Tangential Science: It isn't necessarily science, but it's still funny. 1. Want a business card made out of meat and lasers? You're in luck! Meat Cards is having a contest to win one. All you have to…

As a kid, there were few things more satisfying to me that being given a helium balloon... and then almost immediately letting it go for the pure enjoyment of seeing it float out of sight into the…

Error Handling And Error Codes This article is a brief explanation of how errors can be handled in computer code.  The basic idea is that if an error arises then it should be obvious, and easily…

In Was Michael Jackson A Pedophile? we dismissed the idea that Michael Jackson was gay and the unlikeliness of his being a clinical pedophile along with being an autogynephile.  So what was he?…

This is a review of a recent article, cooperation in Defense against a predator,  in the Journal of Theoretical Biology by Jozsef Garay of the Research Group of Theoretical Biology and Ecology…

The predictably massive postmortem analysis of Michael Jackson has focused on both his enormous talent and his spectacular strangeness. Although there is lively debate whether Jackson or Elvis…

After The Dreamimg Stops.   Ever woke up with a funny, weirdor just different feeling after dreaming a certain type of dream? I can still feel some of the dreams I had years ago. I remember a…

The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years,…

Astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory have discovered a black hole they labeled HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), which lies towards the outskirts of the galaxy ESO 243-49,…

On television, police technicians zoom in on a security camera video to read a license plate or capture the face of a hold-up artist but, in real life, enhancing this low-quality video to focus in on…

Time for a job-hunting question.  Which programming languages can you work with?  It's not the same question as which languages you know, and can be a surprisingly hard question to answer,…

The biomedical community has become too risk-averse, according to a recent NY Times piece. I agree, although I don't agree with the dramatic presentation (it's not some dirty scientific secret - it's…

Metasequoia, a deciduous conifer, and one of the common fossils found in many of the Eocene sites of the Pacific northwest, flourished in Oregon's forests for millions of years. In honor of this…

Metasequoia, a deciduous conifer, and one of the common fossils found in many of the Eocene sites of the Pacific northwest, flourished in Oregon's forests for millions of years. In honor of this…

I spent last week in Boston, attending the Open Mobile Alliance meeting. Whenever one goes to meetings, one does the dance of the business card exchange. Because it was my first OMA meeting, I had…

John Hawks reviews an article in the NY times, by Gina Kolata, on Grants for Cancer Research.  Here’s an excerpt from the original article: Yet the fight against cancer is going slower than…

The evidence is in. The scientific community has reached a clear consensus that vaccines don’t cause autism. There is no controversy.” So begins an in-depth discussion of the vaccines-cause-autism…

Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius. - William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Proverbs of Hell #66

Look out, Ida.   Hot on the heels of one overhyped mishmash of media hysteria, a new fossil primate from Myanmar/Burma called Ganlea megacanina is causing researchers to speculate that the…

Researchers have completed the largest ever survey for very distant clusters of galaxies.  Named the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, "SpARCS" detects galaxy clusters using…