Currently Reading: "Elementals" - A. S. Byatt

A friend at a party I was attending yesterday mentioned that she didn't know that I had a Livejournal. Surprise! Allow me to give you and anyone else who finds this post a tour:

First we have the subject line. Sometimes I write this first before posts to describe a recent experience or the current state ( Read more... )

Currently Reading: A seemingly endless font of neuroscience articles

Conversely let me criticize a movie that is awesome, I just finished watching the Swiss film "Vitus", and beyond the disturbing affinity the audience begins to feel for Adolf Hitler should they before have watched "Der Untergang" there were a few internal consistency problems that  ( Read more... )

Currently Reading: "Nothing That Meets the Eye" - Patricia Highsmith

I just spoke to my friend YK for the first time since the Japanese earthquake- thankfully she, her family, and her friends are fine! She has been trying to get me to come visit her in Tokyo since I have joined Facebook but I have jokingly argued that there are too many natural ( Read more... )

Currently Reading: "The Story of a Strange Time" - Leonid Borodin
It is too warm now, I shaved off my crazy beard today. Earlier this week while waiting on a sidewalk corner a girl started taking cell phone pictures of me and laughing from her car. I've been getting Jesus jokes from all corners (as usual for February) and one comment that I will ( Read more... )

Currently Reading: "The Myth of the Rational Market" - Justin Fox

My Egypt-inspired kick ended with a viewing of Kanye West's short film "Runaway". The man samples Aphex Twin and hires good people to form his aesthetic but on many occassions his lyrics are maximally skeezy and I am glad when he stops to autotune ballet sequences instead of ( Read more... )

Currently Reading: "Brain Fuel" - Joe Schwarcz

Hmmmmm.... In the last week I went to a better 'Iowa City Foreign Relations Council' meeting than usual, the talk was given by a woman on the Jewish community and its history in the island, as well as her experience seeing a man being arrested for selling pork (which, like lobster, the state has a legal ( Read more... )

Currently Reading: Science Translation Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3001304  > > (please note EGU is something of a nutter butter)

Imbolc brought a giant blizzard this year! I was rather surprised, I should read more local news instead of getting all of my weather information from HNN. Since snow advisories were keeping everyone from work I ( Read more... )

Currently Reading: "After That, We Are Ignorant" - Bilal Tanweer >


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Currently Reading: "Immortality: How Science is Extending Your Life Span and Changing The World" - Ben Bova (audible.com)

In news at which my friend DC would likely be writing in jest "I can't believe you're even concerned about this at all when we could all be raped to death by Julian Assange tomorrow" we, the people of America, are losing our ( Read more... )

"Publication standards vary widely, with some conferences and journals accepting all submissions, and others accepting only a few. More important, almost all research is useless; no one really reads the papers. (One study estimates that on the average, a given research paper is read by .5 people, with the number being skewed upward by the few ( Read more... )