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How to bring me down
A beautiful, although dry, Saturday is happening outside. What could possibly bum me out so bad? It's been quite a long time since TPP thought about any of this, but a review of the new book "Kill...
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The Destruction of Pompeii - Still a Mystery of History
It's probably the most famous volcanic eruption of all times - the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. So may it surprise that the exact date of...
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Paradrillia
Paradrillia patruelis, from Joop Trausel and Frans Slieker.Paradrillia is a genus of conoid gastropods found in the Indo-Pacific region, with a fossil record going back to the Miocene (Powell 1966;...
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Children don't always learn what you want
Someone has not been watching his/her speech around this little girl. It's clear she has some sense as to what the phrase means, but clearly she's got the words wrong. But she is treating this phrase...
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Alternative medicine quacks show their greedy side
Congress is on holiday this month, but the lobbyists are baiting their hooks, planning their strategies for how to get more money for themselves. A growing lobby is Complementary and Alternative...
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Not the birthday present I would have preferred
I seem to have now thoroughly disproved one of my favourite hypotheses, that cytoplasmic genes in the competence regulon act to help cells survive depletion of pools of deoxyribonucleotides (dNTPs)....
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Everything as usual
Let's see. TPP is too much of a mother hen; TPP doesn't give enough instructions. One week into a two week lesson, and two out of 24 people have uploaded material. A mother hen warning was...
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Fairness or intimidation: How do you handle difficult commenters?
Last week I wrote a post on my Scientific American blog criticizing a guest post about nuclear power on Andrew Revkin's NYT blog "Dot Earth" by John Miller, a social psychologist and journalist who had...
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On the Road with the Shambulance
Hello from the land of boxes! I'm about to move across the country, so there will be a brief hiatus from new stories here. But in the meantime, please enjoy some travel-themed reruns. The Shambulance...
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When you can't afford onions
People can put up with quite a bit, and while annoying, if some non-necessity or luxury item is beyond your means, well, you wait or change your mind and generally endure. But when you cannot afford...
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LHComedy: CERN After Dark
LHComedy brings science-themed stand-up comedy to the Geneva area. Bringing our audience a mixture of laughs and insight, we bring our passion about science and technology to the world with our own...
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Don't step on the snake
TPP has several useful rules for tropical field work. Among the most important are don't sit on ant hills and don't step on snakes. Large snakes have rules too; eat anything you can catch. A very...
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Almost 400-year-old pear tree
How long can a tree live? Trees are nearly immortal, the result of meristems and indeterminate growth. Many die not because they are too old, but because as a sessile organism they are subject to...
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Nobody has the USA pegged as well as Tom Tomorrow!
This is Tom Tomorow, a cartoonist. TT on whistle-blowing journalism. TT on government transparency. TT on politicians in your bedroom! TT on Tea-party Republicans in charge. And TT hasn't been...
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Who's afraid of nuclear waste?: WIPPing transuranics into shape
This post first appeared on Scientific American Blogs.Waste arriving at the WIPP from all over the country's non-commercial DoE nuclear reactor sites (Image: PBS Nova)About 50 miles from the Texas...
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So you hate GMO's because they are untested. What about feelbetteramine from...
Normal rice and golden rice fortified with beta carotene (Image: Wikipedia Commons)Noted pharmacologist, Forbes blogger and North Carolina Museum of Natural History science communications director...
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Who knows more words? Americans, Canadians, the British, or Australians?
I have been hard at work on preliminary analyses of data from the the Vocab Quiz, which is a difficult 32 word vocabulary test. Over 2,000 people from around the world have participated so far, so I...
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What makes a garden botanic? They don't know in Brooklyn.
What makes a garden botanic? Obviously botany, a science, a process conducted by botanists, botanical scientists. Without the botany all you got is a pretty garden, nice, but it adds nothing to the...
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Bill Watterson - philosopher
Is there any philosopher more cogent than Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes? This is the thing about gardening; it's a high value activity. When you focus more on the quality of the...
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