Republicans surging on all fronts in Oklahoma

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From Eric Dondero:

The Republican Party is experiencing a huge surge in support on all fronts in the State of Oklahoma.

Party Registration booming for GOP

From NewsOK, Oct. 16:

Seven of 10 new Oklahoma voters registered as Republicans since Jan. 15 while Democrats failed to pick up 1 percent, according to figures released Friday by the state Election Board.

The GOP surge has Republican officials optimistic they have a chance to win many of the statewide and legislative races to be decided next month.

New voters since Jan. 15 total 40,394, with 28,499, or 70.5 percent, registering as Republicans and 11,482, or 28.4 percent, registering as independents.

First Female Governor in Oklahoma history, and she's a Republican

Continuing from NewsOK:

Oklahoma has never before elected a woman governor. The Republican Party which ended slavery and pushed for women's suffrage, will now add the honor of electing a female Oklahoma governor to its list of accomplishments.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mary Fallin has been leading polls since winning the GOP nomination in July.

A poll released earlier this week indicated Republicans winning the governor's race and the seven other statewide offices up for election.

MAINE: Race for Gov. "stabilizes" with LePage in a small lead

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From Eric Dondero:

The State of Maine is poised to elect its first Republican Governor since the early 1990s. And he's a libertarian/conservative Tea Partyer.

Polls in recent weeks suggested that the race might be tightening. Paul LePage, Mayor of Waterville, held a substantial lead, even as high as the 20s throughout the summer. Then a couple run-ins he had with local media, and some gruff statements on his part, brought the race back into competitive territory.

But the very latest poll gives LePage a somewhat comfortable lead of 5 points. From Pan-Atlantic (via DownEast.com):

A new poll conducted by Pan Atlantic SMS shows a close race between Libby Mitchell and Paul LePage. LePage is ahead with 32.9% of the vote and Mitchell is slightly behind with 28%. Independent Eliot Cutler comes in at third place with 14%, Shawn Moody is at 4.6% and Kevin Scott garners just .4% of the vote, with 20.2% of those surveyed still undecided.

ME libertarian Republican, fmr. state legislator and RLC State Co-Chair Stravos Mendros sees this as good news. Pan-Atlantic he says "is a liberal firm" biased towards Libby. So his margin is probably much higher?

Matthew Gagnon, a libertarian Republican, and editor of the influential blog PineTree Politics, notes that this indicates the race has "stabilized."

But after a series of polls put the race at “dead even”, we have seen a stabilization of the race. After a somewhat flawed Critical Insights poll showed LePage losing to Mitchell for the first time, our own poll in partnership with MECPO showed LePage with a small lead. After that time, three successive polls have shown LePage regaining a decent chunk of his lost momentum – Critical Insights had him up six points, Rasmussen had him up three, and just today, Pan Atlantic showed LePage with roughly a five point edge.

So in short, LePage has lost his once commanding lead, but seems to have scrapped his way back into a comfortable – if tenuous – advantage.

Sidenote: It appears increasingly likely that a number of libertarian Republicans will win election to the Maine State Legislature.

Reporting from Maine...

Whoa! McCain puts his daughter in her place, supports Christine O’Donnell

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From ABC News, "Meghan McCain wrong on Christine O'Donnell":

“With all due respect to my daughter, the primary voters of Delaware chose Christine O’Donnell and she’s the candidate.”

The Arizona Senator went on to side with Sarah Palin on the importance of newly-elected Republicans sticking to the Tea Party agenda after the elections.

“I think she is right to this degree, that obviously when we gain the majority, when Republicans gain majorities, they betrayed our base typically in the area of fiscal responsibility,” he said.

“And what Sarah’s saying is that we’ve got to get a fiscally responsible majority in Congress of Republicans and act in a fiscally responsible manner"

LPIN Podcast: Rebecca Sink-Burris, The Grown-Up In The Room

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Rebecca Sink-Burris participate in the first of three debates between the three candidates for US Senate Monday night. Often times, she looked like a buffer between the other two, but always like the grown-up in the room. The contrast was stark: Rebecca answered the questions, while the Republican and Democrat slung mud at each other. [...]

Why I am Libertarian: Ed Angleton, Former Democrat

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Conventional wisdom holds that Libertarians are former Republicans. In reality, disaffected Democrats are every bit as likely to become Libertarians. Ed Angleton is a good case in point. He comes from a family of Democrats, and even shook Bobby Kennedy’s hand as a youngster. But with civil liberties as an absolute, an aversion to political [...]

SKY 3D Puts Planets over London

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SKY 3d's planet balloons over London. Click for larger. Credit: SKY 3d

Sky 3D is a new 3D channel in Europe.  To kick things off they brought to life some of the scenes from 3D version of:  The Universe: 7 Wonders of the Solar System above the London skyline and above Greenwich’s Royal Observatory.  What a sight!

Sky 3D has a short video of the set up of the balloons on their website you should check out.

You know what?  That’s doing things right and I’m glad to see science means something too!

Riddle Business

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I’ve had several people ask me to move the time I post riddles on Saturday.  As I’ve said, I only started posting them at noon CDT to make it easy for me to remember (I lead a complicated life), and it’s been that way now for 11 months.  I would be happy to post the riddle at whatever time is best for you; after all, I make the riddles for you, you ought to be able to enjoy them and participate.

In the comments, please let me know what’s best for you.  I would probably be in a better humor if you didn’t have me up at 3am posting a riddle, and I am on Central Daylight Time.  If you don’t care what time the riddle posts, let me know that, too.

The Orionids Are Here

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The Orionids, the most prolific meteor shower associated with Halley’s Comet, are about at their peak tonight.  If you can’t go out tonight, don’t worry.  The shower will still be impressive tomorrow night.  Well, should be impressive.  You know how it goes.

This gorgeous green and red Orionid is from Mila Zinkova, an awesome astrophotographer. All rights reserved.

Anyway, the Orionids are the second of two showers associated with Halley’s Comet, the first being the Eta Aquarids.  The Orionids radiant (the point they appear to come from) is in the constellation of Orion.  The bad news is we are waxing gibbous on the moon, and that puppy will be full tonight, and with Jupiter shining beside it, it’s hard to take your eyes from it.  Aldebaran should grab your attention, too, as it’s been super-luminous lately, and is commanding quite a bit of attention.  At least Aldebaran is going to make it easy for you to find the radiant.

When you see Aldebaran, you know you’re close to Orion.  Just scan down a line to the SouthEast a bit.  You should see Betelgeuse, and right off the point of Betelgeuse (to the left) is the radiant.

Halley’s Comet has been around for some 2200 years, so there should be a lot of “stuff” out there.  The Orionids have been averaging about 60 meteors per hour for the last three years.

A funny story about Aldebaran.  It really is something where I live, and Tom sent me out early one morning to look for the comet.  I came screaming back in and quickly emailed, “That’s not MARS is it??  That can’t be MARS!!”  He patiently explained to me that it was probably Aldebaran, but it took some convincing.  Okay, shut up. It was early.  I hadn’t had coffee yet.

Building a Rover

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You do know NASA is building a new Mars rover named Curiosity.  What you may not know is you can now keep tabs on the progress by means of a new webcam.  The newly installed webcam streams video so you can watch the techs at work live.

Not sure how the techs feel about being watched but hey I like watching them so here’s the link.  The link takes you off site but it’s better that way, bandwidth and all that stuff.

The video immediately brought back memories of working in a clean room, if you’ve never done that all I can do is tell you it’s different.  Clean isn’t the word, part of what I did was industrial x-ray and a particle of just of just five-thousands of an inch in the wrong spot would ruin 6 hours of work – bang just like you never did it.

And that spider at the end of the post a couple back has gotten me about three times now. 8-O

Let’s Play Find the Comet

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103P/Hartley 2 as seen by the EPOXI spacecraft 34 days before encounter. Credit: NASA/JPL/UMD

Comet Hartley, no wait, comet 103P/Hartley 2 to more precise is out there.  Yes it’s important, I had a devil of a time finding this comet with binoculars.  It seemed I was always looking in just the wrong spot and I kept thinking “I should be able to see this”.  It turns out there is ANOTHER comet Hartley out there at least according to my Planetarium program.  Confusion ensued.

Once I figured out what was going on I went right out and found the comet both in the morning and the evening. If you have a pair of binoculars you stand a chance of seeing it – if you are not too far south of the equator and you have clear skies of course.

You have to keep a couple of things in mind.  The moon is getting brighter and will be washing out the sky, this is not going to help.  The comet isn’t exactly bright and it doesn’t look like what you might think of as a “classic comet shape”.  Hartley is almost a ghostly cloud for the lack of a better description, in fact you might not recognize it as a comet at all.  Come a couple more weeks and the EPOXI encounters the comet you will have seen the comet for yourself.  Besides comets are cool.

So how do you find it?  First the early morning is going to be your best chance considering the moon.  Sorry but that’s the way it happens to work this time around.  I would try sooner rather than later if I was you because the moon becomes more of a factor every day.

You will need to go outside and away from bright lights for a short time to acclimate your vision.  I found the comet after only a few minutes, but I have pretty dark skies.  Avoid looking at the moon because its brightness will interfere with the acclimation process.

Ready?  Now find Polaris, it’s the last star in the handle of the Little Dipper.  Got it?  Good.

Turn around and face the other way and locate Betelgeuse.  It is located in the constellation Orion and will be the reddish looking star.  You will see two reddish stars the western most one is Aldebaran (pronounced:  al – deb- ah -ron) and it is quite striking; it’s not the one you want specifically but it can help later too, as will be finding Capella which is a very bright star not quite half way on a line from Aldebaran to Polaris.

Here’s an annotated chart to help show what I am trying to explain.  Chart time 4:30 AM local on October 23 (should be valid for you too at your local time).

Ok draw a line from Polaris to Betelgeuse, the comet will be not quite halfway to Polaris from Betelgeuse along this line, either on the line or very close to it.  To help narrow it down a bit more, Look along the Polaris/Betelgeuse line (stay on that line) about half way between the corresponding to Aldebaran and Capella.

Here’s a chart for tomorrow morning (not annotated), as I was saying the moon will be less of a factor if you can look sooner rather than wait a few days.  Notice the position of the comet is slightly different as time passes.

Remember this isn’t going to look like one of the great comets, in fact you might go Huh, that’s it? Or Tom got me up for this??  HAHAHA Yep, I did.  But you can at least say you saw it. ;-)

William’s Trip South

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Today we have something a bit different.  One of your fellow readers – William – went on a trip to Zimbabwe and I gave him a couple of star charts.  He provided the following story about the trip.  It is VERY interesting and brings up something I never would have dreamed.   So a great big THANK YOU to William for this excellent write up!!

My First Glimpse of the Southern Sky

Viewing the night sky wasn’t my primary reason for going to Zimbabwe.  But this was my first trip to Africa and I wanted to see, and experience as much as I could. My trip would not be complete without several nights of star gazing. Since this was my first time south of the equator I knew there would be stars and constellations visible that I couldn’t see from my home in North America. So I did a little research, and made my “wish list”. I even emailed Tom for his help with star charts and his suggestions of what I just couldn’t leave Africa without seeing.

We flew into Harare (S17 49’ 57” by E31 4’ 9”) on September 19 and as we walked through the parking lot to our car I was already checking out the night sky. The moon was high over head. It looked very bright and the surface features were really easy to make out. There were two planets, one on each side of the moon, that were visible as well; but I could only make out a few stars. Well, I thought, this is Harare, the capital and one of the three largest cities in Zimbabwe. It’s just light pollution ruining my view. I’m sure I’ll be totally blown away by the night sky once we get to Mashoko.

Mashoko (S20 25’ 37” by E30 49’ 39”) was four hundred fifty-four kilometers to the south and it took us six hours to travel there. The last fifty-four kilometers were over unimproved dirt roads in such poor shape that it was impossible to travel over 25 KM/h. We arrived at sunset and after we unloaded the cars and unpacked the suitcases I took a quick peek at the sky. The moon was up and I could see Jupiter, and one or two stars; but that was it. The next night I made sure to get outside before the moonrise. I could see a few more stars than the night before, but only those directly overhead. Then when the moon came up it was like someone flipped a switch and all the stars blinked out of view.

Each night was the same story. I could see a few stars directly overhead before the moonrise but then nothing once the moon was up. I had come to Zimbabwe with a group from my church to volunteer at the Mashoko Christian Hospital. The hospital is situated inside a compound and there are security lights around so I was convinced that even in rural Mashoko light pollution was stealing the show. So I asked my friend Munya (pronounced Moon-ya) where I could go where it was dark enough to really see the stars. “You can’t see any stars, it hasn’t rained”. That statement made no sense to me at all. To me rain means clouds and clouds mean no visibility, no stars, and no way to see the night sky. Munya went on to explain that we were at the end of the dry season. And because it hadn’t rained in over two months the air was filled with dust and smoke from grass fires that had sprung up all over the countryside. This dust and smoke reflected light and made seeing any stars next to impossible. He said that until the rains came and “washed” the dust and smoke out of the atmosphere there was nowhere to go and nothing to see in the night sky. I was devastated!  I knew that it was the end of their winter and that where as we were going into fall they were starting into spring but I never would’ve thought it would affect my star gazing.

I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to see any of the “new” stars and constellations in the southern hemisphere. We finished our week working at the hospital and I’d go out each night and look up into the heavens and only see what few stars were directly overhead hoping and wishing for some rain before we had to head back to the states.

We had planned to spend the last two and a half days of our trip doing some sightseeing and we traveled west and north from Mashoko to Victoria Falls ( S18 25’ 1.4” by E26 39’49”) and we spent one day and two nights at a Safari Camp. So here I am the day before I have to head back home and I still haven’t seen what I wanted to see. I did notice that the moon was rising later in the evening giving me more time to look at what star were visible. So I pulled our host / guide aside at the Safari Camp and I told him my story. I explained that I didn’t want to be late night snack for a hungry lioness but I did want to see stars. Was there anywhere I could go where it was dark enough to see what I wanted to see? So later that day the owner told me that he was going to have one of the guides take me out away from all the artificial light and give me some time to see what I could see. My guide’s name was Gary and after dinner he and I jumped into one of the pickup trucks and we headed out into the bush. Gary took me to a clearing where just a few hours before I had seen a pride of 6 lions resting in the high grass. Gary steers the truck to the center of this clearing and then pulls a 360 shining the headlights into the bush to see if there were any “critters” lying in wait. He then turns off the headlights shuts off the engine and says “hop out!”

So we hopped out. Here I am in Africa, with someone I’ve only just met, standing in a clearing, in the dark, waiting for my eyes to adjust and the only thing going through my head is my mother saying “now Bill when you go to Africa, remember to stay with the group!” After about twenty minutes the sky started to light up. I could see the Milky Way. I hadn’t seen the Milky Way that bright since I was a teenager. Then I made out the Southern Cross, and I saw some stars and constellations that I couldn’t identify from memory. I had some trouble keeping my compass directions straight, I’m used to looking south to see the elliptical and now it was more overhead and a little bit north. All the stars that I could see seemed very close like I could almost reach out and touch them. But even here I couldn’t see anything down close to the horizon. The dust and smoke in the atmosphere still blocked our view.

After an hour or so Gary said he knew of another place we could go that might afford an even better view. So we jumped into the truck and headed across the field. We hadn’t traveled more than 300-400 meters when a herd of Impalas ran in front of the truck frightened out of their resting place. Obviously something was out hunting. Unfortunately the second location wasn’t any better than the first. Objects directly over head were bright and brilliant but we couldn’t see anything else.

There were several things on my wish list that I didn’t get to see, but what I did see was beautiful. What did I learn from my experience? I learned that if I’m ever going to travel eight thousand miles and hope to gaze at the night sky I’ve really got to do my homework. I’m not just going to research to see what stars and constellations should be visible I’m going to take time to learn about the climate, season, and atmospheric conditions for the time of year that I’m visiting. I’m going to know about anything that could potentially hinder my viewing pleasure. Even more importantly I was reminded how beautiful the stars can be, and that even if I didn’t see everything that I had hoped to see it was still fun and well worth the effort.

William

A Friend In The Infinite

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When you talk about the constellations, there is one that stands out from the crowd; Orion, the Hunter.  Since the constellation is located on the Celestial Equator, it is visible throughout the world.  It also lends its name to the Orionid meteor shower, to which you should be paying attention, since the shower reaches its peak around October 21st.

An unusual view of Orion, for STS59/NASA

The Constellation Orion formed about 1.5 mya, and will be recognizable for at least another million years.  Orion has been a feature in the folklore of every human civilization, even the Australian aborigines.

One of the most recognizable features of the constellation is Orion’s Belt, an asterism consisting of three bright stars in a line:  Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.  Mintaka is actually an eclipsing binary variable star system, not a single star.

Orion - Besser Museum Planetarium

From Orion’s Belt, almost everybody can find the gorgeous Betelgeuse, a massive red super-giant.  Betelgeuse is expected to supernova sometime in the next thousand years, and lately has been doing some weird “stuff”, which many astronomers believe is a preamble to supernova.  As you know, I’m torn about the prospect of this beautiful giant going supernova.

After Betelgeuse, the next most recognized star in the constellation is Rigel.  A rare blue supergiant, Rigel is the sixth brightest star in the night sky.  Rigel is known to be fusing heavy elements in its core, which as you know signals the approaching end of a star’s life.  This bright beauty is responsible for illuminating several celestial objects, like the Witch Head Nebula.

Orion - image by Torsten Bronger, some rights reserved

Suspended from Orion’s Belt is his sword.  On the sword you find the Orion Nebula, which can be seen nicely with binoculars on a clear night.  This little hotbed of star formation is a beautiful sight, no matter how you view it.

Orion can be used to find other objects in the sky.  For example, if you follow the line of Orion’s Belt to the Southeast, you’ll run into Sirius.  Go Northwest along the line and you find Aldebaran.

Hubble and Spitzer team up for a look at the Orion Nebula - NASA/ESA

Truly one of the most known and loved of constellations; a hunter, a warrior, a shepherd, or just a familiar friend in the infinite.  Every time I look up and search the night sky, I look for Orion.  I’ve never lost the satisfaction of finding it.

Spaceport America Dedicates Its Runway; Flights *Could* Begin in 2011 | 80beats

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spaceport1Just two weeks after the first solo flight of Virgin Galactic’s space tourist ship, the company’s bigwigs gathered again to celebrate the completion of the two-mile, 200-foot wide runway of the world’s first commercial spaceport.

Spaceport America is the world’s first facility designed specifically to launch commercial spacecraft. The celebration of its nearly-two-mile-long runway comes less than two weeks after another major step for Virgin Galactic: the first solo glide flight of its space tourism rocket ship. [ABC News]

Its name may make it sound like an amusement park, but Spaceport America is well on its way to being a real portal to space for the wealthy private citizen. Its construction is being funded by New Mexico taxpayer dollars and commercial space companies; it has already been designated the home of Virgin Galactic’s space tourism operations. But the spaceport, located 45 miles outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is able to support a variety of spacecraft, and other commercial space companies are beginning to get involved. The spaceport is scheduled to be fully operational in 2011.

Virgin Galactic says it has already signed over 380 customers (at $200,000 a head) to take a two and a half hour flight to the edge of space (that includes a whole five minutes of weightlessness); some of the customers were present for the runway dedication today. Richard Branson, the company’s founder, said that it will still be at least a year before their first tourist flight will take off. When that day finally arrives, the Virgin Galactic “mothership” will take off from Spaceport America’s runway and soar to an altitude of 48,000 feet before releasing the spaceship VSS Enterprise, which will take passengers the rest of the way up.

“The mothership has been finished and flying for a while now,” he said. “We’ll do many, many, many test flights over the next 12 months to maybe 18 months before we actually send people up into space. But we’re entering the last stages of the test program and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel now,” he said. [AFP]

Related content:
80beats: Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship-for-Tourists Takes Its First Solo Flight
80beats: Virgin Galactic Unveils Its New Space Tourism Rocket
Science Not Fiction: Ralph: The Official Mascot of Space Tourism
DISCOVER: #44: Spaceport Breaks Ground in New Mexico
Discoblog: Space Tourists Will Get Their Own Special Space Beer
Bad Astronomy: How safe is space tourism?

Image: Spaceport America


NCBI ROFL: Accidental condom inhalation. | Discoblog

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condom headIt’s case study flashback week on NCBI ROFL! All this week we’ll be featuring some of our favorite medical case studies from the archives. Enjoy!

“A 27-year-old lady presented with persistent cough, sputum and fever for the preceding six months. In spite of trials with antibiotics and anti-tuberculosis treatment for the preceeding four months, her symptoms did not improve. A subsequent chest radiograph showed non-homogeneous collapse-consolidation of right upper lobe. Videobronchoscopy revealed an inverted bag like structure in right upper lobe bronchus and rigid bronchoscopic removal with biopsy forceps confirmed the presence of a condom. Detailed retrospective history also confirmed accidental inhalation of the condom during fellatio.”

!

!

accidental

Photo: flickr/letmehearyousaydeskomdeskom

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Accidental anal intercourse: does it really happen?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Double feature: Personalities of punks and perils of their pointy parkas.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Oh, the irony!

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!


Star trippin’ on The Big Bang Theory | Bad Astronomy

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thebigbangtheory_logoDid y’all catch last night’s episode of The Big Bang Theory on CBS? In one scene, Sheldon is walking down the steps of their apartment building and reciting a little ditty about the nearest stars to the Earth. How did he — heck, how do we — know what stars those are?

Happily, BBT science advisor David Saltzberg has a blog describing each episode, and he talks about this very thing! And what’s this? Why yes, he mentions that your host here on Bad Astronomy helped him with the pronunciations of the star names! David sent me an email a while back asking me if I could lend a hand (well, a vocal cord) to pronouncing some of the names which weren’t all that obvious. I love the show, and was glad to help.

And how weird is it to hear Sheldon saying stuff I was emailing about? Pretty weird. But also totally awesome, too.

Now if I could just get my URL to appear on their white board…


Running by the Books: Math for the Marathoner | 80beats

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marathonerAbout two-fifths of marathon runners “hit the wall” on the big day. That means they completely deplete their body’s stash of readily available energy, which makes them feel wiped out and severely limits their running pace; it sometimes forces people out of the run completely.

Marathoner and biomedical engineer Benjamin Rapoport has been physically and mentally struggling with this phenomenon for years, and had the bright idea to turn it into a research project. He published a mathematical theory in the journal PLoS Computational Biology describing how and why runners hit the wall–and how they can avoid it.

By taking into account the energy it takes to run a marathon, the body’s energy storage capacity and the runner’s power, the researchers were able to accurately calculate how many energy-rich carbohydrates a runner needed to eat before race day and how fast to run to complete all 26.2 miles (42 kilometers). [LiveScience]

Rapoport’s studies of marathoners were prompted by his desire to run in the Boston Marathon in 2005, and his teacher’s desire for him to be in class. In return for missing class, Rapoport was tasked with giving a class lecture on the physiology of the marathoner. That same year, Rapoport himself hit the wall while running the New York Marathon.

“It feels a bit like you might feel if you’re on a crash diet,” Rapoport said. “Except that when you diet, it happens over the course of a few days, whereas a runner experiences it in the course of a few minutes.” [LiveScience]

The main limitation of a marathon runner’s ability is his or her aerobic capacity–how much oxygen the muscles can take up and keep working. The other important factors are how much energy is takes the person to run, and how much energy they have stored in an easy-to-access form, glycogen. By using estimations of these numbers, Rapoport was able to create a mathematical model of how long and fast any runner could run and how much they would need to fuel up in order to finish the race.

“This is a unique area that hadn’t been addressed in the medical literature in any substantial way,” says Mark Cucuzzella, a physician and running coach based in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. “He’s lending some hard numbers to what experienced runners and coaches have been doing.” [Science News]

By estimating their aerobic ability and other factors in the model, runners can estimate what their pace should be to complete a marathon in the best time.

Rapoport’s model also shows that a slightly faster pace can be maintained by consuming a midrace snack. This carb-eating strategy can help, but it can’t win races, since the body can store only so much fuel, says Cucuzzella, chief medical consultant for the Air Force Marathon and a marathoner himself. “It’s not about how much sugar or spaghetti you eat the night before a race,” he says. “There’s a critical pace.” [Science News]

And while following this formula won’t enable everyone to run a marathon without training, Rapoport has put an easy-to-use version of his unwieldy formula online to help trained runners calculate their ideal pace.

Related Content:
80beats: No Shoes, No Problem? Barefoot Runners Put Far Less Stress on Their Feet
80beats: Debate Over South African Runner Spotlights Confusing Nature of Gender
80beats: Scientist Smackdown: Are a Sprinter’s Prostethic Legs an Unfair Advantage?
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Drug improves endurance without need for exercise
DISCOVER: Born To Run

Image: Flickr/Pablo 2008-09


w00tstock-lite tomorrow! | Bad Astronomy

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Final reminder: tomorrow is "w00tstock Presents" at the Boulder Theater here in my very own hometown! If you’re local, you should come, because I’ll be giving away a pony*.

This event is so important to the cultural community here that The Daily Camera has an article about it. They even got Patrick Stewart to pose for the picture. I think.

Anyway, it’ll be awesome fun, so come and geek as hard as you can.

* That’s totally true!†


† No it isn’t.