From the mustachioed microscope-gazer who gave us the method (for staining specimens), the receptor (inside our tendons) and the bodies (inside our cells) comes a hypnotic look inside a dog’s nose.

As cited on Scientific Illustration (where I found this):

“This 1875 drawing of a dog’s olfactory bulb by Camillo Golgi is but one [...]

Ten percent. That’s all it takes to start a mob or to sell a coup d’etat. ScienceBlog digs up the numbers we need to make a change. Once 10 percent accept a thing as a rock-solid fact, the rest of the population follows – ready or not:

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there [...]

The IBT (and a bunch of other news outlets) are making this discovery – an asteroid that’s been orbiting Earth – are making it sound like a deadly trick. When really the little hunk of rock has just following us around for thousands of years and seeing if we notice it:

Trojan asteroids share orbits with other planets in [...]

BBC News uncovers a strange complex of problems that humans have and chimps don’t. We get old. On the one hand, we live a long time. And on the other, our brains shrink:

Anthropologist Chet Sherwood from George Washington University in Washington DC, who led the study, thinks that humans live longer to “pay for” their larger-brained children.

Humans live relatively [...]

Georgetown University researchers want to know why – and how – dolphins are so good at healing themselves:

A dolphin’s ability to heal quickly from a shark bite with apparent indifference to pain, resistance to infection, hemorrhage protection, and near-restoration of normal body contour might provide insights for the care of human injuries, says Michael Zasloff, M.D., Ph.D.

For a “Letter” [...]

A sad fact from Science Daily – kids’ TV shows are teaching them that it’s better to be famous than it is to be kind:

On a list of 16 values, fame jumped from the 15th spot, where it was in both 1987 and 1997, to the first spot in 2007. From 1997 to 2007, benevolence (being kind and [...]

This is a Julbock – a “Yule goat” – from a very special category on Wikimedia Commons.

What, it’s the 23rd and there’s no song?

Yes, it’s true. I’m moving (yet again) and have been unable to record between the packing and unpacking. Expect one shortly. And a penitential cover.

And, perhaps, some news that might make the wait worthwhile.

New York Times recognizes the work of some teenage sleuths in finding what’s really in that fancy herbal tea:

Catherine C. Gamble, a senior who will be attending Harvard this fall; Rohan Kirpekar, who will be attending Columbia University; and Grace Young, a rising sophomore, used DNA barcoding, a kind of genetic fingerprinting, to test 70 tea products and [...]