Recent News
- Found: Another molecule needed at the origin of life
- For real: A new way to produce electricity
- New: Single molecule sensor array
- Finally(?)…artificially making blood stem cells in quantity
- Update: Chinese space station
- Looking at the strange face of antimatter
- Life on Mars, if it exists, is below the surface
- A different kind of lens for time
- Oh please, “skinput”
- Update: More Moon water
- Cutting cancer cell immortality short
- First time: Watching the unfolding story of proteins in living cells
- Newly named: Copernicum (element 112)
- Making jet fuel from biomass
- Nanobubbles are really slick
Category Archives: Funnybone
A black hole of good news – bad news
Tucson, Arizona – Astronomers at the University of Arizona have dubbed a new observation – the “chaos cloud.” Discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope on March 1, the swirling, 10 million kilometer wide cosmic cloud has been likened to nothing ever seen before.
Although measurements are preliminary, astronomers said the cloud would sweep through Earth [...]
DNA for fun and nobody’s profit
Scientists in Scotland cloned a sheep. “Dolly” became very famous, but was rarely seen in public. There are rumors. It is said there was a mistake in the lab when they worked on the clone DNA. Somebody reversed a small portion of the DNA (probably a gene or two were backwards). Unfortunately, as a result [...]
To the Moon with reservations
The year is 1966. NASA is preparing the Apollo astronauts for a landing on the Moon. No opportunity to have realistic Moon-like experiences is too cumbersome or expensive, so the astronauts are trucked out to the desert near Tuba City in Arizona. They go a batch at a time to bake their spacesuits and wander [...]
Signs of LRF (Lab Rat Fever)
Work in a modern biochemistry lab has its good sides and bad sides – like most workplaces. On the other hand, people who have never worked in a ‘laboratory’ (which is most of us) may be surprised by some subtle, and not so subtle, differences between the lab and other places of work. For example, [...]
Research paper subtext
It has long been known that…
(I didn’t have time to look it up.)
It seems of great practical and theoretical importance…
(Could be kinda interesting)
While it was not possible to answer…
(The experiment failed.)
The XYZ system was chosen as especially suitable…
(The guy in the next lab already had the setup.)
Long tern paper
Terns have been in the news lately – they’re the champs of long distance migrating. So research about terns is not likely to win any “Ig Nobel Prizes.”
There once was an undergrad biology student who was studying the coordinated flight patterns of sea birds, focusing specifically on terns. For his research paper, he proposed to [...]
Cats, buttered toast, and anti-gravity
Question: Assume that if you drop a buttered piece of toast, it will fall to the floor butter-side down. (I’d say this was a certainty, but that would overlap with Murphy’s Law. Of course, you could also add jam on top of the buttered toast.) Also assume that if you dropped a cat from a [...]
A Mad Experiment
Experiment: A mad social scientist kidnapped three colleagues: an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician. He took them to an abandoned laboratory and locked them each in a bare room provided only with a bed, toilet, six boxes of canned food (but no can opener), and water.
Result: A month later the mad scientist returned, clipboard [...]
Modern sagacity
People don’t write commandments any more or attempt to expound laws of behavior. Too bad, we could use more like these…
Style is its own reward
Do not attempt to find substance in everything. Some things are done only for the sake of form. This is especially true of mathematics.
Those who frame the conversation, shape it
For [...]
The Amateur Astronomer’s Commandments
1. Thou shalt have no white light before thee, behind thee, or to the
side of thee whilst sharing the night sky with thy fellow stargazers.
2. Thou shalt not love thy telescope more than thy spouse or
thy children; as much as, maybe, but not more.
3. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s telescope, unless it
exceeds in [...]
Only real and positive
George, a physics professor, waving a sheet of paper, runs into the office of Ken, a math professor. “Ken. I’ve got it. I’ve finally got an equation that explains my data! Can you check it out for me?” Accustomed to George’s enthusiastic outbursts, Ken nodded. George handed him the paper. Ken scanned it for a [...]
True utterances
Teachers and professors say the darndest things. Maybe it’s a test – to see if anyone is listening. More likely, they just like to be clever, or inadvertently dumb…
“If what I said makes any sense to you, you have a big problem.”
“The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
someone with [...]
Smoke runs electronics…
Kids these days are smart. Or at least they have more familiarity with electronics. Yesterday a boy and girl from the 2nd grade approached me after a science class. They looked very pleased with themselves. The girl said, “We know what makes these electronic things run…” She paused.
Then the boy said, “Smoke!” They looked at [...]
Astronomers. Light Bulb.
How many astronomers does it take to change a light bulb?
“Change a light bulb? What for? Dark is good.”
“Oh, if you insist. Ah…”
“One, to measure the bulb’s black body radiation at room temperature to verify it is totally dead. Then…”
“One to argue about the measurement’s calibration.”
“One to analyze the pre-failure luminosity and classify the bulb [...]
Wise cracks
There’s recent news about a new crack in the Earth, the one starting in Ethiopia that looks like it could turn into an ocean, which reminds me of the old canard about geologists…Geologists are most unpopular when they are fault-finders.
Math irony
“Math was always my bad subject. I couldn’t convince my teachers that
many of my answers were meant ironically.” — writer Calvin Trillin
Confusing maths
Cell biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division.
On the origin of children
Two different theories exist concerning the origin of children: the theory of sexual reproduction, and the theory of the stork. Many people believe in the theory of sexual reproduction because they have been taught this theory at school.
In reality, however, many of the world’s leading scientists are in favour of the theory of the [...]
Evolutionary light bulb change
Q: How many evolution scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but it takes eight million years.
Biology punishment