i don’t know if i’ll really keep up with this, but i do appreciate good food when i find it, and i do have this thing for just that sort of thing. so i’d like to direct your attention to taboon (773 10th ave, 212.713.0271). i can’t vouch for much of the real food (i had a long drive ahead of me), but i can say that the desserts i sampled are different and wonderful. and if you’re into the best of chocolate, it’s all about valrhona, so chocoholics are safe, but don’t limit yourself.
posted by roj at 2:48 am
published in the journal of agricultural and food chemistry, crazy scientists are mixing food with their mosquito larvae.
Results of larvicidal tests demonstrated that the leaf essential oils of cinnamaldehyde type and cinnamaldehyde/cinnamyl acetate type had an excellent inhibitory effect against the fourth-instar larvae of Aedes aegypti
we draw your attention to this little bit of science, because it’s in roughly the same vein as these guys that found a cheap approach to their problem too.
the next step is to get the “mosquito repellant” study done, and then we can all start using cinnamon sprays instead of freaky chemicals to save us from west nile. will we all smell like cinnamon in a few years?
posted by roj at 2:36 am
i was away from the technology for most of last week, and when i came back, i noticed a pretty prominent spike in visitors looking for fuck yourself. the mystery of the powerful googlejuice continues, and the apparent reason for the spike is that the meta-roj blog is at the very bottom, but on the first page of results from google. it was just one of those things i noticed. but, since i did notice it, i thought i’d drop you a link to a little article from slate on a very, very dirty word and the wikipedia version too.
because we like to provide subtance with our juice here at the meta-roj blog.
update: now for some sizzle 🙂
whoa! i don’t believe what i’m hearing! check out the balls on this kid! hey dick, this is for you! that’s the way! you don’t take no shit from nobody!
posted by roj at 2:22 am
ear the dawn of the meta-roj blog, i posted about a project to do organic chemistry on a cd. that work was done at ucsd, and now we have good old academic one-upsmanship… from ohio state.
The ELISA biochemical test — one of the most widely used clinical, food safety, and environmental tests — normally takes hours or even days to perform manually. Using a specially designed CD, engineers performed the test automatically, and in only one hour.
ELISA is “enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.” if that’s not enough for you, you can drop by the usda site for some more info.
lead researcher at ohio state is l. james lee, so you can drop by that page and say hi.
posted by roj at 2:17 am
back in 1989, the ivory trade was officially (though not practically) shut down by international agreement. since then it’s been a bit of a contentious issue.
what makes this a science story and not an endagered-species story or an economics story, is that scientist thinks he has the technology to reopen the ivory trade, on more-acceptable terms.
Nuclear physicist Elias Sideras-Haddad says he can determine when an elephant died as well as its age by a new carbon-dating technique applied to the tusks — a process made possible by the above-ground nuclear tests of the past.
the reuters article mentions a presentation from two years ago in japan… there’s a faint echo of that here [pdf] – it was called “Dating studies of elephant tusks from the Kruger National Park South Africa using accelerator based mass spectrometry.”
that’s just not terribly satisfying, but the paper [pdf, october 3, 2002] itself is also available from lawrence livermore national labs. sadly, it’s a pretty bad scan-based document as opposed to real text, so it’s not much fun to read.
given the bush administration’s concept of science, this may just come back as a good reason to build those baby nukes and get out of the test-ban treaty. there seems to be more solid science behind this than behind, for example, the missile-defense plan…. and you can spin it as an economic support plan that lets those poor african countries pay back their debts.
posted by roj at 2:05 am
just a tiny little blip on the radar, and something that was quickly spun out of the news with the latest iran-scare, but i thought i’d go ahead and mention it….
The House voted 217-191 to remove $25,000 in the $19.4 billion 2005 foreign aid bill earmarked for Saudi Arabia.
The funds were designated for military training but approval would have triggered millions of dollars in discounts on hardware and other military training, lawmakers said.
you’ll have to engage someone significantly more involved in the political machine and creative accounting than i to understand how $25,000 can “trigger millions of dollars in discounts” and still be just $25,000…
of course, saudi arabia really doesn’t need american tax dollars, but there’s much much more political capital than monetary capital in this issue. the fact that a $25,000 line-item in the congress made the news at all says a lot about the symbolic value of those dollars.
posted by roj at 12:45 am
you won’t often find me siding with fox, but stranger things have (and will) happen. i saw this on the ap wire.
Television is typically repetitive, she said.
“There are two boxing shows. There are three Amy Fisher movies. There are two Diana movies. This is the way television works,” she [Fox TV entertainment chief Gail Berman] said. “There’s nothing new about it.”
what’s new is the scope of copyright, not the behavior, and some lawyer thought they could carry this case under the current laws… or, at least, they convinced their bosses to pay them to try.
another lawyer has some thoughts as well: “Competition over derivatives only makes the derivatives better.”
i think many of the people that wander into my blog space probably share the opinion that, generally speaking, reality tv has plenty of room to “get better.”
posted by roj at 12:39 am
On Monday, the city council adopted a resolution to apologize.
“If Nicole and Jeff Rank did nothing other than peaceably exercise their right of free speech and expression as guaranteed by our Constitutions, they should not have been arrested or charged with a crime,” the resolution states.
“The City does hereby apologize to Nicole and Jeff Rank.”
the city apologizes. this is, truly, amazing.
after being arrested for wearing the wrong t-shirt in a bush zone, and having charges dismissed on a technicality, the city council of charleston, west virginia stepped up and actually did the right thing.
the panic button on this has gone from red to blue to green.
posted by roj at 11:53 pm
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posted by roj at 11:40 pm