A Room of My Own

Well - today we went to the doctor's office.  Tom got the cast cut off and the staples taken out (about 25-30) - when she was doing the side of his foot that was numb it was OK - but when she started on the other side he ended up nauseous and faint.  Felt better after a while and a soda - then it came back - we had to get him onto the table so he could lie down.

Anyway he is OK now.  He got a walking boot - but he is not supposed to walk on it for a week - "treat is like a cast" the Dr says.  In the x-ray we could see the screw in the back of his heel, the plate under his arch and where the bone was cut and repositioned.  Like Tom has been saying - they re-arranged his foot.

Well - I found a nice thoughtful post in Salon which I tried to send ot Kelly - but I sent the wrong one - sorry Kel - I finally found my way to the right one and sent that - but what is the etiquette when one does a gaffe like that?

MEDICINE PRIZE. Dan Ariely of Duke University (USA), Rebecca L. Waber of MIT (USA), Baba Shiv of Stanford University (USA), and Ziv Carmon of INSEAD (Singapore) for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine..
REFERENCE: "Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy," Rebecca L. Waber; Baba Shiv; Ziv Carmon; Dan Ariely, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Dan Ariely
Love this - expensive meds work better than cheaper meds - and both were placebos!  guess it applies to everything people buy???  Does not explain why so many people go for discunted drugs though.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE PRIZE. Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University, Japan, Hiroyasu Yamada of Nagoya, Japan, Ryo Kobayashi of Hiroshima University, Atsushi Tero of Presto JST, Akio Ishiguro of Tohoku University, and Ágotá Tóth of the University of Szeged, Hungary, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.
REFERENCE: "Intelligence: Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism," Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, and Ágota Tóth, Nature, vol. 407, September 2000, p. 470.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero

ECONOMICS PRIZE. Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.
REFERENCE: "Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?" Geoffrey Miller, Joshua M. Tybur, Brent D. Jordan, Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 375-81.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Geoffrey Miller and Brent Jordan

Most tips during estrus - least during menstuation - those who took birth control pills did not see a change.

PHYSICS PRIZE. Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.
REFERENCE: "Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String," Dorian M. Raymer and Douglas E. Smith, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 42, October 16, 2007, pp. 16432-7.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Dorian Raymer

Oh yes - and one scientist said that Coke is a spermicide and another proved that it was not!  So do not douche with Coke (old, New or Diet).

Current Mood: contemplative

Well now I know what it takes to get me to write - an earthquake!  We just had a 5.4 or a 5.6 (depending on the source) here in Pasadena California.  The table shook, the floor rolled - it was very interesting and much stronger than others I have felt.  At first security announced that we could evacuate if we felt the need to do so, then they announced that we had to evacuate the building while it was checked for safety.  We are back in (at least on the 1st floor) and back at work - sort of.

Verizon wins for getting through on the phone.  Those of us with other carriers (cingular, ATT) had much more trouble getting through than the Verizon people.

The Three Laws

Writer and critic George Zebrowski, a good friend of Clarke and a recognized expert on his work, once stated that Clarke's Three Laws are central to appreciating the man's work.

Not only are these aphorisms fundamental elements of Clarke's literary legacy, but some would argue that they comprise a valuable contribution to 20th-Century popular thought. They are:

1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. Corollary: When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2) The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to venture beyond them into the impossible.

3) Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The Third Law is widely quoted and appears in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

Go Arthur - wishing you more good exploring!

Well Jim Wright really did set up the video for my poem.  He had it set one way - then had a "professional" look at it and edit it - they took out the picture of Annie and the picture of the skates on the ground - and the instances where he panned in on something - personally I think his version was better - but some things ya just have to let go and really it is all out of your control.  
his blog site is  

http://njmg.typepad.com/owl/

We still want to do a book - but have the "for you" parts all have pictures of little kids - we can use the cousins - as if it is talking to future generations.  Then if we can get some of the stories Marie and Jean have been writing down actually put on paper - we can include those.

Marie is already talking about a party.  We can take a walk and then go to her house - to swim if it is in the summer!