Character Cleaner

If you've ever had a problem with transferring text from an application like Microsoft Word to an all-text medium, due to Word's fetish with "smart quotes" and other silliness, check out The Character Cleaner, which will convert the special characters into straight-text suitable for using on webpages.

(Found via jimhenleyrss)

Pictures of an Exhibitionist

Vectored from rjmwell among others:

Go to Google images and search on your first name; post the first interesting picture you find.

( Rob )

( Robert )

And just for fun, my most commonly used screen names:

( Doc )

( Autographedcat )

Ovaries replenlish eggs, study suggests

Diane Duane (outofambit) points to article in the Boston Globe about a study which indicates that one of the things we thought we knew about the function of mammalian reproduction may be fundamentally wrong:

In a finding that could someday revolutionize fertility treatments, researchers yesterday reported evidence that appears to topple a decades-old tenet of reproductive biology: that girls are born with all the eggs they'll ever have, a pool that dwindles and degenerates with age.

[...]

Clearly, they needed even better evidence. They gathered more. In particular, they took a mouse that had been genetically engineered so that every cell in its body glowed green under fluorescent light, cut its ovary in half, and grafted onto it pieces of a normal mouse's ovary.

In three or four weeks, they found green-glowing eggs that had been surrounded by a layer of nongreen supporting cells to make what is called a follicle. That mixture, Tilly said, indicated that green egg stem cells had migrated into the nongreen pieces of ovary and started to produce new eggs that then attracted the supporting cells they needed to form follicles.

If the study can be reproduced and substantiated, this could be a truly revolutionary development in biology. Very nifty!

Bush/Cheney slogans for '04

Circulating the Internet. Some of these might be fun to plug into this tool that khaosworks pointed to earlier.

Bush/Cheney '04: Compassionate Colonialism
Bush/Cheney '04: Because the truth just isn't good enough.
Bush/Cheney '04: Four More Wars!
Bush/Cheney '04: In your heart, you know they're technically correct.
Bush/Cheney '04: Putting the "con" in conservatism
Bush/Cheney '04: Thanks for not paying attention.
Bush/Cheney '04: The last vote you'll ever have to cast.
Bush/Cheney '04: Asses of Evil
Bush/Cheney '04: Don't think. Vote Bush!
Bush/Cheney '04: Apocalypse Now!
Bush/Cheney '04: Deja-voodoo all over again!
Bush/Cheney '04: Leave no billionaire behind
Bush/Cheney '04: Lies and videotape but no sex!
Bush/Cheney '04: Or else.
Bush/Cheney '04: The economy's stupid!
Bush/Cheney '04: This time, elect us!
Bush/Cheney '04: We're Gooder!
Bush/Cheney '04: WWJB: Who would Jesus Bomb?

Bush/Cheney: 1984 Now

George W. Bush: Leadership without a doubt
George W. Bush: The buck stops Over There
George W. Bush: A brainwave away from the presidency
George W. Bush: It takes a village idiot

Vote Bush in '04: "I Has Incumbentory Advantitude"
Vote Bush in '04: "Because every vote counts -- for me!"
Vote Bush in '04: "Because I'm the President, that's why!"
Vote Bush in '04: Because dictatorship is easier.
Vote Bush in '04: It's a no-brainer!