DraculaZombieUSA

Blueberry 2

2009-04-18T20:41:00.001-04:00

Forced It - Blueberry 2
I like this slow one.

OMfG

2009-04-16T14:07:00.001-04:00

The only better dream I can dream: hot results.
The Field and the Juan MacLean Team Up for North American Tour

Owls

2009-03-31T15:35:00.004-04:00

Owls are scary as shit.
Owl swallows rat
Owl swallows chick (oh ha ha yeah real fucking funny)
Owl Attack 1
Owl Attack 2
Not cute (the terminator camera sounds!?! the unlinked blinking?!?! aaaahhhh!)

Undersea volcano

2009-03-29T13:35:00.000-04:00

Undersea volcano erupts near Tonga:

A fine name

2009-03-24T17:51:00.001-04:00

At least one of us is out there, achieving.

This made me miss New York

2009-03-17T01:26:00.001-04:00

Looker - After My Divorce

New songs

2009-03-13T22:14:00.004-04:00

Here are some new songs. I'm looking for help on the new stuff-- vocals especially. Anyone out there interested?

Distant Misters... I was going for a Neu! and The Field kind of thing
Get Back To Me... I was going for an AFX and Boards of Canada kind of thing

Insomnia Jeopardy

2009-03-07T02:47:00.002-05:00

I think this is my favorite New Yorker cartoon. There, that's it.

All my friends are thread

2009-03-05T19:17:00.002-05:00

The matchless Sanschain brought this article by MB to my attention. The article brought this art (??) by MB to my attention. Nice.

Flim Flam

2009-02-20T20:24:00.000-05:00

Oneida

2009-02-18T17:13:00.002-05:00

Worst Oneida.
Medium Oneida.
Good Oneida.
Better Oneida.
Best Oneida.

Walk to Perkins

2009-01-27T13:59:00.001-05:00

DZUSA-Walk to Perkins

It's an old song we've been batting around for a long time. It's not as long as it used to be. It's weird and fast and questionable.

Bishop Gene Robinson's invocation

2009-01-21T15:56:00.003-05:00

I was especially pleased to hear Obama include "non-believers" in his address. I was even more pleased by Bishop Gene Robinson's invocation at the opening of the Inaugural Opening Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial.

Also, was that the Deep Space Nine theme?

new Star Trek movie

2008-12-15T14:06:00.003-05:00

It looks like the new Star Trek movie (trailers) is going to be a lesson in quantum mechanics and the related, "many universe" theory. The theory, of course, is God's, uh, physics' gift to director JJ Abrams.

Thorns of Life

2008-12-08T14:27:00.003-05:00

Review and videos of Thorns of Life show, the new band membered by Blake Schwarzenbach and Aaron Cometbus. (via Sanschain)

A wholy unfrozen woolly

2008-11-22T13:01:00.008-05:00

It was a fine idea for a beach novel, but resurrecting a long-extinct species seems to have little chance of having any real benefits. Of course, they just gave a Nobel prize to some people that studied a molecule from an obscure jellyfish. Anyway, a recent publication reports that scientists have sequenced most of the woolly mammoth genome. What's more, we may have the technology to use an elephant to birth one of these guys.

It would be pretty fucking cool, kinda like a moon-landing, and maybe spin-off efforts could uncover new medicinal molecules (keeping with the parallel, reaching the moon was pscyhologically amazing but practically useless, however, related space exploration efforts gave us satellites, whose benefits are undeniable). I'll say this, if we did it, we would have to house these fellows like they're aliens-- in a government-controlled >BSL4 facility. I mean, dudes hunt from the front and the side!

In unrelated news, now we know where mass comes from. OK.

A Doctor, a Mutation and a Potential Cure for AIDS

2008-11-08T12:41:00.007-05:00

I once met a so-called "long-term non-progressor" whose story was bittersweet. He talked about having the virus that causes AIDS, suffering no symptoms for more than twenty years, and the many friends he had lost during the epidemic. It is still a largely mysterious phenomenon, but my sense is that long-term non-progressors are a heterogenous pool, and that "resistance" can be achieved through various means.

This story, of a bone-marrow recipient who may be cured of AIDS, is one of those wonderful scientific tales of serendipity and potency. When I read it, I was like "holy shit, of course!" See, HIV is a retrovirus, which means it must invade white blood cells and use their own replication machinery to proliferate. To invade cells it attaches to them via a surface receptor called CCR5. This has been known for many years now, and it has also been known that some individuals have mutant versions of the gene that makes the CCR5 receptor. These individuals are resistant to HIV infection because the virus cannot enter their cells and proliferate. Bone marrow transplants are a common treatment for leukemia and other diseases because they replenish or replace a patient's pool of blood cells (which are largely derived from bone marrow). It makes so much sense-- replenish an HIV patient's pool of susceptible blood cells with some that carry a mutated version of the CCR5 gene and the HIV virus can no longer proliferate.

Yes

2008-11-07T00:46:00.005-05:00

Obviously, this win is amazing. The air is different. People are smiling at each other. I can be a better person.

Obama's transition team has set up a web site to solicit new ideas from regular folks like you and me, about his new administration.

In Reno

2008-10-27T23:33:00.007-04:00

Dz hit the road to canvass and rally for Obama in a swing county in a swing state. It was awesome for so many reasons. Here are some photos:

Team (OG Dz not pictured)!

America the beautiful

Damn straight

security is serious

BHOFTW!!!

and in the casino hotel...

there are strange things

Nate Silver

2008-10-14T12:14:00.003-04:00

Nate Silver has been everywhere lately so aficionados probably already know who he is. But anyway, he's the dude who invented PECOTA, and as such, loomed large in dorky sabremetrics circles. Now he's turned his formidable intellect towards politics and runs fivethirtyeight, and is dropping bombs like Medzhitov. By way of introductions, here's a nice piece in New York magazine about him.

Fade to Black

2008-10-13T19:20:00.003-04:00

Founding Dz member and its main repository of talent, Aross, has a sweet new video for his delicious new jam. You may also be interested to know that much of the video's cast and crew is funding my autumn LP-spree with their fantasy baseball losings.

Leader-ship

2008-10-11T13:07:00.004-04:00

If Tim Gunn were my PI, I would already have 3 Nature papers-- what a leader!

If Vladimir Putin were my PI, I would be a hero-- he made an instructional judo video, he gets a tiger cub for his birthday, he saves a film crew. (via KP)

Illegal voter registration culling

2008-10-08T23:21:00.001-04:00

This is scary (link).

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

Those states are Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

How does he do it?

2008-10-03T13:27:00.002-04:00

Everything he does is right: Lil' Wayne is a Red Sox fan.

I will forever remain faithful

2008-09-30T18:26:00.001-04:00

Dz superfriend Dave Ramsey in the Oxford American on teaching in NOLA and Lil' Wayne.