After running around for much of Friday night running errands (like exchanging a hard drive for a faster model) and getting to bed later than expected, Lyssa and I slept in later than we'd expected on Saturday morning - 1100 EST5EDT, to be precise. While that happens to be my usual weekend get-up time Lyssa's is significantly earlier, which basically means that we got a late start to the day. I hurried to get dressed in some of my finest clothes because I was headed downtown that afternoon for the January 2009 Chrononaut's Stroll, organized by G.D. Falksen. In recent …

This is possibly the most awe inspiring thing that I've seen all year; in fact, I think it's a fitting way to close out the year and celebrate the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. This guy rigged up a Tesla coil and a framework into a Christmas tree.

No, I'm not kidding.

Fun Fever constructed a large Tesla coil (a multiple circuit resonant electrical transformer) and a metal framework that would shape the electrical discharges in a particular way, namely, a tree with a star on top. Quite a bit of experimentation was required to get the …

Researchers at the Forstyth Centre for Regenerative and Developmental Biology in Boston, Massachusetts, lead by Dr. Michael Levin have figured out how to trigger tissue regeneration in xenopus tadpoles past the age when they are normally capable of it. After a certain age, the tadpoles are unable to regrow their tails or other organs after amputation, but some nicely nonlinear research shows that it is possible to duplicate the weak electrical field that builds up around sites of major trauma that heralds the regenerative process. This is a phenomenon found in many higher lifeforms, from frogs to deer (the males …