Parlor Trick. I've just acquired a container of Geneva Magview, which is basically a magnetic suspension in aerosol form. Spray it on the magnetic strip of a Metro fare card or a 3.5″ disk exumed from its plastic housing and–violla–the pattern of… [Matthew G. Kirschenbaum] —— the problem of course is the pattern has no […]

Science reader writes funds for author payments out of reach for non-U.S. scientists. Peter Celec, Open Access and Those Lacking Funds, Science 303(5663), 1467 (5 March 2004). (Access restricted to subscribers.) A Slovakian scientist comments on the lack of funds available to support author publication charges in his country, in contrast to U.S. scientists whom […]

Calvinball. Calvinball, as many would claim, is both pre- and post-cursor to Junkyard Sports. I exemplify: In this episode (one of only ten I was able to find on the remarkable collection of C&H strips found on Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn's) we see the following: [Funlog] ——- mmm calvinball…. I'm in the red zone, […]

Philosophers protest Bush's Dismissal of Bioethicists from Presidential Council. Philosophers Arthur Caplan (University of Pennsylvania) and Gerald Dworkin (University of California, Davis) have prepared a letter, signed by some 200 philosophers and bioethicists, protesting the latest political meddling with science and policy by the Bush Administration: In the absence of any public reasons explaining your […]

Lalo Alcaraz on Schwarzenegger's $15 billion bond issue   [Politics in the Zeros] —— were people this responsible….

this is great, all the calvin and hobbes fit to eat.

Accessing and preserving data. Tony Hey and Anne Trefethen, The Data Deluge: An e-Science Perspective, forthcoming in F. Berman et al. (eds.), Grid Computing, Wiley. The preprint is on Hey's web site. Abstract: “This paper previews the imminent flood of scientific data expected from the next generation of experiments, simulations, sensors and satellites. In order […]

the abstinence campaigns in sexual education in the u.s., which stopped pretty much prevent young people from being educated about their sexuality, have caused, over time, and increase in sexually transmitted diseases….

Death for Cursing Parents All who curse their father or mother must be put to death. They are guilty of a capital offense. Ê (Leviticus 20:9 NLT) God Kills the Curious Ê And he smote of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of Jehovah, he smote of the people seventy […]

Presentations on interoperability and repositories. The presentations from the conference, Breaking Boundaries: Integration and Interoperability (Melbourne, February 3-5, 2004), are now online. [Open Access News] — some nice presentations here, i still have to download a few.