwells | September 21, 2007I didn't shuffle through the digital shoe box of photos for flower porn today, so I'm offering something else.
A few posts back, LOLTHULHU made an appearance. It's a parody of LOLCATS. With regard to the latter and the former, here's what the blog formerly known as the Table of Malcontents (now Ectomo) had to say:
Is there anything more loathsome, more indicative of the rife idiot stupidity of the Internet than the LOLCats meme? The endless repetition of the exact same joke (photograph of surprised cat + implausible misspelling) done over and over and over again. Have you ever opened…
bushwells | September 20, 2007Speaking as a mother who breastfed both of my kids and was a card-carrying member of LaLeche League (an uneasy relationship since I worked outside the home but valuable all the same for many other reasons), I figured I'd weigh in on this, but not from the Facebook angle. There are plenty of other offerings among my SciBlings on the Facebook debacle, and I am sure you can find them via the main page so I am not linking them here. I can't say I am surprised at FB's reactionary response to the photos of the mother in question. Breastfeeding is ridiculously sexualized in the US.
So here I…
bushwells | September 20, 2007When I find myself in times of trouble
Ben and Jerry's comes to me
Snarfing Chunky Monkey so sweetly, so sweetly.
When stressed, some folks barely eat and consequently lose weight. Others, including myself, reach for high-fat-high-sugar (HFS) foods in an attempt to ameliorate the angst. Although the connection between stress and overeating is not fully understood, the evidence until recently focused on centrally acting (brain & spinal cord) mechanisms, e.g., hypothalamic control of food consumption and metabolism.
However, Lydia Kuo et al. (1) reported recently in Nature Medicine that…
bushwells | September 19, 2007Steinn (Dynamics of Cats) reports that Mars Invades Peru.
This must be smack-dab in the middle of physical-type scientists' radar screen since my Rocket Scientist(tm) friend sent a similar blurb from Yahoo News.
I expect Scully and Mulder have been called in to investigate. Rocket Scientist(tm) mysteriously alluded to the Colour Out of Space in his e-mail, signing off with the baffling words:
Ph-nglui mglw'nath Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
The Thing From Beyond the Stars is either a meteorite that released volatiles or a man-made object containing similar gaseous substances as Steinn…
bushwells | September 19, 2007Once again, my brothers and sisters, it is that grazhny Talk Like a Pirate Day. What hound-and-horny chepooka is this, I ask you? That PZ chelloveck and other SciBling lewdies Corpus Callosum, Grrl Scientist, and Dr. Free-Ride guff away when they slooshy Pirate. I say "Yarbles!" to that. There should be a "Govoreet Like a Droog Day." I think that would be real horrorshow.
Nadsat Dictionary
bushwells | September 19, 2007Via Technovelgy - Where Science Meets Fiction, here's an article on a wild display surface upon which small panels move with precision and "ripple," creating strange, almost biologically protoplasmic motion:
HypoSurface Walls Are Full of Life.
Bill Christensen, the author of the Technovelgy article on HypoSurface notes that this technology is a close approximation of science fiction writer J.G. Ballard's warped domiciles:
HypoSurface is a pretty good implementation of the plastex walls in J.G. Ballard's psychotropic houses from his 1960's Vermillion Sands stories:
It was a beautiful room all…
bushwells | September 15, 2007I concede. As self-deprecatory as I can be, I am left in the dust, gasping and quivering, by the mighty Christopher Hitchens who aptly displays the gloriously superior sense of humor that is characteristic of the human male. I am humbled, Mr. Hitchens. My hat's off to you.
In the latest Vanity Fair, Hitchens writes about his experience at the spa of the Four Seasons Biltmore Resort in Santa Barbara, CA: On the Limits of Self-Improvement, Part I.
It's an entertaining - and funny - article on the micro-economy of self-improvement. Be sure to check out the slide show!
bushwells | September 14, 2007The deck plantings looked innocent enough. Trite flowers and greenery were stuffed into cheap plastic containers, crammed together like so many commuters in a suburban horticultural subway car. Those frilly purple dames though. If he could only get a closer gander at them. They were so coy. Were they as virtuous as they seemed? He buzzed in for a closer look.
Then it hit him. These were not chaste flowers. Not at all. These were turgid violet temptresses. He knew he was taking his chances. If he flew too close, he would be sucked into the gaping purple...gaaaah!
I'm not sure of…
bushwells | September 13, 2007...to reassure the Kevin-o-philes and the Kevin-o-phobes, for that matter, that the raucous young bonobo will be back on the blog in the future. Exactly when that will be is to be determined at this point, but he will be back!
In the meantime, I am sure that Jim "I-am-the-god-of-drums-and-circuits-worship-me-you-fools" Fiore will continue to keep you entertained, e.g., the comments in response to Kevin's A-kickin' the Fannie (or a'dyin' tryin') post. As a last resort, I, The World's Most Boring Woman, will offer my garbled, geriatric mutterings. You will note that I do no take on or seek…
bushwells | September 12, 2007James Lileks maintains one of my favorite high-kitsch entertainment time-sinks, namely The Institute of Official Cheer. Lileks has scanned all sorts of advertisements, comics, and cookbooks (sp. The Gallery of Regrettable Food) from the 30, 40s, 50s and 60s, and then has commented on them. Some of his text makes me smile. Some makes me laugh aloud, spraying my computer monitor in a Jackson Pollock-like motif using masticated food or coffee as the medium.
A science and technology related addition to the Institute is Compu-Promo. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
The "Computer" photo…