The Hubble Space Telescope is 25 years old today. Congratulations, Dennis!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5MwOCgzQ6M
Happy Birthday Hubble ST
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The problem with privilege metaphors
It seems to me that we are all the recipients of unearned privilege. You were formed in the womb of your birth mother, to her great discomfort and inconvenience; and obviously nothing you did yourself made you worthy of this privilege – it was a gift, literally the gift of life itself, that you received for free. You had already been a freeloading moocher for nine months before you were even born!
But not every birth is equal. Recent research claims that poverty diminishes mental capacities from birth. It’s fairly clear that the richer your parents and community are, the more unearned privileges you will eventually enjoy – for example, the children of Barack Obama enjoy vastly more privilege than the children of impoverished Arkansas sharecroppers, or the children of impoverished Native Americans on the Res.
Right Wing radio pundits like to split common people along color lines by screaming of “black criminality” and “black on black violence”, but criminality and violence correlate far more with poverty and lack of opportunity than with any skin color. Left Wing bloggers like to split common people on color lines by screeching “white privilege” – as though privilege did not correlate with wealth, and as if there were no privileged people of color.
These talking heads, Right and Left, are of their own free will servile to the ruling class. The .001% of humanity whose titanic wealth makes them immune to law would prefer that the rest of us split on color lines, gender lines, religion, anything that will keep us from uniting. If we could put aside our differences, it might interfere with the continuing concentration of the Earth’s vast resources into fewer and fewer hands – or even reverse that trend.
better now
only relatively, though.
ugh
sick.
blackboard skillz
Blackboards are better than whiteboards. Even if they’re green blackboards.
relax and enjoy
Apparently it’s video week here at the blog.
Ow, CARP!
Apparently invasive Asian silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) get stirred up by the sound of the motorboat accompanying the rowers.
It’s too bad the person recording the scene is so prone to thoughtless profanity, as that will limit the appeal of this video.
How a lead-acid battery works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhIRD5YVNbs
14-yr-old imprisoned for changing wallpaper
Zero tolerance means no harmless prank shall go unpunished.
This kid’s prank demonstrated that children in his school have the ability to easily see the questions to be used for the state’s standardized tests, because teachers there apparently have full administrator access to the school’s network, and their passwords are their upcased last names.
But nobody cares about that… I think they’re basically freaked out because it’s Florida, and the kid’s prank was to put a picture of men kissing on his teacher’s desktop. Education be damned, we must punish the gaiety! The teenager has since been released into his parents’ custody.
your boots and poses, go down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBGUBRfTRmo
Stack Overflow 2015 survey is out
Their data analysis is very good, but the questions they ask always seem weird to me. Maybe it’s the job categorization they do – I have used “unnatural scientist”, “network janitor”, and “unreconstructed hacker” as my job description from time to time, but SO doesn’t have anything like those categories.
Brontosaurus is BACK
I’m back from Boston, and Brontosaurus (Marsh, 1879, Brontosaurus excelsus) might be back too.
The name “Brontosaurus” was made a disreputable synonym for “Apatosaurus” by the Peabody Museum in 1981, belatedly acknowledging a 1975 paper by McIntosh and Berman claiming that Othniel Marsh (who named both dinosaurs) had incorrectly mounted a Camarasaurus skull on an Apatosaurus skeleton in his famous 1883 Brontosaurus restoration. Fans of the Flintstones were quite naturally appalled, and Stephen Jay Gould wrote a couple of popular essays about it.
Earlier today Emanuel Tschopp published a thesis detailing an exhaustive analysis of all the existing Diplodocid type specimens.
“The present paper increases knowledge about the phylogenetic relationships of diplodocid sauropods. In order to resolve relationships within Diplodocidae, a specimen-based phylogenetic analysis was performed, which included all holotypes that have been identified as belonging to a diplodocid sauropod at some point in history.”
“The numerical approaches established in the present analysis allowed a reassessment of the validity of the numerous taxonomic names proposed within Diplodocidae. Thereby, it was found that apatosaurine diversity was particularly underestimated in the past. One genus previously synonymized with Apatosaurus is considered to be valid based on our quantitative approaches: Brontosaurus forms the sister clade to Apatosaurus in the present analysis. On the other hand, Elosaurus and Eobrontosaurus were found to be junior synonyms of Brontosaurus, and one more cluster of specimens was recovered at the base of Apatosaurinae, which might even represent a further, new apatosaurine genus. Apatosaurus was found to include only the two species A. ajax and A. louisae. This results in three genera and six species belonging to Apatosaurinae. In a less inclusive and less detailed specimen-based analysis of Apatosaurus, Upchurch, Tomida & Barrett (2004) found five species as probably valid, but did not include Eobrontosaurus yahnahpin. The species count recovered by our analysis is comparable to that proposed by Upchurch, Tomida & Barrett (2004).”
The analysis combined pairwise dissimilarity and results from TNT, the latter of which seems appropriately named since we’re talking about resolving taxonomic problems left over from the Bone Wars.
Along with the resurrection of Marsh’s original type specimen of genus brontosaurus excelsus, this research has spawned a proposal to the ICZN that the type species for Diplodocidae be changed from D. longus (due to the “undiagnostic, fragmentary holotype specimen”) to D. carnegii.
A Ticke, a Tacke, and a Toe
It seems a good day to consider the medieval origins of popular games.
Drink up, Monsanto.
Robert Chesebrough, the chemist who created Vaseline, was challenged to prove the safety of his product. His response was to eat three tablespoons of it, and he later claimed to eat a teaspoon of it every day as a health tonic. He lived to be 96, and white petroleum jelly is still considered safe and non-toxic.
More recently, Wang Chuan-Fu, the CEO of BYD, publicly drank the electrolyte liquid used in the lithium ion battery produced by his company.
But Monsanto doesn’t even want to label their products, and while their shills might say that it’d be safe to drink a quart of glyophosate pesticide, they certainly won’t do so.
Of course, if he’d drunk it, that wouldn’t have proved it was safe. Thomas Midgley publicly drank tetraethyl lead… and then snuck off to Europe for lead poisoning treatment!
Update: Monsanto tells Xeni Jardin:
Dr. Moore is not a Monsanto lobbyist or employee. Knowledgeable scientists, consumers and our farmer customers may be familiar with and confident in the safety of glyphosate, but their statements don’t make them lobbyists for our company. Dr. Patrick Moore is one of those individuals. He agrees with the science that supports the safety of glyphosate, and is an advocate for technology and innovation. But as I mentioned, he is not and never has been a paid lobbyist for or employee at Monsanto.
GROUTED. Also Martin Hayes.
Yes, that’s right, the bathroom is grouted.
Also, we went and saw Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill at the Queen last night, which was excellent. Four pints of stout and a superb Celtic session really helps you relax after a day rubbing the floor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkxtRbQ_0ZE
Something that’s really obvious live, and becomes noticeable about halfway through this video, is that a set of Irish brogues and a hardwood stage can be substituted for a bodhran.
Slothsavers
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lego bug racks
Technically tuned to torturing transfixed termites.
“We believe the insect specimen manipulators presented here are a valuable addition to any entomologist’s toolbox and that the use of any insect manipulator is in the interest of anyone dealing with valuable specimens as the actual handling of the specimen is reduced to a minimum during examination.”
Orwell meets Disney
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The pills are known to be as MMS Separation
See http://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov/ for mission updates!
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Bladerunner model builds on imgur
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Breslin@Kottke
Susannah Breslin is taking over Jason Kottke’s web site for a while. Although admittedly her work can be a bit dark at times, and I’m pretty sure my Dad wouldn’t care for it, I love Susannah Breslin! She’s a brilliant writer and she’s thoroughly mastered the art of blog.