The Futile Cycle

From the Loom, a scientist gets his wife’s initials (”EEE”) tatooed onto his body in the form of a genetic code (i.e. Glutamine-Glutamine-Glutamine). Very nerdy, but kind of sweet.

Via Cosma Shalizi, old dissection videos of squid giant nerve axons. They show how Hodgkin and Huxley actually did their measurements, leading to the discovery of the action potential and the famous Hodgkin-Huxley equation that predicts the existance of sodium and potassium channels.

I love watching old videos of dissection. One video I recall very fondly was on the dissection and manipulation of a single-celled algae, with which one could study hydrodynamics within plant cells, actin and microtubule organization along the cell walls, and the dynamics of cell-wall growth during tip growth. It was quite amazing, but I can’t for the life of me recall what the video was called, nor who made it. I distinctly remember a scene in which a loop of human hair is used to squeeze out all the cytoplasm from a severed algal cell.

The other videos on that course website are also very interesting. I like the earthworm dissection video, which demonstrates very clearly the “recharging” time of the action potential.

A great post by Rangel MD on why medicine will always, no matter what, have inequality of care, at least unless you ban private healthcare, and paying doctors extra cash to treat you better.

xkcd really hits the spot this time, with this brilliant strip: