Archives for December 19, 2007
A Whale of a Missing Link : Indohyus
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 Yet another missing link has been found! This new find links whales to quadrupedal land mammals. Thewissen et al. report in Nature new fossil material from the Middle Eocene of Kashmir, India. This species (in the genus Indohyus is represented by a remarkable set of remains, including cranial and post cranial material. Previous studies using…
Impala
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 Aepyceros melampus. This is one of the more widespread antelopes. Impala can be either grazers or browsers. They are pretty and they taste good. This herd is located at De Wildt’s Reserve very near Johannesburg
Computers Need Not Contribute to Global Warming
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 A SiCortex SC648 supercomputer and a Linux cluster of 648 CPU’s and a TB of main memory woudl draw about 1,200 watts. That’s gotta widen your Carbon Footprint!
Tangled Bank 95: Here I stand and can do no other
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 Read it all here.
A New OpenSource Online Office
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 “After going premium and suffering some community fragmentation, the OpenOffice.org open source office suite is being taken in a new direction by a company named Ulteo. A brainchild of Gael Duval, founder of Mandriva Linux, Ulteo’s mission is to serve as a platform for putting applications onto the web. Using this approach, Ulteo has released…
Reduced Verbal Ability in African American Children
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 African American children may have reduced verbal ability compared to other children to a degree that is roughly equivalent to missing a year in school, according to a recently published paper. Is this evidence of a racial difference? The study by Sampson et.al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences included more…
Blogospherics: Recommended reads
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 Good stuff from my neighbors in the blogosphere:
War on Christmas Update
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 A conservative commentator recently editorialized: For centuries, atheism has been the rake lurking around the edges of the Christmas party, but now it’s slurping from the punch bowl in the middle of the room. Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are selling atheist manifestos by the bin, and teens are soaking up blasphemous bits…
Four Stone Hearth 30: at the end of the year
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 … the web carnival, is here.
Geek the Vote
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 Popular Mechanics (one of those magazines that genteel people refuse to admit they read, but that is actually a blast) has published a thing called “Geek the Vote.” According to an email from PM, this is: …an online guide to all the candidates’ stances on issues related to science and technology including energy policy and…
The Flores Hominid and the Evolution of the Shoulder
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2007 Homo floresiensis more widely known as the “Hobbit,” may have had arms that were very different from those of modern humans. A paper in the current issue of the Journal of Human Evolution explores the anatomy of H. floresiensis. To explore this we first have to understand the concept of “Humeral torsion.” Humeral torsion is…
, which is now available for the 
