It seems that with every new Halloween there is a new opportunity for some appalling racist act or another. Locally, we had such an event at Hamline University, and nationally, where else: The Bush Administration. The Hamline event ... and my source here is Minnesota Public Radio, something I heard in the car ... involved a Halloween party in which several college boys dressed up in black face as primitive savages. They and the girls who helped them are in significant trouble. I heard about this while driving Julia (seventh grade) to school. She objected: She did not understand the…

Obviously, I have to work this both into tonight's talk in Grand Rapids, and blog about it: Gene governs IQ boost from breastfeeding from PhysOrg.com The known association between breast feeding and slightly higher IQ in children has been shown to relate to a particular gene in the babies, according to a report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...] But for now, I'll just say this... By way of cautionary notes. It is being said that this is evidence of intelligence being the result of "nature and nurture" interacting. This is because there is a gene that…

A new species of peccary has been discovered in the Amazon. It's different from other peccaries in that it appears to be a frugivore. It also lives in pairs or very small family groups. This is, of course, exactly what one might expect. Frugovores eat high quality food, while the other peccaries eat lower quality food. Higher quality food is rare and dispersed so it is difficult to get into larger groups. A huge, undiscovered animal lurking in the Amazon rain forest? When pigs fly, you might say. But recently, Dutch biologist Marc van Roosmalen spotted a new species of peccary--a type…

This is interesting: Doctors began operating today on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs in an extensive surgery that they hope will leave the girl with a normal body, a hospital official said. Lakshmi is joined to a "parasitic twin" who stopped developing in the mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus. [source] It is believed that in utero, this girl had a twin whom she absorbed, reportedly after that twin's "death." (I'm not so sure about the death part... that sounds like an assumption.) Various parts…

We shall not be moved. ..." Fifty five of us jammed in a bus designed to hold fourty people plus a driver, rolling down Highway 90 from Upstate New York to Chicago. As a teenager (just turned 15), I was thrilled to be going to Chicago to attend the Fight Back Conference, a thinly disguised Communist Party meeting. I was going, in part for Keith, the young African American kid (about 12 years old) who was shot in the back by a state trooper just under a year earlier. Keith was driving a mo-ped down the toll road, on the shoulder, where he shouldn't have been. It appears that he did not…

I'm off for two days to the Great White North, Grand Rapids, where I'll give a talk tomorrow night for the area Library Association on the topic of Race and Racism. If you are in the vicinity, please stop by and visit! I'll be "at the lake" for the day prior, taking a few more winterizing steps for the cabin (mainly rescuing the latex from the oncoming winter) and writing highly controversial yet amusing and informative blog stuff.

I'm pretty sure Amanda and I were abducted by aliens this morning. This is not the first time, for me. I was abducted with two others about 20 years ago in Southern Maine while looking for antiques, back when you could still get them cheap even in antique stores (inexpensive antiques, not aliens). You can tell about the abduction because one moment it is a certain time and the next moment is it much later in time and you have no memory whatsoever of he ensuing time. Since that is essentially impossible, alien abduction is pretty much the best possible explanation. Back in Maine, it…

... Oh, wait. brought back to life "in stunning 3D by a scientist at The University of Manchester." I hate those press release writers... This is actually fairly cool despite the fact that no actual spiders were actually brought back to life. Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography (VHR-CT) was used to "digitally dissect" tiny fossils thus revealing very fine detail including internal organs. Here is an example: View larger image The same graphic in a different format can be seen here, and you can get a PDF of the paper here. ___________________ Penny et al. 2007, 'First fossil…