poukledden

...the oldest fossilized human hair has been found...in fossilized hyena dung.

Sometimes it's hard not to think that the crappy way we treat other animals may, really, just be payback.

Scientist as "snowball fight" with orca

The short form: scientist throws a snowball at an orca, intending to hit the water, just to let her know they were there. Throw is off, hits orca. Orca responds, in manner that seems like it might be playful. But click the link and look at what her idea of a snowball was. :) Am I the only one hearing Crocodile Dundee saying "you call that a knife? THIS is a knife" ?

Of course, I also am seeing ninjas in my head saying "then he threw a chimney at us." First one to name the source of that gets, oh, I don't know, a tongue kiss from President Obama.

One of my favorite bet-ya-haven't-heard-of-this-one blogs to read is Notes from Kenya: MSU Hyena Research. It chronicles, as you might guess from the title, an ongoing hyena research project out in the boondocks of Kenya. It's a fun look at hyenas and the life of researchers in the field.

Case in point: sometimes, things crawl on the hood of your car. And stick around for a bit. Make sure to follow the link to the guy's personal page to check out the videos. Cheetahs are stunning creatures.

via Bad Astronomy, a bit of nice perspective from Louise CK:



It's a nice reminder. We are surrounded by miracles born of human ingenuity everyday.

The life of Gregory has been okie-dokie of late, nothing worth writing about really, been kind of in a non-blogging space (if it wasn't obvious).  Work has been a bit down, with some short nights of late and lost money thanks to the downturn in business. Yes, we are seeing the effects of what Jon Stewart calls the "Clusterfuck to the Poorhouse." You can almost guess crowds based on the Dow Jones. Tonight, though, was nicely busy, and I at least earned back a half hour thanks to the busy dinner rush.

I am very much in a holiday mood. It will have to be a cheap Xmas, but all in all the economic wuzziness has me ready for some happy holiday cheer and Xmas music and watching my sister get blitzed on Wassail.  And don't forget the Bass and Rankin, and Bing Crosby and Perry Como and that Run DMC Christmas song. I'm rather excited, by the way, because I have Hogfather coming this weekend from Netflix -- Hogfather, in this case, being the British TV movie thingie from last year based on Terry Pratchett's book. That will hopefully be a nicely silly way to ge the holiday groove going.

Fight political craziness with -- PRETTIES!

There's something about those black and white photos of Enceladus that are just so eerily beautiful. I keep hearing "Thus Spake Zarathustra" in my head....

There was some worries that this year would have the lowest extent ever of ice in the Arctic, but it didn't quite get that bad -- 2008 came in as second lowest since measurements began (2007 is the lowest). BUT -- 2008 did see the lowest volume of ice ever. That means, most likely, that the extent record will be coming down fast, and repeatedly, in the coming years.

I have to admit, though, that I was mostly amused by the unthinking chauvinism in this article. I bet there's two people on my friends list who will see it right away.

It's the shit like this:

Oldest rocks found.

4.3 billion years old. Earth was still in diapers, then. Duuuude.

The odd, vaguely disturbing thing about keeping track of the Mars Phoenix twitter feed is that increasingly it will become like listening to an elderly relative talk about death:

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will monitor the encroaching ice cap from above, @BrianFinifter. I won't see it (darkness will get me first)

Or, to put it in the elderly relative terms aforementioned:

This will probably be my last Christmas with you kids.

I can only hope that some wag makes sure, at some point, to have Phoenix twit "So c-c-c-c-c-c-old." Other options would include the famous line "I'm going out for a walk" (that one's tricky, you'd have to try to time it just right, just before the craft goes silent), or, given the U of A angle, "Tell the team -- tell the team to bear down."

Actually, now that I think about it, I think the one I'd do, if I were the web elf in charge of such things, would be this for a final line:

My God, it's full of stars!

Feel free to share your favorite possibilities!

Cassini survives its hyperclose fly-by of Enceladus!

The photos should come out tomorrow.

I've worked so many hours this week, and had so much trouble sleeping, and now I have a day off, and I'm at a loss. I just keep sitting here, staring at the wall and the blinds and my cat.

I did manage to get one post written for A Go-Go, which will post itself early in the morning. I hope it makes sense. I want to write more, maybe work on a story, but my brain feels like a puddle of BRAIN JUICE.

Meanwhile, I'm excited for Cassini's flyby of Enceladus, the Most Coolest Little Moon in the Solar System. Cassini will fly within 30 miles of the geyser area! That's a bit intimate. I hope Enceladus doesn't get creeped out.

Yeah, I've been a bit quiet. Just been that kind of week, storms in the head that can't be translated, right at this moment at least, into words. In the meantime: LInkage!

True Colors: an archaeologist brings the colors of ancient statues to life. Nifty.

Head Fake: the common idea now is that depression is a matter of chemical imbalances. New research is showing the story is far more complex and interesting.

Judean Date Palm lives!

But what I want to know is, when does this thing go out of control and try to kill Jeff Goldblum?

Here's an example of why. Sometimes it's not the big, gory stuff -- the slaughterhouses, the massive factory farms housing tens of thousands of suffering animals -- but the small things. Like the life of one chimp.

We are such an arrogant species.

He says it perfectly:


And you know, when I saw that photo earlier, and the import of it really hit, I was thinking how it showed me why, despite everything -- despite all our conniving and evil and inhumanity and greed and self-destructiveness -- I really love this crazy sad wonderful beautiful species of ours. We are so amazing when we let ourselves be.

I was just watching some videos about Phoenix (the Mars lander, not the butt-ugly cancerous polyp in the middle of Arizona). Fun stuff. Apparently there's no danger here of a long, extended mission. Not only will there come a point of perpetual night for a time, thus killing the probe's power source, but the area that the probe is in will be covered by the Arctic icesheet. Phoenix will be literally entombed in ice.

Amazing fun stuff. And a bit of hometown/alma mater pride to boot. That's my school, folks, the U of A. Go Cats! This is way cooler than a National Basketball Championship. I mean, even Duke can get one of those. But you don't see Duke landing no probes on no planets now, do you?

via Pharyngula

CNN tells us:

Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says

BBC tells us:

Human line 'nearly split in two'


They're talking about the same study. Why is CNN stupid? Because the study simply notes that another study had determined that humans faced an evolutionary bottleneck about 70,000 years ago, when the population may have been reduced to as few as 2,000 or so individuals. But that, my friends, is old news. And it isn't what this study is about. This particular study is adding a new twist to that story -- that there were two populations that were isolated from each other for a big chunk of time, long enough that they could have been on the road for speciation to occur, if they hadn't met up again. (All the more interesting is that one of the groups is what we now know as the San, which includes the Bushmen).

One wishes CNN would bother to have science reporters who wrote about subjects they were up on. I mean, that bottleneck theory is old enough that there's been a Discovery Channel special about it.

P.S. yeah, I've been quiet. Just one of those not feeling talkie weeks.

There's a type of person that wears their fatalism like a badge of honor. They come from all stripes of life -- religious,non-religious, etc. -- but all have the same basic message: humans can't change. We is what we is, and what we is is pretty crappy.

Wise people over the years -- religious and nonreligious alike -- have known that This Is Not So. People can learn to be better people. You can learn compassion and love.

Now science is joining the discussion and pissing all over the cynics' parade.

What's amazing is that at this juncture there's still people who dismiss meditation as simple woo-woo, in the same category as things like belief in astrology, ghosts, and the Cubs' ability  to get to the World Series. It's perhaps tempting, given the difficulty of the task at times, to believe that the brain can't be changed, that the ways in which we think and view the world are pretty much set. But it just ain't so.

I, for one, need to remember that more often.

What the title sez. 199 years ago, the man himself was born.

Here's something to ponder about that quiet English intellectual. Around him a bunch of people said reality had to be this way, or that way, or the other way. Darwin was the kind of guy who originally planned to be a country vicar because it was a nice, quiet lifestyle, with plenty of time for relaxing tea and walks and studying bugs.

The world contorted around him, the great ideological battles raged, and Darwin studied his bugs and other little critters. And the rest, as they say, is history.