Archive for April, 2008
Go blind, live forever
Cancer treatment news
This Wired piece on a new cancer therapy is exciting, though in an “I’ll believe it when I see it” way. The idea is to attach gold atoms to nanoparticles that can attach to cancer cells but not to healthy ones, then to use radio waves to heat the gold atoms and fry the bad cells. It works well in vitro, so we may see this in clinical trials pretty soon. Caveat: “Questions about the safety of nanoparticles are largely unanswered.” But if curing cancer takes a few years off your life (and there’s no evidence that it would), who’s complaining?
Smart, smart, smart
So this cartoonist I like has put together a new way to make some money. It works like this: send her some money and she’ll draw a cartoon detailing how she spent it. Some of them are wonderful, and her ability to make ennui engaging is a rare talent. Check out Cat and Girl, her regular strip for some dark, bitter, lovely moments.
Fraud is disgusting
You don’t have to read the whole story (which is only mildly interesting), but you really need to check out this headline. Good work, people!
International adoptions have led to what oh-so-wry child psychologists have labeled the “Madonna Effect,” whereby parents in developing nations ship kids off to orphanages in the hopes that they will be adopted by rich Americans. Get this:
Child psychologist Professor Kevin Browne, said: “Some argue that international adoption is, in part, a solution to the large number of children in institutional care, but we have found the opposite is true…
“Some celebrities have unwittingly encouraged international adoption, yet it has been shown that 96 per cent of children in ‘orphanages’ across Europe and probably across the globe are not true orphans and have at least one parent often known to the local authorities…
“Governments and orphanages can reap substantial financial gains from international adoption and this appears to be fuelling its growth…”
I suppose the parents may be acting rationally, especially if conditions are so bad for them that institutionalizing the kids means they’re not much worse off in orphanages, but holy crap does this sound like a bad situation that’s going to get worse. Thanks, Madonna!
It turns out thatcognitive dissonance might need some additional research before it can go legit. I didn’t really think it was all that big a deal, anyway. Ha?
Worth reading, if only for the best (and briefest) explanation of the seriously counter-intuitive solution to the Monty Hall problem that I have ever seen.
OK, you win.
Check out the amazing new coin designs from the Royal Mint. (Not the Philadelphia Mint, so collector’s value not guaranteed.)
Seriously, go check out the site – the second arrangement of the coins is mind-blowing, if only because it reveals that a major financial/governmental institution can display playfulness. Good work, people!
This one, though, is actually exculpatory, to the extent that I need to be exculped. I obtained a new laptop a week ago, and it uses Linux, and it mostly rocks. There was some learning curve foolishness, but not really any more than with any new machine – and, I reckon, quite a bit less than the heartbreak that would have come with Vista.
My problems included a slight (and persistent) misunderstanding of networking that occasionally takes me offline, a temporary madness caused by a conflict between a visual theme and my word processor, and – the only thing that might become an ongoing problem – the puny spell-checker bundled into OpenOffice. I’ll do some research, but for now, I have to port my files over to the old laptop and run them through Word, which feels like something someone’s grandfather would do.
The Ubuntu UI is sweet and comforting for those of us who were relieved instead of annoyed to leave the command line behind when we finally broke down and started using Windows. (Hey, you know, that smirk is super-unattractive, Mac user.) The price was right – not only is the OS and software free, but Linux can run quite well on much cheaper hardware than either Windows or MacOS. But I’m not evangelizing, honestly.
The other reason I haven’t been blogging so much lately is WordPress’ phat new upgrade – which is so full of awesomeness that it has crippled my ability to post pictures. “I remain committed to open source,” he said through a mouthful of nubby, gritted teeth. That’s a big one, so I reckon it’ll be fixed soon. Soon enough? No, just soon.
Noted without comment
Thanks to the cheesy but irresistible Canadian science program Quirks & Quarks, I learned today about the Tagging of Pacific Predators program, through which a bunch of hardcore marine biology studs and studettes tag leatherback turtles, elephant seals, and great white sharks. Check out the site – they’ve got a sweet map with daily position updates. Follow your favorites! Prepare for heartbreak, though – Dr. Block did say that occasionally one tagged creature eats another. The next step in reality programming, maybe?
I resisted adding a widget over there to the sidebar because it is already far too stuffed, but one of you needs to help the rest of us keep track of “Purple Lightning.”
You said it, sister