"...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like the fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."
- Jack Kerouac
Technology Review: Genesis of a Virus
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:30 pm EDT, Jun 3, 2008
Over the years, HIV has proved a tricky target. No one could definitively show where in the cell it assembled, or when it was released. Certainly no one knew how long it took a single virus to be born. And so much of what's known about HIV and other viruses has been pieced together through experiments that rely on inference: microscopic and chemical probing of cells frozen in different states of viral infection provide only information about what was happening in that cell at a particular moment in time. Now researchers have been able to watch as hundreds of thousands of molecules assemble inside a cell to create a single particle of HIV.
Wow...this is really neat. Scientists have tagged GAG (a major structural protein of HIV) with a fluorescent tag. Using TIRF microscopy (microscopy in which the microscope is able to observe a very thin slice in its focal plane), they were able to do some live cell imaging and show HIV virons assembling REAL TIME! (Be sure NOT to miss the link to the movie, underneath the still image in the article).
globeandmail.com: Ottawa insider was at the centre of the October Crisis of 1970
Topic: Miscellaneous
4:48 pm EDT, May 17, 2008
A career civil servant who had worked for six prime ministers from Mackenzie King to Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Cross watched anxiously from Parliament Hill as the drama unfolded. Wondering whether "this still could be Canada," he waited while Mr. Trudeau consulted his advisers.
"Canadians might've been accustomed to uniforms and arms during wartime, but to have them appear in peacetime gave one an uneasy feeling," Mr. Cross said decades later.null
The Globe and Mail ran an obit on my Grandfather friday.
RE: The World's Spookiest Weapons | Popular Science
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:46 pm EDT, May 14, 2008
k wrote:
Known as the Airborne Laser, the craft will house a multi-megawatt chemical oxygen iodine laser capable of hitting a target many hundreds of miles away. At its core, it's the same basic technology as found in a drugstore laser pointer, only a billion times more powerful. While the craft is scheduled for its first live target test in 2009, the laser and the airplane have yet to be tested together.
"Damn you, Kent! How could you build that mirror!"
Damn you Kerry, for taking the words right out of my mouth. Literally, just before I switched the slides onto "Airborne Laser", I was thinking - where is the real genius weapon?! And there it is....
To track down neuroscientist Corey Hart, you could stop by his laboratory, located on the second floor of Drexel University’s medical building in Philadelphia. Or, you could visit the lab of Luciftias Neurocam, located in the virtual world of Second Life
Pretty interesting development in the Second Life game....actual scientific research going on in game.
So today while speaking with one of my house-mates who mentioned that polar bears are becoming at risk of extinction, she made a plea that they were so cute.
While I agree, the polar bears we see in commercials are actually cute - real polar bears will eat your face.... much like the ones seen here in the golden compass. (Note: the above bears are alive only because of the coke bottle in their paws)
Why didn't they eat the little girl? I don't know but how fucking awesome was that? Mother fucking bears! At first I thought the movie was going to suck but this scene is worth it. They should have just renamed the movie "Mother Fucking Bears." Why you might ask - because MOTHER FUCKING BEARS, thats why!
Back to my point. Stephen Colbert has it right to be afraid of bears. Bears will eat you. They are not nice and cuddly which tells me that my house-mate would be eaten in the wilderness.
It isn't as though they are that dumb either. May I present exhibit Wojtek (Polish for Soldier Bear). Wojtek would carry heavy artillery shells for the Polish during WWII. That is not the coolest part. The coolest part is the soldiers considered him part of the team and would sit around and smoke cigarettes and drink beer with him.
What kind of jackass play fights with a bear? Wojtek liked water so much he would drain the water supply if they didn't keep the shower locked. Imagine if the Polish had no soldiers and only bears.... it wouldn't matter how much technology the Germans had because no one fights an army of bears. Especially, beer drinking cigarette smoking bears.
In conclusion: If bears had opposable thumbs, we'd be the ones going extinct.
