Missing The Moon: Science

Archives

Books I Have Read This Year

Jon Bradshaw: Fast Company (*****)
Carl Hiassen: Sick Puppy (*****)
Thane Rosenbaum: Elijah Rising (***)
Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum: I Want My MTV (*****)
Joe Eszterhas: Hollywood Animal (****)
Howard Norman: Kiss In The Hotel Joseph Conrad (****)
David Buckley: The Thrill Of It All (*****)
Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky (*****)
Dick Williams: No More Mr. Nice Guy (*****)
Alfred Kazin: Starting Out In The Thirties (****)
Peter Carey: His Illegal Self (*****)
Charles Frazier: Cold Mountain (***)
T. Coraghessan Boyle: The Road To Wellville (***)
William Shakespeare: Coriolanus (**)
Christopher Brookmyre: Not The End Of The World (***)
Barry Hannah: Bats Out Of Hell (****)
Andrzej Szczypiorski: A Mass For Arras (*****)
(ed.) Dave Eggers: The Best American Non-Required Reading 2002 (*****)
Henry Bromell: Little America (****)
Robert Penn Warren: All The King's Men (***)
Russell Shorto: Descartes' Bones (****)
Joseph Wood Krutch: If You Don't Mind My Saying So... (***)
Prof. James Robertson, D.D.: The Old Testament And Its Contents (****)
Helen DeWitt: The Last Samurai (****)
David Lehman: The Last Avant-Garde (***)
(ed.) Dave Eggers: The Best American Non-Required Reading 2009 (***)
Peter Golenbock: Fenway (*****)
Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes: P.'s Three Women (****)
David Pownall: The Raining Tree War (**)
Melvyn Bragg: Richard Burton (****)
Lydia Millet: Oh Pure And Radiant Heart (****)
Booth Tarkington: The Magnificent Ambersons (*****)
Alexander Pope: Scriblerus (****)
Mickey Mantle: All My Octobers (*****)
Maureen O'Hara: 'Tis Herself (*****)
Jerzy Kosinski: Blind Date (*****)
Eric Zencey: Panama (***)
Eric Ambler: Passage Of Arms (****)
Richard Wright: Native Son (****)
P.G. Wodehouse: The Girl In Blue (*****)
Robert MacNeil: Wordstruck (****)
Keith Waterhouse: Billy Liar (****)
H.R.F. Keating: The Dog It Was That Died (****)
(ed.) Gideon Bosker and Lena Lenček: Escape (****)
Warwick Collins: The Rationalist (****)
James Conaway: Memphis Afternoons (***)
Bill Mauldin: Up Front (*****)
Josef Škvorecký: The Republic Of Whores (***)
Robert MacNeil: The Right Place At The Right Time (*****)
Ryszard Kapuściński: The Soccer War (****)
C.P. Snow: Death Under Sail (****)
Lee Durkee: Rides Of The Midway (****)
Martin Booth: The Industry Of Souls (****)
Michael Brownstein: Country Cousins (***)
(ed.) Mike Jay and Michael Neve: 1900 (*****)
Evgeny Popov: The Soul Of A Patriot (*****)
Salman Rushdie: Imaginary Homelands (*****)
Louis Begley: Mistler's Exit (****)
(ed.) Ann Charters: The Portable Sixties Reader (*****)
Nicholas Dawidoff: The Catcher Was A Spy (*****)
David P. Barash & Nanelle R. Barash: Madame Bovary's Ovaries (***)
(ed.) Malcolm Bradbury: The Penguin Book Of Modern British Short Stories (****)
Reif Larsen: The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet (*****)
Ogden Nash: Ogden Nash's Zoo (*****)
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone (*****)
Granta 51: Big Men (****)
Henry Miller: Europe After The War (***)
Sybille Bedford: Quicksands (*****)
David Dimbleby & David Reynolds: An Ocean Apart (****)
(ed.) Keath Fraser: Bad Trips (****)
James Ellroy: Killer On The Road (*****)
Brian Hall: The Saskiad (***)
Arnold Wesker: As Much As I Dare (****)
The Vintage Contemporaries Reader (***)
John Hersey: Life Sketches (*****)
Isak Dinesen: Out Of Africa & Shadows On The Grass (*****)
Rory Stewart: The Places In Between (****)
James McManus: Positively Fifth Street (****)
Thomas Hardy: The Mayor Of Casterbridge (*****)
Karl Shapiro: Reports Of My Death (****)
Robert Bly: Iron John (**)
Jack Higgins: Dark Justice (*****)

The Year In Cinema

: Marley (*****)
: The Avengers (**)
: Bernie (*****)
: Headhunters (*****)
: Darling Companion (*)
: Damsels In Distress (*****)
: The Three Stooges (*****)
: Rampart (*****)
: The Kid With A Bike (***)
: Mirror Mirror (*****)
: Salmon Fishing In The Yemen (*****)
: The Hunger Games (****)
: Coriolanus (*****)
: A Separation (*****)
: In Darkness (****)
: Thin Ice (*****)
: The Woman In Black (*****)
: Haywire (*****)
: The Iron Lady (*****)
: Carnage (*****)
: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (*****)
: War Horse (*****)
: The Artist (*****)
: A Dangerous Method (*****)

The Slaves

C/Tyler Flowers (CWS) C/Ramon Hernandez (COL) 1B/Gaby Sanchez (MIA) 2B/Michael Cuddyer (COL) 3B/Jose Bautista (TOR) 3B/Kyle Seager (SEA) SS/Astrubal Cabrera (CLE) CM/Adam Lind (TOR) MI/Jed Lowrie (HOU) OF/Dexter Fowler (COL) OF/Brett Gardner (NYY) OF/B.J. Upton (TAM) OF/Justin Upton (ARI) OF/Dayan Viciedo (CWS) OF/Giancarlo Stanton (MIA) DH/Yuniesky Betancourt (KC) RES/Craig Gentry (TEX) RES/Alexi Casilla (MIN) RES/Jason Bourgeois (KC) RES/Tyler Pastornicky (ATL) P/Frank Francisco (NYM) P/Matt Harrison (TEX) P/Brandon McCarthy (OAK) P/Mark Buehrle (MIA) P/Jeremy Hellickson (TAM) P/Alex Cobb (TAM) P/Anibal Sanchez (MIA) P/Jordan Walden (LAA) P/Ted Lilly (LAD) RES/ Brian Roberts (BAL) RES/Jeff Niemann (TAM) RES/Juan Cruz (PIT) RES/Kevin Correia (PIT)

Extreme Tracking

March 26, 2012

The Slaves Return

After a few years away from it, I have returned to fantasyland. Team rosters will be posted on the sidebar. This also means that transactions will be posted weekly; like before there should be something of interest for the less baseball-interested reader. The Slaves have always, always been a mythopoetically terrible franchise. I'm a little curious to see how the season will play out.

Posted at 07:32 PM in Music, Science, Sports | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 19, 2012

Footage Of A White Blood Cell Hunting Down A Cancer Cell///Evolution Of The Moon

University of Cambridge researchers have captured stunning microscopic footage of how killer T cells (a type of white blood cell) can protect the body from pathogens. The video shows a T cell hunting down a cancer cell and engulfing it.

Cytotoxic T cells are just 10 microns in length, approximately one-tenth the width of a human hair. The actual action has been sped up and appears 92 times faster in the video.

The microscopic footage was shot by PhD student Alex Ritter, in the laboratory of Gillian Griffiths, a professor of immunology and cell biology at Cambridge.

How will this help cancer research? On the YouTube page, professor Griffiths explains it this way:

“Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or cancerous cells, without destroying healthy cells surrounding them . . . By understanding how this works, we can develop ways to control killer cells. This will allow us to find ways to improve cancer therapies, and ameliorate autoimmune diseases caused when killer cells run amok and attack healthy cells in our bodies.”