ISSN 1534-0236
Technology and ideology alike are exercises in applied imagination.
A detailed study using molecular clocks pushes back the
emergence
of land plants and fungi by hundreds of millions of years.
Lichen and land plants may have
caused both "snowball Earth" events--by removing carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere--and the Cambrian explosion.
Molly Ivins reports on two
attacks
on the First Amendment. In Texas, a journalist has been
locked up after a secret hearing for not turning
over her notes. It's not clear what the Feds hope to find
in the journalist's
notes: the suspect she interviewed committed suicide, and the
other suspect has already been acquitted.
Meanwhile, up north,
Dalton, who has never even been accused of actually molesting a child, was arrested for violation of probation after his parents turned his private journal over to his probation officer, hoping it would get the young man some mental treatment. Instead, he got seven years.
The Onion AV Club has an
interview
with Samuel R. Delany, in which he talks about
Dhalgren,
urban life and inter-class social contact, privacy and dignity, and
related topics.
Some European bats are
feasting
on migrating birds, probably catching
them on the wing.
Nyctalops lasiopterus
can be quite large, with a wingspan of 45 centimetres (18 inches). So the researchers suspect they should have no problems overpowering the small birds. They should also be able to sneak up on their prey, since their echolocation frequency is much higher than anything the birds can hear.
Moderation in all things:
low
serum cholesterol has been linked to higher death rates in elderly
men.
[via the excellent
Follow Me Here]
Public service announcement: due to "a technical problem,"
the voting deadline for the 2001
Hugo Awards
has been extended to July 25. Note that "any online votes sent
prior to July 12, 2001 at 7:20pm EDT may be lost. If
in doubt, cast another ballot." The extension also applies to
postmarks for mailed ballots.
That settles the question of what I'm reading on the train to Schenectady Thursday--and makes tomorrow less hectic over here.
(If you don't know what this means, you can safely ignore it.)
Making do:
Somali
air traffic control guides about 1600 flights a month through
Somali airspace, but handles almost no takeoffs or landings--and
has been operating from another country since 1995.
"The study of zoology is full of surprises." A genetic analysis
of a wide variety of waterbirds suggests that the
flamingo's
closest relative is the grebe, which looks nothing
like it (except for being a bird).
"We never imagined the flamingo and the grebe would turn out to be closest relatives, and were so surprised by this outcome that we did additional examinations using different sources of flamingo and grebe genetic material and obtained the same results," Hedges says. "A lot of people may have trouble believing the results from these genetic studies for a while, but they carry a lot of weight because we have so much data from two different techniques, and it all paints the the same picture of the evolutionary history of aquatic birds."
Accepting these results might require ornithologists to test and compare DNA samples of every living species of waterbird, since the basics of the family tree are in question.
According to a quiz at the Grauniad,
I am
the
average bloke.
Sometimes you
really
can't trust your software:
the Russians got nuclear materials software from the US, and
discovered a large bug. Basically, old data disappear from view as
the system ages.
Fortunately, they now trust us enough that they reported the bug,
instead of treating it as sabotage. Now the US Energy Department,
which has been using the same software for years, and threw away
its paper records, needs to do a
physical inventory--but that won't necessarily detect any
missing material, since you can't count what isn't there.
I
don't believe in this
court decision,
but it's probably the funniest thing online that discusses
maritime law, summary judgment, or G. Gordon Liddy.
Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact-- complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed.[with thanks to the potsmaster]
A brief article on the
company
behind the push to "privatize" Social Security:
Just because financial-services companies stand to make billions on privatization does not in itself mean that instituting private accounts is a bad idea. But even a cursory look at privatization's most prominent booster organization shows that its work is less aimed at protecting the American retirement program than it is part of an international attempt to nudge social-insurance programs around the world toward greater reliance on private market investments. Publicizing the full panoply of the CAFS-sponsors' many global involvements will put their efforts in a different, more questionable light--something Ezra seems to realize. "We're very much in the background advising these countries" about privatizing their Social Security-type programs, Ezra told me. "It's not the stuff we'd like to see publicized."
If capitalism is so wonderful, why do they need to hide?
Is a satellite in geosynchronous orbit
"movable
property"? An abstruse question, but one whose answer could mean
millions in taxes to Los Angeles County.
Copyright 2001 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page.