Dave Grohl..what's this about? New Diagnostic Lung Cancer Test
Okay, just to show my reader that I am not ALL SCIENCE, ALL THE TIME, I have to give Dave Grohl(Nirvana, Foo Fighters, etc.) a shout out. I love music, too. Although very little of current music causes me to take notice, Foo Fighters are really something special. Sorry, RHCP fans, Foo Fighters are where my rockin' mind goes whenever I think of bands that are still doing it. RHCP is Flea, with back-ups. Foo Fighters are fresh and a throw-back to real good rock. Apparently, Dave has inked a deal with HBO detailing the band's next album as travelogue.
In other total coolness news, the full 38+ minutes of Nirvana's R&R Hall induction can finally be seen in decent quality on the web
Whilst medical breakthroughs aren't strictly science(applied technology), I can roam there occasionally as this is my party. A breathalyzer for lung cancer detection, that allegedly, not only detects lung cancers, but also--again, allegedly--differentiates between stages is really very cool indeed. The odd part about most lung cancers in the USA is that they are almost entirely avoidable. Kids these days are hopefully taught about the evils of recurring inhalations of tobacco smoke. I am not entirely without guilt here. I was shown a cancerous pair of lungs at a science museum at around ten years of age, yet I still smoked a bit as a teen, and then into my twenties while engaging in ethanol consumption. I have not allowed tobacco smoke to enter the temple of my body for approximately twenty-six years.
I also quit boozing at any level roughly fourteen years ago. Since both activities can give rise to myriad medical issues, it just seems prudent to go completely without either. I do miss the inebriant effect of ethanol, but the potential downsides far outweigh the few hours of social lubrication that ethanol certainly provides.
That's all for now. I may yet find a hard science item worthy of a few words.
I should note here that the blog isn't meant as a geek's tool to scientific nirvana(sorry about the pun). It's rather a place to start researching items that you might find interesting. In all honesty, a blog about cutting-edge advances in semi-conductor gate processes and shrinking lithography isn't likely to garner much readership. Oh, I could write about programming, web development, and all things network related, but there must thousands of blogs that already address these concerns.
At a less technical level, I could wax on about mineralogy, and paleontology, but blogs like the truly excellent Pharyngula blog and others. If there is a clamor for an amateur mineralogy blog, I would be honored to provide much more in-depth treatments about the geology of northern New England, and sites, specimens, etc. I suspect that this would have even less a following than another 'big tent' science blog; which is really what I see this becoming as time passes.