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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Smaller and Bigger

Who would have thought that there would be a storage device, the size of a DVD, that can hold 500Gb. Wow.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Cherry Blossoms!


I forgot to post pictures from our trip to visit DC! We drove up Friday night, stayed with our friend Nicole (thank-you Nicole!!), spent all day Saturday walking and walking and walking, then drove back to State College to run in a 5K race on Sunday. Whew! While in DC we enjoyed the blossoms, saw tons of dogs, and of course, stopped at the Natural History Museum (a requirement!). I was super-excited about all of the evolution exhibits - I think every city needs a museum like this! How can I convince someone to fund this? By showing them how cool evolution is!


If you want to see more pictures, check them out on facebook.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best

In the course of a weekend, this guy created a solar oven that can be manufactured for $5, and gets hot enough to bake bread.

Sometimes research needs lots of time and money, sometimes it just needs a few hours, but always it needs a creative mind to consider all alternatives, even the obvious ones!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Is the rhinopus an amphibian?

This is definitely worth the 10 minutes to watch, and provides a great overview for anyone about evolution:

National Public Radio

Today I became a member of our local NPR station, WPSU. The live streaming is really great - and I love that I have the option of listening to WPSU or WPSU2 - the second plays programming/news during the day when the other plays classical music.

Yesterday, on the way out to visit some friends in the country, we were listening to NPR and heard about an add campaign in Turkey for a local bank featuring a faux-bama. The actor looks remarkably like the current president, and even speaks like him during television commercials in Turkey. I guess, living in the US, I'm always amazed at how small the world really is, once you leave the country.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

too many people?

Nina Fedoroff (from Penn State) is the Science and Technology advisor to the Secretary of State (previously Condoleeza Rice, now Hilary Clinton). In a recent article on BBC news she discusses her opinions on Genetically Modified foods, as well as the need to better manage natural resources, especially water. She claims there are likely already more people on the planet than it can support. I am curious what the reasons behind this claim are, and hope to hear more during the full interview on the One Planet podcast from the BBC World Service.