gregladen | August 4, 2008The bodies of civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were found after they had been missing for six weeks in the vicinity of Philadelphia, Mississippi, on this day in 1964.
From the bbc report of the time:
The three young men had left the CORE office in Meridian six weeks ago to investigate the destruction of a black congregation church in Longdale, Neshoba County because it was used as the site for a "freedom school".
The school was set up by Mr Schwerner as part of a wider civil rights campaign in Mississippi teaching black children, among other things…
gregladen | August 4, 2008PLoS ONE. You are ONE today. Does this mean that starting today you are PLoS Two?
For a recent history of the Public Library of Science, see this earlier post.
gregladen | August 3, 2008 New Smithsonian Field Guide Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America by Ted Floyd is a newcomer to the bird field guide scene. This guide offers a new combination of features that may make it the best choice as the primary guide for a small number of birders, and as an excellent second (or third) guide for most birdwatchers. Given the guide's qualities and price (it is not expensive) if you are a North American birder (anywhere in the region) this is a must-have for your collection, and if you know a birder who is having a present-able event (birthday, etc.) any time in the…
gregladen | August 3, 2008
As you can see, this specimen of Leptotyphlops carlae is small enough to hang out on a US quarter. Scientists are still working out why this snake associates itself with coinage.
But seriously, this snake was discovered by Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Pennsylvania State University, who is famous for also having discovered the world's smallest gecko in 2001 and the world's smallest frog in 1993 .
How does he do it?
According to Hedges, it is mostly a matter of luck.
"I turned a small rock and found it hiding underneath," he claimed in a recent press report. However, the…
gregladen | August 3, 2008 All Franken chatting with supporters at a home in Coon Rapids. "Why?" you may ask, "Why would a guy running for the United States Senate ... in which you represent one state ... have a fifty state strategy?" Good question. Franken discussed his Fifty State Strategy with supporters at a recent fund raiser at a home in Coon Rapids. Amanda, Julia and I dropped in, and were able to hear Franken's current thinking on a number of issues. He discussed Norm Coleman, the economy, the war, America's place in the world, and cracked exactly one Saturday Night Live joke. And, we had an…
gregladen | August 3, 2008You always hope this happens, but it never does. But every now and then JUSTICE PREVAILS!
So, we're driving north on 371 just out of Baxter. Amanda, who is an excellent driver, is at the wheel. Moderate traffic, overcast but no precipitation, just before nightfall.
Suddenly, from the corner of our eyes we see a black pickup truck with two young men in it accelerated down slope from a shadowy parking lot, speeding down the steeply sloped drive. The pickup swerved onto the road directly into our path. Amanda, skillfully, swerved and braked, averting a collision with the pickup and…
gregladen | August 2, 2008From a press release from the NCSE:
Kenneth R. Miller's new book, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul, is reviewed in the July 31, 2008 issue of
Nature. Reviewer PZ Myers writes that "Miller is a fine writer who sharply
addresses the details of the arguments about intelligent design
creationism. When tackling old chestnuts such as the 'only a theory'
complaint, or Michael Behe's argument for a maximum limit for the number of
genetic mutations, or William Dembski's rehash of William Paley's
watchmaker argument for complexity, Miller discusses the contemporary…
gregladen | August 1, 2008U can haz KDE 4.1 ~ Javascript ~ Would apple mess with your music? ~ When pseudonymous trolls get out of hand.
If you want KDE 4.1 and you want it now, have a look at this guide to installing it on your LInux Ubuntu 8.04 box ahead of its appearance in the Ubuntu repository.
For those who don't know what that means: A given distribution of LInux may use a particular method of installing software that in turn uses on line repositories. Individual software items may be added to this repository at the discretion of the maintainers of the distribution. Some distributions are fairly…
gregladen | August 1, 2008Remember bug? (We wants our BUGs.... yessss)Of Buglabs? Here's more:
From Linux Journal.
gregladen | August 1, 2008ls | wc -l
How many files are in the current directory on my hard drive?
The command ls gives me a list of files (ls stands for "list stuff")
the vertical line is a pipe. This means the standard output of the left side of the pipe is sent (like in a pipe) to the standard input of the right side.
wc means "word count" ... the default output is the number of lines, nmber of words, and number of bytes for a file or for standard input. the -l option puts out only the number of lines. That, then, is the number of files.
Try it!
gregladen | August 1, 2008Carnival Of The Liberals is at The Cult of Gracie.
The Carnival of Cinema: Episode 85 - Journey to the Center of the Blog at Good News Film Reviews
Friday Ark #202 at The Modulator
New and Exciting in PLoS this week
Soup To Nuts, the Progressive Dinner Blog Carnival is at The Gonzo Papers.
gregladen | August 1, 2008 Photograph of anthrax
Do you remember the Anthrax Scare? Envelopes with strange notes and mysterious white powder were showing up in various mailboxes. In many cases the white powder was "weaponized anthrax" ... anthrax (bacterial) spores processed in such a way to enhance the spread of the spores by air and infection via lung tissues.
A total of five people died in that incident, which occurred shortly after the September 11th attacks.
US Government Scientist Bruce Ivins had been under suspicion for a number of reasons, and on learning that prosecutes were about to charge him with…
gregladen | July 31, 2008On this day in 1971, on the second day of the Apollo 15 lunar mission, astronauts dug up a really old rock which, of course, they named "The Genesis Rock"
The so-called Genesis rock was found by lunar module pilots David Scott and James Irwin when they dug into the slope of Spur crater, on the flank of the Apennine Mountains.
They were there on the second "moon safari", traveling for the first time in a custom-built lunar rover vehicle.
The rover, which looks like a four-wheeled Jeep, has enabled the astronauts to spend more time away from the lunar module than ever before, and to go several…
gregladen | July 31, 2008 You can't have it until December, but you can pre-order it now (in case they run out!). Click the picture. Maybe. Probably, this is more properly thought of as the Zeroth Harry Potter Book.
Do you know about the Tales of Beedle the Bard? According to Julia (I didn't know) it has to do with these three brothers who encounter a river previously uncrossed by mortal men. They fool death or build a bridge or something and survive and get wishes. One asks for a powerful wand, one wants to bring back the dead, and one asks that Death not be able to follow him.
This results in the existence…
gregladen | July 31, 2008A total Solar Eclipse will happen tomorrow, August 1st. Here is the map (click the map for the original version at NASA):
More details here.
gregladen | July 31, 2008I noted earlier that hundreds of baby penguins are being washed, dead, onto beaches thousands of miles away from their native lands. Various causes have been suggested, including the idea that the penguins are swimming into unfamiliar and penguin-hostile waters in search of fish, diminished in supply owing to overfishing.
Well, this phenomenon has continued, and sifted northwards.
While penguins commonly wash up as far north as Rio de Janeiro state in July and August - hundreds have done so this year. Bahia is roughly 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) northeast of Rio.
P. Dee Boersma, a…
gregladen | July 31, 2008A Goshen Family has identified an apparition of Banana Jeezus on their kitten. Here is a closeup:
Go HERE for a film of Banana Jeezus.
All Hail Banana Jeezus! All Hail Orac for Brinin' Us Dis Newz!
All Hail Ceelin' Kat!
We ask Ceelin' Kat, "Ceelin' Kat, whut 2-do about teh unbeleevers????"
Laik dis, ceelin' kat???
Whoa.....
gregladen | July 30, 2008Austrian Franz Sikora was a fossil hunter and merchant of ancient bones working in the 19th centuyr. In 1899 he found the first known specimen, which was to become the type fossil, of Hadropithecus stenognathus in Madagascar. This is an extinct lemur. To be honest, I'm not sure when this lemur went extinct, but I think it was not long before Franz found the fossil.
The bones found in 1899 as well as other material have been sitting in an Austrian museum since.
Excavations at the same locality in 2003 recovered much more material from this species. Now, a team working mainly at a lab…
gregladen | July 30, 2008 Sabertooth Cat, Megantereon nihowanensisl There are two kinds of "true cats." Cat experts call one type feline or "modern" partly because they are the ones that did not go extinct. If you have a pet cat, it's a modern/feine cat. This also includes the lions, tigers, leopards, etc. The other kind are called "sabercats" because this group includes the saber tooth. It is generally believed but not at all certain that these two groups of cats are different phylogenetic lineages (but that is an oversimplification).
It has been suggested for some time that the bite force mechanics for at…