Hey America. I know you’re at war and all that, making the world safe for democracy America. I know you want to be in control of everything. But guys… this is a heads up. Not from someone who is out to do anything himself… I live far away and can’t speak enough Korean to say anything to most people around me. But just you keep at it this way. You never know where this kind of thing will lead. (For those nations sick of the regime, I think this strategy is intriguing… and America, that is a heads up for …
Category: WTF
Golden Nano-Bullet Cancer Treatment
This is just damn cool. Gold “nano-bullets” could seek and destroy inoperable human cancers, suggest new studies by US scientists. The tiny silica particles are plated with gold and heat up when near infrared light (NIR) is shone on them. This kills the cancer cells. Tests on human breast cancers, both in the test tube and in tumours in mice, were highly successful, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The nanoshells are designed to absorb near infrared light and convert that light to heat,” explains Jennifer West, who led the study at Rice University, …
“We’re Not Losing The Culture Wars Anymore.”
Is the American media closed? What does this do to the American mind? How about Korea, and Quebec, and English Canada? And what are the ethics of publishing inside a closed-media nation?…
Inevitable Innovations… (Friday Five)
This week it was my turn to ask the Friday Five Question. Man was it long-winded: I’ve just thought of this question, and perhaps it will be torturously difficult to answer, but… I’ve been reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt, a stunning alternate history that raises many questions about history, religion, culture, meaning (and how humans make or find it)… and offers some beautifully thought-out answers or possibilities to these questions. It’s a wonderfully crafted novel, and I highly recommend it. On a more literal level, the novel asks the question: What would have happened if …
Another Friday Five
I found a website called the friday five. I knew there were other Friday Fives out there, but… looking at this one, I have to say… I think ours is better. Not to toot my own horn.
(late) Friday Five: What Would You Do With Two Months Paid Vacation?
Where Gord Gets To Feel Suddenly Blessed
Craig produced this week’s Friday Five topic: The biggest advantage to being a teacher is the time off in the summer. Yeah, the annual salary isn’t the best, but I get two friggin’ months off a year! Not to mention two weeks for Christmas, a week for Thanksgiving, Spring Break, and other assorted days off. If you were paid for two months of not going to work, what are five things you would do with your time off? This is the time when I say with a big grin, that this will happen to me every four months in my …
Evolution is NOT A Theory. Period.
I’ll say it again. Evolution is not a theory. Evolution is something we know happened. We see it happen in nature even now, with creatures like cichlids in Lake Malawi, who speciate unusually rapidly. We see plenty of evidence for it in the fossil record. Anyone who spends any amount of time looking at the world around them will sense the genius in Darwin’s simple, elegant, and brilliant insight of how the world came to be as it is now. The claim that Darwinism is in trouble is to claim there is the crisis to cover one’s own ignorance, and …
Right, Left, and Wrong About History
So I was reading this article about how Francis Fukuyama’s declaration of the coming of the End of History when the Berlin Wall came down is something that seems, retrospectively, naive and totally mistaken. The article is called Why History Has No End by Victor Davis Hanson and it’s online over at City Journal. Never mind that, in my opinion, one shouldn’t have need of hindsight to see that statement was very foolish. No, I read on anyway… here’s a snippet: European animosity toward the U.S. also has a snobbish component—an anti-bourgeois disdain that is the dual legacy of Europe’s …
Friday Five: Ohrwürm
The latest Friday Five, courtesy of Dave: I’ve been reading a lot about Neurology lately, and the rhythm’s behind our thought processes. As if by fate, I came across this article yesterday that sums up one of the most insidious kinds of mental loops we all fall into. They’re known as earworms. “Earworm” is the term coined by University of Cincinnati marketing professor James Kellaris for the usually unwelcome songs that get stuck in people’s heads. Since beginning his research in 2000, Kellaris has heard from people all over the world requesting help, sharing anecdotes and offering solutions. “I quickly …
Korean Internet Problem? I Don’t Think So.
I honestly shouldn’t be shocked by what I read in this article at Forbes.com, but the unpretty picture that it paints about the net in Korea is kind of surprising… and perhaps misguided. I am very surprised to see that 60% of divorces cite infidelity with people met online as their causes. This is a shocking statistic… but I don’t think there is anything magical about the internet that induces adultery. I am skeptical that the marriages were so good to begin with, and I think probably infidelity was a major citation of the cause of divorce in the past …