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January 31, 2005
Oh boy!
A Quantum Leap sequel?! That's crazy talk!
Posted by Ben at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2005
Pokemon and Cancer
POKEMON apparantly causes cancer. No, it's not what you're thinking.
Someone on TZ pointed out this quote from the research team:
"Pokemon works by controlling the pathways that are required to transform normal cells to cancerous ones. The researchers found that when they 'knocked out' the Pokemon gene in mice, that transformation was blocked and cells do not become cancerous."
If Pokemon gets "knocked out" cells don't "evolve" into cancer. I love scientists with sense of humor.
Posted by Ben at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
Chirac, you're such an old curmudgeon. Give us a hug!
"The democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator that loves you."
-Natan Sharansky in Bush's "Favorite Book"
Posted by Ben at 08:19 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2005
New TZ Design; Review
Toon Zone News has a brand new super-spiffy design. Also, read my review of Gregory Horror Show Vol. 1, one of the oddest things I've seen in a while.
Posted by Ben at 02:23 PM | Comments (1)
Text Animation
Posted by Ben at 06:34 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2005
Life Arrives on Titan
William Saletan's brilliant, awe-struck article about the Huygens landing expresses my sentiments exactly about this astonishing journey. In his words:
"Scientists wonder whether Titan is 'prebiotic'—whether it might have evolved like Earth, had Saturn not been exiled to the far reaches of the solar system. They scour the pictures for signs of life.
But there's already a sign of life on Titan. It's the one thing the camera can't show you: itself. Atop the orange landscape stands the corpse of Huygens, eye and emissary of a species that got off the ground of its own planet only 100 years ago and developed personal computers only 30 years ago. Today that species is poring over spectral, chemical, and electrical data from a world a billion miles away."
Why we only hear about this kind of thing in five-minute blurbs at the tail end of newscasts full of ridiculous trivia at best and voyeuristic sludge at worst is something I will never understand.
Posted by Ben at 02:29 AM | Comments (1)
January 18, 2005
Covering as Liberation
My Anthropology professor (Culture & Language, major requirement) is an extremely bright lady. She's spent a lot of time in Morocco on research and today she reflected a bit on the Muslim body wraps she had to wear while staying with the people she had studied. She mentioned that her students often ask her about Muslim oppression of women and her response is to recall how it felt to return to the US and "have to wear those sundresses again." She said she felt very naked-- as though she was opening herself up to all kinds of spoken and unspoken criticism about her muscle tone and skin and body-- and said that after years wearing them the wraps had actually become, in a way, liberating.
Obviously the situation is different where the modesty issue takes on directly political baggage but it was a very interesting thing to hear her say.
Posted by Ben at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)