Comeuppance for Ben Stein
April 14th, 2008 ecoliThis has been making the rounds on the blogs.
Ben Stein’s expelled movie is in hot water for using secondary party content without permission. Read science after sunclipse’s witty response.
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NY Mets get ‘RickRolled’
April 8th, 2008 ecoliThanks to the excellent folks at Digg, the last opening day at Shea Stadium was graced with the sounds of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Link.
The song received 5 million votes in the Met’s new theme song contest, but will probably be replaced with Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” or Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” because Rick Astley’s song was booed when it was played at the game today. I guess Mets fans can’t appreciate genius when they hear it. It’s no wonder they haven’t won a World Series since 1986.
New Theme (same great content)
April 8th, 2008 ecoliDon’t be shocked, faithful readers, but I’ve decided to go with a new theme. I think this gives my blog a slightly more professional look.
What do you think?
I-CON 2008
April 2nd, 2008 ecoliAny science-fiction, fantasy, anime, and science fans should head down to New York this weekend for the 27th Island Convention (I-Con). It’s at Stony Brook University April 4-6. I’ll be volunteering (as usual) at the con, setting up the dealers room all day thursday. It should be a great con, with plenty of awesome guests, RPGs, computer/console gaming, music, food, demonstrations, lectures, etc…
Check out the website at www.iconsf.org.
Battlefield Acupunture
March 19th, 2008 ecoliOrac, from science blogs’s Respectful Insolance, brings to light a disturbing new trend in medicine; Woo invades the military.
Apparently, some German and American medics are (independently) exploring the use acupuncture to deal with pain. Despite the enthusiasm the military seems to have for this new program, they don’t seem to care much about waiting for research to discover if acupuncture is actually does what they say. It seems like this could be a potentially expensive and dangerous display of the placebo effect.
Ask Col. Richard Niemtzow, a radiation oncologist-turned acupuncturist for the Air Force how to deal with phantom pain of amputees and he’ll tell you to put needles into the ear, an organ closely associated with the central nervous system. The needles interfere with pain processing by interrupting and turning “the pathways.”
Priest-Cosmologist Wins $1.6 Million Templeton Prize
March 15th, 2008 ecoliAccording to the NY Times, this years winner of the Templeton Prize is a catholic priest/cosmologist. Michael Keller, who is 72, works for the Pontifical Academy of Theology, in Krakow, Poland. He is devoted to studying questions such as “does the universe need to have a cause?”
I was almost surprised when I read this, thinking it unlikely that Catholic priest should have the objectiveness to study cosmology, especially in relation to cosmology. However, Heller is strongly against the God of the Gaps theory and is quite for teaching evolution in the classrooms, describing the feud as a ‘misunderstanding’.
As it turns out, this is exactly the kind of guy I want to see playing a role in religious institutions. Now, if only members of the US protestant religions would come to the same realization…
AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water
March 10th, 2008 ecoliAccording to this report from the AP, pharmaceuticals are building up in the water reservoirs of virtually every major American city as well as Canada and Europe. Unmetabolized drugs find there way from sewage treatment plants into our nations water supply. Of course, we don’t know what the effects will be on the general population, the concentration of drugs are really low… but you just know it can’t be good.
Information Revolution: The Music Industry in a Digital Age
February 28th, 2008 ecoliReviews of 2007 sales show that through iTunes, Apple, Inc. is now the number two music retailer in the country, beating out Best Buy and Target, but still lagging behind Walmart. 10% of legally obtained music is now downloaded, a 6% jump from last year. Meanwhile, the average American spends $4 less per year on music and approximately 1 million Americans stopped purchasing CDs.
These statistics speak volumes about the way the music industry is changing. Apple, originally a computer and software company found a niche in the market for portable music devices, in the way other companies were developing slimmer cell phones and digital cameras at the beginning of the 21st century. Apple was able to successfully advertise the iPod and its accompanying software, iTunes, and still largely commands the market on portable music devices.
However, portable music players are nothing new, so why is the iPod revolutionizing the music industry? What separates the iPod from the Sony Discman, and the Walkman before it, is that the iPod is completely dependant on computers in order to function. The rise of the iPod has coincided perfectly with the rise of the internet. People are getting used to transmitting information and communicating through the internet, so transmitting music is the next logical step. Completely digital transmitted music is cheaper, more efficient and less wasteful than CDs.
Through iTunes, Apple has 50 million customers and has sold 4 billion songs - and that is just music obtained legally through one music purchasing program.
Walmart Chooses Blu-Ray
February 15th, 2008 ecoliThe nations top retailer, Walmart, has officially chosen sides in the ‘Blu-Ray’ verses HD-DVD debate, according to this AP report.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Wal-Mart-Blu-ray.html?_r=1&ex=1360818000&oref=slogin
Netflix, Blockbusters, Target, MGM, News Corp, Fox, Disney and Time Warner have also chosen Sony’s Blu-Ray over Toshiba’s HD-DVD. Personally, I think because ‘Blu-Ray’ was a cooler sounding name, and thus more marketable to consumers.
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