Waking up Hungry

I’m looking at my messy desk this morning, and thinking about the list I have to make of urgent, can wait, and maybe later projects. I have exams next week, an Art Deco style pearl necklace under my elbow, and an Indian take-out menu on my pentablet. There’s coffee to my left, but none of it in me, yet. I really need to go through my files and find an important piece of paperwork, and oh, yes, also get my printer to work since yesterday it refused to print (I’ll buy another one, you oversized gadget, you! Printers are cheap, Nyah!). On the upside, I have a day to work in. On the downside, what I really want to do is go hunt butterflies.

In the meantime, I’ve got a collection of science-in-the-news type articles for you all, and I hope to carve out the time today to work on a little art. For one thing, I plan to publish a short story, which means a cover must be made. For another, I really need to mix up a batch of henna for a party tomorrow. For a third thing (do I have enough hands to hold all that?) I would like to actually, you know, cook something for dinner tonight. I have rhubarb.

There’s a big asteroid passing by the earth, and it sent a present… Mysterious Explosion: “A team of Nicaraguan scientists are working with the government to determine if any remains of the meteorite can be found near the apparent area of impact, located on KM 9.5 of the Carretera Norte, in a field about 300 meters from the Camino Real Hotel.” That is far too close to that hotel.

Science is making progress in fighting our own bodies, as they over-zealously attack themselves. I have two mild auto-immune disorders, but i have family who has real problems, so I find this very interesting. “Scientists were able to selectively target the cells that cause autoimmune disease by dampening down their aggression against the body’s own tissues while converting them into cells capable of protecting against disease. This type of conversion has been previously applied to allergies, known as ‘allergic desensitisation’, but its application to autoimmune diseases has only been appreciated recently.”

Taken any generic drugs? This might interest you… “So what we’ve actually got, after all this, is a classic public-choice story: The government is currently doing something insane, which is being defended by the highly motivated special interest that benefits from the insanity. And a story that seems simple and intuitive actually is simple and intuitive — and completely different from what you’d think.”

Ok, this last one might only be of interest to me, as I am learning about the ‘little animalacules’ but I find it fascinating that the more we learn, in science, the less we know. Anyone who says “We know everything about X” is full of it, or lying through their teeth.

Now I’m going to go try to absorb enough caffeine to set the brain waving in a steady rhythm. See how a little methylxanthine affects my adenosine… after all, it’s For Science!