Links - Jan 4, 2011

Sometimes I forget how much I love sociology (little known fact: I was an American Cultural Studies minor in college), and it is really too bad that it makes a better hobby than occupation. Sociological Images was one of my favorite blogs in undergrad, but it is too high traffic for me to keep up with these days. I also enjoyed Feministing and After Ellen. Sigh. I long for the days when I often concerned myself with things other than science! I suppose that's one of the crappiest things about grad school, how focused your attention becomes to one minute field. I loved the broadness of undergraduate education, but everyone has to grow up sometime.

By Odin's wrinkled scrotum... IS THAT SOME PIMP DNA BEING REPAIRED LIKE A BOSS?! (Definitely not SFW.)

Do brain-boosting supplements work? Sort of. Maybe. Some of the time. Depending on a lot of factors. I dunno. I might properly blog this review article later, but for right now I just want to say that I am very annoyed by dietary supplement culture. Just eat your damn fruits and vegetables, people. (I realize the irony of saying this, since I never eat green things, but at least I am not under the assumption that I can replace them by taking 93802938 vitamins and supplements). Which isn't to say that most people shouldn't be taking a multivitamin, because they should, but they shouldn't expect that taking a bunch of supplements will vastly improve their life.

The Top 10 Life Forms Living on Lady Gaga (And You) "You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the bacteria out of the girl's large intestine."

5 things you never knew about penguins! I'm really just posting this for K. "We don't often picture them alongside extinct animals such as mastodons, but penguins pre-date many of the best-known fossil mammals. In fact, the most ancient penguin fossils are amongst the oldest fossils discovered from any group of living birds.

Looking back: AT&T commercials from 1993 predict such things as video teleconferencing, Face Time, DVR, wireless internet (and 3G), among other things. Pretty damn cool. Also Dave Barry's 2010 Year in Review.


This is my morning jam, by the way. Note: if you have epilepsy you may not want to actually watch the video. (Runner-up morning jam.)