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Why the Marriage Amendment is Asinine
The citizens of Minnesota will be voting on Nov. 6th on whether to amend the state constitution on the issue of gay marriage. I've been holding off on commenting in depth on this issue because I've...
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Close call
While heavily overcast this AM, it was not exactly threatening, so TPP road his bicycle to work with the usual stop at a coffee shop. During the 10 min ride to the coffee shop, it had turned very...
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Close Look at Bison DNA Reveals Our Dirty Fingerprints
We really owe the American bison an apology. But where do you buy a card that says, "Sorry we wiped out nearly your entire species, then muddied your DNA by forcing you to mate with cows"? Would...
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Recollections of childhood religion: your past becomes like your present
Trying to work out why and how religious beliefs change over their lifetime is challenging because hard data are rare. Instead, researchers often have to resort to asking adults what they believed when...
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Reevaluating the 'Prosauropods' of the Upper Triassic Caturrita Formation of...
Bittencourt, J. S., Stock da Rosa, A. A., and M. C. Langer. in press. Dinosaur remains from the ‘Botucaraí Hill’ (Caturrita Formation), Late Triassic of south Brazil, and their stratigraphic context....
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America the Ignorant
TPP lived in Misery, a Midwestern state with southern tendencies, for two of the longest years of his life. It's easy to be cynical about state level politics, but this is a truly amazing level of...
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How do you spell relief?
A cold front moved through, the one that almost doused TPP, and brought with it some much appreciated relief in the form of 2.5" of rain according to the official garden rain gauge and cooler...
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Around the Internet - 7/30/2012
Citations There have been a bunch of posts lately on citations and the Impact Factor. I started with these two posts by DrugMonkey. These posts have links to others in the chain, which you can follow....
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Kissing bug - the real vampire of Latin America
A recent story in the New York Times yesterday not only grabbed my attention, but my Twitter followers too. What have been termed 'neglected tropical diseases' (diseases we usually associate with...
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On Bamboo
Bamboo, a name given to a tribe of perennial grasses including the largest of grasses, are marvelous plants. In Asia bamboo is ever present, an eternal reminder, “this is Asia.” Bamboos are gorgeous...
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The Rhodospirillales: It's Photosynthesis, But Not As You Know It
Colony of Rhodospirillum rubrum, from here. For today's post, I'm going to take a look at the Rhodospirillales. This is a clade within the larger bacterial group known as the Alphaproteobacteria, other...
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Wasps Follow Order of Succession When Queen Dies
The office of postmaster general to the United States used to come with a perk totally unrelated to mail. In the unlikely event that an accident wiped out the president, vice president, and every...
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Latest Scientific American posts
Not to beat a dead Sprague Dawley rat, but I have another post on Sci Am comparing airplane and drug design, this time discussing some of the actual complexity of protein-drug binding. On occasion of...
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Hay fever - It's ragweed, not goldenrod
At least once every late summer/fall season, TPP has to explain that it's ragweed that aggrevates your allergies, not goldenrod. Funny though, don't think it ever was in one of my blogs. Wonder why?...
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Fish, schooling and video games
Much is said about why fish group together in schools. But there is little direct evidence for why that happens. Now, with the help of a video game, researchers know at least one reason why schooling...
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Fun with food - carved watermelons
The thing about carving watermelons is that you've got a pretty big chunk of material to work with in comparison to most fruits. The first place TPP ever saw such remarkable fruit carving was in...
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Real ginkgo forests
Ginkgoes and ginkgophytes (ginkgo like plants) have been around for a long time, 275 million years or so dating back to the Permian. Presently a single species, Ginkgo biloba, is all that is left,...
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Drug discovery 2.0: Rise of the biologics? Not so fast
Along with ominous drumbeats heralding the decline of the pharmaceutical industry, another recurring lament that we hear these days is about the decline of small molecules and the rise of biologics...
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The Shambulance: Zero-Calorie Noodles?
(The Shambulance is an occasional series in which I try to find the truth about overhyped health products. My Shambulance co-captains this week are Steven Swoap and Daniel Lynch, both of Williams...
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Pythagoras by Henry Swinburne
posted by @ulaulaman about #Pythagoras #Croton #HenrySwinburne #MagnaGrecia Pythagoras spent the last years of his life at Metapontum. After his decease, the house he had dwelt in was converted into a...
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