Boot Camp

Yeah, baby! Now there is no reason for you not to buy a Mac. For all of you out there who thought that you'd like to have a Mac because, after all, they are so cool, so reliable, so upscale, but all you've ever worked on is Windows and you think you'd have to learn a whole new operating system (which you wouldn't) - run, run, run to your closest Apple store and hand over your credit card. Because now you can own a beautiful computer and still run your old clunky Windows program that you're used to. With Boot Camp, you have the choice of running Windows XP or Mac OS X. Is it a perfect world now, or what?

Big News out of the ACC!

No credit is given in this short blurb, but I think this breakthrough is probably the work of the scientists at Wake Forest. Anthony Atala left Harvard's ivy halls to come to a new institute of regenerative medicine at Wake Forest. The word is that he's been able to make cell suspensions that form uteruses, vaginas, and large blood vessels. Atala's group has even constructed a fully functioning rabbit penis! Now they're working on solid organs.

URINE LUCK
We can grow you a new bladder. Can we conquer death?
By William SaletanUpdated Tuesday, April 4, 2006, at 9:15 AM ET
(For the latest Human Nature columns on birth control, polygamy, and old people, click here.)

Scientists have grown and implanted the first custom-made human organs. They made bladders and put them in patients who donated the source tissue. Recipe: Take a tiny tissue sample from each patient, grow it in a dish, wrap it around a scaffold to shape it, grow it for seven weeks in an incubator, then put it in the patient, where the new bladder keeps growing. The bladders have been functioning in seven patients for about four years. Next, scientists plan to grow kidneys, livers, and hearts. Interpretations: 1) Tissue engineering has arrived. 2) We did it without embryonic stem cells. 3) Death, RIP. (For Human Nature's take on growing organs from embryos, click here.)

My Final Final Four!

That was the worst Final Four I've ever seen! The first rounds were so very, very exciting. Many games went into OT and even double OT. We were all talking about those great games. Then by the round of 8, I didn't even care who won anymore. I could have cheered for "Big Baby" but LSU was playing so badly, that it was painful to watch.

I hate Duke, and I'm not crazy about Jim Calhoun's UConn team, either, but that would surely have been a much better game. I feel sorry for those players who had NBA scouts watching them and then, as time went on, their stock fell lower and lower. Let's see how it plays out when draft time comes.

Whew! I'm glad baseball season is here!

Stomp!

Just got home from seeing a performance of Stomp! at ASU's Gammage Auditorium. It was wonderful! The creativity is just mind boggling, and kids could actually learn from the performers how to make music out of almost anything. This performance included brooms, dustpans and dust sweepers, long sticks, short sticks, flexible pieces of rubber hose cut to various lengths, matchboxes, zippo lighters, 55-gallon drums, plastic garbage cans, metal garbage cans, garbage can lids, and a large assortment of pots and pans, dishpans, plastic water cooler bottles, and anything else that makes a sound. The timing and syncopation was impeccable, and the performers were funny, energetic, athletic, and, of course, fine musicians.

If you ever get a chance to see this marvelous show, don't miss it!