This article about rabies surprised me a little.

See, we know how to prevent rabies, but we have absolutely no idea how to cure it. In fact, we don't even really know how it kills people. Despite (and, perhaps, because of) its status as one of the first viruses to be tamed by a vaccine, rabies remains a little-understood disease.

What about all those stories you hear of someone being bitten by a rabid animal and having to get painful shots? I thought that was the cure, but it turns out those shots are actually a vaccine after the fact.

"You think about flu, that's a very quick virus. You develop symptoms in a couple of days. In a week, it's passed. But rabies incubation is very long," said Zhen Fu, DVM Ph.D., professor of pathology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia. "It may be weeks or even months before you develop an active infection. So we have enough time after a bite to immunize with normal vaccine and bring up the immune system."

New treatments for vaccine show promise, but with few cases to study, the results are not conclusive. Maggie Koerth-Baker researched the disease after she found a bat in her living room. Link

Weaving glass? It seems impossible until you think of it backwards from the finished product. In this piece, the glass warp is formed in the finished shape before it is woven to the weft. Here you'll find instructions for doing it yourself. http://www.weavezine.com/content/how-weave-glass -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

This post gives you a crash course in gravity, specifically how gravity affects the way we travel to (or don't travel to) other planets.

The more massive and more compact your planet is, the harder it is to get off of. Something like the Moon, which is only about 1.2% of the mass of the Earth but 27% of the Earth's radius, is way, way easier to escape from than the Earth. To escape from the Earth's gravity, you need to reach a speed of 40,000 km/hr (25,000 mph) from the Earth's surface. To escape from the Moon, on the other hand, you only need to reach 8,600 km/hr (5,400 mph).

This explains why it would be so much easier to travel to one of the moons of Mars than to Mars itself, due to the ease of traveling back home from those places. Link

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Jib Jab's annual year in review animation set to the tune of The Entertainer.

This may look like a snake attack, but it's actually an ad on a bus inviting everyone to the Copenhagen Zoo. Link -via J-Walk Blog

You can find a serious look back at the news of 2009 just about anywhere. A lot of those stories can be downright depressing. Meanwhile, Dave Barry reminds you of what happened while putting his ridiculous spin on 2009.

Elsewhere in politics, a team of specially trained wildlife agents equipped with nets and tranquilizer darts manages, after a six-hour struggle, to remove Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office. He is transported to an undisclosed swamp, where he is released into the wild and quickly bonds with the native ferret population.

On a more upbeat note, the nation finds a new hero in US Airways Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, who, in an astonishing feat of aviation, manages to land a US Airways flight safely in the Hudson River after it loses power shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia. Incredibly, all 155 people on board survive, although they are immediately taken hostage by Somali pirates.

In entertainment news, an unemployed California mother of six uses in-vitro fertilization to give birth to eight more children, an achievement that immediately catapults her to a celebrity status equivalent to that of a minor Kardashian sister.

And that's just January. The year ends with Somali pirates hiking the Appalachian Trail to escape North Korean missiles. Or something like that. http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/dave-barry/v-print/story/1397654.html -via Fark

If I lived in Japan, I would probably watch more TV. In this episode of Shimura Zoo, Pan-kun must pick up and deliver a cake. It's not that simple, as everyone wants the cake! Link (embedded YouTube clip) -via Random Good Stuff

Well, you may have heard of at least some of these, but you can expand your color vocabulary. Now you'll be able to say "malachite" instead of "kind of a dusky teal green" or "sort of like that Ford van color but a tiny bit bluer." The car shown is the color known as malachite.

This color is also known as basic green 4 and is often used when creating a green dye. This vibrant green comes from the carbonate mineral known as Malachite, or copper carbonate. In the 1800, the mineral was widely used for green paints because it was lightfast and often varied in color. The color is one that is seen rampant in history. For instance, there is the Malachite Room in Hermitage, and it is also said that Demeter’s throne was made of this color as well.

Link -via Interesting Pile

Many people put glow-in-the dark star stickers on a child's bedroom ceiling. With this Instructable, you can go all the way and have twinkling fiber optic stars! The project is just one of many listed in Instructables' Best of 2009 list. You'll find links to the most popular projects of the year broken down by categories (art, home, food, pets, games, etc). Maybe you'll find something to keep you busy during the after-Christmas doldrums. Link

On December 31st, we will see the second full moon of the month, or the 13th full moon of the year. These rare occasions are called a blue moon, as in "once in a blue moon". But that's not the only thing special about New Year's Eve this year. There will also be a partial lunar eclipse on the 31st (visible in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia)!

Only a very small portion of the Moon's southern limb will be in the Earth's umbral shadow, but there will be a noticeable darkening visible over the Moon's face at the point of greatest eclipse. Need more? Then know this eclipse is the one of four lunar eclipses in a short-lived series. The lunar year series repeats after 12 lunations or 354 days. Afterwards it will begin shifting back about 10 days in sequential years. Because of the date change, the Earth's shadow will be about 11 degrees west in sequential events.

For the eclipse, the duration of the partial phase will last within two seconds of a hour long, while the penumbral duration from beginning to end will run about four hours and eleven minutes. Penumbral contact will begin at 17:17:08 UT and umbral contact at 18:52:43 UT. The moment of greatest depth of shadow will occur at 19:22:39 UT, 31 December 2009.

Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

(image credit: Kostian Iftica)

Redditor zeldajk received this lovely baby quilt displaying science concept designs. Different blocks represent light and optics, measurement, astrophysics, particle physics, electromagnetism, and other parts of the world of science. The first block is a tribute to Albert Einstein! Link to pictures of the quilt. Link to pattern. -via Gizmodo

In case you didn't realize how far component miniaturization has progressed in the past decade: casemodder Klaus Diebel offers the iMac CS, which is an iMac case (in your choice of colors) that contains a computer (a Mac mini), a sound system, and a coffee maker! Each unit is custom-made, so you'll have to discuss the price with him if you want one. Link -via Gizmodo

Spc. Matthew Mortensen is a combat medic, charged with providing aid to wounded front line soldiers, but that was no protection against harm. He was shot by a sniper while on patrol in Baghdad on December 10th.

"After I was shot, I had my platoon sergeant examine for a wound and he found one on my right shoulder blade," said Mortensen. "Then I jumped into the truck, threw off my kit because I couldn't reach my right side with my kit on. After I took it off, I started cleaning up some of the blood with gauze then I used the package for the gauze and created a pressure dressing over the wound just in case it penetrated my chest cavity. I didn't know what happened to the bullet so that was the only thing I was really worried about"

Mortensen even directed his own medical evacuation. He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Combat Medical Badge the next day. Mortensen is now recovering in the US and expects to be back in Iraq in February. Link -via Digg

The Salary Theorem proves mathematically that those who know more make less money. Therefore, if you know nothing, you should be fabulously wealthy! Link -via Digg

Children of the Victorian Era had to be tough, because this Santa Claus would have given me nightmares! This picture is a detail of a larger family portrait from Flickr user stevechasmar. For sheer weirdness, it just might beat out the previous creepy Santa post. See more Victorian Christmas ephemera in his photostream. http://www.flickr.com/photos/opiummuseum/4179068965/in/photostream/ -via Buzzfeed