Science/Technology blog

What is soft, furry, clean, and curious and actually makes a decent pet? A rabbit. Yep, rabbits are one of the few species that we take on our Oakland Zoo ZooMobile outings and feel it is ok to choose as pets, with proper care and preparations, of course (not so much for the hedgehogs).

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If you’re on the hunt for reading material, you’re in luck — there’s a particularly deep selection of good blog carnivals to choose from this week:

All Women Blogging Carnival (a brand new carnival!)Books Carnival at The Book’s DenSeventeenth Edition of the Carnival of Mathematics: “At Seventeen, I Learned the Truth”The Carnival of Space - week 21, the XPrize editionCarnival of the Green #96Encephalon 32, A Neuroscience CarnivalFriday Ark #157Gene Genie Number 16Grand RoundsI And The Bird #58What’s Up, Postdoc?

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As I continue to answer questions from my earlier solicitation, I am going to skip ahead to the question:

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Posted in Chemistry at 4:00 pm by David Bradley — 2 Comments

NOW with working links!

The latest issue of chemistry webzine Reactive Reports is now online, in this month’s issue:

Plain or Vanilla  Some men smell of vanilla while others smell of urine, but it is not always down to personal hygiene or ice-cream tainted Cologne.

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Snipped from the huffingtonpost.com.

In reviewing the news on the Huffington Post, I came across an article by Bill Maher that while it made me laugh, it probably makes more sense than all the politics in Washington put together. Bush and Co. belabor their premise that we need to fight terrorists in Iraq so that it won’t become a base for terrorism. Well, has anyone checked to see how much of the fight in Iraq is with al-Qaeda? It amazes me that it is never brought up in the news media or that no one will challenge this premise. Well, Maher brings it up and makes a great point about how the hell we can fight al-Qaeda and get out of Iraq at the same time.

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Posted in Science at 4:00 pm by David Bradley — Click to comment

My wife’s mother is very keen to trace her family tree and has dug up roots as far back as the early 18th century with possible hints at some ancestors dating back to the late 1600s. She has quite a rare and locally focused maiden name, so it has been a little easier for her than it would be for someone in England called Smith. Personally, I gave up any notion of trying to find my ancestors as my name, while not incredibly common is not rare, meaning as it does “broad field” and so is quite widespread in its various forms.

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It’s been called “Burning Man for science geeks.” The annual Maker Faire attracts thousands of amateur inventors and scientists, displaying their home-made prototypes and gadget hacks. In a world where the technological race is speeding up, the Maker movement has revealed that the do-it-yourself culture is in no danger of dying out.

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It’s a virtual world, but the transactions are real. Go inside Second Life, an online game where millions of people are creating digital personalities called avatars and are living virtual lives– meeting other avatars, going to events, and even buying property with real money.

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Well, in case you haven’t heard the news yet, it’s a case of good news / bad news for the folks in Peru with the recent meteor impact.

The good news — that illness they came down with wasn’t all in their heads. Well, not for all of them, anyway.

The bad news — the illness is a side-effect of arsenic poisoning.

It turns out (as the BBC briefly alluded to a few days ago) that the ground water in the vicinity of the new impact crater contains high levels of arsenic. The heat of the meteor’s impact vaporized enough of this water to create an arsenic-laced fog around the crater.

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Academy volunteer at work“A few years ago I was working 40 hours a week for good pay: now I’m working longer hours for no pay, and life has never been better.”

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