Tangled Bank #103

Well, this sucks. We just lost Edward Lorenz. At 90, but still...couldn't we have traded a couple of Bill O'Reillys or something and got to keep him a bit longer?

You might like this report from Florida.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080415/NEWS/804150543

" His mess of white hair rising with the wind, Nobel laureate Harold Kroto delivered what has become his standard speech on evolution:

Humans and fruit flies share the same genes.

"You may not like that but it's not my fault," Kroto, 68, said in front of the state Capitol on Monday.

"It's the way it actually is."

- Once again it is a Brit who talks some sense to Floridiots.

"Florida lawmakers are frustrating the winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for chemistry. They want to change the way evolution is taught so that teachers are allowed to challenge Darwin's theory.

It is the most absurd thing Kroto has heard since moving to Florida in 2004 to teach at Florida State University. His friends back home in England, where he was a professor in Sussex, have been sending him e-mails asking why he stays, he said.

"We're the laughingstock of the enlightened world," Kroto said."

couldn't we have traded a couple of Bill O'Reillys or something

Throw in Ann Coulter too... no charge.

Throw in Ann Coulter too... no charge.
I've been thinking since I posted that though, and I doubt that between them BillO, AC, Rush, Billy Kristol, W, Sean Hannity, et al. would come close to adding up to the worth of such a man. Maybe we could swap them for his pyloric sphincter or maybe the appendix?

Thanks for the link and for allowing me to host!

The comments thread at my blog indicates a problem with some submissions not getting through. Just thought you should know so you can hopefully fix the problem in time for the next edition!

The RSS feed for tangledbank.net seems to be down BTW.

In honor of a father chaos:

What did they use to fill in the grave of Lorenz? A tractor.

Off-topic, but this has to be brought to PZ's attention: Octopus sex is more complex than you'd think:

...Christine Huffard, lead author on a study recently published in Marine Biology, a science journal. "But they interacted so much more than we ever expected."
She discovered that the males were very picky and discriminating, that the females would have sex with just about anybody, and that male competition for females tended to be violent and frequent.

(Anyone familiar with sexual selection theory will recognize that this is a somewhat unusual combination of traits.)
Huffard's research was done in Indonesia, and she notes "...Over and over, I'd hear, 'You came from America to do this?' "