-
The Paradox of Universalism
Another long boring blog that will make Robin complain...
I'm a Unitarian-Universalist. Strictly speaking, this means that I'm a member of a church that is part of the Unitarian Universalist Association, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Since I live outside of the United States, my congregation is the Church of the Larger Fellowship ( Read more... ) -
Antiquities Theft/Trade and Treasure Hunting
I'm actually going to blog about the subject of my studies today, sort of. A few weeks ago in one of my classes we had a discussion about the theft and trade of antiquities. Problems that particularly concern archaeologists include illicit digging at archaeological sites, and the sale of ancient artifacts on the art market.
Listening to and ( Read more... ) -
Stupid science article statement of the week
Attempt #1 a short blog (at reader request).
Gluten is relatively new to the human diet, as wheat cultivation began only some 10,000 years ago.
Jury Is Still Out on Gluten, the Latest Dietary Villain - New York Times
It's true that we only domesticated wheat 10,000 years ago, but we've been eating it longer than that.
technorati ( Read more... ) -
Ode to Munich
A cite in the Economist lead to the Mercer 2007 World-wide Quality of Living Survey, which came out a couple of weeks ago. Munich, where I live, was ranked 8th in the survey.
People often ask me how I like living in Munich (having lived here for 2 years now, having previously lived in Chicago, San Francisco, and Berlin), and especially how it ( Read more... ) -
Dieting and Weight Loss Study
Robin mentioned reading about a meta-study about weightloss programs, and I found an article about it in the scotsman. Basically, it says that diets are useless, and the only useful weight loss comes through more exercise. The article asks, why do we diet, when we just gain the wait back again?
I'll tell you why we do it. The hint comes down in ( Read more... ) -
A look in Taska's Spam Barrel
Yesterday, in preparation for the deletion of over 3 years of spam backlog, I did a bit of a study of my spam. Mostly this was directed at the efficacy of my spam filter, but I looked a bit into overall nature of my spam also. I lamed out on the geek end of it and used searches in Thunderbird instead of doing any scripting, which probably made it ( Read more... ) -
Apnea
Oh right, I have a BLOG....
Robin is an apneist. I'm not so much, although I have been known once in awhile to spend time underwater without a tank. In the past few weeks I have gone on a couple of freediving (Wikipedia) trips with Robin (to Tenerife and to Konstanz), and while I have been sitting on the surface waiting for him, I have been ( Read more... ) -
Duco Photos
Robin wanted me to upload some photos to flickr, so I took the easy way out and made some of my favorite photo torture victim, Duco. We've taught him a number of tricks like sit, stay, lie down, fetch, and pattycake. He's taught us a number of tricks like dinner, out, cuddle, and play.
Blogged with Flock
-
Negative Income Tax
I'm back in Munich after a wild week in Chicago (wild in that it was a whirlwind of cleaning and repairing and renting my apartment). The United States was warm and sunny, just as confident and optimistic as always, and seems to be getting along just fine without me.
Before I left Robin and I were watching a very interesting series of videos ( Read more... ) -
Magic Mushrooms
So everyone seems to be talking these days about the study that shows "magic mushrooms cause spiritual experiences". Frankly, when I heard about this, I had no idea what it meant, so I looked it up. The study was done by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and published in the journal Psychopharmacology. In the study abstract I found several ( Read more... )