Jeff Martin

So there's this girl...

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:02:13 +0200

I love her, and she loves me.

She’s the single best thing that has happened to me.

I would do anything for her.

One Chat at a Time

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:21:34 +0200

One Chat at a Time :

alexainslie:

“And there it is: his name is right under hers. I move the cursor over it, and the thumbnail pops up with all of his information. His address, clarkstatehood@gmail. com. His icon, a photo of Patrick Swayze from Road House. A little gray dot, just like the one next to Cella’s name. As if he’s just not available to chat at the moment. Clark is offline.”

allcreatures: Photo: Matthias Rietschel (via SFGate: Day in...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:29:47 +0200

allcreatures:

Photo: Matthias Rietschel (via SFGate: Day in Pictures)

hardlivin: got a wallet full of these to pass out, thanks to...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:29:23 +0200

hardlivin:

got a wallet full of these to pass out, thanks to thinkgeek.com.

sciencecenter: Insulin spray shows early promise in warding off...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:28:06 +0200

sciencecenter:

Insulin spray shows early promise in warding off Alzheimer’s

A twice-daily dose of insulin, sprayed deep in the nose for easy transit to the brain, may slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new pilot study. The researchers gave 104 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease or pre-Alzheimer’s cognitive impairment one of three nasal sprays for four months. One group of patients got a nasal spray with a moderate dose of insulin twice a day, one group got a higher dose, and the third got a squirt of saline solution, as a placebo. The memory, cognitive abilities, and day-to-day functioning of patients given insulin stayed constant or improved slightly—particularly for those given the moderate dose of insulin rather than the high dose—while the abilities and memory of patients given the placebo declined.

It makes sense that insulin might slow the advance of the disease. In addition to its effect on blood sugar levels, insulin seems to guard against some of the ill effects of the amyloid plaques that build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Diabetics and other people whose bodies produce too little insulin or aren’t responsive to it are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s.

This was a small, short-term study; to know whether insulin nasal sprays can really keep Alzheimer’s at bay, researchers will need to run longer-lasting studies with more patients. But given that there aren’t currently any ways to treat or slow the course of Alzheimer’s, this study highlights a promising direction for further research.

philphys: “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” —...

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:45:06 +0200

philphys:

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

— Carl Sagan

chocolatesexfactory: i hate marijuana tryhards more than anything. Smoking weed is not a status...

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 18:58:20 +0200

chocolatesexfactory:

i hate marijuana tryhards more than anything.

Smoking weed is not a status symbol. People need to understand this.

Photo

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:25:10 +0200

Photo

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:24:47 +0200

Orson Scott Card the Homophobe and My Hero

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:23:48 +0200

Orson Scott Card has always been one of my favorite authors. Ender’s Game inspired me as a child, and I would venture that it had a large impact on who I am today, as well as how I see my place in the world. Though what’s troubling about my childhood hero is that he’s homophobic.

I understand that he has conservative views, as well as a Mormon background, but he’s not your typical conservative:

He speaks on the need to conserve fossil fuels in a, mostly, unorthodox manner for a conservative.
He believes that the world’s governments need to intervene more with how we spend our resources.
He wants a much larger space program.

These aren’t your typical conservative views, and it’s really great to see that I can agree with Card on these topics.

However, all this is overshadowed, by his outright homophobia. Like Charlie Jane Anders, of io9, has said in his article dedicated to the same topic,

“Card still has a huge following and a massive soap-box, and he’s proved he’s willing to use his fiction to advance his political ideas. I’d really love to see him spending more time advancing his unique ideas about energy policy — rather than wasting time propounding ideas about homosexuality that are neither original nor constructive.”

Long distance is hard.

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:46:32 +0200

But in the end, you’ll be better for it.

'Only 50 years left' for sea fish

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 10:28:16 +0200

'Only 50 years left' for sea fish:

cultureofresistance:

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.

Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating.

Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity.

But a greater use of protected areas could safeguard existing stocks.

“The way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be another species to exploit after we’ve completely gone through the last one,” said research leader Boris Worm, from Dalhousie University in Canada.

“What we’re highlighting is there is a finite number of stocks; we have gone through one-third, and we are going to get through the rest,” he told the BBC News website.

Steve Palumbi, from Stanford University in California, one of the other scientists on the project, added: “Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood.”

jtotheizzoe: Moon-bound twin GRAIL spacecraft launched this...

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:23:46 +0200

jtotheizzoe:

Moon-bound twin GRAIL spacecraft launched this morning!

These twin GRAIL spacecraft are setting out on a mission to map the Moon’s gravity. Here’s how it will work, from EarthSky:

Here’s how GRAIL’s gravity-mapping ability works. As one body in space orbits another, changes in the larger body’s topography – its hills and valleys, for example – minutely affect the orbital path of the smaller body by slightly increasing or decreasing the amount of gravity exerted upon it. As GRAIL records these changes, it will reveal details about mountains, craters, and other features on the moon, including those below the moon’s surface.

Once arriving at the moon, the twins will spend about two months sliding into orbit with GRAIL B following GRAIL A. After the proper orbit is established, an instrument on board each craft will measure relative changes in velocity, which can then be translated to map lunar gravity. The instruments are so precise they can detect a change in the distance between the two GRAIL orbiters the diameter of a red blood cell.

That’s some sensitive machinery, eh?

(via EarthSky)

laughingsquid: War of the Worlds by Jack Teagle

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:51:40 +0200

laughingsquid:

War of the Worlds by Jack Teagle

Creationists Like to Argue Out of Context

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:00:00 +0200

Creationists have good reason to believe there is something wrong with the explanation that isotopes are due to billions of years of radioactive decay. This is not a blind faith — there are scores of geological evidences indicating that the earth is young.

Is the argument that the creationist website http://creation.com/ is using. Albeit, they cite a legitimate scientific study that does in fact find the half-lives of certain radioactive elements to be imprecise. Though the research paper only applies to radioactive elements that undergo electron capture. Radiometric dating uses only two radioactive isotopes that undergo this method of decay (⁴⁰K to ⁴⁰Ar). What this means is that there is only one set of radioactive isotopes being used in radiometric dating that are up for review, the other elements in radiometric dating do not use electron capture. The creationists at this website attempt to fool its readers by making a blanket statement. They do not mention the limitations of this research, but contrary, they hide it with deceiving word choice.

The discussed paper can be found here.

Some information about Radiometric Dating, Radioactive Decay, and Electron Capture.

dontmindmehomie: Made this cover for my calc notebook… awwww...

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:21:28 +0200

dontmindmehomie:

Made this cover for my calc notebook… awwww yeah!

philphys: Why I love Physics

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 07:49:03 +0200

philphys:

Why I love Physics

mineralia: Beryl var. Aquamarine with Schorl Tourmaline from...

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 01:23:34 +0200

mineralia:

Beryl var. Aquamarine with Schorl Tourmaline from Namibia

jtotheizzoe: The creepiest thing I will see all day … We all...

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:07:26 +0200

jtotheizzoe:

The creepiest thing I will see all day …

We all know that children lose their baby teeth over the course of several years, and they are replaced by adult chompers.

With that in mind, here it is: The skull of a child with adult teeth coming in.

(from Scotland’s Hunterian Museum)

ohscience: saturn would float in water

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 21:35:16 +0200

ohscience:

saturn would float in water