Octavia Butler, the brilliant science fiction writer, reportedly died on Saturday following a fall.

Somehow I missed this. Very unfortunate.

(This is very sad indeed...she is a brilliant biopunk author. I recommend her writing...
-Nano)

Boing Boing: RIP, Octavia Butler,

Zombie Slave roaches...wow...this kicks total ass. Sometimes biology is so much more sci-fi than fiction

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.

Boing Boing: Wasp performs roach-brain-surgery to make zombie slave-roaches

Tom got into Science before I did....curse:)

Tom Cross, who is a software security researcher and co-developer of the MemeStream social networking website, also disagrees that “if we want to improve America's scientific competitiveness, we need to increase the supply of technical workers, which will reduce their cost.” Gathering Storm, he believes, has “misdefined the problem, [which] is on the demand side and not the supply side.”

“Technological competitiveness is not about how much technology you are doing but what kind,” he states. “You don't want to lead the world in having development sweatshops where people grind out code for hours at low wages. ... You want to lead the world in creating new innovations.”

Science Magazine quoted my MemeStream. :)

ScienceCareers.org | What's Wrong With American Science? : Benderly: 9 December 2005

] Reenie's head chip woke her by steadily increasing
] the perceived volume of a song by a British comedy
] troupe. Lots of trippy dreams last night. She
] couldn't remember them all this morning, but she was
] sure they were cool. She rolled out of bed and prepared
] for her "Commute" to the adjoining room. Reenie
] loved her job, well, as much as she could love any job.
] She got to work from home as much as she liked.

If you liked "Ownz0red" by Cory Doctorow, which many of you did, you will definitely like this quick little 10 minute read.

Futurismic: Fiction

] Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring
] from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really
] Want to Give You One

Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring

] We invite you to browse through the songs and artists on
] this site and download anything that strikes your fancy.
] The artists on this site have released their music under
] the Creative Commons license and agreed to allow their
] music to be used by you in any way and form for
] webcasting, as long as you don't take credit for the
] original work. We hope you will find something that will
] be useful to you in your Pod Cast!

Meme Alert - "Pod Safe Music"

Pod Safe Audio - Pod Safe Music under the Creative Commons license for Podcasts and Webcasting

] The Atlanta Time Machine website is dedicated to
] examining the history of Atlanta, Georgia by comparing
] vintage photographs of Atlanta with much more
] contemporary images shot, more or less, from the same
] perspective of the original photographer.

Atlanta Time Machine

For each week of 2004, we provide a graph of that week's social network activity, the most popular discussions, and the most popular users. Every link between people in the graphs represents at least one blog entry that was read and re-recommended; hence propagated further through the network. The arrows point to sources; they represent the flow of reputation. The users in each graph are those whose memes were re-recommended in the preceding two weeks. Users are colored depending on their popularity that week, with the highest scores getting the brightest colors. Links are only mapped for memes posted on a user's MemeStream. Replies in threads are not graphed.

fiine...see...I memed it...its cool

MemeStreams - Year in Graphs 2004

] This textbook contains material on gravity. Gravity is
] a theory, not a fact, regarding a force that cannot be
] directly seen. This material should be approached with an
] open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
]
] This book was anonymously donated to your school library to
] discreetly promote religious alternatives to the theory of
] evolution. When you are fvinished with it, please refile the
] book in the fiction section.

Wow, I never thought I'd say this, but right now I REALLY wish I was back in High School!

[Just because we aren't in high school, doesn't mean we can't be *in* the high school putting these stickers on the books;) Damn, I want this in t-shirt form -Nano]

Textbook disclaimer stickers

] Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for
] scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers,
] theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports
] from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to
] find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers,
] professional societies, preprint repositories and
] universities, as well as scholarly articles available
] across the web.

So far, I am pretty impressed. I do literature searches pretty much daily in my job, so more sites like this make my life much easier. I spend most of my time at Pubmed, but it is interesting to see what google catches that pubmed doesn't. I will definitly be keeping my eye on this. - Nano

Google Scholar