We shop all year long. We’re addicted to it (some more than others)…men hate it, women love it (let the generalization slide, it’s true). I read an interview with Kim Yarrow, Ph.D. in Medscape about this, and found it interesting. “I just finished a new book on that subject, Decoding the New Consumer Mind , so a short summary might be hard! I suppose if I were to narrow it down to the one most important thing, I would say that buyin...
The last of the original family and child to Georg and Maria von Trapp, immortalized by the Broadway play and Oscar winning movie in the mid ‘60s has passed on in her home in Vermont, has died at age 99. She and her family escaped the Nazis during WWII. Her mother wrote a book providing the plot for the play and movie. During and after the war, her family toured and sang, becoming very popular. They eventually settled in their ski resort in Vermont. Rest In Peace....
On March 14th, a disturbing news item slipped by unnoticed. We were all entranced by the Malaysian Triangle. I don’t think JFK’s and RFK’s assassinations together with the late President Reagan’s attempted assassination garnered so many news hours… So what’s the big deal? Supposedly American stewardship of the Internet was always supposed to be temporary (really?). The U.S. government announced plans to relinquish Federal control over ICANN. This...
You’ll be receiving no Valentine from this CUPID: The Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone. This via Zach Honig at Engadget . photocredit Engadget This drone ‘copter delivers an 80,000 Volt zap. The developers say it’s for use against ‘bad guys’. The devs hail from Chaotic Moon, the same people who developed SharkPunch (and its Leap Motion visor mounted controller) and Oculus Rift and VR software as well as a motorized, gesture controlled skate board (Board of ...
Many will greet this with fear, and its misuse should be feared. However, if you can, suspend the fear for a moment, and revel in the wonder of what has been achieved. For the first time, molecular geneticists have achieved a truly wonderful thing. They have performed the precise repair of a damaged gene, and that gene only. This was what I considered would be the ultimate triumph of Medicine. The scientists at MIT have used two enzymes (from a bacterium) to locate and correct a ...
Mr. Barry Clifford may have found the Santa Maria. The ship was lost off Haiti on its last voyage in December, 1492 when it ran aground on a reef. The really interesting part of the story is that Mr. Clifford found the wreck back in 2003, but didn’t realize its significance. He found some ballast stones and a ship’s cannon. That cannon was misclassified in 2003. Two years ago, while researching the cannons in use during Columbus’ time, he awoke in the middle of the night wi...
Softwheel has done just that. They invented a wheel whose spokes are shock absorbers as well as a dynamic suspension system. What do I mean? I mean that the ‘spokes’ are shock absorbers which alter their length according to task: What this means, is that the wheel can go over any type of surface with each wheel on essentially, an independent suspension and absorb the shocks of going over rocks and up or down stairs. The way these shocks/spokes are connected? ...
You’ve probably seen the story. Many are hoping NASA gets the funds to probe (pardon the pun) this idea. Einstein proved that there is an absolute limit to velocity (the speed of light in a vacuum = c ). However, what if a field (a warp field) could be generated which would compress space ahead of the vessel and expand it behind the vessel, by generating a “warp bubble” around the vessel. So? Well, while the speed of light remains as is, space itself can be...
Tonight (technically tomorrow morning) at 12:11 am (EDT) there will be a full “Honey Moon” on a Friday the 13th in almost 100 years. This one is special because the full moon also coincides with perigee so, it’ll appear very large on the horizon. Add to this mix the June summer solstice and an itty bitty dust in the air… et voila a honey colored (amber) moon. Don’t miss it…it won’t happen again until 2098! Source: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/no-human-...
“When I'm gone, I hope there's a theater in the next world where I can work.” He was the son of Polish immigrants and grew up poor and Jewish in an Italian neighborhood of Brooklyn. His parents owned a candy store. After appearing in a school play at 15, he knew he would be an actor. He moved to Texas to attend the University of Texas in Austin. where he earned a B.A. and earned a Master's Degree in Education from CCNY. He won a sch...
Their motives were sincere. They wanted to assess the risk of a 1918 “Spanish Influenza” (H1N1) type outbreak in the future. They believe that since there are Avian Influenza viruses, the H1N1 outbreak resulted from mutations in that virus causing cross species infectivity and transmission. The experiment (their graphic): Reasonable, it would seem, until you think a bit and conclude that “post hoc ergo propter hoc” logic isn’t really val...
Besides being my late father’s birthday, the fourth of July means a very great deal to me. It means more than the fireworks, picnics, and barbeques; but yes, we should celebrate our Independence Day. We really should. We should also remember how brave those colonists were, what they endured: Their suffering, their hopes and dreams back then and all those who lived and fought for the greatest and most revolutionary words ever dared written by any people anywhere, ever: ...
Yes! We have a perigee moon. So, the second will occur on August 10th and the third on September 9th. On average, though they appear once every 13 moths and 18 days…so this year we’ve had a bumper crop! The moon will be 14% larger and 30% brighter than usual. To make it seem truly giant, catch it on the rise on the horizon. To calculate your moonrise and moonset simply go here: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/moonrise.html\ For me it’ll be 9:07 pm.
...
So sad…one of my most favorite actors has passed away at age 86. He was born James Scott Bumgarner on April 7, 1928 in Norman, Oklahoma, James Garner's early childhood in the Great Depression-era Dust Bowl was marked by hardships. He is the youngest of three sons. When he was only four years old, he lost his mother, Mildred Bumgarner, who was half-Cherokee. Garner’s career started with The Caine Mutiny Court Martial . He then landed several supporting roles in f...
This article is a tribute to those who were on their way to the HIV – AIDS Symposium in Australia on MH17. They will be missed. To try to explain what has been done, I’m using an image from the net which shows the process of infection of cells of the immune system and what the virus does in the cells. These researchers used human cells in culture. What these researchers (Temple U. Med School and others) have succeeded in doing is attacking the HIV virus at “4”, after viral ...