Come on In

Bluesman R.L. Burnside dies at 78

R.L. Burnside, one of the last, great Mississippi bluesmen, whose raw, country blues was discovered late in his life, has died. He was 78.

Burnside died Thursday morning at the St. Francis Hospital in Memphis His health had been declining for some time, said Matthew Johnson, owner of Burnside's record label, Fat Possum.

I found R.L. by way of the Jon Spenser Blues Explosion. I now have three Burnside discs (A Ass Pocket of Whiskey, Mr. Wizard, and Come on In) -- all of which I enjoy, though I can imagine they would be for everyone. Of the three, Mr. Wizard would probably be my pick.

Well, crap.

Cranberry juice no benefit for kidney stones?

In both, the cranberry juice increased urine levels of calcium and oxalate. Levels of brushite did decrease, but this substance causes a different type of kidney stones (known as brushite stones), which are comparatively rare.

Not that I've been hitting the Ocean Spray in hopes of avoiding another kidney stone. It was just kind of nice to have the idea that there was something that could help.

Prison Break

My initial impression of Fox's new show Prison Break (the pilot for which I watched last night) is good overall. I have kind of a hard time imagining how they will fill a whole season (nevermind the idea of any following seasons, but I said the same about Lost), but I'll watch anything with a guy who has plans for an entire prison campus and clues for how to exploit said campus' weaknesses tattooed on his body.

"The tattoo takes about four to five hours to apply, if you've got two people working on it," Wentworth explains. "It's a series of decals that fit together like puzzles. They're kind of more sophisticated versions of what you might find in a Cracker Jack box. You lay it down, spray it, peel it off and then seal it with glue, paint in the filler parts. It's apparently the most complicated imitation tattoo ever created, done by the art house that did all the special effects for 'The Passion of The Christ.'"

It is impressive.

Nano-nano

Molecular motors push liquid uphill

Droplets of liquid have been moved uphill by molecular motors designed to manipulate Brownian motion.

While other researchers have found ways to make drops of liquids move before, what is new here, says David Leigh at the University of Edinburgh, is the use of molecular motors to achieve it: “This is the first time you can use molecular-level motion to move a macroscopic object. OK, so it’s only a tiny droplet – but it’s a start.�

How very Diamond Age!

Best are the "you might also do this" scenarios:

The so-called “nano-shuttles� could also create a range of different types of smart surfaces, such as adhesive surfaces that can be switched on and off, or surfaces that can be switched from one colour to another.

Brave new world, indeed. I can't wait until I can finally customize the color of my flying car!

Intelligent Design Smackdown

Moonbat anti-evolutionist: Deepak Chopra This is beautiful. Deepak Chopra seems to be even more of a looney tune than I thought he was, and this article is a wonderful deconstruction of his "Intelligent Design" arguments.

Wow.

Highlight (one of many):

Larry King actually asked this question:

KING: All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?

Uh, right. And my ancestors came from Sweden, so why the heck are there still Swedes?

Nice.

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Oh, then there's this.

Leavin' on a Jet Train

Plans for high-speed rail between Wyoming and New Mexico rolls on

Organizers envision the "Ranger Express" traveling about 110 mph and connecting Cheyenne, Wyo., Denver and Albuquerque, N.M., and cities in between. The plan will need cooperation not only from voters but also members of Congress and commercial rail companies.

Interesting. I wonder if the economies of the cities along this proposed line actually support the idea of building it. Or if people are just banking on the "if you build it they will come" idea.

[Ta, Garret]

This monkey's gone to Heaven

Misfits that fit

Deal got married and moved to Boston. "I'd lived in Boston for one week and I got this paper called the Boston Phoenix that had ads in the back. A lot of them are, like, 'Bring your chops [talent], must have own van.' Which means, basically, they're looking for someone with a van, because they don't have their own transportation." But one ad caught her eye. "It said: 'Looking for female bassist, high harmony, must like Hüsker Dü, Peter Paul & Mary, no chops.' I thought it was really cool. And I called the people. I'd never done this before. Or since. And I found out from Joe on this tour I was the only one who actually answered that ad."

Good little article about the Pixies with plenty of history and a lot about how the reunion came about. God, I love those kids!

Chimps Are Sheep

Copycat chimps are cultural conformists

The team taught two female chimps how to get food out of a complicated apparatus using a stick. One learned to poke a barrier with the stick, and the other to lift the barrier with the stick. Then the chimps’ groups got to watch the new experts use their skills. When the rest of the groups were allowed to try their own hand at freeing the food, they followed the lead of their own expert chimp – the poker’s group preferred to poke and the lifter’s group tended to lift.

And then they called each other Comrade.

Really, I'm just posting this for the following paragraph:

Although the poke method was more effective – as shown by the fact that some lifters independently learned to poke – the majority of lifters-turned-pokers nevertheless reverted to their group’s original lifting strategy, conforming socially.

Hehe... Poke...

Singing Wings

Just because I did nothing with my aerospace engineering degree doesn't mean I ignore the cool stuff from that field: 'Singing' wings help prevent small-plane stalls

In wind tunnel tests, Salmon stuck sections of plastic piezo-electric film to wing segments. This film vibrates when an electrical signal is applied, producing sound.

Tests using a barely audible sinusoidal tone of about 400 hertz showed a 22% increase in lift, compared with a standard wing. This could translate into a few extra seconds of time for a pilot to boost a plane’s speed before it stalls, says Salmon. The simple tones worked best, though Salmon did experiment: “I can say that songs by the band Spiderbait are more effective than Radiohead’s.�

Spiderbait?! Way to plug the virtually unknown (in the US, at least) Aussie band, Qantas dude! Truth be told I went through a huge unknown Aussie music phase in college. Can't say I stuck with any of the artists I got into back then, but at the time some of my favorite tracks were on those freebie tapes I got a CollegeFest in the Hynes Convention Center.

Back to the airplane stuff... Once, while hiking on Mt. Washington, I saw a couple gliders buzzing around the summit. Literally: their wings were vibrating in the updraft (I assume), causing a high-pitched hum. No piezo-electric plastic involved with that, but it was really cool to me.

Another Tattoo Blog

I previously pointed you fine folks to Needled, which remains a steady read for me. However, one tattoo blog can't possibly be enough, so I'm happy to find INKEDblog:

INKEDblog takes you beneath the skin of today's tattoo culture. Our mission is to celebrate tattooing as a modern art form which incorporates art, fashion, style, and pop culture. While paying homage and respect to the past, we look to present a contemporary take on the present and future of skin art.

Take some time in the archives, there's some good stuff. One post points to this bit about rose tattoos and what the color of the flower might symolize, which I dig on since I'm planing a dagger/rose tattoo.

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Oh, yeah, by the way... I'm spending some of my stock option payout on new ink this Saturday. Stay tuned. (Hint: It's not the dagger.)

Six Nations, One Soul

I've said it a million times before: The Scots, the Irish, and all other Celtic types are basically the same, but now I have new evidence specific to my own family:

The Colquhouns originated in Ireland. In the early thirteenth century the founder of the clan, Humphrey Kilpatrick, was granted a charter for the barony of Colquhoun on the western bank of Loch Lomond.

Cool.

Slainte to all my Kilpatrick cousins! ;)