In the comments thread of one of the posts I wrote recently, where I discussed the new tentative signal of a new jet-decaying particle discovered by the CDF collaboration in their data, a reader asked me if hadronic signals of single vector bosons had been seen before by CDF.

The US national debt is now at 100% of Gross National Product, in other words equal to what we produce in a year. Forty cents of every dollar the US government spends is borrowed. Horrible, cry the pundits! The government should behave more like a family with a budget, should know when to stop spending!

Let’s consider, though, that the average home-owning family takes on a mortgage equal to two or three times its annual earnings. (Before the crash, this number was five, not two or three.) In the US, it’s common for this family to spend 40% of its monthly income servicing the mortgage debt. So far, then, the government is acting exactly like a family – and a fairly responsible family at that, as we’re not even talking about families that abuse credit cards.

One of my dear readers out there wrote to me “I don't own a scale and I understand I have to measure this s**t out in mg.” Thus we introduce to the world today: Alpha Meme’s Divide and Join Portioning (DJP©).

On March 14, I became aware of the CDC’s consideration of adding a wandering code to the ICD-9-CM in relation to autism and other developmental disabilities. ASAN, an organization created and headed by Ari Ne’eman, created a petition calling for people to speak out against the wandering code.

"Sir, if you were to suddenly appear in space would you be able to talk because you already had air in your lungs?"

Sahara Dust In European Skies

The skies over southern England were hazy on Friday April 08 2011.  In the evening the usual colors of sunset were absent.  A muddy grey-brown haze could be seen along the horizon.  That haze was caused by dust from the Sahara.


Dust from Sahara over Biscay, the English Channel and Ireland


Dust cloud from Sahara off the coast of Portugal

How much does science cost-- and how much does it cost to turn science off?  I know science can be done cheaply.  After all, you're listening to a guy who is building a satellite in his basement, for fun.  Yet while the satellite is paid for, even I'm hitting costs for the science part-- the ability to do something useful with the hardware once it's up.  In fact (shameless plug time) I've launched a Kickstarter fund drive where you can get cool Project Calliope space memorabilia for the next month only-- visit it!  Pass this link around through facebook, twitter, your network of choice: http://tinyurl.c