Another addition to the #hipsterscience photography meme – A colorful BCA assay for total protein in clinical blood samples.
Photograph by Metousiosis.
A Pulseless Heart
•January 26, 2012 • Leave a CommentFocus Forward Films highlights the extraordinary vision of doctors Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier, from the Texas Heart Institute, in their effort to show that “physiology can be supported without a pulse,” by replacing a dying man’s heart with a device capable of providing a steady stream of blood to the body, ”like water from a garden hose.”
[Via Texas Medical Center]
Aurora and the Largest Solar Storm in 6 Years
•January 25, 2012 • 3 CommentsAP provides this beautiful time lapse video, captured last weekend, of the Aurora over Trondheim, Norway, manifested from the largest solar storm since 2005.
Debunking 10 Common Misconceptions
•January 24, 2012 • Leave a CommentC.G.P. Grey shines the light of reality on 10 popular myths in merely 4 minutes.
Ferguson’s Unseen Doctor Who Opening
•January 22, 2012 • Leave a CommentAfter watching far too many episodes of Doctor Who last night, I simply have to re-post this . . .
It’s all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.
TED: Drew Berry – Animations of Unseeable Biology
•January 22, 2012 • Leave a CommentDrew Berry presents some of his advances with computer graphics, in this TED talk, in order to illuminate the unseeable biology occurring every second in every cell within your body.
Metousiosis 22Jan12 Links
•January 22, 2012 • Leave a CommentThe weekend link dumb:
- Marketers of acai products fined $1.5 million for false claims and unfair billing
- How Airplanes Fly – The Real Story (With Experimental Verification!)
- The rebranding of CAM as “harnessing the power of placebo”
- The Big Picture: Haiti slow to recover from 2010 quake
- The New England Journal of Medicine Sinks a Bit Lower
- Nobel laureate, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, takes aim at pseudoscience in India
- Chinese Government investing $1b to boost TCM industry
- Free Thought Event: Reason Rally March 24 IN D.C.
- Austerity For Dummies: A 3-Minute Guide To A Very Bad (And Very Powerful) Idea
- Craig Venter Explains How Pond Scum Will Save the World
- World Map of All Wars and Conflicts Happening In 2012
- Dr. Phil follows Dr. Oz’s descent into psychic woo
- Why skeptics should embrace political advocacy — and how they can do it
- NIH Director Francis Collins doesn’t understand the problem with CAM
- Facilitated Communication – Again – in the HuffPo
- Soapy: an even better anti-SOPA browser plugin
- Obama Administration Lost Big at the Supreme Court
- How the new ‘Protecting Children’ bill puts you at risk
- James Webb Space Telescope: A year of achievement and success
- 10 Stubborn Body Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science
Winter . . .
•January 22, 2012 • 1 CommentFinally, now in the later half of January, Boston was dusted with 1-2 inches of snow in what seems to be a rather bleak winter. Below is Evans Way Park with the new wing of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the background.
Photograph by Metousiosis.
I Don’t Know…
•January 21, 2012 • Leave a Comment
The Nature of Phi
•January 21, 2012 • Leave a CommentVi Hart expands upon her pervious video on the Fibonacci sequence to explore the role of phi (1.618o3399… or The Golden Ratio) in nature.
Although there are a lot of myths out there regarding phi, it remains my favorite irrational number.
Dumpster Diving
•January 20, 2012 • Leave a CommentDaniel Klein highlights the life of someone who dumpster dives in order to sustain his family, and thus emphasizes the great abundance, waste, and inefficiency in todays US food market.
The Joke That Is The Super PAC
•January 20, 2012 • Leave a CommentJon Stewart and Stephen Colbert make a complete mockery of the US regulations concerning the coordination of Super PACs with their presidential candidates.
Given the power of Super PACs and that provided to corporations through Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission there is little question of the government’s progression towards the monetization of democracy.
The Voyager Probes
•January 19, 2012 • Leave a CommentTime Magazine provides this succinct overview of the fight paths of the two Voyager space probes, as they are destined to break the heliopause and enter interstellar space, on their now 34 year, 11-12 billion mile, voyage. These are the spacecrafts that contain those glorious golden records with extraterrestrial greetings from Earth.
SOPA/PIPA Protest Results
•January 19, 2012 • 1 CommentThe internet is powerful. Below are some results provided by Fight For The Future regarding yesterday’s SOPA/PIPA protest and internet blackout:
Google launched a petition. Wikipedia voted to shut itself off. Senators’ websites went down just from the sheer surge of voters trying to write them. NYC and SF geeks had protests that packed city blocks.
You made history today: nothing like this has ever happened before. Tech companies and users teamed up. Tens of millions of people who make the internet what it is joined together to defend their freedoms. The free network defended itself. Whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: from today forward, it will be much harder to mess up the internet.
The really crazy part? We might even win.
Approaching Monday’s crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA. Last week there were 5. And it just takes just 41 solid “no” votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate. What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach.
But don’t trust predictions. The forces behind SOPA & PIPA (mostly movie companies) can make small changes to these bills until they know they have the votes to pass. Members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, but they don’t understand why–so they’re easily duped by superficial changes. The Senate returns next week, and the next few days are critical. Here are two things to think about:
1. Plan on calling your Senator every day next week. Pick up the phone each morning and call your Senators’ offices, until they vote “no” on cloture. If your site participated today, consider running a “Call the Senate” link all next week.
2. Tomorrow, drop in at your Senators’ district offices. We don’t have a cool map widget to show you the offices nearest you (we’re too exhausted! any takers?). So do it the old fashioned way: use Google, or the phonebook to find the address, and just walk in, say you oppose PIPA, and urge the Senator to vote “no” on cloture. These drop-in visits make our spectacular online protests more tangible and credible.
That’s it for now. Be proud and stay on it!
–Holmes, Tiffiniy, and the whole Fight for the Future team.
It’s not too late to sign the petition, before the 24Jan12 vote.
UPDATED 19Jan12:
The congressional shift in support of PIPA/SOPA Via BoingBoing:
And Rachel Maddow’s take on how Congress does not understand the internet:
Stephen Fry: QI on American Cults
•January 19, 2012 • Leave a CommentStephen Fry, as host of the comedy quiz show QI on BBC, takes a brief – and incomprehensive – look at the failures of American cults/religions in their predictions of the rapture.
