John Stanton's Blog

California Docs Back Schools Barring Scientology Drug Program

2005-07-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO—The California Medical Association has declared support for school districts that have dropped a controversial drug education program with links to the Church of Scientology.

San Francisco and Los Angeles schools have barred the program, known as Narconon, because of concerns about strange factual inaccuracies. The program was co-founded by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.

Only seven different plots in storytelling

2005-07-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "TWO hundred years ago, Dr Johnson surmised that fiction was limited to a few plots “with very little variation”. Now a major study has worked out that there have been just seven since storytelling began."

Wonderfalls

2005-07-11T22:06:00.000-07:00

I bought the DVD for the show *Wonderfalls* a couple weeks back and I finished watching the 13 episode season last night. This show was great; it had outstanding writing. I am really disappointed that this show did not make it. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy *Desperate Housewives* and *Lost*.

It is really a shame that TV networks don't give new outstanding shows more of a chance to prove themselves in the ratings department.

KPBS Podcasts!

2005-06-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that KPBS has three podcasts available:

A Way with Words
KPBS News Features
These Days

If you are interested in the English language, I suggest you give _A Way with Words_ a listen. _These Days_ is a great interview program focused on San Diego. The _These Days_ podcast now includes the excellent weekly _Editor's Roundtable_. These are excellent podcasts and worth a listen.

Coverville

2005-06-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

My favorite podcast is Coverville. Brian Ibbot hosts a show where he plays covers of songs that were made popular in the 1960's - 1990's. Each episode is 30-40 minutes long and typically features 6 songs. You can download and listen to the show episodes by going to http://www.coverville.com/.

Right now they are running a contest to win a 20 GB iPod by answering 6 questions about song covers. I am having a lot of fun answering the questions and it would be great to win an iPod for one of my nephews or neices.

If you want to try out podcasting in more depth you can get a free program called iPodder or if you have a Mac you might want to try iPodderX.

Trepanation

2005-06-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

Trepanation is the fine art of boring a hole in the skull in order to release the pressure of imbalanced bodily humours, or to allow brain tissues to "pulsate" freely, or to increase the flow of blood to the brain by creating an outtake valve, or possibly just to let the demons out ...

http://www.rotten.com/library/medicine/quackery/trepanation/

Numa Numa

2005-05-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

Numa Numa is an Internet meme based on the Romanian techo song "Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone. More can be found in this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numa_Numa.

The video itself can be found here: http://www.garybrolsma.net/.

Science Friday is now podcasting

2005-05-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

My favorite radio show, Science Friday, is now podcasting its two weekly one hour shows. This is great for me since only one of the two hours per week is broadcast in San Diego on KPBS.

There are a few more shows that I would like to see go to podcasting: A Way With Words, The Dr. Demento Show and Hour 25.

Podcasts Take To The Air - Airwaves That Is

2005-05-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

An interesting article on podcasts can be found here.

Foxtail says hello

2005-04-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Hear my cat say hello.