This is more of a science blurb than an actual posting, but the topic is one I’ve ranted about before. I’m sure we’ve all heard the Republican Right bashing Michael J. Fox for his political ad that encourages people to vote for candidates that support stem cell research. In the ad Michael says that stem cells could one day be a cure for Parkinson’s disease.

Well, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is backing this claim. There are a specific cell type called DA neurons that relieve the symptoms of Parkinson’s. Researchers in several different laboratories have successfully induced stem cells to differentiate into cells that function as DA neurons. Thanks to the policy Bush signed in 2001, Scientist can’t afford to continue this research.

It’s crazy. We’re this close to curing a number of diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes, but without government funding researchers can’t continue their work. Then the work goes to big corporations who then reserve the right to charge outrageous amounts of money for the cure. It’s the same ole’ gripe.

Three or four years ago someone gave us a gift card to Pottery Barn. I didn’t know what to do with it, until I found a sales bin of curtains. I bought enough curtains to do the living room except Chris always found some excuse or another for not actually hanging them. So the curtains sat around in various places of the house. Then Chris broke the blinds in the living room. Ah ha!

I used this opportunity to go to Ikea and get new blinds and curtain rods to finally hang those curtains. The new blinds are a huge improvement. They’re bamboo, simple and clean. The only problem is that you can see through them at night, so people can see in our house which means no walking around in our underwear. This means we had to hang the curtains. Of course we would hang the curtains…if we could find them. That’s right. We have managed to misplace four Pottery Barn curtain panels still in there packages. We have torn the house, garage, and shed apart looking for the curtains. I’ve called family members to see if I had accidentally given them away. No curtains. Worst case scenario is that we threw them away.

To fix the issue, I made some curtains out some sheets we weren’t using. Mom will be so proud to hear that I finally used the sewing machine all by my self. I even had to add thread to the bobbin a couple of times. The curtains aren’t perfect, but they look a lot better then what was up there before. Of course now you realize that after I’ve gone through all the trouble of making curtains, the others will miraculously reappear.

Someday soon kids across the world will be asking Santa for their cloak of invisibility. The difference between then and now is that Santa may actually be able to deliver on this request.

An American and British science team has made an invisibility cloak. OK, maybe it’s not as good as Harry Potter’s, but it’s good enough to hide a copper cylinder from microwaves. Unlike stealth technology, cloaking passes waves like radar around the object as if it weren’t there. Just like Harry’s cloak!

The “cloak� is made of an engineered mixture of metal and circuit board materials (metamaterials). It may only hide things from microwaves, but the scientists plan on adapting it to radar and light waves. This of course would be very beneficial to the military. But really we know that the researchers are only working on this so they can have an invisibility cloak just like Harry Potter’s.

Last night, Chris and I dragged some new friends of ours over to a voter’s registration bash in downtown Oklahoma City. The event was put together by Andrew Rice who is running for Oklahoma state senate. His special guests for the party were none other than Wayne Coyne (lead singer of The Flaming Lips) and his wife Michelle (who I think used to be in my yoga class at the Y). They live in District 46 (the district Andrew is running for) and came out to support him. If Chris and I lived in District 46, Andrew is the guy we’d vote for.

Ken (one of the friends we took) and I went to the Flaming Lips concert together and we both didn’t know what to expect at a voter’s registration bash…besides just a bunch of people registering to vote. Would we just get to hear Wayne give a little speech? Would he roam the crowd saying hi to everyone? Would we have to stand in a line to meet him?

The event started at 7:00 PM, which is about what time we got there. We were all standing around for 5 minutes figuring out what we should do when Wayne and his wife walked in and started talking to “some guy”. After awhile, Jen (other friend and Ken’s wife) was beginning to think that we wouldn’t get a chance to meet him, and was getting a little impatient. She leaned over to Ken and said, “Do you want to go talk to Wayne Coyne? That guy’s been hoggin’ him for twenty minutes”. Ken and I busted out laughing. “That guy” was Andrew Rice, the guy Wayne was there to support!

Finally, Chris wiggled his way through to say hello and tell Wayne that I’m totally in love with him. This is where I turned the color of my new pink t-shirt. But I got a hug from Wayne and he stood there and talked to us for a good 5-10 minutes. He’s just as cool as he appears to be on TV. We talked about the DVD of the latest tour and the differences between the most recent OKC concert and the Yoshimi concert a few years back. He was so energized and excited about what he was saying. It was just cool.

Meeting Wayne Coyne, originally uploaded by Elephant Soap.

So, I don’t know what was up yesterday, but we had this sudden infestation of flies. I think they may have come through a crack in the screen door. Now you’d think that if that were the case, there would maybe be one or two flies in the house, but there were dozens of them. DOZENS. Our house was like the Amityville Horror house.

I don’t know how many I killed in the kitchen or by the front door. At one point I gave up and settled on the couch to knit. Chris came out of the office and I told him to get the fly swatter because I saw two flies resting on the front door. He killed them and looked down and said “Oh My God. Look at all the bodies�. The floor in the kitchen and in front of the main door looked like a fly war zone.

The best part by far was the fly that we incinerated on the stove. We were standing at the stove getting our dinner plates ready when I noticed a fly crawling around the back burner of the stove. Chris said “hurry� and before he could finish what he was going to say. I turned on the burner. We giddily watched the fly go up in a flash. We truly are sick and twisted.

Well sure, we all heard about the great Nobel Prize wins the U.S. received this year in medicine and physics. But Nobel Prize time also means it’s once again time for the Ig Nobel Prize. The Ig Nobels may seem a bit silly, but all the research is real and has been published (yes, in legit scientific and medical journals). They may not receive any money, but their awards are presented by real Nobel Prize winners.

My all time favorite winner for this year has to be Francis Fesmire and Majed Odeh’s team for the cure of hiccups through rectal message. Yup, all you need to do to cure those pesky hiccups is stick your finger up your butt.

My second favorite winner is the team of Al-Houty and Al-Mussalam for showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters. They won’t eat just any ole’ poop. What’s really funny is that this research fell under the “Nutrition� category.

One winner whose research may actually be of some use is Bart Knol’s findings that mosquitoes are attracted to the smell of stinky feet. Apparently, the female mosquito Anopheles gambiae (the one that transmits malaria) is very attracted to the smell of limburger cheese and human feet. So keep your feet stinky cheese free and you should be fine fending off those nasty mosquitoes.

Be sure to check out all other winners for this year’s Igs. They are all very entertaining.

Chris decided that we should get our Christmas presents for each other early this year. That way we’d have more money and time to focus on all the kids in our family. I got a new iPod. It’s pretty and I love it. The only problem I’ve come across is finding a yoga podcast in the right format for my iPod.

Since I have a new iPod, I also needed a new case. I wanted something unique. Something that says “Cindy”. So I drew up the design and mom came down yesterday to sew it all together for me (this led to the “you should really learn how to use your sewing machine lecture). The case turned out better then I expected and the total cost came to $7.72. Not bad for a one-of-a-kind iPod case. And the quality time spent with Mom…priceless.