Archive for November, 2008
Pour Some Space Sugar on Me
Key Molecule for Life Found in Habitable Region of the Galaxy
A sugar molecule linked to the origin of life was discovered in a potentially habitable region of our galaxy.
The molecule, called glycolaldehyde, was spotted in a large star-forming area of space around 26,000 light-years from Earth in the less-chaotic outer regions of the Milky Way. This suggests the sugar could be common across the universe, which is good news for extraterrestrial-life seekers.
“This is an important discovery as it is the first time glycolaldehyde, a basic sugar, has been detected towards a star-forming region where planets that could potentially harbor life may exist,” Serena Viti of University College London said in a press release.
Previously, glycolaldehyde had only been observed toward the center of the galaxy, where conditions are thought to be too extreme to host habitable planets.
Glycolaldehyde is a key ingredient for life. It helps to build Ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is thought to be the central molecule involved in the origin of life on Earth. Glycolaldehyde is a monosaccharide sugar, the basic unit of carbohydrates. It can react with the chemical propenal to form ribose, the building block of RNA.
“The discovery of an organic sugar molecule in a star forming region of space is very exciting and will provide incredibly useful information in our search for alien life,” said Keith Mason, chief executive of the England’s Science and Technology Facilities Council.
The finding, made with the IRAM radio telescope in France, was announced Tuesday and will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
No commentsHow not to Review a Beer
For all of you looking for that perfect Turkey Day beer, do not go to this guy for advice.
3 comments‘Stache Bash ‘08
The St. Louis-based American Mustache Institute held their third annual ‘Stache Bash here in St. Louis recently. Here’s a video of the event that was posted the other day on Funny or Die:
Relive the ridicularity of the American Mustache Institute’s ‘Stache Bash 2008, the greatest annual celebration of the Mustached American people known to mankind.
1 commentShake Hands With Danger (PSA)
Get the message? Don’t be a Three-Finger Joe.
2 commentsVALIS by Philip K. Dick
Just finished up this book over the last couple of weeks. Ya need something to do while on the crapper. Anyone into Sci-Fi should know Dick (uhhh…that doesn’t sound right) from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Pretty interesting read on the search for God and salvation. To me, it seemed Dick borrowed a lot from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land mantra of “Thou art God.” You grok that? To get that conclusion, you to go through a lot of psychotic babble. This was written as a semi-autobiographical account of Dick’s psychotic break down due to heavy drug use or schizophrenia. Or both.
One of his conclusions is that God has been reincarnated numerous times. God went by the names of Apollo, Zoroaster, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad. And from a religious outsider like me, that makes a lot of sense. All religions serve a basic purpose of trying to explain the world around us. give us a reason for why things are the way they are. I see regional differences, but a connected conclusion. This could be due to divine intervention, coincidence, or even a shared evolutionary history.
Or it could all be bullshit. It’s crazy people and and prophet’s who have the ear of God. Dick finally admits that he may be all wrong and this is just a continuation of a psychotic delusion. What ever it is, he warns us to stay away from a deity’s followers. Those people are crazy for sure.
1 commentGoogle Takes LIFE Photo Archive Online
Google has partnered with LIFE magazine to make more than 10 million images available online from the magazine’s photo archive. The LIFE Photo Archive on Google will be one of the largest professional photography collections on the Internet and one of the largest scanning projects ever conducted. Millions of images have been scanned and made available on Google Image Search and all 10 million images will be available in the coming months.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
That’s pretty f’in cool if you ask me.
No commentsSend me a REAL check!
You know when you get those checks in the mail, like from a car dealership or a credit card company wanting you to give in to their bullshit?
As I was going through the mail today, I saw another one of those things and opened it up to destroy it. Then it occurred to me, I had no idea what they were trying to sell me or get me to do, but all I saw was Pay to the order of: ME
amount $500
and across the entire thing was written “THIS IS NOT A REAL CHECK”.
Do you think I can get away with that when paying the bills? Hey KCP&L, here’s your money…but it’s not a real check.
I want a real check!
fuckers.
1 commentThe Monsters – Burn My Mind
Kudos to whoever the hell made this video. The images from Roberto Gavaldon’s film Macario work really well with this song by Reverend Beat-Man’s fuzzed-out garage-punk band, The Monsters, from Switzerland. Enjoy!
Obama’s Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy
Andy Borowitz-
In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.
Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama’s appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect’s unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.
But Mr. Obama’s decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.
According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it “alienating” to have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language.
“Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,” says Mr. Logsdon. “If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist.”
The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, “Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate — we get it, stop showing off.”
The president-elect’s stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.
“Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can’t really do there, I think needing to do that isn’t tapping into what Americans are needing also,” she said.
Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.
