Mercury and cocaine

Here are a couple of interesting bits:
When government scientists went looking for mercury contamination in fish in 291 streams around the nation, they found it in every fish they tested, the Interior Department said, even in isolated rural waterways.
and:
A study by Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and colleagues has found that about [...]

PhD

Well then. Today I submitted my thesis to the university, which means that I’m basically done with my PhD (there is a check of the pdf file I submitted only). Yay.
It works out that this weekend I’m going to Baltimore to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday, which I can use as a celebration for me. [...]

Second Anniversary

I’m a day late (I blame my dissertation defense on Thursday), but I have now been blogging for two years:
I’m still in the pathetic zone in terms of hits: 50,745 in two years for an average of 69.4 per day (although I averaged 108.8 this last year);
this is my 1250th post (1.71 per day, .99 [...]

Full court press?

This article by Malcom Gladwell on innovation has been getting a lot of attention, especially one of the main elements of the article: how a full court press helped a junior high basketball team do better than expected. In the background there’s the obvious point that you don’t play to an opponent’s strengths.
I saw this [...]

Congrats NU grads

Today is graduation here at Northeastern (the undergrad’s was in the morning and the grad’s in the afternoon–the law school’s isn’t until May 22). I congratulate all of the graduates and wish them well even if they didn’t shake hands.

Google understands i?

I think I used to know this, but forgot (I am old). Google has a built-in calculator and gives answers like:
e^(pi * i) = -1  and ln(-1) = 3.14159265 i
Yay, it likes imaginary stuff. It will also convert numbers into roman numerals:
2177 = MMCLXXVII
and will add in hexadecimals (among others–the 0x says that we’re looking at [...]

Finals and a poem

Today I give the first of my two finals.
In commemoration,  here’s a picture of the Galaxy triplet Arp 274 (it won the Space Telescope Science Institute’s ‘You Decide’ competition. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)):

Ok, I’m not really sure how it’s a commemoration, but anyway here’s a poem [...]

RIP: Dave Arneson

The two creators of Dungeons and Dragons (or the official site) are now both dead.  Gary Gygax died last March and Dave Arneson died yesterday. Between the two of them they were responsible for much of the RPG fantasy world (and thus for much of the explosion of computer games).
Play a game, roll some dice [...]

Really

Ok, I just gotta link to http://fuckyoupenguin.blogspot.com/. And you just gotta go look. The survival of the earth hangs in the balance–it shows how cute animals are trying to take over, or something.

Merry Christmas

Well, tis the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring–ok a mouse is.
Merry Christmas unless you don’t believe in that sort of thing. In that case you could celebrate Isaac Newton’s birthday. Which is sort of tomorrow–he was born on December 25, but in the Julian calender which translates [...]

Spam and Fraud

A while back Kevin Drum had a post about the huge drop in Spam when McColo Corp’s servers were taken down. It turns out that McColo wasn’t only supporting spam:
One month after the shutdown of hosting provider McColo Corp., spam volumes are nearly back to the levels seen prior to the company’s take down by [...]

Happy Fashionable Thanksgiving

Well, for those who think sexism is gone:
“With due respect to Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, after decades of matronly suits, it’s refreshing to see the first lady-elect in fashion-forward looks,” says Nicole Phelps, executive editor of Style.com. “She’s got an independent sense of style and seems genuinely interested in clothes.”
…
“In some ways we’ve wanted [...]

Vegetarian Food Fest and Art Open House

This weekend there are two different things happening:

The Boston Vegetarian Food Fest is today from 10-6 at the Reggie Lewis center. Click the link for information and directions. Also go there for the Boston Vegetarian society which has a list of veggie restaurants amony other things.
The Waltham Mills Artists’ Association has their open studios this weeked [...]

Web Comics

The Boston Globe has a story about one of the web comics I read, so I thought I would use it to put up a list of good web comics:
Questionable Content (the one in the story. The writer, Jeph Jacques, is from Easthampton MA.);
Mega Tokyo;
The Mows;
Bunny;
Applegeeks;
Scary Go Round (my current favorite);
xkcd;
SMBC.
I also read This Modern World and [...]

Smells and Mates

I have posted about how scent can drive mate selection before (based on this article). It seems there was a follow up study (which I see via here and here) that is talked about on MSNBC. I’m sure you’ll be stunned to learn that the part of the study that MSNBC talks about is the part [...]

Miss Conduct, AIR, and the IgNobels

Hmm, I read the Miss Conduct column in the Boston Globe occasionally (this week’s column is here and her blog is here) and yet I never associated her with Marc Abrahams until she mentioned it in today’s column. Who is Marc Abrahams? He’s the person in charge of The Annals of Improbable Research, which runs the [...]

Dr. Horrible by Joss Whedon

Via Boston Brahmina, Joss Whedon has a musical thingy called Dr. Horrible. It’s a three piece (about 13 minutes each) done up by Joss (and including people he knows) to protest the way show business works and to make eating petunias mandatory (or something, read his plan).
It’s quite interesting, but if you want to watch [...]

Is it Christmas?

If you’re not sure if it’s Christmas, go here. Really you should go every day just to be sure.

Pillows Are Dangerous

Umm:
“I have a 3-year-old son who sleeps in the bed with my wife and me,” Inge said. “I was trying to push the pillow down behind his head (two nights ago), and when I did … I repopped (the strained muscle).
There are links to other weird sports injuries here. And there are longer lists here:
John [...]

Apostophe’s and “Quotation Marks”

Apostrophes, quotation marks, oh my (via this comment at Sadly No!).