RIP Michael Crichton

The Andromeda Strain is one of my favorite sci fi books of all time. Eaters of the Dead, Jurassic Park, Sphere, and Congo are some of his other well known and often read works.

ETA: CNN link for added traffic.

After two years of an almost constant ...

... barrage of politics, it seems things will return to normal (whatever that is) for a bit. Here's to hoping that the next four years are a bit less stressful than the last four.

I've always wanted a mammoth ...

... and now it appears that I might be able to get one!

Scientists at the government-backed research institute Riken used the dead cell of a mouse that had been preserved at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a temperature similar to frozen ground.

The scientists hope that the first-of-a-kind research will pave the way to restore extinct animals such as the mammoth.

Why is this so exciting? The dead cell was not cryopreserved. Rather, it was simply frozen, as in, stuck in a plastic bag and stuffed into the back of a freezer for 16 years. No extraordinary efforts taken to preserve the cells of the dead mouse.

Therefore, scientists could potentially use cells from animals frozen in permafrost for centuries and "revive" them. Hello wooly mammoth! Here is a link to the PNAS abstract. The ability to gain access to the PDF can be found there as well.

Orion

I haven't really blogged about my astronomy exploits recently because the sky has not really cooperated. However I did notch a first a few weeks ago. I spotted my first constellation (without any assistance). You can probably guess which one.Orion.

I was pulling out of my driveway on my way to play racquetball at the ungodly time of 5:30am, looked up and Viola! there he was. Pretty friggin cool if you ask me.

Then, for good measure, the following morning I woke up a bit earlier, took out my binoculars and scanned Orion for M42 (Orion Nebula). What a sight!

Linkage

Check this website out:

Hunters Hope dot Org

Found it through a comment on Peter King's Monday Morning QB writeup for the NFL's week 9.

Good Guy of the Week

Jim Kelly, retired quarterback, Buffalo.

Kelly, who never could get the Bills over the Super Bowl hump in his Hall of Fame career, has a new mission these days -- to get every state to test for 54 potentially fatal diseases that could be diagnosed at birth. Only one state, Minnesota, tests for that many today.

He's on this mission because of the death of his son, Hunter, in 2005, from a rare brain disease called Krabbe Leukodystrophy. The disease (leukodystrophies afflict one of every 100,000 American births) could have been diagnosed at birth, but New York State did not test for the illness when Hunter was born in 1997.

"The tragedy for Hunter, and for so many children born with fatal illnesses, is that they're simply born in the wrong state,'' Kelly said the other night. "If you don't think that's something that just tears at your heart every day ...''

I've known Kelly for a long time, and I've always found him to be one of the biggest life-of-the-party guys I've covered. He was a prolific pre-curfew beer man in his Bills training-camp years, when the Buffalo players were as tight as a team could be. But when I saw him the other day, I saw he'd changed. There was a grimness to a once-carefree guy, with more lines on his face than I remembered. The grimness is not from giving up; it's a grim determination.

He's already seen governors of three states -- New York, Pennsylvania and Kansas -- and gotten each to increase dramatically the number of diseases tested for at birth. When babies are born, their heels are pricked and a blood sample taken to test for diseases. With Kelly's lobbying, New York has increased from 11 to 44 diseases tested for, Pennsylvania from 11 to 29, and Kansas from four to 29.

Parents can buy a kit to screen their children for the maximum number of diseases for less than $100, but Kelly, and his foundation, want the tests to be done for every child as a matter of course. Considering that the costs of caring for children with one of many known leukodystrophies can run from between $500,000 and $1 million per year, it seems like early-testing money would be well spent.

"I never won a Super Bowl,'' said Kelly, "and for a long time that really bothered me, obviously. But this is real. This is life. My Super Bowl victory will be to get every state to adopt universal newborn screening so we can save lives that are now being lost needlessly. When that day comes, that victory will be 10 times better than any Super Bowl.''

Because New York now tests for Krabbe, Kelly met a perfectly healthy boy, now a year and half old, who was diagnosed at birth and successfully treated. "Little Elmer,'' he said with a grin. Now his goal is to meet a lot more Elmers. If you'd like to help, or learn more about Kelly's mission, you can go to www.huntershope.org.

There is simply no reason that we shouldn't be performing these tests.

Microbial Life on Mars

Here it is, the slides (with some slight modifications and in PDF format) from my seminar on the possibility of microbial life on Mars given to the local Astronomy Club. The talk went well, from what I could tell, and I had a good time (and I hope everyone else did too, on top of learning something!). The slides are not "complete" in the sense that you might be able to glean all the information I spoke about by simply viewing them. That's because slides IMO should mostly be written from the vantage point of the lecturer, so as to be used as a guide for them and remind them of what they're going to say (if people are reading my slides, they're not paying attention to me speaking ... that's not a Good Thing). So you won't see many full sentences in these slides, just bullet points to jog my memory. And some snazzy eye candy (pictures). Alas, since it's PDF, all addtional eye candy (movement) is lost. I don't use special effects in my actual talks/seminars but for the local Astronomy Club, I figured what the heck. People thought the stuff I did was amusing (like the space-faring sea monkeys to illustrate the ideas of "forward contamination" and "panspermia".

Anyways, here it is: Martian Life

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Science Biology bacteria microbial

Oh, and Scribd is a pretty cool site, and it's free!

This is what worries me about Obama ...

... sooner rather than later, I imagine I'll be considered "upper class" and I'll be taxed to death. Exactly what is his threshold for "middle class"? It seems to be a moving target.

IIRC, when Obama started this whole deal with defining the middle class, he pegged it at anything above $75K. No freaking way. As a married government employee, my wife and I come close to that, and we still live paycheck to paycheck. Student loans and a mortgage take out a considerable chunk of our pay. An increase in our taxes would kill us.

Then it was raised to $250K for a family. Pretty high ceiling there, but now it seems to be creeping down again. Where it actually stops, is anyone's guess. Give me a damn number, and then stick to it. Jimminy Christmas!

Uh, what?

Palin not going back to Alaska, even if she loses next week. And here I thought she was governor of the state. Does this mean she's stepping down?

If Obama and Biden win next week, I predict the death of the Republican Party as we know it. While quite a few people will rejoice at that, I don't think it's such a Good Thing. While a two party system is horrendous (essentially picking between dumb and dumber), a single party would be a damn nightmare. It'd be essentially mob rule.

Oh well, guess the Republicans brought this on themselves. I still blame Perot though. If he hadn't gone all loopy and pull his "I'm dropping out, no I'm here, here's my VP he's a total dumbass" stunt back in 1992 we might have a healthy three party system right now.

Busy again today ...

... preparing a talk for a seminar I'm giving on Friday to the local Astronomy club. Managed to find a way to put two of my favorite intellectual pursuits (Astronomy and Microbiology) together ... Astrobiology! So, I'll be talking about the potential for life on Mars. When I'm done, perhaps I'll put my lecture on the web.

Sheeple ...

So Obama paid for a thirty minute freakin infomercial during prime-time television, delaying the start (or end, as it were, damn Phillies) of the World Series game. Nevermind the fact that if he had kept his promise to accept public financing (read the entire article) this never would have happened ... but instead he's managed to pull in over half a billion dollars and has so much money left over, it appears that he'll just be throwing it to the wind in the next few days. Yay. Just what we needed ... wasteful spending when the economy is in shreds. Can't wait for those tax breaks and a rejuvenated economy and balanced budget. Oh wait, looks like that won't be happening.

Anyways, this infomercial was so special-rific that it's moved people to tears, definitely more than one it seems. You've got to be kidding me. Am I a curmudgeon or simply unmoved by the unabashed attempt to get people to vote emotionally rather than logically? You tell me.

Sometimes it's all about perspective.

There are plenty of times that I get frustrated with this country. For all the boneheaded decisions our politicians make, for all the greed that big businesses practice, for all the idiotic things that private citizens do ... it makes me want to pull out my hair and scream.

And then, I read articles like this one.

The condemned inmate, his body torn apart by guard dogs, slumped unconscious as the three executioners fired. The bullets shattered his skull, splattering blood near other prisoners forced to watch.

His offense: trying to escape from the remote prison camp in North Korea.

Compared to this, life here is pretty damn good. I don't say this to excuse the wrongdoings that go on here, because they most definitely need to be pointed out, stopped, and those responsible held accountable. However, I do think it's important to note that despite our problems, we still hold a lot of promise and potential.

Speaking of idiots ...

... Richard Dawkins is a bore.

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales.

Dawkins, it's called "fiction". Children don't grow up believing in witches and wizards, it's a good yarn. So what's next? Is he going to rail against Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, or Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth? Or does he just have fantasy fiction literature in his sights?

Perhaps Dawkins would prefer if children just read The God Delusion? That'll certainly generate interest in reading, right? What ever happened to the imagination?

h/t to Mark Shea.

Idiots

1. What sort of idiot lets his 8 year old fire an uzi?

2. This one is just a plain idiot (well, they're all plain idiots). First she calls the cops complaining that the trunk of her daughters car reeks of death, and then when the cops concur ... she refuses to believe it.

3. How is this idiot still not in jail?

4. Yah, you thought you would never get caught, eh?

5. Ummm, what the hell you fool! First you call your constituents racist. Then you "apologize" by clarifying your comments to merely call them all rednecks. Why don't you just shut up you jackass.

Currently ...

Listening To
Rolled Gold Plus - The Rolling Stones

Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique (Post 1)

The first post outlining the badges I've earned in my career as a scientist.

BADGES

Talking Science Badge - Every geek talks about their science, don't they? Not that the non-science people in our lives really understand half of what we're saying, but the fact that we take the time to put it into layman terms (well, most of us do I suppose) must mean something.

I Blog About Science Badge - This one is pretty much a given since I blog here, right? Well, maybe this one is a bit suspect lately since I've done more blogging about music and sports than actual science, but since it's my blog I can do what I want. Then again, since I don't blog for Science Blogs ... oh wait, nevermind. Half of their blogs don't ever blog about science so who are we kidding?

I'm Pretty Confident Around An Open Flame Badge - Bunsen burners are cool. When that bunsen burner is simply a nozzle slapped on top of a can of butane, it gets even cooler. Yah, what can I say ... our lab doesn't have a gas hookup. It doesn't have vacuum or air either. *shrug*

"Sexing Up" Science Badge - I earned this one with my work on the STD Neisseria gonorrhoeae. I think I earn even more kudos for this badge given the fact that we actually tried to given gonorrhoea to baboons. It didn't work, though not for lack of trying. Next time you can claim that your P-1000 has been up the menstruating vagina of a baboon, come talk to me.


I've Frozen Stuff To See What Happens Badge - Whether it's throwing things in the minus 20, or better yet the minus 80, to see "what happens" -- in science we call that "making an observation" -- well, I've done it. What is especially cool is when you pull out the buffers for your restriction enzymes and it's still a liquid but when you flick the tube it immediately freezes solid. That's cool.

I've Frozen Stuff in Dry Ice to See What Happens Badge - Heck, in my graduate school lab we had a dry ice maker. It was this block of wood that you could connect a tank of carbon dioxide to and make the stuff. Scary as hell the first time you fired that baby up, but after that ... man the stuff you could put inside and then freeze. Total coolness!

I've Frozen Something in Liquid Nitrogen to See What Happens Badge - This is a bit scary. When you contemplate the fact that if you stuck your hand in the liquid nitrogen tank it'd die almost immediately and probably shatter into a million tiny pieces ... it's a sobering thought. So we had a few yucks with it, but that was about it. Of course one of the girls in the adjoining lab would use the LN to burn off warts. Weird. Effective, but weird.

Skynet?

Has it already begun to take shape?

The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human".

Can I file this under "Bad Idea"?

You know ...

... when someone writes a perfectly damn good story, and someone else tries to make a movie out of it, the least they can do is be true to it! On that note, I suppose I should not be surprised by the stupid crap Hollywood does, so when I watch a movie which has been "altered" from the way the book ended, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised or upset.

The two movies which have recently irked me to this effect? [WARNING: Spoilers below.]

1. I Am Legend - I can't begin to count how many people don't quite understand the meaning of the movie's title. I've had to explain to them what the actual title of the movie means, because if he's NOT the only one (human) left, he's not really a "legend", at least not how Richard Matheson meant it.

2. The Mist - Typically Steven King movies suck, but this one was alright. That is, it was alright until they went and made Drayton a mass murderer at the end.

STD Greeting Cards

Did you give your partner an STD? Having a difficult time as to how you're going to break the bad news to them? Don't fret. Email them!

The site, www.InSPOT.org , is a way for people newly diagnosed with an STD to notify their partners to be tested, too. The e-cards, a sort of greeting card you’d rather not receive, are direct and to the point.

Sexually transmitted diseases. Never a fun thing I imagine, and not really a trivial matter. Some can be/are eventually fatal (syphilis and HIV), can lead to other life-threatening complications/diseases (HPV), or increase the risk of contracting a fatal STD (gonorrhea and chlamydia). The following link is to the CDC webpage on STDs.

The site featured in the first link is: inSPOT dot org which stands for [STD] Internet Notification Service for Partners or Tricks. You really can't make this stuff up.

Patent Crap

I'm handling patent stuff today so blogging will be scarce. I'll be back soon!

In the meantime, here are the next ten songs on my iTunes playlist:

1. White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
2. Piece of My Heart - Janis Joplin
3. For Those About To Rock - AC/DC
4. Heartbreaker - Led Zeppelin
5. Two Out of Three Ain't Bad - Meatloaf
6. Honky Tonk Woman - Rolling Stones
7. Heart of Gold - Neil Young
8. Tiny Dancer - Elton John
9. 25 or 6 to 4 - Chicago
10. Behind Blue Eyes - The Who

What's everyone else listening to?

The Happening - A Review

I can sum the movie up in three words.

What.

The.

Hell.

It was atrocious. I swear Marky Mark was in a coma in this movie. He speaks in monotone for most of the movie, and it's ... well, just plain stupid! If you've seen the trailers, you've seen the first five minutes of the movie, because all the "good stuff" is put right up front. I can't even begin to get into the details of the movie, like how Marky Mark is a science teacher, and he and his wife are in the middle of a bad marriage ... because, well it's not even integral to the movie except for about 10 seconds in the movie when Marky Mark uses his *ahem* skills as a science teacher to come up with the solution basically to "Run!" (away from the breeze).

I think the funniest bit is when, in the middle of a "terrorist attack" and people are told to evacuate NYC, Penn Station is friggin empty. EMPTY! IT'S NEVER EMPTY! 600,000+ people go through there each day ... and when the city is told to evacuate you think it's going to be anything other than shoulder to shoulder? Sheesh.

This movie sucks.