Cat Found

CatFound
Originally uploaded by hedwig_the_owl

From a field guide to mammals.

But there are no marsupials in the Bible!

Cute

Via Uncertain Principles at ScienceBlogs, cracked.com: The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You.

If animals could talk, they would spend most of their time calling us dicks and telling us to get off their land. The traits we think of as "cute" are often simply tricks animals have developed to get tourists to throw them food.

Oh shit! Run!

That is not in fact a man and a hippo doing a live reenactment of a cartoon they saw. That's an experienced park ranger, who narrowly avoided getting killed by a hippo by sprinting over a hundred yards.

Related: Cute at Dirty John Bonny.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour March 28

Linky. The World Wildlife Fund is inviting people throughout the world to call attention to climate change by turning off their lights for one hour at 8:00 PM local time.

It started with the Syndey Opera House. Later the Coca Cola sign in Times Square, Niagra Falls, the Golden Gate Bridge, and thousands of McDonald's Golden Arches will all go dark.

Boys kissing

Dirty John Bonny and Alec, 1974.

Boys kissing at Dirty John Bonny.

Barbary lions

Lion skulls from the Tower of London

Two lion skulls found during excavations at the Tower of London originated in north-west Africa, genetic research suggests.

The big cats, which were kept by royals during medieval times, have the same genetic make-up as the north African Barbary lion, a DNA study shows.

...

The two well-preserved lion skulls were recovered during excavations of the moat at the Tower of London in 1937. They have been radiocarbon dated to AD 1280-1385 and AD 1420-1480.

BBC News.

Lions once lived throughout Africa, into the Middle East and Northwestern India. There were even lions in Europe up until about 100 C.E.

The North African variety, called the Barbary Lion or Nubian lion, became isolated from it's Sub-Saharan cousins and developed into what is generally recognized as a separate sub-species. Mitochondrial DNA has been isolated from samples in museum collections, bolstering the evidence of isolation and speciation.

The Tower of London is actually a complex of fortifications and thirteen towers. Over time it has been the site of a royal residence, an armory, a prison and a menagerie.

Apparently, the Tower moat was used for over one hundred years as a place to dispose of expired lions.

Happy Spring

Today is the day of the Vernal Equinox, the day when the sun is positioned directly above the earth's equator, and, depending on how you measure it, the day and night are (nearly) the same length throughout the world.

And it's the first day Spring.

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson Locksley Hall.

In spring a young man's fancy turns to a fancy young man

- Mart Crowley, The Boys in the Band

Seasons at Wikipedia.
United States Naval Observatory Astronomical Information Center.

Picture

Lion

Gurumustuk Singh

More lions at Dirty John Bonny

3.141592653589793238462643383...

Today is Pi Day which celebrates the constant π, which is very roughly 3.14, similar to the American date format 3/14.

Pi Day founder Larry Shaw of the San Francisco Exploratorium.
With pies.

And it's also Albert Einstein's Birthday!

Pygmy Hippo

hedwig_the_owl

href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/grrlscientist/2323598978/">PygmyHippo


Via GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life at ScienceBlogs, and the Daily Telegragh (UK).

The pygmy hippopotamus, Hexaprotodon liberensis, was feared to be extinct until recently. At best, is remains very threatened by poaching and deforestation.

Almost never seen in the wild, this smaller cousin of the more familiar hippo is solitary, nocturnal and resides in dense West African rain forests.

This individual was recently caught by a camera trap in Liberia.

Illinois' fourteenth congressional district is vacant since Dennis Hastert resigned. You know Hastert, the about-to-explode lips, portrayed by John Goodman on The West Wing, the very image of a Fat Cat.

So today is a special election where Dirty John got to support Democrat Bill Foster - a real scientist! Foster was a physicist at Fermilab for years, and later a businessman.

And the Democrat actually has a good chance here in the very Republican 14th, since his opponent is a clown that has made a hobby of running for office. Just hasn't gotten the winning part down yet. Anyway, he's beginning to annoy people.

The term is short, but the winner will have the advantage of running as an incumbent in the fall.

And for my prize, I got this cool sticker to wear.

[Update 3/9/08]

In a stunning upset Saturday that could be a sign of trouble for Republicans this fall, a little-known Democratic physicist won the special election for a far west suburban congressional seat long held by former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
-Chicago Tribune

Chutzpah

Via PZ Myers at Pharyngula and others.

Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the great scientist by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.
- The London Times

And they plan to put it near the rooms where Galileo was imprisoned while he awaited his heresey trial for claiming that earth recolves around the sun. The vatican is apparently commemorating the scientist's trial where he was forced to recant, when as legend has it, he muttered under his breath "E pur si muove!" (And yet it does move!).

The Church wants to close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his great legacy but also of the relationship between science and faith.
- Pontifical Academy of Sciences president Nicola Cabibbo.

Yeah, the Galileo story helps understand the relationship between science and faith, all right.


More about Galileo at Dirty John Bonny.

Silence

Silence gets an earful, and Illinois lurches back towards liberty


In the fall of 2007 the Illinois legislature passed, over the Governor's veto, the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act. This was purported to provide an opportunity for captive children to engage in "silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day."

It was not (wink, wink), I say not, a tranparent attempt to back-door a school prayer law.

And never mind that the Christian News Wire bleated out the news with the headline "Illinois 'Moment of Silence' - Putting Public School Prayer Back in Place" (linky).

The inevitable lawsuits were filed, and legislators began to propose that perhaps the law ought to be amended to remove the references to prayer, or perhaps to rename it the "Silent Reflection and 'Look over there! Shiny!' Student Prayer Act"

The [Illinois] House voted Tuesday to reverse the requirement after getting an earful of complaints from school administrators and teacher unions who found the requirement poorly thought out and unenforceable.

The Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2008

Pray (not at all silently) with Dirty John Bonny, Jesus and Gloria Gaynor here.

Boys kissing

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Kisses, by TamanduaGirl.

Boys kissing at Dirty John Bonny.