I am thankful for many things -- an intelligent, caring, and beautiful wife who is my life partner in every way; three healthy, energetic, and smart kids who challenge me to be a better role model at every turn; a rewarding and interesting legal career; good health; freedom; and this amazing Internet, just to name a few.

Go read Glenn Reynolds' and James Lileks' Thanksgiving entries (yes, I am thankful for them, too).

And I am thankful that this President is leading the war against terrorism.

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I apologize in advance for this: I am not Lileks, who I am sure could do this subject more justice than I. I don't usually share much of my domestic circumstances here, but tonight is such a "perfect storm" of pet misfortune that I have to type a few words.

Background: my wife has asthma and is very allergic to cats; somewhat to dogs. But we are both animal lovers and want our kids to learn to be as well. Therefore, we keep a few small pets -- a hamster, fish, and a toad. Our main pet is a hamster, Perky, who just passed away after seeming to recover from a brief bout of wet tail.

I wonder now if it was actually wet tail or just old age, as she was approaching the two-year-old maximum lifespan of hamsters. You don't know sorrow until you have three kids under the age of 10 experiencing this kind of loss for the first time. This comes on the heels of my killing of my second son's two about-to-metamorphose tadpoles last week by using dechlorinated city water instead of the bottled "drinking water" we had been using. Add to that the fact that his wild toad hasn't eaten for the last two weeks, and things look pretty glum in the
Lanius household.

Oh yeah, one of my first son's neon tetra fish (which we just got a couple of days ago) is having major equiulibrium problems (swimming nose-down or upside down) and I am concerned that his days are also numbered.

Arrgh.

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Jeff Foust has an update to his earlier report on High Altitude Research Corporation's (HARC's) X-Prize entry, the Liberator, today. This past Saturday, HARC invited selected guests from the media and investor communities to view actual hardware (engineering test models at this point, not flight-ready articles). Jeff also provides a neat gallery of images from the event.

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Regular readers of Instapundit have probably noted his continuing focus on the outsourcing of "white collar" jobs (software support to India, for example) as a potential campaign issue next year (representative posts here, here, and here).

Scott Adams, who has already lampooned the outsourcing fad in Dilbert with his fictional country of "Elbonia" spreads the meme further in today's strip.

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More science fiction becomes science fact, as a team at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have built a nano-scale transistor using a DNA molecule as the "assembler."

According to this article, the team started with a long strand of DNA to use as the template for the device. They coated graphite nanotubes with antibodies that caused them to bind to the DNA strand in the desired locations. Then, the team turned the remainder of the DNA molecule into a conducting wire by adding a solution of silver ions that chemically attached themselves to the phosphate backbone of the DNA, "condensing" as silver metal after the team added aldehyde to the solution. With the addition of gold (which, according to the article, "nucleated" on the silver), the team produced functioning carbon nanotube transistors with gold and silver leads.

I am certainly not a molecular biologist, so I hope I properly summarized the technique used here. This sure seems like big stuff for small stuff.

(Via Geekpress).

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This page has more fun illusions.

And they are annotated to explain how they work. Enjoy.

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Form Arsole to Clitorin, you'll find your funny molecule names here.

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You aren't being paid to believe in the power of your dreams.

(Lots of other cynical twists on the "motivational poster" genre here).

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Lileks has completed his mp3 trilogy of the three great Star Trek:TOS characters.

First, it was Doctor Poppycock (McCoy).

Then, Captain Clanton (Kirk).

Now, Spock gets his turn in Your Agonizer Please.

Enjoy.

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Tim Blair demonstrates the true Australian virtue of "mateship" in this response to an idiotarian emailer who gloated about the impact of the recent loss of 17 of America's finest in Iraq on their families.

Thanks, Tim. Next time you swing through North America, be sure to make it down to Texas. I'll be glad to introduce you to some true Texan hospitality (lots of BBQ, real TexMex, grande steaks, and good local beer!)

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Today's Foxtrot puts in a subtle plug for Darwinism.

I think Carl Zimmer would approve.

Foxtrot is one of my daily "must-reads," along with Get Fuzzy, Dilbert, and the Norm.

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Scientific American has named Burt Rutan to their Scientific American 50 list in Aerospace for "design[ing] a reusable suborbital passenger spacecraft."

I only wish the award could have been for designing and flying the world's first reusable passenger spacecraft, although there may yet be time for Burt to pull that off in 2003.

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Yesterday, the GNXPers examined the sacred institution of marriage from a variety of angles. Any summary I gave couldn't do it any greater justice than their own:

Observation: only on GNXP can you get quotes on [Blow Jobs] and a symmetrized Gale-Shapley alternative in the same post...

So go read the whole thing.

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Mensa is "the society for overintelligent underachievers."

Double heh.

(I have to confess that I was actually "in" Mensa in High School, which means I passed the test and got my parents to pay for the membership fee. But I never participated in any of the special interest groups -- highly oriented towards adult activities -- and dropped out altogether when I encountered a real merit-based system in college)

(Via Anthony, in his comments to this amazing Gene Expression article on Marriage, Money, and Evolutionary Psych).

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For some real pictures of everything, check out this nice Hubble slide show, which takes you into the depths of the Cosmos. (Via Jerry Pournelle).

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Via Alan Brain, you can see a picture of everything here.

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Via SFSignal, you can replay that scene from Aliens.

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Beautiful picture of Jupiter.

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Ever wondered what Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody would look like in Japanese?

Wait no longer. . . (Be sure you have Asian character sets installed).

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I added a link to Troynovant, or "New Troy," a couple of days ago, but failed to mention it here in the body of my blog when I did so.

It's a bit more literary than most blogs, with essays on books, film, and politics.

Be sure to click over and check it out.

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