Death comes

the hurricane katrina cut a swath of destruction from new orleans to someplace in the southern united states. most of the coverage has centered on new orleans and southern louisiana so the terminus of destruction is not known to me. some people evacuated others stayed. some died because they were convinced that they could 'stick it out' yet again through a storm and other because they didn't have transportation out. the effects of the storm will be felt in the region for a longer period than any news publisher will cover. thus far the death toll is said to be 'in hundreds maybe thousands.'

today another story of death came with its sharp sickle. shia muslims marching as part of a religious festival were trampled to death and jumped to their deaths when rumors of a suicide bomber in the crowd circulated. this wasn't an incident like the americans who wanted the $50 ibooks where only 17 people were hurt. in this case, close to 1,000 people died, according to the last tally i read. this didn't happen over a wide swath of land and didn't come with a weather forcast. it was mostly women, children, and the elderly who died. sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are sure to kill many.

Ta-Da!

this sunday we went to pick up a new addition to our garage, my new (to me) motorcycle.

it is a BMW F650 GS
with all the goodies i want. heated grips, side cases, top case, abs, the key is the same for the bags and ignition, engine guard, hand protectors, tall windshield, acessory socket, and some other misc. stuff.
it rides wonderfully and sits probably shorter than my xt 225. so i definately flat foot it.
we rode out on sat. afternoon to mt. diable state park near san fran. camped on sat night and then picked up the bike sunday morning. we then rode up highway 1 for a little while before turning off and heading through napa and then over to sacramento taking 50 back to reno. it was a long day and i am still tired. but worth it, after all what is work for other than to recover from the weekend?

Jury Scam

i usually find scams reveal themselves fairly easily but this particular scam may catch some off guard. people call claiming you failed to report for jury duty and can be arrested. just in case it starts up in your area, check out snopes. it is a good refresher course in how not get your identity stolen.

motorcycle signals

some of these are a bit to similar to the left turn signal but interesting and pretty good none-the-less. see page 2 of group riding from MSF.

Sounds

this morning, and almost every morning, i hear our cat trot across the carpet. it is a careful, friendly, inquisitive sound that i love to listen to as i wake up.
what sounds do you love?

Coming Through at a Rapid Pace

watch it when you go to the hospital. if you get an MRI don't count on the people in the room to check for loose metal. the magnets in MRI's are very strong but people get complacent and forget things like small amounts of metal. these small and large pieces of ferromagnetic metals end up flying across the room and getting stuck to the magnet. check out this article at NY times and these pictures. i can't believe the government doesn't regulate this better.

Yay! for chemistry

i can't wait until a product is put on the market using this surface tension reduction to get the water between the holes in cloth. i would love to use less electricity to dry my clothes and i imagine the clothes get cleaner too.

Old Old

i heard a snipet of this article on the elderly parent on the radio yesterday. read it this morning over breakfast and it is a really good piece.

Golden again

yup golden palace casino spends yet more of the profits of people who are willing to pretty much dump money at them in exchange for blinking lights. this time they bought an image of Jesus in a potato pastry. the story also includes a few items i missed out on earlier like a pretzel in the shape of mary holding Jesus. exciting stuff i tell you.

Switch to uhhh whatever you want

check out this linux ad type thing. pretty funny.
thanks to my brother for finding this.

Trees

planting a tree helps the air right? well not always as much as you think. apparently some trees actually make some pollutants and don't sequester as much carbon (remove CO2) as others. check out the article at chemistry.org.

How long has it been?

this afternoon we rode our motorcycles in a forest that had just been rained upon. i need a scratch-n-sniff blog. =) it had been ages since i'd been in a freshly watered forest; perhaps because most of the moisture in nv is from snow rather than rain. it was a great sensory experience.

Golden Palace... Again

i haven't kept up with the golden palace casino like i should have been. a quirky series of untracibly odd associations led me to remember that a while ago i heard that a researcher was auctioning off the rights to name a new species of monkey to benefit conservation. so i wondered who won the auction. i should have known it was the golden palace...
your new monkey species name is a combo of latin aurum (gold) and near as i can verify palatii is indeed palace:
Callicebus aureipalatii

Phytoalexins from the Crucifer Rutabaga: Structures, Syntheses, Biosyntheses, and Antifungal Activity

this is a title of a paper in J. Org. Chem. 2004, 69, 4471.
i get the tables of contents of several journals delivered to my inbox automatically. sometimes i don't get to reading all of them. today i was reading through some of the old ones and this title popped out at me even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with my research. i just couldn't pass up "rutabaga" without saying it aloud. rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga (a suprisingly difficult word for me to type.)
the article had something to do with isolating a chemical that defends against particular problems that rutabagas (and apparently other crops). here are some pictures of rutabagas with problems.

Hall Effect

HyperPhysics
NIST

remember: conventional current uses positive charge carriers; positive charge carriers obey the right hand rule in a magnetic field; negative charge carriers obey the left hand rule in a magnetic field => using the hall effect one can measure if a semiconductor is a p-type or an n-type as well as the mobility of the material

And We're Off

our house is now officially for sale. the realtor is putting the sign up in the yard tomorrow (has to enter the info in the computer first because people start calling as soon as the sign goes up). we have a lockbox on the front step. and the house is clean. i hope it sells quickly =)... now we just have to pack up the rest of all our junk and put it in storage 'till the new house is done.

here's the pictures of the house that our realtor picked out as good enough to use in her brochures for the box and what-not.

May it die

atkins, the company is filing bankruptcy. a good death i say. that diet is just unhealthy!