rianjs.net

I've been listening to Beethoven's Ninth this evening, courtesy of the BBC and their free downloads. I find it to be most enjoyable and powerful, and in a strange way, motivating. Like I want to be productive and accomplish things while I listen to his music.

Thanks, Ludwig van, and thanks, BBC.

The eery, distant violin at the end of track 3 disc 2 of Phantom of the Opera is amazingly haunting and beautiful. It doesn't go on long enough.

That is all.

Mon-Fri: 9-4.

What the hell kind of hours are those? So pretty much if you have a job, you can't go to the bank. I rarely need to see a teller, but geeze. They make it nearly impossible!

Oh yeah. I got a haircut today too, and now I'm sexy again.

The more I write about science and science matters, the more I become angry with the religious right. Well, perhaps not angry, but exasperated by their ass-backwardness about things. It seems like they're always about fifty years behind the rest of the world when it comes to science. And the current administration doesn't really help when it comes to public policy regarding scientific issues.

I tend to be more of a Republican on a great many things, but their ridiculous stances on things like evolutionary theory, gay rights, etc. preclude me from voting conservative. The current administration's attempt to stifle things like stem cell research and accurate science teaching frustrates me endlessly, and is only going to result in a nation that is behind the rest of the world which *does* have very real ramifications when it comes to market competition.

Anyway, I just felt like ranting a little bit. I started off writing for polyscience.org with complete indifference to politics, but the more I read and write, the more I see that science, particularly life science, does not exist in a religious and political vacuum, no matter how much I wish that they did. The more I write, the more I see how important it is to report the social and political impacts of scientific research, because avoiding it is to go through life with blinders on.

I almost feel guilty about writing this here, because my mom reads my blog, and she's fairly conservative. Our opinions on a great many matters when it comes to evolution and abortion and homosexuality and many other things, are nearly polar opposites of one another. I am fortunate in that she doesn't take my frustration personally or feel a need to try to convert me from my heretical opinions.

I did something for MCP students: I made a list of books for 2nd through 3rd year pharmacy student from Amazon. I prefer to buy my books from Amazon because they tend to be a little less expensive than through the official MCPHS outlet.

http://rianjs.net/mcphs/books/

I am not a computer geek. Nor am I a "wannabe" despite what my score would indicate.

Okay? Thanks.

That CD question is bogus. "CD" = compact disc; "cd" = change directory.

I took this picture a while ago. It's what I take every time my Crohn's flares up. (I had some issues two weeks ago, but I'm fine now.)

The morning pills are on the bottom. From left: potassium, Levaquin 500mg (I have like, $800 worth of Levaquin in my lock box. :rolleyes: ), multivitamin, 3x Pentasa 500mg.

The top is the nightly round: 2x fiber capsules, 3x Pentasa 500mg

For size comparison, a single Pentasa 500mg capsule's length is the same as the diameter of a US quarter.

For whatever it's worth, I find that Levaquin is far more effective in quelling a flare-up than Pentasa or Asacol. But it makes me itch, which hurts because it makes my skin really sensitive. It itches, but when I scratch, it feels like I'm tearing my skin off with a hot piece of 0 grain sandpaper.

And did I mention that it's expensive? Next time I'll go with Cipro, I think. <3 generic drugs.

YUMMAY! PILLS!!! MMMM.

Ugh.

Some of you may know that Peter Jennings passed away recently. I can remember in my house that we always watched World News Tonight with Peter Jennings as I was growing up, without fail, every night.

Last night, ABC News put together a documentary of his life, entitled Peter Jennings: Reporter. Some folks on the Ars forums capped it, and I have decided to host it for anyone who is interested, as I believe that capped televisions shows are legal to share. If not, I'll take it down.

Peter Jennings: Reporter (343MB)

Feel free to share the URL to this blog entry, but please don't link to the cap directly.

Recently, I've been working on my science website, as I've so often pimped in the past. Well, I decided that I wanted to have Google News index it so it could be added as a news source. I figured it'd be a way to drive traffic and increase exposure. Not a bad idea, right?

Well anyway I submitted it for appoval the other day, and I got a response this morning. Obviously it wasn't the response I was looking for, otherwise, I would be posting about how amazingly awesome and cool Google is. But no, in fact, they suck, and I shall explain why in a moment. Here's the text of the response:

Hi Rian,

Thank you again for your suggestion. We've reviewed your site and cannot include it in Google News at this time. We appreciate your willingness to provide your articles to us, and we'll log your site for future consideration.

Thank you for your interest in Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team

No real reason why. Not that I expected one. So why am I angry? Because of one site that they DO index, that they shouldn't, and I would imagine that of the "4,500 news sources updated continuously" that there are more sites out there that do the same thing.

I am talking about ScienceBlog.com. ScienceBlog rips the text of every single one of their stories directly from another news source. Usually this is a place like eurekalert.org or a government site (NASA, for instance), or another educational site where the material is not explicity copyrighted. In the case of NASA and other government agencies, they cannot copyright what they publish because it is illegal. Scienceblog copies the text from the article verbatim, adds no commentary, and doesn't even provide a link to the original article. The attribution is a tacked on paragraph that will say, for instance, "From NASA."

Let me give you some examples.

Prozac for plants (NASA) | Scienceblog rip
Meteor impacts: Life's jump starter? (Eurekalert) | Scienceblog rip
Neuroscientists match specific thoughts to brain signals (UCLA) | Scienceblog rip

It took me all of two minutes, searching only the news sources that I have in my RSS reader and scienceblog.com's front page to come up with both the originals and the rips. Why and how Google News thinks this is appropriate, and worthy of inclusion in their news service is beyond me, but I am thoroughly disgusted by Scienceblog's copying, and Google for seeing fit to include them as a news source.