So says some genetic research. I’m not surprised. Might as well say, “Language linked to expression.”

Two samples from the newly linked Edge Foundation-

Breaking the Galilean Spell by Stuart Kauffman

A New Science of Qualities with Brian Goodwin

Those charming Brits and their great tits:

“It’s great to hear that the great tit is able to keep pace with the rapid rate of climate change, but then it’s probably in the best place to do that,” observed RSPB spokesman Grahame Madge.  

The Enola bean patent holds a special place in the “biopiracy hall of shame” because the patented yellow bean was proven to be genetically identical to an existing Mexican bean variety[1].  That’s not surprising, because the patent owner, Larry Proctor, first got his hands on the yellow bean when he bought a bag of beans in Mexico. After securing his monopoly patent, Proctor accused Mexican farmers of infringing the patent (U.S. patent number 5,894,079) by selling yellow beans in the U.S. As a result, shipments of yellow beans from Mexico were stopped at the U.S./Mexican border, and Mexican farmers lost lucrative markets. In 2001 Proctor filed lawsuits against 16 small bean seed companies and farmers in the U.S., again charging patent infringement.

Patent abuse is a fucking disgrace.

All the makings of a bonafide scientific mystery.

A news report on the controversy.

Institute for Science in Society weighs in.

The dude who cracked the formula for Haitian zombie powder.

A remarkable series of short films about the sex lives of insects. Must be seen to be believed. Wow.

Positively Velikovskian ideas seem more and more acceptable.

James Kennett, a geologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is one of the main proponents of the comet-impact hypothesis.

He said the theory is consistent in explaining and linking … various phenomena.

“We suggest it’s a series of aerial bursts, more of a multiple Tunguska event … like a shotgun,” he said, referring to the explosion of an extraterrestrial object over Siberia in 1908.

This would also explain evidence of fires across swaths of North America, Kennett said.

He and his colleagues have also found widespread and abundant minuscule diamonds and magnetic particles in the layer of Earth that dates to this time.

These features were formed in the extremely hot and high-pressure environment created by the series of explosions, Kennett suggests.

“It’s obviously an outrageous hypothesis … in the sense that it wasn’t predicted—it has come out of left field,” Kennett said.

A couple thoughts: those diamonds are a clue that maybe the impactor/s were themselves chunks of an exploded planet. Also, this guy’s characterization of his own theory as “not predicted” is worthy of note for its lack of perspective (if perhaps technically correct if you narrow the focus enough, i.e. Clube and Napier wrote a popular book about it decades ago, essentially using Velikovsky’s evidence from decades before that. Catastrophism gets ever more acceptable - of course the evidence is firming up too, but one can hardly say it’s “not predicted”).

This is an awesome academic shark resource link with tons of reading and images.

And this is about the freaky Greenland shark, second largest predatory shark in the world, known to lie in wait for caribou, horses, and other large mammals to come to the water’s edge, and then pull them in:

…there are several reports by credible Canadian wildlife biologists of Greenland Sharks in Arctic Canada actively grabbing caribou (= reindeer) that ventured too close to the waters edge (in a manner reminiscent of Nile Crocodiles ambushing Wildebeast and zebras at African waterholes) as well as a curious phenomenon of numerous Grey Seals off Sable Island with their blubber-rich skins ripped off in a bizarre spiral pattern, for which the investigating biologist feels the Greenland Shark is responsible. 

 A horribleness only compounded by the fact that 85% of this shark species is infested with parasites that eat their eyes:

Perhaps the best known creature that dines on sharks’ eyes is a strange, 3-centimetre-long, pinkish-white copepod known as Ommatokoita elongata, which permanently attaches itself to the corneas and associated tissues of the Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus).

More, incl. picture of Greenland shark with parasites in eyes.

Some initial speculation that the parasites acted beneficially as glowing lures has foundered on the findings that the parasites are not bioluminescent - no, they are only eating the sharks’ eyes. This shark is also remarkable in that its skin is so soaked with urea that it smalls like piss.

More good publicity for this deeply compassionate and misunderstood company.

Totally weird clip from “The Adventures of Mark Twain”, a 1985 animation full-length (apparently the first in Claymation) that I grew up with on HBO, but had completely forgotten about until I found this. I’m sure a lot of you will remember how much this freaked you out. Quality stuff.

Who sent these folks over there again…?

What makes me maddest is the memory of the constant drumbeat in the leadup to this war, where the implication was made that I was a traitor if I was against this war, because criticizing the war didn’t support the troops.

It’s about bloody time.

These recently released pictures speak for themselves.

But I thought electromagnetic fields had no physical effects. I guess all that shit was wrong:

Dr Carlo Bellieni, who led the study, said that he did not want to alarm parents, but that a precautionary approach was necessary.

“We know that this heart rate variability has been linked to arrythmias and strokes in adults, but we do not know yet the consequences of it for these tiny babies.

“What we have proved is that the effects of these machines are not neutral - and they should be.”

Always good for a laugh, uh, I mean, always a legitimate focus of science. Here is Discover’s “Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex” (alright, I knew one or two of them).

Here’s a juicy sample representative passage:

Barbary macaques have a distinctive way to get their mates to make a sperm donation: yelling. If the female does not shout, the male almost never climaxes. How do we know this? German primatologist Dana Pfefferle watched a group of macaques, counting the females’ yells and the males’ pelvic thrusts. She says this work is “quite weird, but it’s science.”

I might add that the female may be yelling as she climaxes, which contracts her vaginal muscles, stimulating the male climax. That’s been proposed as a possible evolutionary reason for the human female climax; seems like it may be at work in these macaques. Although even if the males were chronic premature ejaculators, their sperm would still be deposited, so the reasoning is somewhat circular. It may then have to do with the muscle contractions of the female orgasm directing the semen more successfully to the egg, although I believe research into this idea has borne no fruit in human subjects. Maybe the female orgasm triggers a chemical change in the vaginal environment that makes it a more sperm-friendly place? Science marches on.

Enjoy this award-winning video about the Gold Standard of conspiracies-

Uncle Sam’s participation in the drug trade.

Or something.

Update: It’s a hoax.

Male spiders have been shown to sexually communicate with female spiders via UV signalling, of the UVB sort previously thought to be impossible to see, even for spiders. And yet the spider females are seeing it just fine and … kind of liking it. The males reflect UVB rays from their bodies in a way that says, “Your eyes are like eight limpid pools”:

A team found that male jumping spiders (Phintella vittata) are using ultraviolet B (UVB) rays to communicate with females.

While UVA rays are often used in animal communication, this is the first evidence that UVB light is also being used, the researchers said. ….

“Until now, scientists have assumed that animals cannot ’see’ UVB, but we have found that this is not the case.”

Spiders have complex eyes and although scientists know that they have UVA receptors, it remains unclear how they can detect the ultraviolet B light.

It’s parkour night here at Gonzo Science. Parkour is part gymnastic stunts, part guerrilla fitness regime, part self-expression, part urban exploration. This video nicely captures the idea that parkour is not just a different way of moving, but a different way of seeing, particularly in the urban environment. In that regard, it is a more or less direct descendant of the derive of the Situationists.

Short parkour film by Julie Angel, starring a bunch of parkour ladies.

Short parkour film by Julie Angel. Parkour Gents.

On March 29, a distant echo of the American Revolution’s idealism and independence reverberated through the rolling, wooded hills of Montville.

Warmed by a woodstove and sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with their neighbors in the town’s 200-year-old meetinghouse, members of the community came together to exercise their fundamental right in a pure democracy. By casting their vote with a show of hands, they enacted an ordinance that places a 10-year moratorium on the cultivation of genetically modified crops (GMOs) in town.

Among Montville’s earliest settlers were farmers, woodsmen and craftsmen who united against the most powerful government on earth during the American Revolution to assert their belief in self-determination. Their courage, conscience and creativity carved this community out of the wilderness. The essence of their convictions resonates with people who live here today.

The people whose voices were heard at the meeting expressed deep concern about the safety of their food and the security of their food system. In solidarity with others across the world, they expressed a desire to protect a common natural heritage that is represented by the diversity and purity of seed, the source of life-giving food.

As the moderator read the warrant article at the town’s annual meeting, a farmer moved that the ordinance be accepted as written. But the discussion that followed was immediately led by consumers.

A retired schoolteacher, whose long-standing tenure in the community has earned her respect as a nurturing caregiver, spoke of her concerns about the affects of GMOs on human health, the local farming economy and the environment. A retired military serviceman and computer executive spoke about his findings while researching genetic engineering, and the resulting apprehension he feels about the crops after reading about devastating effects on corn in Spain. A nurse and an avid gardener voiced unease about the potential for cross-contamination with traditional crops and cited situations in Canada and Mexico where cross-contamination has occurred.

I guess someone forgot to choke all the democracy out of Montville.  Local governments used to reflect the will of the people? Its unheard of.

Here’s a little twist to the ongoing saga.

The scoop.

Kunstler on Colbert Report

Drool drool.

Bonus: New Scientist’s “Top 10 Fictional Scientists“.

…Extra Bonus!: Business Week on the “Top 10 Smartest Superheroes.”

Check out the new links in “Our Top Links” to “Skeptical Inquirer” aka CSICOP, and “Skeptic Magazine” aka the Skeptical Society. These guys are for the most part grumpy skeptics, but bear reading anyway to maintain an umbilical cord to cultural materialism, mechanistic atomism, and logical positivism. Our basic position is that these so-called scientific skeptics form an invaluable rear-guard action against the creationists and the like, but are essentially a reactive force with few predictive successes vs their less conservative scientific competitors (the skeptics too are usually pro-biotech, since, if you don’t want the latest technology rammed down your throat, you’re unscientific). Still worth checking in on, especially you New Age fruitcakes, but the danger is that you’ll start taking yourself incredibly seriously.

It has been debated for nearly four decades but no one has yet been able to prove it is chemically possible. Now good evidence suggests that birds can actually “see” the lines of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois, proposed forty years ago that some animals – including migratory birds – must have molecules in their eyes or brains which respond to magnetism. The problem has been that no one has been able to find a chemical sensitive enough to be influenced by Earth’s weak geomagnetic field.

Now Peter Hore and colleagues at the University of Oxford have found one.

Cryptochromes are a class of light-sensitive proteins found in plants and animals, and are thought to play a role in the circadian clock, in regulating plant growth, and timing coral sex. A few years ago, Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg in Germany showed that they were present in the retinal neurons of migratory garden warblers, and that these cells were active at dusk, when the warblers were performing magnetic orientation.

More.

Hmm, almost like they’re self-aware.

I’m glad people get paid to do this.

File with ethanol under ’seemed like a good idea at the time.’

Hey, Dick Cheney thought it was a good idea.

(Plus, there was nowhere to put the waste 50 years ago, there’s still no place to put it, and now there’s 50 years more of it worldwide. Thanks Big Science!)

Vaya Con Dios, Amigo.

Our take on the Texas pedophile cult that’s been all up in the news lately, generously referred to as a “polygamist sect”.

Ruh roh. This time it’s the orangutangs.