Poetry Morning

Since I'm not at home, asking MegaHAL's advice on things is out of the question. However, nalidoll (a Pisces using a lovely Miracle Fish icon) linked to FreeWill Astrology, so I checked out this week's horoscopes over there. The 'scope for Leo (sign of my moon & ascendant) began with "Sometimes it's not how good you are but how bad you want it," and the message for my sun sign of Libra mentions the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. Fittingly, this brings me back to fishiness, since the first Bishop poem I was knowingly exposed to was this:( The Fish )

In Science News

Via mind_hacks: Can brain infections account for cultural differences? Mostly about toxoplasmosis, but also: "what about other parasites? Do viruses, intestinal worms, and other pathogens that can linger in the body for decades have their own influence on human personality? How much is the national spirit the spirit of a nation's parasites?"

omnibrain links to: Area Man Calls For Immediate Release Of His Endorphins. "While motivations behind the assault remain unclear, it now appears that Shepard's hypothalamus seized control of his nervous, limbic, and endocrine systems late Thursday night, killing several innocent physical desires such as appetite and sexual drive in the ensuing synaptic fire." (Why yes, it is an Onion article. Why do you ask?)

Also: It's Alive (ish): "Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology figured they could learn more from neuron clumps that acted more like real brains, so they've developed "neurally controlled animats" -- a few thousand rat neurons grown atop a grid of electrodes and connected to a robot body or computer-simulated virtual environment.... Rather than create a sentient being, the goal of the work is to learn about the earliest human brain development, according to Daniel Wagenaar, a California Institute of Technology neuroscientist who worked with Potter on the animat."

And: High-tech museum brings creationism to life. "Visitors to the museum, a few miles from Cincinnati, will be able to watch the story of creation unfold in a 180-seat special-effects theater, see a 40-foot-tall (12-meter-tall) re-creation of a section of Noah’s Ark and stare into the jaws of robotic dinosaurs."

The inevitable question is: Which brain infections are responsible for Creationism?

all the pretty colors

" 27-year-old TV researcher who won a competition to travel the globe in search of the world's "bluest" sky has found that Brazil is the place to be if blue is your colour." (from physicsweb.)

From politedissent: Look At All The Pretty Colors (of Diseases), including ailments both real and fictional.

And from trekearthafrica comes this picture of seven-colored dunes at Chamarel. Other photos of the dunes here (my favorite), here, here, and here.