CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-18 22:04:50 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Not surprising, considering the evidence that much of what's considered hypertension isn't harmful.
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~scp/publications/mortality.PDF
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~scp/publications/dbp.pdf

2013-05-18 21:49:23 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

2013-05-18 21:36:24 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Some good news in the Kiera Wilmot case.

2013-05-15 17:59:19 (1 comments, 4 reshares, 7 +1s)

2013-05-13 07:36:54 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

2013-05-12 23:14:00 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

The article I just posted about wolves moved me to look up Jean Craighead George, the most influential fiction writer of my childhood. (For those who don't know, she wrote Julie of the Wolves, a book about an Inuit girl who runs away from a forced marriage and lives for a time with a tundra wolf pack.) It turns out she died last year, at age 92. Her books will live on for a long time to come.

2013-05-12 23:06:51 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

Why everything you know about wolf packs is wrong; the alpha wolf doesn't exist—at least not in the wild. http://io9.com/why-everything-you-know-about-wolf-packs-is-wrong-502754629

2013-05-12 21:47:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

2013-05-12 20:40:00 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

2013-05-12 20:35:55 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

How the price of paint is set in the hearts of dying stars

Today I’m going to try to explain the real reason that barns are painted red: nuclear fusion. And yes, this is an excuse to take a mad ride around some of the stranger corners of physics and chemistry in order to give you the real, this-is-not-BS, answer to a simple question.

This question got stuck in my head as a result of an episode of a long-forgotten sitcom called Head of the Class, about a high school class full of smart kids. (Sort of like Welcome Back, Kotter in reverse) This being an American show, it’s obligatory to occasionally emphasize the superiority of the ordinary virtue of “plain folk,” so in one episode the protagonists face off in some kind of academic contest with kids from a rural school, and end up losing because their city-slicker knowledge can’t answer the question “why are barnsred?” (And ... more »

2013-05-12 19:43:15 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Sign a petition opposing sale of Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to the Koch Brothers.  Can you believe that we are even in this position?

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/08/local/la-me-tribune-times-koch-20130509

Petition: http://democracyforamerica.com/pages/768?t=bernie

2013-05-12 19:36:42 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-05-12 00:53:04 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

Amen!

via +Michael Swanson 

2013-05-11 22:53:28 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

2013-05-08 17:27:24 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Two power outages in under a week. What country am I living in?

2013-05-08 06:14:02 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

2013-05-08 06:08:13 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Sounds about right.

2013-05-08 04:57:41 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

2013-05-06 04:24:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Click through for video.

2013-05-06 02:52:39 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

Learning about astronomy is a character building experience as Carl Sagan once said. It’s a subject that inspires you to branch out to other disciplines like chemistry, geology, biology and so on. Neil deGrasse Tyson always talks about how in the 60’s, with the mission to land on the moon, NASA made us feel that we were dreaming about tomorrow. This type of thinking and inspiration resonated with kids and young adults to become scientists and to contribute something meaningful to society. NASA is an investment that will inspire anyone it gets a hold of to dream about tomorrow.

NASA at one point or another has wowed most of us. Now they are in a time of need where money is tight and funding is dwindling. It would be amazing to see NASA’s budget get doubled and feel that we could see a lot more of that wow factor. There are many people who want to change the world and I dare you to do justthat.... more »

2013-05-06 01:52:29 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 8 +1s)

This is actually a pretty good reflection of regional differences in the US. Both in terms of travel patterns, but also socialization patterns. 

2013-05-05 22:27:47 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

52 years ago today, Alan Shepard became the first American to fly in space. Our expedition 28 mission patch honors both the first American, Alan Shepard and the first human Yuri Gagarin. It was an honor to be aboard the International Space Station during the 50th anniversary of both of those milestones.

#TheKeyIsWe

2013-05-05 22:27:19 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

I've filled out the application and profile and intro video for "Mars One" - the proposed endeavor to send volunteers to "colonize" Mars well before a simple manned landing and return can be accomplished. How? Simple.  Make the journey one way!  I have mixed feelings, but I approve of the devil-may-care courage that's involved and the willingness to toss aside the solipsistic importance of the self for something spectacularly ground-breaking. I can't promise for sure that I would go.  But I talk about the mind-set and I think I've got at least a bit of it. Drop by and view and vote!

An alternative to weigh in comparison is Dennis Tito's endeavor to attempt to send an older married couple on a free-return flyby of Mars in 2018. Ideally a couple with some qualifications. My wife & I both have planetary science doctorates.  Now... to persuade her!<... more »

2013-05-05 22:23:14 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

2013-05-05 22:14:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-05-05 22:07:02 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-05-04 06:12:29 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

For those looking for updates on the Kiera Wilmot case:

2013-05-04 03:44:34 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Somebody on the bus (possibly the driver) is whistling the Ode to Joy.

2013-05-03 07:08:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Ginny Walbot on "Domesticating the beast" follow up to her "Are we training pit bulls to review our manuscripts" http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/11/35

2013-05-03 07:05:55 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

One of those great "only in America" moments: the UCLA Lebanese Social Club sold churros for a fundraiser!

2013-05-01 17:14:50 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-05-01 07:06:05 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

So this is epic.
Build a game about building games.
Released a cracked copy where players eventually go bankrupt due to piracy.
Watch what happens...

2013-04-28 23:56:30 (14 comments, 2 reshares, 9 +1s)

2013-04-28 20:46:10 (1 comments, 9 reshares, 36 +1s)

Brilliant !!

2013-04-28 07:46:45 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

Marginal impacts of flying: Got data?

The "flying is the worst thing you do in terms of CO2 emissions" discussion has once again flared up, this time on ECOLOG. But how do we assess this impact? The usual method for doing so just divides the total CO2 emissions for a flight by the number of passengers on this flight. This is justified by the argument that, although the CO2 cost of carrying one more person (marginal impact) may be small, your flying increases the overall number of planes in the air (http://sustainability.tufts.edu/air-travel/). Still, it seems like this calculation method has the potential to be seriously misleading.

I broke up the total CO2 emissions that can be attributed to a passenger into marginal impact (the CO2 resulting from the extra energy it takes to move you) and demand impact: CO2 impact = marginal impact + impact on demand * average impact... more »

2013-04-28 06:53:26 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

2013-04-25 07:25:16 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

2013-04-25 03:22:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Seriously awesome. A woman who was born with only three fingers on one hand ended up having to have it amputated. She then developed a phantom hand -- with five fingers.

2013-04-22 17:18:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

2013-04-22 17:09:41 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Random question: when police arrest someone for drunk driving and there's a passenger who's themselves too drunk to drive, what are they supposed to do with the passenger?

2013-04-22 04:21:52 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

2013-04-22 01:55:25 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

2013-04-22 01:18:26 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Going for a million signatures to stop Keystone XL!

2013-04-21 22:41:55 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-04-21 18:40:14 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-04-21 04:42:07 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

It may be inspired by military methods, but it just looks like good community policing to me.

2013-04-21 04:04:55 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

Bees remember flowers that have caffeine in their nectar better than other flowers. I wonder if the caffeine directly helps memory or if bees just like it.

2013-04-21 03:52:23 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Could computers give us telepathy?

2013-04-20 22:13:59 (4 comments, 3 reshares, 13 +1s)

Good news : isolated coral reefs can recover from bleaching.

2013-04-20 22:09:18 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

A counterintuitive discovery about defective viruses helping the translation of normal ones.