Shannon Jiménez

"The feds had been investigating his tomato-processing company for more than four years, but Scott Salyer was apparently taken by surprise when the FBI nabbed him at JFK Airport last month. Salyer, who flies his own jet, had been traveling to Paraguay and Andorra, among other locales, looking for an extradition-safe home. He was visiting the United States to see his newborn grandson when the investigation closed in on him." - Shannon Jiménez

"Every dog owner knows a pooch can learn the house rules—and when she breaks one, her subsequent groveling is usually ingratiating enough to ensure quick forgiveness. But few people have stopped to ask why dogs have such a keen sense of right and wrong. Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates regularly make the news when researchers, logically looking to our closest relatives for traits similar to our own, uncover evidence of their instinct for fairness. But our work has suggested that wild canine societies may be even better analogues for early hominid groups—and when we study dogs, wolves and coyotes, we discover behaviors that hint at the roots of human morality." - Shannon Jiménez

We have a mutt rescued from the street when she was a month old. My wife and I half-joked that we needed the teach her dog behavior so I dropped to the floor in four legs :) The amazing thing is that instinctively we followed all the rules described in the article, reading them I recognize all the things we did and how I picked up her behavior as well. When we rescued another dog, this one eight years old, they played just like we did before. Thanks for sharing this! - Andrés David Aparicio

"What truly distinguishes sacred values from secular ones is how people behave when asked to compromise them. When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular—what psychologist Philip Tetlock refers to as a “taboo tradeoff”—they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange. What’s more, when people receive monetary offers for relinquishing a sacred value, they display a particularly striking irrationality. Not only are people unwilling to compromise sacred values for money—contrary to classic economic theory’s assumption that financial incentives motivate behavior—but the inclusion of money in an offer produces a backfire effect such that people become even less likely to give up their sacred values compared to when an offer does not include money. People consider trading sacred values for money so morally reprehensible that they recoil at such proposals." - Shannon Jiménez

Mine definitely is :P - Lo

"Researchers tested one group of newborns who only heard English in the womb and the others who heard English and Tagalog.The infants exposed to two languages during pregnancy showed an equal preference for each one." - Shannon Jiménez

"For years, Americans have heard blue-ribbon commissions and major industrialists bemoan a shortage of scientists caused by an inadequate education system. A lack of high-tech talent, these critics warn, so threatens the nation’s continued competitiveness that the U.S. must drastically upgrade its K-12 science and math education and import large numbers of technically trained foreigners by promptly raising the current limit on the number of skilled foreigners allowed to enter the country to work in private industry. “We face a critical shortfall of skilled scientists and engineers who can develop new breakthrough technologies,” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates testified to Congress in March 2008. But many less publicized Americans, including prominent labor economists, disagree. “There is no scientist shortage,” says Harvard University economist Richard Freeman, a leading expert on the academic labor force. The great lack in the American scientific labor market, he and other observers argue, is not top-flight technical talent but attractive career opportunities for the approximately 30,000 scientists and engineers—about 18,000 of them American citizens—who earn PhDs in the U.S. each year." - Shannon Jiménez

"Good science education at the earliest grades is supremely important, but in most classrooms it gets short shrift. Studies have found that children in kindergarten are already forming negative views about science that could cast a shadow across their entire educational careers. When researchers interviewed kindergartners from typical classrooms, barely a third of the children showed any knowledge of science, whether from school or other sources. Many children said that science was for older kids and adults, not kindergartners like them. They talked of science being about magic potions or dangerous chemicals; they said science is hard, science is not interesting, and “I am not good at science.” Ask a room of five-year-olds to draw a scientist, and you will likely get lots of pictures of white-coated men in laboratories. Furthermore, even before first grade, fewer girls than boys say they like science." - Shannon Jiménez

Anyone? Come on people!! - Shannon Jiménez

:( - Anne Bouey

"Farm-raised salmon has long been the poster child of unsustainable aquaculture practices. Issues of escape, pollution and inefficiency have plunged it deeply into the "avoid" territory of environmental groups—until now. In a report released January 14, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program is taking the unprecedented step of approving a particular method for farming Pacific coho salmon that is currently employed exclusively by the Rochester, Wash.–based AquaSeed Corp. The sustainability nod from the consumer education group means that these salmon also will be assigned a green "Best Choice" rating on Seafood Watch's Web site. The approval follows several months of intensive site visits by Seafood Watch scientists and reviews of the company's production facility, feed ratios, fish contaminant and pollution discharge levels, and more." - Shannon Jiménez

"For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Now, as the Obama administration offers states more than $4 billion to identify and cultivate effective teachers, Teach for America is ready to release its data." - Shannon Jiménez

"Stereotypes are usually the last thing to change in the face of contradictory evidence. A case in point is the long held belief that boys are better at mathematics than girls. Well a meta-analysis to be published in the journal Psychological Bulletin can be added to the pile of evidence that finds no significant gender difference in mathematical ability. Researchers analyzed results from two math tests that assessed nearly half a million boys and girls between the ages of 14-16, from 69 countries. They tested algebra, geometry, data analysis and number concepts. The study’s lead author, Villanova University psychology professor Nicole Else-Quest found “…that on average across all the nations the gender difference was negligible.” But she and her colleagues did notice an interesting pattern, “When you look at the variability across nations you see it varies a great deal. There are some nations where girls do better than boys. There are some nations boys do better than girls.”" - Shannon Jiménez

This is EXACTLY what happens in our house! - Shannon Jiménez

LOL! - rowlikeagirl

Koko steals Honey Girls bed every day..... - amelia arapoff

Awww...hugs to Pirulin! - Skye Miller

Happy New Year, Shannon! - Anne Bouey

Got this link from Deborah here: http://friendfeed.com/fabooma... "Towards the end of the great war, in June 1918, America's most authoritative women's magazine, the Ladies' Home Journal (it still exists), had a few wise words of advice for fretting mothers. "There has been a great diversity of debate on the subject," it wrote, "but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl....This is, as you may have noticed, no longer the case. For maybe the past decade or so, little girls have inhabited a universe that is, almost entirely, pink. It is made up not just of pink princesses and fairies and ballerinas and fluffy bunnies, but of books, bikes, lunchboxes, board games, toy cookers, cash registers, even games consoles, all in shades of pink." - Shannon Jiménez

"Can a Barcelona truck driver be expected to speak like a Buenos Aires banker? Can rules be imposed on a language spoken by 400 million people stretching from Madrid to Manila? The academic overseers of the language of Cervantes have taken an ambitious stab at it, unveiling their first Spanish grammar guidelines in nearly 80 years. The fruit of their toil is a nearly 4,000-page tome in two volumes presented Thursday, with yet another to come out next year. It was produced by the Spanish Royal Academy and 21 sister organizations in Latin America and other countries where Spanish is spoken, such as the United States and the Philippines, and has taken them 11 years to compile." - Shannon Jiménez

LOL @ Kevin - Shannon Jiménez

Anyone in Northern California thinking of adopting a doggie over the holidays? I volunteer as a trainer with the Yolo County SPCA and Buster has been my charge for several months now. He is an AWESOME little dog (and I'm not normally a little dog person). He's just under a year old (the Petfinder description is a little out-of-date) and super smart. In fact, he is the star of the training class and would be a great dog for someone who wants to teach a lot of crazy show-off tricks. He's not the kind of dog who'd be patient with the poking and tail pulling of a little kid, but he'd be fine with older kids. He gets along well with other dogs (he's living in a foster home with 5 dogs), but hasn't really met cats yet, so would have to be properly socialized to them. Anyways, I think it's high time Buster found a forever home, so you should adopt him right now! (He's currently living in Davis, so it's only an hour away for you Bay Area folk). - Shannon Jiménez

Bumping this because he really is an AWESOME dog :) - Shannon Jiménez

Awesome. See also: http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/2009... - Bill Hooker

So what does agarose taste like? I once had a dessert that looked and felt like 4% Metaphor but was in fact strawberry flavour... - Richard Badge

Agarose tastes like a less tasty version of agar-agar, which is basically what it is. Just a set gel of sugar. - Cameron Neylon

"Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give out... But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid." - Shannon Jiménez

I was tutoring a student in AP Biology today whose teacher is still perpetuating the "lactic acid makes your muscles sore" myth, which insprired me to look up this old article. If you can't trust your biology teacher, who can you trust? - Shannon Jiménez

It's the ability to metabolize lactic acid that is the culprit. Not all muscle uses it effectively and that's when you have lactic acid buildup. - FFing Enigma

"1671: “A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory about Light and Colors” In one of the most famous experiments ever, Newton used a glass prism to spread a beam of light into a rainbow spectrum, demonstrating that colors were a property of light’s refraction. Not mentioned, however, is Newton’s earlier studies of light, in which he stuck a needle into his eye and recorded how colors changed as he pressed his retina into different shapes." - Shannon Jiménez

I learned the above from reading Cryptonomicon. The Newton in that trilogy was a lot more fascinating the Newton we learned about in school. I always feel sorry for people who never start/finish the trilogy I learned so much more just reading it. - Anika