I just spent $17.75 for gas at $2.82 per gallon. This is just ahead of a gas price cap that’s about to be implemented here. Since nobody really knows how this is gonna work, there’s all manner of speculation; will the prices go up, go down, stay the same? The cap is supposed to be …
If you ever wondered how the now-discredited practice of frontal lobotomy first became an acceptable medical procedure, MedPundit has a brief history. It’s interesting and disturbing at the same time. Link via Derek Lowe.
Here’s an interesting book list: the scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Research Center have recommended science books for their lay friends. The Center’s scientists narrowed down their favorites to books they would readily recommend to their typical non- scientist friends. The chosen books had to be in print and selected from the categories of biography/autobiography, …
I spent two hours trying to track down a copy of a 1979 article so I could photocopy the thing today, and I’m annoyed. The local medical library has been forced to hand over its collections to the new University School of Medicine Library, and that one’s not real organized yet. I finally found a …
The blog is hungry. The blog will not be ignored. It is an insatiable little beast, a creature still unclassified by science — hairy, warty, slobbering, with its own fiendish agenda. I often fantasize about killing the blog, but I worry that it will respond just like the crazed computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey”: …
Your wretched refuse is not protected by law, at least in Montana. The Supreme Court of Montana ruled last month that police could conduct a warrantless “trash dive” into the trash cans in the alley behind the home of a man named Darrell Pelvit. The cops discovered evidence of pseudoephedrine and Naptha–a solvent with uses …
In honor of our guests I took the car to the local car wash, and the brush machine knocked the driver-side mirror off. It’s about 90 degrees out there; standing around while the Chevron attendant put it back together and filled out the forms to get a replacement ordered was not in my plans today. …
The NYT has looked into the backers of the Discovery Institute, which promotes Intelligent Design, and found (quel surprise!) the likes of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Philip F. Anschutz and Richard Mellon Scaife. Hmm. Anyone who paid attention to the backers of the VRWC during the Clinton years will recognize those names. The institute would …
This is rich. Dick Cheney, to a veterans’ group yesterday: The vice president cited the darkest days of the American Revolution, when the war was going badly and ragtag rebels were ready to go home until George Washington rallied them. “They stayed in the fight, and America won the war,” he said. “From that day …
The deck railing is fixed. Due to an unexpected but very welcome e-mail from the California part of the family, the house is far tidier than it has been in a while. (It was clean enough, but…cluttered.) Now I don’t want to cook till after they get here.