Hummingwolf at Home

There's gloom and doom aplenty, but here are 99 Reasons Why 2016 has been a great year for humanity.

Also, dinosaur tail, complete with feathers, found in 99-million-year-old amber from Myanmar. Seriously, people, "the tail of a non-avialan theropod (coelurosaur) preserved in Burmese amber, combining bone outlines with microscopic details of plumage and integument. This specimen sheds new light on the appearance and evolution of plumage of dinosaurs, providing a direct association between amber-entombed plumage and body fossil material." I'm not the only one squeeing out here, am I?

Saber-toothed squirrel

and

Zombie worms?

Frankly, I think someone at Science Daily has been having a little too much fun writing the headlines.

New Scientist TV: No magnet required: How to build a compass out of Lego. Sadly, I do not own any of the relevant Technic parts.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak are this year's winners for the Nobel Prize in medicine for their research into telomeres (the tips of chromosomes) and telomerase (the enzyme that builds telomeres); discoveries which, in the words of the prize committee, "have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies."

This is the first time two women have won the prize in medicine in the same year. But what I'm wondering is, how many times has a winner of a Nobel prize quoted Monty Python?

Now wearing: Long, lightweight, pale turquoise-ish button-down nightgown and boring underwear.

Now hearing: Siouxsie & the Banshees. "The Killing Jar" has been running through my head for days, so I gave in to the inevitable and pulled out my copy of Peepshow.

Now smelling: Mostly my body odor, not entirely offensive.

Now tasting: Vomit, which does offend me. I was checking up on a housemate a while ago, making sure they were still here and hadn't left the house while the door was open (again). Was asked, "Are you all right?" and suddenly realized the answer was a big, fat NO. Well, that explains why it was so hard to get to sleep.

Now feeling: Sick, which must come as a surprise to anyone who read the preceding paragraph. No, I haven't been to Mexico recently--not since the 1970s.

Now annoyed by: The bathroom sink on this floor isn't draining. If I'm gonna be sick, I really don't want to worry about how far I'll have to walk to wash my hands afterwards.

Beverage of the moment: Plain water in carefully small sips, thanks. I wish it were cold.

Miles walked today... erm, yesterday: Just a little heart.

Last meal eaten: Multigrain toast with Monterey jack cheese, avocado & hummus, with dried cherries for dessert. There would have been something green and leafy as well, but I didn't go to the right store for that (was hoping to go today). I do hope that hummus isn't what's making me oogie tonight. It isn't the best hummus ever, but it is tasty.

Last TV show watched: Monday night's House, M.D.

Next TV show to be watched: Most of the big networks will be showing a presidential news conference tonight, but FOX will have its regularly-scheduled episode of Lie to Me. Are they fair and balanced? Of course not! But I'm more likely to watch Tim Roth tonight and read the important Obama bits some other time.

Suddenly I want: Dark chocolate. It's probably not a good idea to indulge right now, alas.

Last book finished: Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed.

Now reading: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.

News story of the moment: Forget the flu and read about glowing cloned dogs. Giving them all the same name doesn't seem fair somehow.

Oh, the story about medical conflicts of interest is probably important too, but it doesn't have any puppies.

Snail mail of the day: The Social Security Administration finally got around to informing me that I'd be getting my economic stimulus payment next month. I already knew that I should be getting it, but it's reassuring to know that they know it too.

Latest LJ interest: changing ‮directions, further evidence that I am easily amused.

From this story, one of many stories about the sad hardware malfunction at the Large Hadron Collider which will put the LHC out of commission for at least two months: "Spokesman James Gillies has been unable to give much more detail regarding the nature of the malfunction, but stated that in order for repairs to be made the tunnel will have to be warmed up to around absolute zero."

Warmed up to absolute zero, eh? What was the temperature before this???

Well, since the piece goes on to say that "Once the repair is made, the tunnel will then have to be cooled back down to its original operating temperature of -271C," one presumes that the spokesman probably meant--and probably even said--that it would be warmed up to something sensible, like zero degrees Celsius*. Still, the idea of the tunnel needing to be warmed up to absolute zero is delightfully bizarre.



* A different article says "CERN spokesman James Gillies said that the damaged section must be warmed up to 273 degrees Celsius before the system can be repaired," which seems a bit excessive somehow.

Once again, technology is confusing me; and once again, it is certain that people are to blame. However, one has to wonder what, exactly, those people had in mind.

See, I can understand the motive behind most instances of web scraping: money. If you haven't got an original idea in your head, or if you haven't the inclination to put all your original ideas into practice, then it is so much easier to have some webcrawler go out and gather other people's content for you so you can put it up on your site, find out how many people click on links to your site when they do searches for something interesting, and collect the ad revenue. It is not a terribly ethical thing to do, but it certainly is understandable. What I don't get is the motivation for sites that collect the content and then change many of the words to something else so that it's barely recognizable as English--particularly when those sites do not appear to have any advertising on them.

Yesterday I found a prime example of what I'm talking about, and as a child of the '80s, I find it a most amusing one. Back in 2006, somebody posted a list of the songs on a compilation called Hit Mix 86 - continuous mix of 1986 hits. A cute little scraped blog posted a mutilated version of that entry a couple of days ago called "Fetch a blow Reembody 86- durational confound with regard to 1986 hits"--text-only Google cache here. In the new entry, "I" was replaced by oddities like "Psyche" or "Herself;" the band Sly Fox became "Slide Reynard," "Ready Sly dog," and "Privy Charmer;" and Paul Hardcastle's name became both "John Hardcastle" and "Clement of Alexandria Hardcastle."

As a longtime Nik Kershaw fan, I would love to hear him sing his hits "Wouldn’t Subliminal self Come True-spirited" and "Ruach Won’t Hampering the Glim Decline By use of Subliminal self" (formerly known as "Wouldn't It Be Good" and "I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"). I was never a fan of Samantha Fox's song "Touch Me, (I want your body)," but hearing Samantha Wolf sing "Touch down You, (Ego neverness your corpulence)" would be a highlight of my life--particularly if she's doing a duet with her twin Samantha Sweet talker, known for her hit "Correspondence Other self (Himself Ullage Your Expansion)." Oh, and it's been a long time since I've heard Kate Howling wilderness singing "Steady Heavenward That Blister." Does anybody else have any opinions on other classic tunes in the mix?

~~~~~

Unrelatedly, rialian posted a link to The Nature Institute's site about Nontarget Effects of Genetic Manipulation. At least, I think that's unrelated. Now that I think about it some more, I wonder what would happen if the bot that made the mutant page above were involved in creating transgenic organisms.

In spite of the fact that I woke up early this morning (or perhaps because of that fact), I've been moving much too slowly to do the thing I wanted to do before going off to do that other thing I want to do. So instead, I'm reading stuff online and wondering when the tea will kick in.

One thing I ran across is an article challenging guidelines on teen depression. I can't actually tell you what the article says, though, because my attention has been eaten up by the fact that the UK really does have an organization with the acronym of NICE. "NICE is an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health." People who remember the C.S. Lewis book That Hideous Strength will understand my problem here.

In other news, languagelog has a post with some fun fruit fly gene names.

Man with tiny brain lives entirely normal life. Insert your own commentary here.

Gosh, this is a surprise: "Body image was significantly more negative after viewing thin media images than after viewing images of either average size models, plus size models, or inanimate objects. ... Results support the sociocultural perspective that mass media promulgate a slender ideal that elicits body dissatisfaction."

"The Pentagon told Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda." My main question is still why Hillary Rodham Clinton is the front-runner when nobody actually wants to vote for her. But anyway, "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton hit back Friday at a Pentagon aide who charged that her questions about Iraq withdrawal planning have the effect of helping the enemy - calling the accusation a spurious dodge of a serious issue."

How much does this stuff matter in the grand scheme of things? Well, size isn't everything, but Universcale may still give you a sense of perspective.

I woke up at about 4:30 this morning feeling like someone had set large patches of my skin on fire. Since this was not conducive to sleep, I eventually got up and read for a while, then managed to sink into a light and troubled slumber for another hour or so. As a result of the pain and sleep-dep, I am likely to be cranky all day. You have been warned.

This article about Conservapedia might be interesting to those of you who haven't already read a zillion blog posts (probably mostly on liberal blogs and probably much more thorough than the Wired article) about the "much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American." I find the article interesting for a different reason, which is that it includes the line "Conservapedia was lampooned by conservative blogger Jon Swift for its brash denial of scientific facts in favor of biblical rhetoric."

People, when some blogger says

I am a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues.

it may not be wise to take them literally. Particularly when they call themselves by the name of a famous satirist. I'm just saying.

Also in the news: Vitamins could kill you. At least, based on results of some of the better studies, some vitamins could kill you, at least some of the time, maybe, if you take really high doses you don't need. People for whom "Too much of anything is too much" is a radically new idea too subtle to be believable may also be interested in the international movement to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide.

Is there anything else in the news that might annoy me this morning? Oh right, there was the Jesus tomb story that hit over the weekend. Could we please stop leaving our science in the hands of movie directors? Surely someone out there must have a better grasp of history and archaeology than James Cameron?

Scientists search for "forbidden sequences in the genome - ones so harmful that they are not compatible with life".

"It's like looking for a needle that's not actually in the haystack," says Greg Hampikian, professor of genetics at Boise State University in Idaho, who is leading the project. "There must be some DNA or protein sequences that are not compatible with life, perhaps because they bind some essential cellular component, for example, and have therefore been selected out of circulation. There may also be some that are lethal in some species, but not others. We're looking for those sequences."
...
Further down the line there is the possibility of constructing a "suicide gene" to code for deadly amino acid primes. It could be attached to genetically modified organisms and activated to destroy them at a later date if they turned out to be dangerous, Hampikian suggests.

In other news, "For the first time, researchers have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine what parts of the brain are active when people consider whether to purchase a product and to predict whether or not they ultimately choose to buy the product."

Anybody else imagining a future when people who have been identified as particularly resistant to sales pitches will be treated to gene therapy with a suicide gene? Have I just read too much dystopian fiction?

In other news (link via supergee),

NEW YORK - Sick subway passengers, most of them dieters who faint from dizziness, are among the top causes of train delays, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Your line for the suicide gene starts over there to the left. Take your diet books with you to read while you wait. Don't mind me, I'll just be sitting over here eating my limited-edition mint dark chocolate Kit-Kats (on sale for 75% off!).

In entirely unrelated news, and in spite of objections by people who believe for some reason that all American lawmakers should be sworn in on the Bible and that using any other holy book is un-Amurrican, Minnesota's Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, will use the Koran when he takes his oath of office--Thomas Jefferson's Koran.

Via rsschristdot:

BOSTON (AP) -- The "crazy, crazy Jewish fun" of Kosherland looks a lot like the board game Candy Land, except gefilte fishing substitutes for visits to the Ice Cream Sea.

In Catholic-opoly, like Monopoly, the job is to bankrupt your opponents. The difference is it's done "in a nice, fun way."

And role-playing can get pretty realistic with the Biblical Action Figure of Job, which comes complete with boils.

Maybe it's just me, but some of the games described in the article do sound kinda fun.

In other news, "Lawmakers have drawn up a resolution naming Jesus Christ as the honorary king of Poland, but have failed to win support from the country’s powerful Roman Catholic church."

delish_fractal brings us Christmas Science, featuring useful links like the NORAD Santa tracking page and the science of Santa.

Something to do when you're bored at Christmas: Construct complex fractals out of light using a few shiny Christmas tree ornaments. Pretty!

Via rssworldmag: "A Commack School District bus driver says he nearly lost his job because he refused to take off his Santa Claus cap while driving his route... Mott said he was told that a parent of a child complained to the district about Mott's headgear, saying that the child doesn't believe in Santa Claus and was bothered by the hat."

Via almost everybody: The title of the next Harry Potter book has been revealed! It is ( behind the cut, for those who don't want to know. )

And ten zillion fans are already complaining about the title and wondering what impact it will have on the epic Snape slashfic they're in the midst of writing.

From bbc_scitech: "A Japanese man has survived for 24 days in cold weather and without food and water by falling into a state of "hibernation", his doctor has said." Another version of the story here.

Woman with two wombs gives birth to triplets. Or, depending on how you look at it, twins and a singleton all at the same time. This is what I'm wondering: What are that woman's menstrual periods like?

Also from the BBC: "Robots could one day demand the same citizen's rights as humans, according to a study by the British government." I wonder what MegaHAL thinks of that idea?

From endicottstudio, we get Yuletide Goblins of Iceland. So cute!

Because advertisements keep showing "snowflakes" with seven or eight points on them, I feel the need to link to a Guide to Snowflakes. Also see the snow crystal primer and various other pages on the site if you like, but the first link is the one with all the pretty pictures.

Because I keep mentioning them to people who forget to download them: the nathanchase LJ has two mashups that some of you need to hear. (The posts are from way back in April 2005, but the links still seem to work.)

Because it amused me: spam subject line from yesterday: "you were taking, the amount of medicine you were using, and arabic"
I've never taken Arabic, though! Just Spanish and Greek. And I think most of the medicine I was taking when I was taking Greek was aspirin.

From various feeds:

Did an eco-disaster spawn complex life? Same topic: Greatest mass extinction gave oceans a face lift.

The genetic make-up of humans can vary more than previously thought.

Research article I am not nearly awake enough to do more than flick my eyes over: Algorithmic Self-Assembly of DNA Sierpinski Triangles.

Crustacean and her 425-million-year-old eggs. Pretty!

"It seems that for some people, love and intimacy might not just be undesirable but downright toxic" "His therapist apparently believed that no one could genuinely prefer solitude and that there must be a psychological block preventing this patient from seeking intimacy." Something tells me his problem wasn't intimacy, but the pressure to be someone he wasn't.

The search for truth serums. The fact that this mentions a physician called Dr. House amuses me so much. "Everybody lies."

Secrets of Hessian crucible makers--"A 500-year old mystery surrounding the centre-piece of the alchemists' lab kit has been solved by UCL (University College London) and Cardiff University archaeologists."

Patterns of visual math.

Icelandic volcano caused historic famine in Egypt. And today there's a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil....

"A lavishly illustrated "Atlas of Creation" is mysteriously turning up at schools and libraries in Turkey, proclaiming that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is the real root of terrorism." Did somebody say "Turkey"? I'm getting hungry again.

In one experiment, "researchers put different subjects in a positive or negative mood state and asked them to write down an argument in favour of a particular proposition.

"When their arguments were analysed for their quality and persuasiveness, subjects in a negative mood were shown to be far more effective in their critical thinking and communication skills."

So. Sad people are better at critical thinking than happy people.

More Americans are taking antidepressants than ever.

Many Americans are still planning to vote for George Bush.

Is there a connection?



No offense intended to anyone who plans to vote for Dubya. I'm sure some of you have excellent reasons for your views and your choice probably isn't entirely due to Prozac in your drinking water.

"Eat your heart out, Dracula - scientists turn blood into biscuits and chocolate."

I'm guessing that the "chocolate" tastes about as much like chocolate as carob does--i.e. it's brown and it's sweet and the only people who think it tastes like chocolate are people who don't like dark chocolate. But it is interesting to see the lengths food scientists will go to in order to turn waste products into something people will buy.

Pardon me, I'm going to go eat a cantaloupe made up of recognizable cantaloupe parts now.

"WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits."

eilandesq's response:

*Office of the general in charge of the program--his secretary pokes his head in*

"General, I've got Joey Buttafuoco on Line One, Geraldo Rivera on Line Two, and Andrew Dice Clay on Line Three. They all think this idea is in really bad taste."

(May be an old joke, Scott, but it works for me.)

Eh, maybe the government types are trying to take our minds off the fact that the new electronic voting systems risk election fraud. Or maybe they don't want us discussing the constitutionality of the F word. (Thanks to Darth Spacey for that last one.)

In unrelated news (unrelated unless the F-word shows up in the poems somewhere), I rather like this:

"Vogons, fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will recall, wrote poetry so bad it could kill. Now an experiment to create poems on the web looks likely to automate the awfulness of Vogon verse.

"David Rea of Greenwich, Connecticut, has written a program that allows a poem to evolve, to see if people with diverse tastes in poetry can work together to create attractive verse."

That article tells you about the Darwinian Poetry website, which language geeks among you may find as nifty as I do.

And in less useful news, Kansas is flatter than a pancake. Maybe you'd need a map of the brain to figure out why these particular stories appeal to me now. Is anybody else as pleased as I am to learn about the possible ice towers on Mars?



(In personal news, I'm still sleep-deprived and barely coherent. I hope that isn't too obvious.)

Since the depression began to lift last week, my predominant emotion has been anger. Good. Much as I'd love to be happy, anger is a nice, energetic emotion much to be preferred over sitting around like a lump all day. If I can sleep enough and get myself sufficiently caffeinated to think clearly, I can work with this.

Reading about the war probably has a lot to do with the anger. Haven't been watching much of the TV coverage, just following links in theworld and other places to try to ensure that if I'm reading propaganda (and I am), at least it's propaganda from a variety of sources. Trying to keep track of other news stories as well, like the one about the artificial synapse.

This weekend's one accomplishment: I made a little animation in POV-Ray which penguinboi is now using as one of his many icons.
Isn't it cute? From certain angles you can tell that the penguin model is pretty crude, but the bouncy guy still has some charm. Anybody else want an icon featuring a chinstrap penguin? (I'd offer to make one for mysticpenguin, but she uses photos of real pengies... anybody else?) Now if only my computer would play nice with mice so I could make a hummingwolf model.

Had more to say but the brain is demanding more caffeine before I'm to be allowed to say it.