gregladen | November 28, 2007This is a web site dedicated entirely to the collection of photographs of animals with gaping maws. Worth a look. But not too closely.
gregladen | November 28, 2007The origin and early history of Native American people has always been an issue of debate and contention. There has never been a moment when all, or even most, interested parties agreed on anything close to a single story. New research published in the Open-Access journal PLoS Genetics tends to support a very traditional (among archaeologists) view of a single relatively simple migration from Siberia across the New World, more or less from north to south.
Studies of genetic variation have the potential to provide information about the initial peopling of the Americas and the more recent…
gregladen | November 28, 2007...rapid judgments of competence based solely on the facial appearance of candidates predicted the outcomes of gubernatorial elections, the most important elections in the United States next to the presidential elections. In all experiments, participants were presented with the faces of the winner and the runner-up and asked to decide who is more competent. ...Predictions were as accurate after a 100-ms exposure to the faces ...as exposure after 250 ms and unlimited time exposure .... Asking participants to deliberate and make a good judgment dramatically increased the response times and…
gregladen | November 28, 2007It may be nothing more than slinging shit, but when you run out of shit:
Wild gorillas have been seen using "weapons" for the first time, giving a new insight into how early man learned to use sticks and stones for fighting and hunting millions of years ago.
Researchers observed gorillas in the Cross River area of Cameroon throwing sticks, clumps of earth and stones at human "invaders".
It is the first time that the largest of the great apes has been seen to use tools in an aggressive way.
[source]
gregladen | November 28, 2007well, he got his own name right, at least...
I think he also mispronounced "people" ...
gregladen | November 28, 2007Asked if he would ever nominate a Muslim for his cabinet, he replied:
"...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."
In a way, I agree. When it comes to Mormons, anyway. This country is just not ready for a minority (Mormon) president.
[source]
gregladen | November 27, 2007RAIDs (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive [sic] Disks) are considered pretty handy for a number of things. This is an example of productive and practical use of a RAID. Granted, this project does not have the archaic grandeur of a Floppy Disk RAID, but then again, the capacity and performance of this system are utterly superior to those of a Floppy Disk RAID. The following is meant as an instruction sheet of how to build a rock-hard USB stick RAID system and simultaneously transform from an ordinary nerd to a SUPER LINUX GURU.
Get your sticks together and go here.
gregladen | November 27, 2007As a child in Catholic school, and later in public school and being sent off to "release time" religious instruction, I had the opportunity to read most of the Old and New Testaments of the standard bible. Later, in junior high school, I became interested in comparative religion, and read it all again, together with some other texts that are not normally considered part of the Bible. Then all that fell to the wayside as I went off to do different things.
[Repost from gregladen.com]
In graduate school, I was lucky to have Irv DeVore as my primary advisor (eventually ... it did not start out…
gregladen | November 27, 2007Ohio State University geologists and their colleagues have uncovered evidence of when Earth may have first supported an oxygen-rich atmosphere similar to the one we breathe today.
The study suggests that upheavals in the earth's crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that cooled the world's oceans, spawned giant plankton blooms, and sent a burst of oxygen into the atmosphere.
read the press release.
gregladen | November 27, 2007It could be called the Vista Bounce. Here is how it works:
First, you have to understand that a good desktop computer costs about $3,000 and always will. A good laptop costs the same.
If you believe differently either you have been believing the ads or you do not know what a "good desktop" or a "good laptop" is.
The reason that a computer is said to cost a certain amount, say "$1850.00" or "Under a Grand" but actually costs $3,000 is this: The less expensive computer does not have something important, like memory, or a screen, or enough of a hard drive, etc. When you add that stuff on…
gregladen | November 27, 2007A French businessman tells AFP his company is working on putting TASER stun guns on a flying saucer that would zap protesters, evil-doers, and anybody else that authorities there don't like.
[source]
gregladen | November 27, 2007Genes determine basic behavior, like the behavior associated with being a predator. Or avoiding being eaten by a predator. This we know to be true because millions, zillions, of years of evolution must have shaped genes ... especially in mammals with with their whopping big brains and all ... to have genetically coded behaviors.http://www.bloggingwv.com/love-everybody-even-the-squirrelly-ones/
Or, perhaps not. Perhaps we need a slightly different view of behavioral genetics. (click on the picture to see the whole story..)
gregladen | November 27, 2007
Diceros bicornis. Africa has two species of rhinoceros, the "black" and the "white" rhino. Experts disagree on the origin of the two names, and there has been an effort to change these colloquial terms to something else. This is because the "black" rhino is dangerous and shifty, and the "white" rhino is cute and well behaved. Therefore, there are racial undertones, although the origin of the names does not reflect this.
The Black rhino is not black. As with all rhinos, it is mud-colored or dust-colored because it likes to roll around in the mud/dust.
They are ecologically vastly…
gregladen | November 27, 2007But not a lot worse. Just as we are hearing that the current hurricane season, just winding down, was not as bad as it could have been, we also have this:
More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study that largely blamed global warming.
[source]
gregladen | November 27, 2007We are told that "the Million Book Project has exceeded its goal of digitizing one million books by 2007. " Well, I can think of a million books that I'd never want to look at, and I can think of a million books that I would give up my life to preserve. Or your life, at least.
Which million does the Million Book Project address? And how? And why?
I don't know about why, but I am deeply offended and seriously worried about the "how" part ... about the fact that the very first words you encounter if you go to the US site of the million book project are:
"Use Internet Explorer to....." (…