someone else posted this but:

And the ceramic tile deal is something I've done a lot of. Part of the reason we wanted to do it ourselves is that I did a lot of research and had some personal experience with friends and family who had tile done... to get a job done correctly, you will need to hire a tile specialist or a really reliable handyman…

Well, this might be true, but it is more like a group of people who lost a cultural tradition preventing inbreeding because the culture they came from lived in large communities. Then the people ended up in small isolated communities hundreds of years later. However, very historically speaking, (and indeed in many,…

I'll take all of these over 1995... especially since that means being 12/13 in 1989. Oh dear... the perms and the bangs and the puberty... the humanity

finally spent all the time on this... agreed. feels much more plausible than the gymnastics that must be done to even put Jay and Adnan together for all those hours, let alone Adnan killing Hae.

wow.. I read all of that and it is really, really compelling. I had limited my following of the story to the podcast itself and let myself be led and entertained and mystified as intended. As such, I vacillated back and forth re Adnan's guilt. I think the fact that the first trial was likely to end in acquittal and…

Typical Jezzies. When it's a woman accusing a man of sexual assault, you rightly won't take any shit from the victim-blamers. When the accusation is the other way around, you belittle and insult the victim.

Never had problems getting outlets in Philly (it's my home airport) and the wifi is free. Had one crummy experience at the end gates of terminal D which is like a cesspool compared to B and C. New boarding policies on the airline, a mother requiring special assistance and two small children didn't help. And that end…

agreed, there is one security area (and sometimes it's terrible, but not much worse than any other). From the exit there you can head down the main area toward you concourse and unless you have last gate in D or maybe C it's not so bad (and C and B have nice areas at the end that aren't super crowded and you can…

You can experience some of the defensive compounds yourself (though they are generally defensive against a natural enemy that isn't always or usually a vertebrate). Peel a cucumber (or just a small section of it)... then wait a minute. You'll see some beading on the surface. These droplets contain cucurbitacin. …

There is a dermestid colony down the hall from my office... used to clean skulls in a wildlife ecology department. The only time you really smell it is when it's dermestid colony cleaning day. Then it's best to work from home.

This article is must read on these subjects:

I will offer a strict definition of evolution, from the point of view of someone who actually studies evolutionary biology. It is a heritable change in allele frequency within a population over time.

The diagram shown is titled that way. It is poorly worded, but I think it is trying to reflect that R0 is a number which is calculated using mathematical models. There are several models that might be chosen with different assumed values for the other variables in the model. They probably ran several models with…

R0 is secondary infections to susceptible individuals in a population that is 100% susceptible (so the real R of measles, mumps, etc are lower in a population of people who have acquired immunity. This is what the concept of herd immunity via widespread vaccination programs is based on. It is also why the percentage…

It also was trying to convey an additional point, but as I said, I was trying to come up with a better analogy but I ran out of time. You must also consider the likelihood of encountering a dose of viral particles large enough to cause an infection. So, yes a droplet of secretion containing Ebola has far more than…

THIS article actually is about how infectious Ebola is. Transmissibility or contagiousness in the linked article is a factor which includes the length of time a person remains infectious. Ebola kills people within a week or two of the time they become infectious so this decreases it's R0.

Eh. I am on the page of, if it makes you happy you should do what you want to your face/body. I wish it made her happy to give the money to some good cause (and maybe she does do that too). I also wish she didn't feel pressure to meet that model ideal to make her happy/happier. If I had to pick between her before…

I do this and record the conversation. Then I listen to it and take notes or make an outline. Because my current problem is actually panic induced by writing, I've had to come up with ways to remove the panic triggers. This is sort of like an extreme writer's block.

I was able to put shoes in a carseat bag the first time I traveled, but the next two times the person checking my bag opened up the carseat carrying bag to check if there was anything inside and I had to remove it. Unfortunately the configuration of my carseat/bag didn't allow me to put the seat in any position that…