Thanksgiving at my family’s house wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. There were a lot of leftovers, particularly dressing, but we all seemed to keep it together pretty well. One Holiday down, one more to go this year.

Instead of fighting shoppers for unneeded and unwanted gifts, we took the advice from Deeper Motive and went to a museum on Friday. The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art is hosting the Ann Frank: A Private Photo Album exhibit through December 18th. It is an extraordinary and somewhat heartbreaking exhibit that consists of family photos taken by Otto Frank prior to their time in hiding. I strongly recommend seeing this exhibit if it ever comes your way.

The Sherwin Miller Museum itself was a total surprise. I had no idea it existed until I saw the billboard for the Ann Frank exhibit on the Turnpike while on our way to Tulsa. The museum houses a lovely collection of ancient Jewish artifacts and a Holocaust section that dismays and enlightens, covering the struggle of Jewish people from the Holocaust to modern-day Oklahoma. The Holocaust section also does a good job of depicting the horrors of the Holocaust without showing the terrible images of the emaciated bodies from concentration camps. It was something you could take a classroom of children to without Tom Coburn having a conniption fit for exposing them to nudity.

Maybe it wasn’t the cheeriest thing to do over the Thanksgiving weekend, but better to spend the time and opportunity on things like this when they come your way than being trampled by a crowd of people after a $30 DVD player.

“I hope Millie done started the chitlins by now.�

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

I found this quiz at Cool Cucumber’s place.

You Are Likely an Only Child

At your darkest moments, you feel frustrated. At work and school, you do best when you’re organizing. When you love someone, you tend to worry about them. In friendship, you are emotional and sympathetic. Your ideal careers are: radio announcer, finance, teaching, ministry, and management. You will leave your mark on the world with organizational leadership, maybe as the author of self-help books.

I thought the results of this test were funny. For those of you who don’t know, I’m not an only child. I have an older brother and sister, but I remember hearing my High School English teacher (she had all three of us at one time in her class)say that my mother had three only children. My brother is sixteen years older than me and my sister is five years older. Five years doesn’t seem like much now, but it was then. When I was in eigth grade, my sister graduated from High School and got married, leaving me all alone in the house with my parents for the next five years. That’s a long time.

Last week the Dalai Lama spoke at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Washington D.C. I found this to be very fitting considering that during the same meeting researchers announced that daily meditation may aid in brain function.

Sara Lazar of Harvard Medical School studied Westerners who meditated every day for twenty minutes (but not necessarily Buddhists) and used MRI to look at their brains. She found that meditators had increased thickness in regions of the brain involved in memory and attention. Those areas tend to shrink as we get older. The study also found that older meditators were able to ward off some of the shrinkage.

Bruce O’Hara and colleagues from the University of Kentucky have studies that suggest meditation improves performances on tests that measure attention, even on the sleep deprived.

So, you would think that with both of these studies being presented at the meeting, that it would just make sense to have the Dalai Lama as a guest speaker. I would consider him to be one of the most knowledgeable people on meditation. Apparently not everyone thinks so because about 600 SFN members signed a petition to keep His Holiness from speaking. They said that scientific society meetings were no place for religious figures, particularly those who believe in reincarnation.

The Dalai Lama is not your average religious figure; at least I’ve never considered him to be. He spoke on how he became interested in science as boy and how the shadows and craters in the moon he viewed through his telescope convinced him that the sun illuminated the moon which violated a long-held Buddhist belief. His Holiness said that “a good Buddhist should embrace clear-cut scientific evidence�.

I wonder if Pat Robertson would say the same.

1. Cindy needs a camper van to use at Camp Casey

We have been talking about small campers a lot lately.

2. Cindy needs your help.

There were a lot of these. They all refer to Cindy Sheehan.

3. Cindy needs to rub some good lotion.

Don’t ask.

4. Cindy needs to fight the talking points.

Right on, Man!

5. Cindy needs a clear picture picture to work from.

It helps to have a clear picture.

6. Cindy needs to look at possible Kevlar mesh/cloth for chimney sulfide collection as well as animal collection.

This was actually a science thing.

7. Cindy needs to have more birffdays.

No, that’s not a misprint. It actually says birffdays. And no, I don’t need more of them.

8. Cindy needs an audio clip for the intro.

I was thinking of something jazzy.

9. Cindy needs to learn how to cash in.

Boy, do I ever!

10. Cindy needs a money blessing.

Boy, do I ever!

This one brought to you by the Ninja.

Since radio in this town sucks, I spend a lot of time flipping around the stations. I had it on the oldies station today while we waited in line at the car wash when Judy in Disguise came on. Except Chris and I didn’t hear Judy in Disguise. We heard something else and even though we know this song both of us have always thought they were singing “Judy in the skies”.

Instead of just bopping along with the bubble-gum tune, we actually listened to the lyrics. Those are wacked out lyrics. What the Hell does “Cantaloupe eyes come to me tonight” mean?

What’s even worse is that I googled Judy in the Sky with Glasses all this time thinking that was the title.

I think it’s pretty cool that we’re still finding new species and types of dinosaurs. Scientists have unearthed a 13-foot oceanic crocodile in Argentina called Dakosaurus andiniensis. It’s one of the Jurassic dinos and they’ve nicked named it Godzilla.

Crocs previously discovered from the Jurassic period were found to have long snouts and small teeth (like today’s crocs) suggesting that they went after small prey. But Godzilla’s anatomy is very different. The large serrated teeth show that the Dakosaurus was a carnivore and a top predator at that. This thing was 13-feet long and swam around in the ocean biting and cutting its prey. It was the T-Rex of the water.

Those teeth remind me of the angler fish. Wonder if there’s any relation.

Yep, this pretty much sums it up. Thanks Ninja Nun.

You are Scooter.
You are a loyal, hardworking person, better known
as a doormat.

SPECIAL TALENTS:
Going for stuff.
LEAST FAVORITE MOVIE:
“Go For Broke!”

QUOTE:
“15 seconds to showtime.”

LAST BOOK READ:
“300 New Ways to Get Your Uncle to Get You a
Better Job “

NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT:
Coffee, clipboard, and Very Special Guest Stars.

What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

The plan this weekend was to go to Arkansas and eat chicken at the AQ Chicken House (best fried chicken in the world made with crack!) and see the pretty fall leaves and buy apples for apple pies. We never made it. There was just too much going on at home. Friday night we went out for Katrina’s birthday which ended up being a Katrina/Bob/Daniel birthday dinner. Our poor waiter did an excellent job of controlling the three ringed circus that was taking place at our table.

Saturday was spent going to football games and thrift store shopping. I bought so much crap this weekend! Big Lots had Kashi brand rice pilaf for $2.00! $2.00! Kashi! Yum! I found the Navy pea-coat I have been looking for forever. It still has rank on the sleeve. What else? I bought two sweaters at Goodwill (one from Banana Republic) and I found three of my favorite long-sleeved T’s on the sales rack at the Gap. In the middle of all this we stopped at a new casino where I won $5.75 (Chris put in $6 and I put in $5 and won a total of $16.75). We had lunch at the Olive Garden at Utica Square. Utica Square is this ritzy outside mall in Tulsa. I love going there and just window shopping and the Olive Garden there is the best. While we were waiting for our table, Garth Brooks walked out with his daughters. Mom waved at him like they were old pals, and get this. He waved back!

We also got to see J.R. and Thomas play football on Saturday. Watching little kids play any sport is a hoot. J.R.’s team was pretty good. The kids are older and have a better grasp of the game, but Thomas’s team was different story all together. First of all Thomas looks like one of those little goblins from Labyrinth with the giant helmet and he can’t ever see where he’s going. The two times his coach put him on the field, he just wandered off. He spent most of the game napping on the sideline.

So, we didn’t get to eat crack fried chicken. There’s always other weekends. I think we got the bigger bang for our bucks with this weekend.

I’m tired!

This article was sent to me by Dr. Clarke to use as a Friday Science entry, which is great because I’ve been too busy to research anything on my own. Researchers at the Molecular Science Institute of Berkeley have developed a very simple cancer detector they call a tadpole.

Tadpoles are protein-DNA chimeras. The head is made of a protein designed to bind specifically to a certain molecule or other protein and the tail is made up of a strip of DNA that essentially acts as a bar code. The tadpoles are very sensitive. They can detect certain proteins that are released in the blood when certain tumors like prostate or breast cancer are forming. The tadpoles can even detect these proteins before you or your doctor even realize that there is something wrong, before complete tumor formation.

You don’t even need to bind a lot of tadpoles to detect the cancer, because once the tadpoles are mixed with a drop of blood they are put in a PCR machine. If you only have fifteen tadpoles in the sample, the PCR machine can multiply the tails until you have enough to detect by standard lab gear. Just by dividing what you had just multiplied would roughly tell you how many cancer-indicating molecules were in that blood sample.

It will be some time before they can bring this test into the market. They are still trying to figure out how to mass produce the tadpoles cheaply and they also have to jump through the hurtles of federal testing and approval.