So a few weeks ago, we were over at Amy and Danny’s for dinner, and somehow Lipitor came up (no, it had nothing to do with the dinner Amy was cooking!). Anyway, Amy said “Why is Jarvick a good person to promote a drug. I mean, that heart didn’t work, right?”Hmm…. Good point, I thought.And now, today’s news makes it all the more interesting… Continue reading Jarvick … Lipitor … Something did not seem right…
Monthly Archives: February 2008
Nature News
Hunting Wolves; Killing Elephants Continue reading Nature News
Space, the Final (political) Frontier…
According to the New York Times, “An
Errant Satellite Is Gone, but Questions Linger” …Should the people of the world be breathing a sigh of relief that the risk of a half-ton of frozen, toxic rocket fuel landing who knows where has passed? Or should they be worried about the latest display of the United States’ technical prowess, and see it as a thinly veiled test for a shadow antisatellite program?
Movable Type Bloggers: A Neat Tip
This is for Linux users, but there are ways to implement it on Windows and Mac boxes (but you are on your own.)If you use the movable type interface, you will know that when you generate a “Create New Entry” page, the current date is placed in the “Entry Date” filed. But, as time passes, that date does not change. So, if you work on this post for an hour, the date of your post is now an hour stale. You get the point.To fix this, you need to adjust the date before you “Publish” the post. But the date has to be in exactly the same format. And the time zone you are publishing on may not be the time zone you live in. And so on.I have a solution. Continue reading Movable Type Bloggers: A Neat Tip
Heath News
Angst-ridden teens have different brain structures: study from PhysOrg.com
It turns out your mother was right: angst-ridden teens really do have something wrong with their heads.[…]
Who benefits from antidepressants? from PhysOrg.com
A new study published today in PLoS Medicine suggests that antidepressants only benefit some, very severely depressed patients.[…]
A Quick Comparison of the Clinton and Obama Health Care Plans is at The Scientific Activist.
The Robot Takeover is Getting Closer
A mind control device … where your mind controls a video game, is soon to be developed, and is obviously the first step in the Robot plan to Take Over the World.
Some scary new technology will soon be coming to market: video game controllers that let you use your thoughts rather than your hands. The EPOC neuroheadsets are “designed to detect conscious thoughts and expressions as well as ‘non-conscious emotions’ by reading electrical signals around the brain”.
Reward now, punishment later. [source: Primordial Blog]Then there’s this: Continue reading The Robot Takeover is Getting Closer
Human Evolution News
A new genetic analysis of people from around the world adds further confirmation to the African origin of humans. The study of genetic details from 938 individuals from 51 populations provides evidence of how people are related and different, researchers led by Richard M. Myers of Stanford University report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
Life After Darwin Part 05
Happy Birthday Brian Switek!
Go over to Laelaps and wish Brian a Happy Birthday!
Microsoft Dupes Library of Congress
Microsoft has paid the Library of Congress a huge bribe so that they will adopt some of their software, and use hardware running Vista in public areas. This is, of course, a travesty. As Boing Boing says, “Library of Congress sells itself out to Microsoft for a mere $3 mil” … You know this is George Bush’s fault. Continue reading Microsoft Dupes Library of Congress
Judge Sticks it to Microsoft
During the 2006 holiday shopping season, in a desperate attempt to boost weak sales of their totally sucky operating system, Microsoft engineerd the branding of zillions of PC’s with the slogan “Windows Vista Capable.”Those computers were only able to run a very stripped down version of the senselessly bloated operating system, called, laughingly and absurdly, “Vista Home Basic.”People bought the computers, and felt ripped off (because, well, they Microsoft had really stuffed it to them) and somebody sued.Now, the suit is elevated to the level of a class action suit. Continue reading Judge Sticks it to Microsoft
R R R
That’s the sound of a statistician or scientist laughing because s/he has some really cool software and didn’t pay a dime for it, because it is open source.Since we are talking about R, I thought I’d point you to a couple of screen shots. Here it is running on a Mac, and here it is running on a Linux box.These images are about 200 K or so in size, and they come to us courtesy of The R Project for Statistical Computing
R 2.6.2 is released
This is not a big deal … it is mainly a bug-busting maintenance release with a few new features (listed below). I mention it, however, to remind you that R exists.R is in my view the most versatile and powerful statistical system available. Many people say it has a steep learning curve, but I think this is because it does not have a commonly used graphical user interface. In fact, if you are doing serious statistics, R is not harder to learn than any other professional system. Continue reading R 2.6.2 is released
Get Your”No to Nader”Blog Badge!
Here they are, in all sizes for all blogs, sidebars, and other places on the web. Or blow it up and put it up on your lawn next to your Obama or Clinton sign! Or use it as the template for a tattoo. … Continue reading Get Your”No to Nader”Blog Badge!
Live Blogging the Oscars!!!!
Well, the oscars have just started, and the stars, the women in their fancy dresses and the men in their tux, are all talking to Regis on the red carpet…. Continue reading Live Blogging the Oscars!!!!