I was saddened today when I learned that WotC (Wizards of the Coast) will NOT be renewing their license for their Star Wars branch of merchandise. This means that SWSE (Star Wars Saga Edition), currently my favorite roleplaying game (and rules set) will be discontinued after the next book (which will be released in April). This also means that their Star Wars miniatures line will discontinue. Here is the official WotC post. I truly loved the Saga Edition line and will sorely miss the excitement of getting new books for it. And while, no "official" new content will be generated, the fans over at d20 Radio's Order 66 Podcast will make sure that the system doesn't fall into obscurity.
*raises a toast to Star Wars Saga Edition*
You had a good run. I appreciate all that you've given to the Star Wars nerds over the last couple of years.
On a completely unrelated note... I bought the live action "The Tick" tv series that aired on fox in 2001. Amazing. It's a throwback to the campy 1960's Batman. It makes me smile every times I see it. Patrick Walburton FTW.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Chemistry Can Disprove Hell?
I received this in an email from one of my Aunts. I thought it was hilarious. Do I think it's true? No, but still worth the comical value.
"The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer was so profound that the professor shared it with his colleagues via the internet."
"Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?"
"Most of the students wrote proofs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student wrote the following:"
"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today."
"Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added."
"This gives two possibilities:"
"1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose."
"2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over."
"So which is it?"
"If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'"
Wlecome to my mind. I hope you enjoyed.
"The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer was so profound that the professor shared it with his colleagues via the internet."
"Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?"
"Most of the students wrote proofs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student wrote the following:"
"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today."
"Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added."
"This gives two possibilities:"
"1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose."
"2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over."
"So which is it?"
"If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'"
Wlecome to my mind. I hope you enjoyed.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Peak Crack Sales = Finals Time
If the title didn't peak your interest I don't know what will. Welcome to another moment in science with Professor Goldfinch.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending one of the most interesting Lab Meetings my lab at Wayne State has had. Our Post-Doc (a person with a PhD doing a paid internship before they become a full fledged professor) began discussing a paper that looked into the effects of stress on drug rehabilitation. I found the results to be riveting and felt I needed to share.
The paper "cAMP Response Element-Binding Protein Is Required for Stress But Not Cocaine-Induced Reinstatement" (if you desire to see this paper please let me know and I will get you a copy) provided a very interesting look into the relationship between stress and former drug abuse. Essentially a series of mice were placed in a small 3 chambered cage with doors connecting the chambers. The left chamber had a diagonal bar pattern on the floor, the middle chamber had a basic floor, and the right chamber had a cross hatched floor. Why? Well the researchers used the unique floor patterns to get the mice to associate the rooms with different things. When the mice were injected with either saline (salt water) or cocaine they would be placed in a specific room. Saline injections corresponded to the diagonal room while the cross hatched room was associated with cocaine injections. After 7 days of injections the mice were placed in the middle chamber and given the option to choose a room. The mice that had been exposed to cocaine chose to return the cocaine room.
The next step involved simulating withdrawl. During this 7 day period the mice were only given injections of saline. When they tested the mice for preference of room they found that the mice no longer prefered the cocaine room to the saline room. Now comes the interesting part. A group of the cocaine mice were selected to perform the "Forced Swim Stress Test". Essentially the mice were placed, individually, in a column filled with water (high enough that they couldn't touch) and swim for about 6 minutes. Not an incredibly long time. This test helped simulate outside stress (stress not caused in the home). When the mice were again tested for their preference of rooms they showed a HUGE inclination towards the cocained room. The stress caused the mice to remeber their fix and desire the good feeling the drug provided. The mice that were not stressed did not return to the cocaine room.
What does this all mean? It means that there is evidence that shows (specifically for cocaine) stress can cause rehabilitation patients to relapse. Our lab has now decided to see if this same information holds true for alcohol.
Anyway, I thought that this was a very interesting scientific study and wanted to share. Just don't try to stop your vices before finals week.
"I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!"
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending one of the most interesting Lab Meetings my lab at Wayne State has had. Our Post-Doc (a person with a PhD doing a paid internship before they become a full fledged professor) began discussing a paper that looked into the effects of stress on drug rehabilitation. I found the results to be riveting and felt I needed to share.
The paper "cAMP Response Element-Binding Protein Is Required for Stress But Not Cocaine-Induced Reinstatement" (if you desire to see this paper please let me know and I will get you a copy) provided a very interesting look into the relationship between stress and former drug abuse. Essentially a series of mice were placed in a small 3 chambered cage with doors connecting the chambers. The left chamber had a diagonal bar pattern on the floor, the middle chamber had a basic floor, and the right chamber had a cross hatched floor. Why? Well the researchers used the unique floor patterns to get the mice to associate the rooms with different things. When the mice were injected with either saline (salt water) or cocaine they would be placed in a specific room. Saline injections corresponded to the diagonal room while the cross hatched room was associated with cocaine injections. After 7 days of injections the mice were placed in the middle chamber and given the option to choose a room. The mice that had been exposed to cocaine chose to return the cocaine room.
The next step involved simulating withdrawl. During this 7 day period the mice were only given injections of saline. When they tested the mice for preference of room they found that the mice no longer prefered the cocaine room to the saline room. Now comes the interesting part. A group of the cocaine mice were selected to perform the "Forced Swim Stress Test". Essentially the mice were placed, individually, in a column filled with water (high enough that they couldn't touch) and swim for about 6 minutes. Not an incredibly long time. This test helped simulate outside stress (stress not caused in the home). When the mice were again tested for their preference of rooms they showed a HUGE inclination towards the cocained room. The stress caused the mice to remeber their fix and desire the good feeling the drug provided. The mice that were not stressed did not return to the cocaine room.
What does this all mean? It means that there is evidence that shows (specifically for cocaine) stress can cause rehabilitation patients to relapse. Our lab has now decided to see if this same information holds true for alcohol.
Anyway, I thought that this was a very interesting scientific study and wanted to share. Just don't try to stop your vices before finals week.
"I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!"
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Crisis of Crises
Allow me to start off by saying that crises is a difficult word to determine if it is spelled correctly. I figured dictionary.com was a good source...
I am getting very tired of DC (the comic company that owns Batman, Superman, JLA, ect.) releasing these "Universe Changing" story arcs that never end with an ending that supports the hype they promoted. I understand that DC has a history with the term Crisis and I appreciate that they want to continue to use it, but enough is enough. Allow me to explain.
In the 1980's DC had a very fractured continuity. They had mutliple version of the same character that were living on "different Earths". For example Golden age superman (indicated by his grey temples) lived on Earth 2 and was part of the Justice Soceity of America while modern Superman lived on Earth 1 and was a member of the Justice League. As you can imagine this was very difficult for new readers to understand. DC came up with a solution, combine all of the continuties and get rid of the duplicates. In order to do this they released a 12 issue story arc known as Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was a huge success and many people still consider a "must read" for anyone who enjoys comic books. This was also the series that killed the Silver Age Flash Barry Allen. In the end all the Earths merged and any duplicates of characters disappeared or where killed. The only notable exceptions were GA (Golden Age) Superman, GA Lois Lane, Superboy Prime, and Alexander Luthor.
So about a year or 2 ago DC revived this story line in Infinite Crisis. There was a lot of hype for this story line, villains had joined in an alliance, nanotechnology had transformed people into a superhero police force, the Spectre was out of control, ect. However, the plot was seriously lacking. The four special "survivors" of the original Crisis decided that they had saved the wrong Earth in the original crisis and set forth to "fix" this world. It didn't work. Superboy Prime went crazy and killed a ton of people before finally being defeated by Modern Superman and GA Superman, Alexander Luthor recreated the multiverse... it totally undid all of thye important and intellegent decisions made by DC during the 80s. They also killed Superboy, how was a really neat character. However, I was still entertained by the story.
Now.... it hurts a little.... they just finished up Final Crisis. I don't even know what the heck happened here. I've read it... I don't understand it. Apparently the New Gods all died and were reincarnated as humans? And then Darksied was able to learn the Anti-Life Equations and enslave humanity, and Cain (yeah from the Bible) came back and fought against God's servants, and they collected all the Supermen from the other Earths, and.... You see where this is going? No? Good, me either. They also KILLED BATMAN for no good reason. I'm going to make an attempt to read it again, but I figure I'll still leave the story widely unfufilled and confused.
Overall, Crisis was great. It will always be great, it's a classic. Don't keep trying to use it. Let it go. Try something different! And DC wonders why it doesn't have the same reader following as Marvel...
I am getting very tired of DC (the comic company that owns Batman, Superman, JLA, ect.) releasing these "Universe Changing" story arcs that never end with an ending that supports the hype they promoted. I understand that DC has a history with the term Crisis and I appreciate that they want to continue to use it, but enough is enough. Allow me to explain.
In the 1980's DC had a very fractured continuity. They had mutliple version of the same character that were living on "different Earths". For example Golden age superman (indicated by his grey temples) lived on Earth 2 and was part of the Justice Soceity of America while modern Superman lived on Earth 1 and was a member of the Justice League. As you can imagine this was very difficult for new readers to understand. DC came up with a solution, combine all of the continuties and get rid of the duplicates. In order to do this they released a 12 issue story arc known as Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was a huge success and many people still consider a "must read" for anyone who enjoys comic books. This was also the series that killed the Silver Age Flash Barry Allen. In the end all the Earths merged and any duplicates of characters disappeared or where killed. The only notable exceptions were GA (Golden Age) Superman, GA Lois Lane, Superboy Prime, and Alexander Luthor.
So about a year or 2 ago DC revived this story line in Infinite Crisis. There was a lot of hype for this story line, villains had joined in an alliance, nanotechnology had transformed people into a superhero police force, the Spectre was out of control, ect. However, the plot was seriously lacking. The four special "survivors" of the original Crisis decided that they had saved the wrong Earth in the original crisis and set forth to "fix" this world. It didn't work. Superboy Prime went crazy and killed a ton of people before finally being defeated by Modern Superman and GA Superman, Alexander Luthor recreated the multiverse... it totally undid all of thye important and intellegent decisions made by DC during the 80s. They also killed Superboy, how was a really neat character. However, I was still entertained by the story.
Now.... it hurts a little.... they just finished up Final Crisis. I don't even know what the heck happened here. I've read it... I don't understand it. Apparently the New Gods all died and were reincarnated as humans? And then Darksied was able to learn the Anti-Life Equations and enslave humanity, and Cain (yeah from the Bible) came back and fought against God's servants, and they collected all the Supermen from the other Earths, and.... You see where this is going? No? Good, me either. They also KILLED BATMAN for no good reason. I'm going to make an attempt to read it again, but I figure I'll still leave the story widely unfufilled and confused.
Overall, Crisis was great. It will always be great, it's a classic. Don't keep trying to use it. Let it go. Try something different! And DC wonders why it doesn't have the same reader following as Marvel...
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The Curious "Cassia" of Cinnamon
So I recently discovered a little fact that I though was pretty interesting during one of the lab sessions of my Instrumental Analysis class. I thought I would share.
Apparently the spice industry has been misleading Americans for years. Cinnamon, a fairly well known spice, is actually not as abundant as we think. In fact, most of the time when you purchase cinnamon from your local grocery store it's actually a spice known as cassia. Cassia tastes just like cinnamon and it's cheaper so they just substitute to save money. Now other countries don't allow this. If you were to shop in Canada you would find both cassia and cinnamon in the spice section, but cinnamon would be a little more expensive.
What does this matter to you? It doesn't... unless you're some sort of spice purist nut. Although cinnamon has been shown to have health benefits for diabetics (I don't have a citation for this atm, I'll fix it later), the other changes are about the same. Both cinnamon and cassia have nice levels of cinnamon aldehyde and cinnamon amide (once again, I'll cite later) so they have essentially the same taste. The major difference is the presence of Eugenol, Benzyl Benzoate, and Coumarin.
Anyway, these 3 different chemicals can be seperated from the cinnamon and cassia samples by using Gas Chromatography which essentially seperates them by size and polarity. Then you can use Mass Spectroscopy to determine the weigh of each component and determine them by molecular weight.
Anyway! Some chemistry for you. Now go find real cinnamon!
Apparently the spice industry has been misleading Americans for years. Cinnamon, a fairly well known spice, is actually not as abundant as we think. In fact, most of the time when you purchase cinnamon from your local grocery store it's actually a spice known as cassia. Cassia tastes just like cinnamon and it's cheaper so they just substitute to save money. Now other countries don't allow this. If you were to shop in Canada you would find both cassia and cinnamon in the spice section, but cinnamon would be a little more expensive.
What does this matter to you? It doesn't... unless you're some sort of spice purist nut. Although cinnamon has been shown to have health benefits for diabetics (I don't have a citation for this atm, I'll fix it later), the other changes are about the same. Both cinnamon and cassia have nice levels of cinnamon aldehyde and cinnamon amide (once again, I'll cite later) so they have essentially the same taste. The major difference is the presence of Eugenol, Benzyl Benzoate, and Coumarin.
Anyway, these 3 different chemicals can be seperated from the cinnamon and cassia samples by using Gas Chromatography which essentially seperates them by size and polarity. Then you can use Mass Spectroscopy to determine the weigh of each component and determine them by molecular weight.
Anyway! Some chemistry for you. Now go find real cinnamon!
The First Post
So, the first post is always the most important, right? Well, maybe...
Anyway, I got some motivation from a friend of mine to start my own blog. There is a serious lack of geek conversation in my life and I figured that by blogging about my geekdom I might find a few people and have some solid conversations.
The topics will change a lot. I'm gonna hit on things I've learned about in Chemistry, exciting moments from my collection of comic books, and anything else that strikes my fancy.
I hope everyone will stop by once in a while, read a post or so, and hopefully get some enjoyment out the ranting of a man who enjoys his geekdom and promises to provide some of his trademark dry sarcasm.
Anyway, I got some motivation from a friend of mine to start my own blog. There is a serious lack of geek conversation in my life and I figured that by blogging about my geekdom I might find a few people and have some solid conversations.
The topics will change a lot. I'm gonna hit on things I've learned about in Chemistry, exciting moments from my collection of comic books, and anything else that strikes my fancy.
I hope everyone will stop by once in a while, read a post or so, and hopefully get some enjoyment out the ranting of a man who enjoys his geekdom and promises to provide some of his trademark dry sarcasm.
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