The Homicidal Urges

For some reason that godforsaken social media site of doom won't let me post this video, so I've fallen back on good ol' reliable LJ.

Anyway, as proof that I don't just listen to metal, here's the video of an old Melbourne band who are missed greatly. They put on a pretty good show.

They were always much more than your average plug-in-n'-play-n'-hope-for-the-best Melbourne indie act. This was one of their more straightforward rockers but they did some really interesting stuff with weird timings and unconventional song structures without being unnecessarily proggish. And the singer, Sianna Lee, had one hell of a set of pipes.

Speaking of Faecesbook, those of you on mine might have seen my beer n' vinyl photo project. It's being discontinued there as I'm really starting to get the shits with FB, and it'll be resurrected here, on a new tumblr site (beerswax.tumblr.com). Yes, I realise using tumblr as a replacement for Faecesbook is akin to cutting my testicles off to spite my future spawn, but I was convinced by someone who knows better that it's one of the easier blogging sites to use.

Oh, and no, this is not the blog I've set up to use as a writing aid, even though there;s a long rambly entry on it! That one's still....a work in progress. And by by "work in progress" I mean "sweet bugger all".

This was a fairly monstrous episode (in a good way) - several people, competing voices (not necessarily opinions!), and plenty of ground covered. Download here.

Lucas was on board again, as was Dr Krystal Evans (yes, I just linked you to a Twatter. I feel dirty), who is a researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute working on a live malaria vaccine, a panelist on radio station RRR's science program Einstein a Go Go (which, as Ed points out, is a terrible name...) and was a strong presence in the program that we referred to in an earlier episode, Discoveries Need Dollars. She's the kind of scientist I would have liked to be - dedicated to the point of wanting to actively engage, erudite and with a passion for science that will hold her in good stead for any shit that's thrown in any career scientist's path. The sort of stuff that I couldn't get over as a scientist. I realised, listening to her, that I'm way out of the loop, and a big part of me is very sad about that.

Anyway, enough rumination. Topics:

Search engines changing the way memory works;
Forests as carbon sinks, and why planting trees won't necessarily work as the only means of offsetting emissions;
- Conversely, cities as carbon sinks;
Ethnic disparities in Genome Wide Association Studies;
The other side of GM - Round Up Ready turf grass and the potential for selection of resistant weeds;
More on Greenpeace's act of GM vandalism;
The genomes of the potato and coral sequenced.

***

Our science podcast continues! We have a few followers on Faecesbook and Twatter, and we've received very positive responses.

This week's podcast: download here. Again, around 40 minutes, and unfortunately there's an annoying crackle that Ed couldn't get rid of.... I was also very tired (whacked in fact) so I don't actually talk much, and when I do I don't seem to make much sense, and I made a couple of mistakes. Oh well...Penny and Ed did a great job!

Topics covered:

Spatial sorting and cane toads - breaking the rules of evolution?
Using cortisol to assist in phobia therapy
Yuri's Night pimped once again
Pics of Mercury! (see last week's podcast)
Drilling down to the Earth's mantle
Microbial fossils....probably aren't fossils
Girls fear the HPV/cervical cancer vaccine, and a rant against the anti-vaccine lobby

Stay tuned for next week! We were planning for it to be a bit shorter, but that didn't eventuate...