A coworker friend of mine just told me about this project, and my first thought was "Wow. Neal would have a *field day* planning a job in that building. But how would he convince Peter that Korea should be in his radius?"

In today's The Brookline Parent column, I discuss how mabfan and I have tried to get Muffin and Squeaker interested in science. I also mention some of the national efforts to keep girls interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Click to read Stop! In the Name of Science!.

I was sitting in my cube at 1:55 this afternoon and felt slight shaking. The shaking intensified, and I asked my across-the-cube-wall neighbor if he'd felt anything. He had, as had others in the open-plan office space. Neighbor (I'll call him A.) went to the USGS Earthquake Hazards site and reported that there had been a quake with its epicenter in ( Read more... )

As I was putting my challah dough together (it's Thursday night, which around here sometimes means the baking of challah), I noticed this flashy new declaration on the sugar bag:


( Read more... )

-- Today we have snow. Again. Numbers I'm seeing right now indicate that we got somewhere around another 9 or so inches. Which is not such a large snowfall for our area, in general. Problem is, there's nowhere to *put* the snow when you clear it off roads/sidewalks/stairs/driveways due to the lingering snow from the last storm (and the storm before ( Read more... )

Shire pays $200m for lab building

...celebrate Pesach!

(link goes to YouTube video)

Thanks to tpau for the link.

Never trash-talk gravity.

ETA: I'm fine. Nothing other than objects fell today. But many objects fell in my presence today, some rather spectacularly.

Scene: gnomi is talking to lcmlc and Abba about lcmlc's current issues with Thoracic Outlet Compression.

lcmlc: Abba says it shouldn't be "thoracic," but "jurassic"*

Abba: Jurassic Outlet -- the place to get your low-priced dinosaurs!

*There's a tradition of this in Jewish biblical exegesis. There are passages in the Talmud and other rabbinic writings where they ( Read more... )

Scene: mabfan is packing books to take to the Michio Kaku lecture that he and gnomi are attending tomorrow.

mabfan (looking at bookshelves in living room): Do I own Hyperspace?

gnomi: No one owns hyperspace, silly! It's shared among all of us, like gravity!