Cicadas attack Japan!!!

Nature reports that japanese cicadas have been descending in masse over the arcipelago, and they don't just make noise.

They also destroy the country's fiber-optic infrastructure, since they mistake the hanging cables for withered branches, and punch them with their ovopositors in order to put an egg in the cosy place.

Jewel Squid.

A wonderful picture of a deep-sea squid in Deep Sea News.

Despite its delicate, decorated appearance, this jewel squid was found 1,650 lung-crushing feet (500 meters) beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. Scientists on a recent deep-sea expedition found the squid, called Histioteuthis, along with an abundance of other species thought to be very rare, if not unknown, elsewhere. Jewel squid are known for their mismatched eyes, one of which is larger than the other to scope for prey in the deep's darkness.

Does the dissimmetry in the eye mirror an equivalent dissimmetry in the brain to better process the different input? I am surprised as I thought that down there no light would make it, so predators would rely on other senses to hunt their preys...

Why is Hello Kittty so popular?

I mean, I get cited in the PostDoc carnival, twice, and get an increase in traffic. Good. Except for the fact that most of the increase is for my citation of a NY Times article about police officers in SE Asia being forced to wear Hello Kitty badges of shame, when acting against the rules. So, I guess the conclusion is that Science is much much weaker than Cuddliness.

The best science book of my year

I just finished this book, and I must say that I loved it. The sheer breadth and depth of arguments treated in the book is mindboggling. The authors cover from the birth of the universe, through that of our planet, to Evolution, our role in the cosmos (or lack thereof) and our best survival strategy in a universe which, if not downright evil, is at least very uninterested to our existence.

Mind opening in so many levels, it really is the very first 'science' novel.

I was a bit skeptic about the alternating structure at first, one chapter of novel followed by an explanatory chapter of science. Yet it does pick up and work wonderfully, giving you a light and varied yet interesting read. 10+!!!

(ps: I am looking forward to read the next one, now.

Surfing mices!!!

who would've thought that mouses mice could surf? it's not only penguins who can!


which penguins am I talking about? these penguins:

ACS: Avogadro's out

From the skeptical chemist:

ACS: Avogadro's out

The ACS Nomenclature commitee plans to get rid of 6.0221415 × 10²³, or better to relate it to the Planck Constant (h) and other fundamental numbers. How? My guess is as good as yours, but I put my money on the relation between the gas constant R and the Boltzmann constant k_B:

Narrativium rules!

I loved Good Omens, from Gaiman and Pratchett. The Discworld I could not bear, Pratchett's humour needs to be tempered by someone else hand, otherwise it's just too much.

RTight now I am reading "The Science of Discworld", and I'm too lazy to translate from Italian what I posted in a private forum: here it is. The final part is about Stardust, the gaiman-inspired movie which is getting very good reviews from both critics and audience.

Proprio ora sto leggendo "The science of Discworld", che e' parte racconto fantasy, con i maghi della Unseen University che creano x accidente il 'nostro' universo e ne osservano gli eventi, parte divulgazione con articoli di Ian Stewart e Jack Cohen (e Pratchett ovviamente) che trattano degli stessi argomenti in maniera leggera e molto originale. Son a meta' del primo e me lo sto godendo davvero, non vedo l'ora di attaccare il secondo e il terzo che ho comprato insieme.

riguardo Stardust, ecco un altro paio di reviews:

Da un sito amatoriale.

Dal sito di Sci-Fi Channel

NY Times

sembra OK.

su IMDB si e' beccato un gran bel 8.3.

here's the trailer:

(whenever youtube wakes up)

Knights of the Order of Hello Kitty

(image from http://www.anime.com/Hello_Kitty/images/circle-01.jpg removed to avoid google-bombing)
The NY Times let us know that to authorities have decided to expose to public humiliation thai police officers who disobey the rules themselves by awarding them a compulsory Hello Kitty arm band. they hope that the threat of shame in front of others will work better than more formal warnings.

P - h - D

It's done. Now I am legally a Doctor of Philosophy (edit: no, I am not - still a PreDoc). Not much to say about the viva, I did not really prepare for it and there was no need, at the end. It was just an informal chat on my work, mostly detailing small corrections to apport to the thesis.

Next step is? Who knows? Relax in Sardinia, celebrate, then... may be start to look for an alternative position. I have some idea in mind, I'll share them in here very soon, as I get some more details fleshed out.

-2 to the Ph-Day

Only two days left before I face the panel, defend my thesis and hopefully get back home (via Brussel->Frankfurt) with three more letters in my business card.

To say the truth, i just want to get this over, I am not particularly tense for this, I just hope that the discussion will be interesting and science based, and I'll get back home with not too many corrections, so to improve the final version before sending it to the printer.

Today, though, is a day busy with other things. Have to get to brussel's midi market to get traditional sardinian sausages and cheese for my hosts in soton, then off to the station to grab my Euro* ticket. May be I'll pay visit to some friends having a picnic in Tervuren, if I don't feel to guitly. Otherwise, i'#ll read the final chapter of my thesis once more to preempt questions.

Failure to prepare is prepare to fail, said Gerry Halliwell.

A Bug's Death

Olivia Judson, evolutionary biologist at the university of Oxford and author of the wonderful Dr Tatiana Sex Advice to All Creation book, proposes to infect the malaria-carying mosquitoes with a killer gene, to estinguish the species within twenty generations or so.

After one night spent listening to two mosquitoes flying round my ears, I'm with Dr Tatiana. Who's with us?

Chiuso x Ferie

Truth be told, I'm on holiday from the blog 'cause I don't have much time to devote to it.

Too much stuff to do at work, and with only five days left before the Viva I really am starting to get skittish about it.

So, it's goodbye for the moment, and see you soon, after the exams and the well earned holidays.

I'll try to split the blog in two or three branches, one where I'll post about (my) science, the others i don't know yet.

If I blog, I want it to be not just a diary but somehow useful to people out there.

Pino e gli anticorpi - omaggio a bergman?

grazie a sassareserie x il filmato.

A new Contender

to the title of gufodotto's camera of the next years:

Panasonic DMC-FZ18

Tuesday, 24 July 2007 08:00 GMT

Next >

In addition to two new 'pocketable' compacts Panasonic has revealed the latest FZ series 'super zoom' model, the eighteen times optical zoom FZ18. This camera mates its (tiny) eight megapixel CCD to a lens which provides the equivalent of 28 to 504 mm on a 35 mm camera, plus it's optical image stabilization. Just like the compacts the FZ18 gets 'Intelligent Auto Mode' and automatic LCD backlight control. The FZ18 is (on paper) a compelling option considering how much glass you'd have to carry around to match it with a digital SLR (ignoring other factors such as high ISO performance, lens quality and focusing speed).

Jump to:

• Press Release
• Specifications

Press Release:

Panasonic’s DMC-FZ18

Snapped from DPreview.

Doing Yoga at your Desk

From the silly suggestions department:People who work at their desks all day tend to stay in one position for a long time. The exercises in these videos are designed to counter the effects of sitting at your desk. We suggest that you start with Part 1 below and then move on to Parts 2 and 3. Each video is about the length of your coffee break.Or, I say, just take a coffee break. This way you get to see Barbie Girl ;-)

read more | digg story

Which super zoom digicam to choose?

Ok, here I am with my new dilemma. My old Nikon Coolpix is kicking the bucket, as the battery flap lost the hinge and keeps popping open. I love the camera but it's become unreliable, and frankly speaking I would like something which pucks some more punch, especially at the telephoto end. Plus, all the usual needs such as higher resolution (not really), better image quality and so on. A big lens would also helps in low light at short distances, I hope, another of the weak points.
Anyway, my alltime favorite was a konica-Minolta Dimage Z-X (X=2,3,5...) but apparently they're discontinued.

So I have to hunt for a substitute - my requisites are:

1. at least a 12X Zoom, 'cause I want to take picture of squirrel far away. Plus, going to Africa in December, I don't want to have to get TOO close to lions and hippos to take a decent shot.
2. AA Batteries, if I can, and SD Cards too. I don't want difficult and expensive proprietary formats such as xD cards (understood, Fuji and Olympus?) nor Memory Sticks (Sony? Drop them!). Ditto for batteries. If I run out of juice I want to be able to spend 10Euros for a new pack, not 40. Damn!
3. Oh, Video + Audio (stereo if I am not asking too much) would be good, availability of an underwater case (although I can still use the old one for diving, if I can find the case again)

and now, the candidates:

• Olympus SP-550 UZ, with its big-ass 18x optical zoom

• Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H9, good 15x and swivelling screen

• Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H7, good 15x but no swivelling screen

• Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8, only 12x may be but it's a Leica and has lots of features

• Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3, tiny, pocket-friendly camera with a Leica 10x (!)

• Canon PowerShot S3, highly recommended and successful but a tad older

• Canon PowerShot S5 is the new model but it's getting mixed reviews and it's more expensive.

There's also some unlikely outsiders:

• Fujifilm Finepix S6000fd / S6500fd which went in don't remember why, though

• Canon PowerShot TX1, HD camcorder and camera at once but boh...

As you may have noticed, most of them have SLR-like bodies but can't swap lenses. I am too lazy for this I just want a camera with a good zoom, for nature and travel pictures. Macro is important but am not an expert so manual modes and all those jargon-priority leave me baffled. I do not plan on printing the piccies but I definitely want to look at them on a 20" HD LCD screen. Other people would probably get my shows through Picasa.

Please help me out. I already have had some feedback but want some more unbiased, from expert and not so. Voice your opinion and thanks in advance!

New Bloggies

It's been a while since I've updated my blogroll.

I am inserting today one more link to a friend's blog: Emiliano is a guy from my birth-city, and he was my pusher for many years, when his bookshop was the only reliable source of comic book in the whole city. Of course you could get them elsewhere, but only there you had your pigeon-hole where he'd carefully slot the latest copy of DragonBall or Ranma 1/2. I still come around the bookshop every time I'm around there, although I rarely if ever get the time to read the stuff. Comics have bored me, sort of. The latest manga look boy-ish, Bonelli's are monotonous and badly told. Most likely, exposure to the broader stream of english literature opened my eyes on the real (lack of) quality of (some, most) comic books. Only the old glories I can keep reading, but it' most likely due to the emotions they re-awake in me than anything else.

Last Saturday? I was there.

I went to the Gentse Feesten, la festa di Gent, a huge musical festival, with five or more simultaneous concerts ongoing throughout the old city.

It's a very nice city indeed, although this saturday was a tad crowded.

Music was good (although I am certainly not the reference ear), I switched between three groups of friends, italians, colleague and some flemish friends of a friend - plus, this
friend of mine (Daniele) truly is a girls-magnet, and hooked up three very young and pretty italian-speaking (and -loving) flemish girls at a bar, just by standing there. What's the secret of his animal magnetism? who knows? Most likely, the fact that he's natural and outgoing. differently from me, introverse and grumpy at times.

Anyway, it was good, but I hope I'll get there sometimes soon with the same nice weather and less crowd, to have a look at the REAL Gent.

wanna see more pictures? have a look here (may be I'll be within the crowd, who knows?)

Non mi chiedermi

Just discovered this silly and funny song!!!



I know it's old but who cares! Here's the lyrics too:

Ciao, mi piacerebbe avere un telefonino che manda i messaggini con tantissimi caratteri
così potrei scriverti
"Ti amo" con un milione di "o"
e verrebbe pressappoco così:
TI AMO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O

Non mi chiedermi di avere un equilibrio
anche in quei giorni
Non mi chiedermi di farti
lo stufato quando torni
Non mi chiedermi il teorema di Pitagora
non ho la licenza media
in prima mi bocciarono
Non mi chiedermi di avere gambe lisce come seta
la ricrescita è una piaga e non mi basta
una "lameta"
ci vorrebbe un diserbante dedicato
io ce l'ho
spero solo che rispetti il mio pH

Rit.
(Girl band)
Quanta spontaneità nei miei modi schietti
(Wooden Chicks)
le mie movenze e i completini perfetti
(Girl band)
o quando uno è naturale è naturale
(Wooden Chicks)
tra l'altro questo motivetto niente male


Non mi chiedermi l'orgasmo che non so come si scrive
Non mi chiedermi se ho sexy più la fronte o le gengive
Non mi chiedermi di coniugarti i verbi
non li so
"se li avrei saputi mo' te l'imparavo"
Non mi chiedermi di amarti con le tecniche orientali
Non cercare di sorprendermi all'incrocio dei miei pali
Non mi chiedermi di rivelarti dove ho il punto G
con il mio alfabeto arrivo fino a F

Rit.
(Girl band)
Belle ragazze con le gambe perfette
(Wooden Chicks)
noi siamo tope dalle vedute strette
(Girl band)
sinceramente non capisco chi ci biasima
(Wooden Chicks)
nei nostri play-back ci mettiamo l'anima

(Frankie Hi in rap)
Tu tipico prototipo di donna libera
tutta acqua e sapone non ti dai
nemmeno un'aria
tu così lucida ed estera
tu che sei più semplice di un
mosaico con una tessera
tu hai più colori di una gerbera
venere berbera
tu genuina come il barbera
tu che non mi dai mai l'idea
di aver la minima idea
di quel che dai

"Se saprei" parlare senza farti diventare rosso
"Se dovrei" vestire i panni senza toglierli di dosso
"Se potrei" dir cose meno imbarazzanti le direi
ma non sarei più gradita in una Girl...

Rit.
(Girl band)
Quanta spontaneità nei miei modi schietti
(Wooden Chicks)
le mie movenze e i completini perfetti
(Girl band)
o quando uno è naturale è naturale
(Wooden Chicks)
tra l'altro questo motivetto niente male
(Girl band)
Belle ragazze con le gambe perfette
(Wooden Chicks)
gagliarde tope dalle vedute strette
(Girl band)
sinceramente non capisco chi ci biasima
(Wooden Chicks)
nei nostri play-back ci mettiamo l'anima

Post, post, post

Posto, ergo sum.

Traffic has gone down considerably, I can only imagine why. My average number of posts x day has decreased even more dramatically.

It's not that I don't know what to post about, it's just that I'm damn busy with so many things and don't have the time to share. I don't even have the time, most of the days, to check my blogs of interest, if not in a very cursory way.

coming up: which super-zoom digicam should I buy?