Oh, man, good listening!

Oh, the Things I Know: A Guide to Success, Or, Failing That, Happiness, by Al Franken.

I'm not sure if it's worth buying, but definitely check it out at your local library.
The book version is probably ok too.

О пользе политических дискуссий в ЖЖ. :)

Поучаствовал в дискуссии y m_p на тему нужно или не нужно давать дотации матерям с детьми. (на русском)
Самый интереснм для меня результатом всех обсуждений оказалось ощущение, что фраза "How do you plan to spread the truth?" очень подходит к мелодии и стихам The Wall, by Pink Floyd. Here it is:

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother do you think they'll like this song?
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother should I build the wall?
Mother should I run for president?
Mother should I trust the government?
Mother will they put me in the firing line?
Mother is it just a waste of time?

Science news

Musical roots may lie in human voice
Key universal features in world music may have their roots in the ever-present sound of the human voice during the course of evolution, suggests a new study.

The analysis of thousands of recorded speech samples found peaks in acoustic energy that precisely mirror the distances between important notes in the twelve-tone scale, the system that forms the foundation of almost all music.
( Read more... )

Science graduates live long and prosper
Science and medicine students go on to live longer and healthier lives than those studying other subjects, according to a survey of men attending university between 1948 and 1968.
( Read more... )

You are what your mother ate, suggests study
What mothers eat during pregancy could have a fundamental and lifelong effect on the genes of their children, suggests an intriguing new study in mice.

Researchers found they could change the coat colour of baby mice by feeding their mothers different levels of four common nutrients during pregnancy. These altered how the pups' cells read their genes. As a result the mice were also less prone to obesity and diabetes than genetically identical mice whose mothers received no supplement.
( Read more... )

Animation lets murder victims have final say
Forensic reconstructions of dead people's faces from skeletal remains are about to become much faster and more lifelike. A novel 3D graphics program not only speeds up the laborious process of recreating a face from a skull, but also allows the dead to frown or smile realistically.

Today, when the police find a skeleton or skull, they turn to forensic artists to build a model of what the dead person might have looked like. The artist makes a plaster cast of the skull and covers it with clay to mimic flesh. The thickness of the original flesh is estimated from standard tables called tissue depth charts.
( Read more... )