Category: Facebook

Normally I disapprove of modern society’s tendency to shoot as much light as possible…

Huge Spotlights Will Light Up the LA Sky From Echo Park to Santa Monica This Friday

Normally I disapprove of modern society’s tendency to shoot as much light as possible into the sky…but this one-time event sounds pretty cool, with the LA Marathon route lit up by columns of light. Now, if I can just come up with a vantage point I can *get to* between 8:40 and 10:15 pm…

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“If you enjoy learning, there’s no reason why you should stop at a given age”

ISAAC ASIMOV: A lifetime of learning

> If you enjoy learning, there’s no reason why you should stop at a given age….There’s only this one universe and this one lifetime to try to grasp it. And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, they can at least do that much.

— Zen Pencils illustrates Isaac Asimov’s remarks on lifelong learning.

Fascinating photos are coming in from Ceres. I always thought of it as a…

Fascinating photos are coming in from Ceres. I always thought of it as a big rock in space, an asteroid like those you see in The Empire Strikes back…but of course it's large enough to pull itself into a spheroid, and Plait makes the point that whether you call it an asteroid or a dwarf planet, it's a *world*.

The World, Ceres

On March 6, the Dawn spacecraft will ease into orbit around the largest asteroid in the main belt: Ceres.

As it approached Ceres on Feb. 19, Dawn took a series of images creating this amazing animation:

A lot of moderates only appear so because they hold extreme positions on opposite ends

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5878293/lets-stop-using-the-word-moderate

Interesting analysis: A lot of moderates only appear so because they hold extreme positions on opposite ends of the political spectrum. (“Between the two of you, that was a perfect shot!”) The article says it’s time to stop using the term moderate. I think it’s also long past time to stop mapping politics to a single dimension.

What a glorious feeling…

What a glorious feeling...

So I had this big plan to set up a still life with J’s tap shoes for the Singing In The Rain theme. Let’s just say that didn’t work out.

Then it started to rain, and of course four-year-olds love walking in the rain, so we went out, and on the way back I noticed he was twirling his umbrella, totally unprompted, so I pulled out my phone.

Sometimes the off-the-cuff moments trump the planned ones.

One-color version

It turns out there were actually two batches of cumin from two different suppliers…

It turns out there were actually two batches of cumin from two different suppliers that were contaminated with peanuts, both in Turkey, though they haven’t yet determined whether the contamination happened there or further up the chain. One of the batches was also contaminated with almonds.

Inside the Peanut-Tainted Cumin Recalls: What Happened?

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Because probiotics are trendy these days, and news outfits tend to miss the detail:…

New Study: Combining Probiotics with Oral Immunotherapy for Peanut Allergy

Because probiotics are trendy these days, and news outfits tend to miss the detail: The study compared a *combination* of two therapies to a placebo. It didn’t compare probiotics+OIT to OIT alone, and other studies with OIT have had a comparable success rate. So there’s a good chance that the probiotics didn’t make a difference, and the effect was due entirely to the OIT.