gregladen | December 29, 2007On steroids....
Dec 29
Battle of Wounded knee, 1890
Dec 29
Civic Holidays (3 days) in Costa Rica
Dec 30
First Los Angeles freeway dedicated, 1940
Dec 30
Anniversary of the Democratic Republic of Madagascar in Madagascar
gregladen | December 28, 2007President Bush's boyhood home was severely damaged by a fire.I
nvestigators in Odessa now believe an arsonist is to blame.
[source]
Burning Bush Home
gregladen | December 28, 2007Visitors to the Institute for Creation Research Web page can quickly deduce that the organization, founded in California and recently transplanted to Dallas, is a Christian group dedicated to spreading the doctrine of divine creation of the world and challenging the teaching of evolution as fact in public schools.
An advisory committee to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board recommends that the group be allowed to confer master's degrees in science education for teacher candidates. This indefensible action would be the equivalent of allowing an institute of faith-healers to issue…
gregladen | December 28, 2007... Or so intoned the Janesville, Wisconsin student during show and tell just before he started ripping his Bible to shreds.
The school responded to this as a "safety matter."
One child felt particularly "endangered" by this show of bravado, and her father has pulled his kids out of the school and has apparently forced school administrators to treat this as a safety issue, and punish the student. The school is silent on the nature of the punishment, but insists that while the student is constitutionally protected in his decision to rip pages out of his own bible, he was being punished…
gregladen | December 28, 2007Possibly even exceeding Ron Paul in his moronosity. Most recently, he has shown himself clueless in matters of foreign policy.
People who questioned my view of foreign policy probably need go back and read the speech that I delivered back in Washington in September. ...[where I talk about] those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists....
Uffda...
gregladen | December 28, 2007Well, actually, you are supposed to try this at home. I was wondering what I was going to do with that extra 150 ohm resister I had laying around...
Blu-Ray Laser Phaser! - video powered by Metacafe
gregladen | December 28, 2007Cool! A Wii! A Wii is a great way to deal with the problem of TV being a bad influence. Instead of sitting around watching TV, you INTERACT with your TV in a physically demanding way! It is actually GOOD for you! Watch!
Ooops. The down side is that you can only do this once. Once Per TV.
gregladen | December 28, 2007Beethoven Home court advantage matters when it comes to food and reproduction. So, where does a big male ape sit? Wherever he wants to....
... and if you are an adult male chimp, this means in the same part of the forest that you used to hang out with mom, when you were still more or less attached to her metaphorical apron strings.
The next issue of Current Biology will have a paper by Carson Murray, Ian Gilby, Sandeep Mane and Anne Pusey on adult male ranging patterns. The conclusion of the research is that adult males essentially inherit their mother's habits of space use.
The study is…
gregladen | December 27, 2007
Alopochen aegyptiacus ... note, this is Egyptian goose, not Egypt goose. But it is Canada goos goose, not Canadian goose.
It might be called Egyptian goose because it looks like the old Egyptian paintings. Indeed, this goose is often depicted in ancient Egyptian art. Or maybe because it "walks like an Egyptian" (and by the way Egyptians don't walk that way, only in the old paintings). But it is probably called an Egyptian goose for the same reason that the African buffalo is properly (in a vernacular sense) known as the Cape buffalo. The Cape buffalo entered the Linnaen Legacy via the…
gregladen | December 27, 2007 TatianaThe killing of one visitor and maiming of two others by Tatiana, a Tiger, in the S.F. Zoo raises questions that go far beyond one cat and three victims. One might ask: Should there even be zoos?
We do not yet know what happened in the San Francisco Zoo yesterday, but some details are starting to emerge. It looks like Tatiana leaped out of her enclosure. If that proves to be true, we should not be too surprised. Cats have amazing, and I believe under investigated muscular ability. The 1.2 foot long cats we are cat sitting for routinely leap 600% of their length to achieve such…
gregladen | December 27, 2007Few have had the opportunity or responsibility to comment on their own assassination.
gregladen | December 27, 2007 Benazir Bhutto
As you have surely heard, Benazir Bhutto and at least 15 other people were killed by a suicide bomber. Bhutto was in shot in the neck by the attacker, who then set off the bomb. This happened in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. This was expected.
And it was expected for years. The main difference between Benazir Bhutto and other leading figures in Pakistan is that the latter pay a lot of attention to security, and Benazir flaunted her freedom and minimized the importance of security. It was easy to get to her.
Otherwise, the situation in Pakistan is normal. Out of control mayhem.…
gregladen | December 26, 2007Linnaeus' Legacy is "a monthly blog carnival devoted to the study of life's diversity, and the science of describing and understanding this diversity." The home page for the carnival is here.
The current issue of Linnaeus' Legacy is at Laelaps.
The reason I'm telling you all this is to get you excited about the next edition of Linnaeus' Legacy, which will be hosted here, on this blog.
The plan is to get the carnival up and running on the Fifth of January. Please send me your posts!
I'd like to have the posts in hand on the 4th of January but if you wake up on the morning of January…
gregladen | December 26, 2007This is not new, but it is cool: The NORFANZ sea sampling project. What is a little new is that many of these species are claimed on some crazy web site to have washed ashore during the Christmas Tsunami three years ago. That is not true....
Jewel Squid (Histioteuthis sp.)
The jewel squids are one of the strangest occupants of open-ocean waters. Firstly they have wonky eyes, the left eye is always much larger than the right. In some species the left eye is telescopic while the smaller right eye is normal. These squids have a funny slant on life, literally. They hang at a 45° angle and…
gregladen | December 26, 2007One person has been killed and two others injured after a tiger escaped from its cage at San Francisco Zoo.
All of the victims were visitors to the zoo, a spokesman for San Francisco emergency services said.
The Siberian tiger, named Tatiana, was the same one that mauled a keeper just before Christmas last year. It has now been shot dead.
The incident occurred as the zoo was closing around 1700 (0100 GMT). It is not clear how the cat escaped its pen.
[source]
gregladen | December 26, 2007You already know about the controversy in South Carolina. Now is your opportunity to put in your two cents.
Kansas City dot Com, which is NOT a South Carolina newspaper, has a short article on the story:
The debate over how to teach the origin of species in public high schools could resurface in January, when the South Carolina Board of Education meets.
The divided state panel withheld its endorsement of two biology textbooks this month when board member Charles W. McKinney pointed to dozens of questions raised in critiques by Horace D. Skipper, a retired Clemson University professor.
And,…