Archive for May, 2010

“The other side” of Arizona’s immigration debate

I’m not happy about the new immigration law in Arizona, but one of my aunts thinks it may be a good thing.  This morning she suggested I more carefully consider “the other side” because of the discarded items in the Sonoran: It’s definitely true that Oregon Pipe is littered with the backpacks, water bottles, and […]

YUX

Tree rings are fascinating and informative data, but the gazillions of formats used by different measurement and analysis programs can be a real pain in the ass.  Additionally, there are a plethora of reformatting programs that all do slightly different things.  Of course, many times none of them do exactly what you want.  I’ve often […]

Coral

If you want to see a coral reef, I recommend booking your tickets soon since they’re dying quickly from natural causes (made worse by people) and human causes. Overfishing removes too many of the fish that eat seaweed, which then starts growing like crazy and poisons the corals.  Since coral reefs are important nurseries for […]

The Placebo Effect & the Power of Ritual

Most (all?) cultures combine medication with ritual – something simple like ginger or pepto for your stomach combined with a prayer of some kind, for instance, or something less familiar, like this Paraguayan man who chants and sings before searching for the healing plant.  After growing up with chronic pain in a church that believed […]

Are symmetrical people smarter?

From Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters: Some asymmetries in the body are consistent: the heart is on the left side of the chest, for example, in most people.  But other, smaller asymmetries can go randomly in either direction.  In some people the left ear is larger than the right; in others, vice […]

The Little Match Girl Passion

David Lang won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for  The Little Match Girl Passion. It’s truly beautiful.  You can read what Lang has to say about the work here and listen to the entire piece here.

What I’ve Noticed

A Phoenix nun was demoted for saving a woman’s life. Religious hospitals are kind of frightening. Already environmentally devastated areas, like mine tailings, might be a good place to install solar projects. A tragedy of “security:” “military personnel were so worried about getting their trucks into the proper place that they crushed a 68-year-old woman […]