December 5, 2008
The RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) and other partners have launched a last push to find one of the world's rarest birds.
They have issued a call to search for and find any remaining populations of Slender-billed Curlew Numenius tenuirostris. This announcement was made at the Ninth Meeting of the…
December 5, 2008
Allen's Rule. One of those things you learn in graduate school along with Bergmann's Rule and Cope's Rule. It is all about body size. Cope's Rule ... which is a rule of thumb and not an absolute ... says that over time the species in a given lineage tend to be larger and larger. Bergmann's Rule…
December 5, 2008
IBM launches first Linux-OpenOffice desktop with virtualization features ...
IBM has added a Linux desktop with new virtualization capabilities to its portfolio.
The Virtual Desktop, which bundles Canonical's Ubuntu Linux, Virtual Bridges' KVM-based desktop virtualization software and IBM's Open…
December 5, 2008
All but one precinct has been counted (and I understand that will be done momentarily). However, there is a box (or bag or envelope) of ballots missing in Minneapolis. The Secretary of State has indicated that the recount deadline is extended to allow these missing 130 or so votes to be found and…
December 5, 2008
Getting sentenced is a drag. One time, when I got sentenced, a conjuncture of highly unlikely events occurred that made the whole thing rather more scary, and more of a circus, than usual.
My sentence was unfair, of course, as I was innocent. I was convicted on the strength of planted evidence.…
December 5, 2008
This tiger was owned by a large cat breeder and handler who provides tigers, lions, and some other beasts for the entertainment industry. Notice the white spots on the tiger's ears. I spent a fair amount of time with this tiger, in its enclosure, photographing it as various other things were…
December 5, 2008
Sometimes called the Mountains of the Moon. The Rwenzori is really one giant mountain with several peaks. Since it is not formed through the usual process of tectonic folding, it is not really like other mountain "ranges." It appears to have been pushed up in the middle of the Western Rift…
December 4, 2008
and unmounting. In Linux.
Here's the problem. With upgrades to Linux Kernel 2.6 for autoplugging devices, and hotswapping of USB devices, etc., mounting has become more complex. At the same time, the spread of Ubuntu and some other Linux distributions among the wider unwashed masses has lead to…
December 4, 2008
At the top of the gorge, a small stream just before it plunges about 60 meters into the gorge.
December 4, 2008
Go visit the Norm Coleman Weasel Meter.
December 4, 2008
Laelaps and Drugmonkey have painfully truthy graphs for you to see.
December 4, 2008
hat tip IBY
December 4, 2008
Windows OS last month took its biggest market share dive in the past two years, erasing gains made in two of the past three months and sending the operating system's share under 90% for the first time, an Internet measurement company reported today.
source
In the mean time, Linux grew from 0.71 to…
December 4, 2008
Hat Tip Miss Cellania (who has some other cool stuff ... check it out)
December 4, 2008
Lions are more diverse than many may think. Indeed, recent research shows that lions may be comfortably divided into races. An expert on lions can tell you what part of Africa a particular lion is likely from by how it looks. Have a look at these lions:
Anyone who knows anything about lions…
December 4, 2008
"Henry G. Molaison, 82, of Windsor Locks, CT died on Tuesday. He is known in the medical and scientific literatures as "the amnesic patient, H.M." He was born in Manchester, CT and graduated from East Hartford High School. In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation at the Hartford…
December 4, 2008
I want the peek.
Watch CBS Videos Online
Hat tip: Bora, a real technology ladies man.
December 4, 2008
A kopje is a manadnock. Which, in turn, is an inselberg. Indeed, it may sometimes be called a Kakba, but that is the most obscure of all the terms for a very large lump sticking out of the earth all by itself. Like this:
In South Africa, this is called a "kopje" (pronounced "Cop eee" a lot like…
December 3, 2008
... or at least much improved.
Two packages arrived today. One containing samples of the Cafe Press merchandise that I created in order to provide a suitable award for the 20 thousandth commenter on this blog plus or minus one. The central commenter and her/his standard deviates will each…
December 3, 2008
On Change.org, the site where you can submit ideas and/or vote on ideas and then Obama has to do them ... or at least listen ... a college student named Griffin Jeffrey has suggested that we create nationalliy required science standards.
National standards on the teaching of Evolution and the…
December 3, 2008
I absolutely love this:
I've been accused of refusing to review Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled," a defense of Creationism, because of my belief in the theory of evolution. Here is my response.
Ben Stein, you hosted a TV show on which you gave away money. Imagine that I have created a special…
December 3, 2008
The 54th edition of Four Stone Hearth, the Anthropology Web Carnival, is up at International Cognition and Culture.
December 3, 2008
New species, thousands of them, have been discovered on a tiny island in the Pacific. Click on the picture of the blog to read all about it at Zooillogix:
Then, when you are done looking at that blog post, get yourself to a magazine stand and pick up the November-December issue of American…
December 3, 2008
Everybody's talking about the Body Swap Illusion. So why should I bother. Here's what you need to know:
The original paper is here, at PLoS.
Here are some blog posts on the topic:
Neurophilosophy: The Body Swap Illusion
Not Exactly Rocket Science: The Quantum Leap effect.
December 3, 2008
Tramplings. Sounds like the title of a Stephen King novel. And it may as well be.
When the news of the Wal-Mart empoloyee being trampled to death was coming out, the thought occurred to me "doesn't this happen every year? Why would the fact that this happens every year not be part of the story…
December 3, 2008
On Monday, Birmingham mayor Larry Langford was busted by the feds for bribery and fraud in connection with a multibillion-dollar sewer bonding that has caused the county in which Birmingham is seated to end up in near bankruptcy.
Langford, Montgomery investment banker Bill Blount and lobbyist Al…
December 3, 2008
Near Kruger National Park, South Africa
December 3, 2008
There is increasing evidence, or at least informed conjecture, that there will be a redistricting in Minnesota leading to the vaporization of a congressional district. If this happens, even if the Republicans are in charge for that process, there is a reasonable chance that Michel Bachmann ...…
December 2, 2008
And this is how they try to show you who is boss:
Hippo plays with kitty:
December 2, 2008
A new paper by Kevin Padian of UC Berkeley is just out in Comptes Rendus Biologies, a French peer reviewed journal, on American creationism.
Padian summarizes the history of creationism in the US. From the abstract:
The history of anti-evolutionism in the United States begins only in the early…
