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Insulin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:34:03 -0800

From the page: "On January 11, 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old diabetic who lay dying at the Toronto General Hospital, was given the first injection of insulin. However, the extract was so impure that Thompson suffered a severe allergic reaction, and further injections were canceled. Over the next 12 days, Collip worked day and night to improve the ox-pancreas extract, and a second dose injected on the 23rd. This was completely successful, not only in not having obvious side-effects, but in completely eliminating the glycosuria sign of diabetes.

Children dying from diabetic keto-acidosis were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death. In one of medicine's more dramatic moments Banting, Best and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families."

Voyager Golden Record - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:06:56 -0800

Consider this: if we destroy ourselves, if we extinguish all life on this planet, what will remain to tell our tale to the universe? A few tiny spaceborne artifacts, like a handful of sand thrown into the vastness of space. One of these grains of sand is the Voyager Golden Record, now 9.6 billion miles from our Sun and growing ever distant. From the record:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some - perhaps many - may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours."

I feel a great, indescribable sadness whenever I read these words.

599 Productions - Timelapse Large

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:10:49 -0800

The river of light

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Pangolinpup.jpg

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:47:24 -0800

Pangolin!

GameSpot - Error

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:26:04 -0700

A man is haunted by a Nintendo game called Abadox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Shinkansen_500_Kyoto_2005-03-19.jpg

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:15:16 -0700

This Japanese train just looks like...speed.

Ecological Footprint Quiz by Redefining Progress

Sun, 15 May 2005 16:54:36 -0700

From the page: "IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 3.7 PLANETS."
Presumably this is meant to encourage me to decrease my consumption in order to "fit myself into the planet". Balderdash. I say we build (or terraform, colonize, whatever) these extra planets so that everyone can live as wastefully as I. I dream of a future of unbounded wastefulness where we can do whatever we want without getting harped on by ecologists. (On a slightly more serious note, the implicit reasoning involved in the extra required planets is specious at best. If everyone lived like me, the world would just be more densely, efficiently, and heavily industrialized. We would not run out of space, and the third world would cease to exist. Yay!)

Lateral-g.net :: The g-Machine Network.& A Pro-Touring and g-Machine Community with pictures and forums

Sat, 14 May 2005 17:23:53 -0700

These are some of the sickest muscle cars I've ever seen. The twin-blower Corvette (Distad) and 8-turbo '57 Chevy (Sandlin) are particularly mindboggling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Peacekeeper-missile-testing.jpg

Wed, 04 May 2005 19:46:44 -0700

From the page: "LG-118A Peacekeeper missile system being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The lines shown are the re-entry vehicles -- one Peacekeeper can hold up to 10 nuclear warheads, each independently targeted. Each warhead, were it armed with a nuclear payload, would carry with it the explosive power of twenty-five Hiroshima-sized weapons."

Horrifically beautiful

Mark Twains The War Prayer

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:18:03 -0800

Every time I pass a church with a sign out front reading something like "Pray for our troops", I think of this short story by Mark Twain.