Regeneration is right around the corner....

Amazing article that first appeared in the Wall Street Journal:

Doctors try new techniques to regrow human tissue
By RON WINSLOW
AP
Eds: Via AP.

By RON WINSLOW

The Wall Street Journal

Five soldiers at a military base in Texas are about to participate in a remarkable test to see if they can regrow portions of fingers they lost in the war in Iraq.

Doctors plan to treat them with a fine powder called extracellular matrix, harvested from pig bladders. The material, found in all animals, is the scaffolding that cells latch onto as they divide and grow into tissue and body parts. In the human body, it was long thought to be inert. But scientists have discovered that it appears to activate latent biological processes that spur healing and regenerate tissue.

Full Article

Dirty little secrets in the NYT...

This article, that made the top of the New York Times' most emailed list is so fitting to my life that I was at once amazed and appalled. Well, at least I'm not the only one who is a little bossy in the kitchen



Another interesting article in the Wall Street Journal deals with a new means of predicting outcomes far and wide. The article specifically deals with how Wall Street traders are not only betting on stocks and bonds and such, but events as well. Apparently they are not only doing it, but doing it with startling accuracy (they accurately predicted the election results in all 50 states for the 06 mid-terms). The most interesting of the sites mentioned is called Intrade, which has predictions on everything from political outcomes to the Oscars to the chances that bird flu will be discovered on US soil by March. According to them, Martin Scorsese is a lock for best director this year...we'll see.
On an unrelated note, I finally saw Dave Chapelle's Block Party and let me tell you, if you're a Chapelle fan, it's eminently worth seeing. The man is indisputably a comic genius.
And finally, I had promised a couple friends that I would post some pix of a mosque I saw over in Iraq. This is up in the north very close to Mosul and the actual mosque is one of the most breathtaking things I saw over there. It's well over a thousand years old but there was a strange peace that hung over it like a cloud. You could definitely tell that it was a holy site. As a bonus, I've included a tank graveyard that was close by.

The Mosque

(just click on the pic to view the album)

Random Things That Fascinate Me

There is this site called swivel.com that allows people to submit graphs and charts of random data they've gathered. I'm not sure why but I find this stuff endlessly entertaining.

google maps finally added subway stops...

a new trend in flooring that sounds delightful for a daylight basement.

Richard Branson offers $25 million prize to combat global warming.



on a lighter note I found this old flash movie that I think is funny as hell called ze end of ze world. It takes a long time to load but it never stops making me laugh...