Everything you know is wrong

These two table tops are exactly the same size and shape.

I'll say that again because you don't believe me: They are exactly the same size and shape. They are exactly the same size and shape.

I Googled about for a good "proof" of this, but the best I found invited you to print it out and take a pair of scissors to the task.

I tried fingers and a ruler on the screen, and playing about a bit in MS Paint. Watch as your ruler or fingers change size as you work it out.



I don't believe it either.

Related.

Link

Dance mix

You have to be of a certain age, else you'll think this is stupid.

I love these songs.

I did this post for myself. Turn up your sound.


A-Ha
Take on me

Talking away
I don't know what I'm to say
I'll say it anyway
today's another day to find you
Shying away
I'll be coming for you love O.K.

Take on me, take me on
I'll be gone
In a day or two

About 4 minutes.


Related: Avenue Q, and kd Lang.

Picture

Boys kissing

Credit.

Yeah, it's a worm.

Boys. Go figure.

Related, and somehow related.

[Update: Link changed after Blogger lost the original post.]

Science news

The Grand Canyon was created by the Noahic Flood as told in Genesis 6-9. Or so it is told in The Grand Canyon: A Different View, available in the National Park Service book store.

Of course the book is unbelievable religion-addled crap, oblivious to the facts lying literally under ones' feet.

But the Bush ("god speaks through me") appointed are on the job:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees.

PEER [Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility] is also asking [Park Service] Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.
Link.

Related: Happy birthday everything.



"Fuck. Just 'Fuck!' What else can you say? Fuck!

The global warming hoax

The free-floating ice is just above center. Open ocean shows as black here.

An ice shelf is the floating extension of a glacier.

In 2005 the twenty-five square-mile arctic Ayles Ice Shelf disintegrated and broke free.

The event registered as a small earthquake on instruments stationed 150 miles (250 kilometers) away, Warwick Vincent of Quebec's Laval University told the CanWest News Service.

Sixteen months of study led [geographer Luke] Copland and colleagues to the conclusion that several factors were at work, mostly related to global warming.
Link.

There were six Arctic ice shelves. Now there are five. Climate models indicate that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free in summer as soon as the year 2040.

Sea ice is free-floating. So this is totally unrelated news:

The U.S. government today proposed listing polar bears as threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act because the animals' sea ice habitat is melting.
Link.

Rest assured, George Bush, his advisor Michael Crichton, and other eminent scientists say there's nothing to worry about:

I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the 'greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'

Senator James Inhofe(R-Okla). Link.

And the trees, Spanish bears, and probably the queers and other liberals are in on it, too.

Any of you that are gardeners will be familiar with hardiness maps.
Warning: these too have been hijacked by the shirt-lifters at the Arbor Day Foundation:

The new map reflects that many areas have become warmer since 1990, when the last USDA hardiness zone map was published. Significant portions of many states have shifted at least one full hardiness zone. Much of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, for example, have shifted from Zone 5 to a warmer Zone 6. Some areas around the country have even warmed two full zones.
Link.

Pictures

Time for a pirate.

Recently friends Pat and Deneice and I met this bonny fellow at the Sponge Docks at Tarpon Springs, Florida.

A lifesize hand-painted resin sculpture. $875.00. Sorry if you want one, but I've no further reference.

The area around Tarpon Springs features a set of bayous feeding into the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1880's Greek immigrants began arriving and went into the growing sponge diving industry. That business became so big that Dodecanese Island Greek sponge divers were recruited to immigrate to America to work in the industry.

A red tide bloom in the 1940's pretty much wiped out the sponge business in the Gulf. Now the Sponge Docks are kitschy shops and tourist attractions, that try, but fail to convey the rich history of the area.

Wikipedia source.

Dragon update

PZ Myers at Pharyngula has more on the genetics of the parthenogenetic Komodo Dragons here.

Previously I wondered aloud how all this worked.

Biology 101: Sex is far more complicated than I ever thought. Meiosis (so I've learned) is, in the normal course of events, a two-stage process that produces four haploid gametes. Somehow the second stage of this is skipped in these lizards producing full diploid eggs.

Yeah, I don't get it either. But due to my efforts I'm now approaching my previous junior-high-school level of understanding.

Which was, incidentally, just before I figured out that I didn't want any truck with that sort of sex stuff anyway.

Interesting facts gleaned from PZ's post:

• The way gender determination works in the Komodo Dragons means that all the babies are boys. They are unlike the Virgin Whiptail lizards that sustain themselves as a species of females.

• They had to do a DNA analysis to determine whether these were really parthenogenetic. Female lizards can retain viable sperm for months until they're damn well ready.

Related: Another dragon.

Picture

Boys kissing

Credit.

You didn't think I was really going to quit, did you?

Related.

[Update: Link changed after Blogger lost the original post.]

Bunny bird breakfast

Time for another bunny.

Credit

Too late - Hop, hop, hop. Arrgh!

(Another bird snowprint here.)

Don't believe a word of this

Researchers in Connecticut asked twenty-five seventh-graders to evaluate a web site devoted to the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

They report that all fell for the obvious hoax, in spite of numerous clever and risible clues. Go look for yourself.

The university research team concerned with education, reading comprehension, and literacy is discovering that the internet requires a set of skills that are not being taught, and certainly not being learned, if this is anything to go by.

Related: Internet bullshit, and more bullshit.

One more

Hobbes, have you ever kissed a girl?

A few, I guess.

Really? What was it like?

Mmmmmmmmmmm. Pop!
Only a lot more so.

Gaack!
I was hoping it wouldn't be so fuzzy...

Related.

I have a very, very, vivid memory: "This is nice. I really like this. But damn, the stubble is really weird ..."

[Update: Link changed after Blogger lost the original post.]

Peep and the Big, Wide World

From WGBH comes this wonderful science program aimed at the pre-school set. And at me. There's a newly hatched chicken named Peep, and his friends Chirp (a robin) and Quack (a duck), and a theme song sung by bluesman Taj Mahal:

Well, it's a sunny day
I feel brand new
There's about a million things
That I could do!
Whoa-oh-oh
Would you like to
Do them, too?
Yeah
Well, it's a big wide world
And it's waiting for me and you!

You can see one of their daily adventures here (all Flash). Enjoy, episodes are about ten minutes.

I learned about light and dark, and things that float and sink, and how much fun it is to explore and learn. All with cute music and charming characters.

Link

Seven baby Jesus's

Flora, a Komodo Dragon lizard at the Chester Zoo, joins London Zoo's Sungai among the first of the species to exhibit parthenognesis - 'virgin' birth without the participation of a boy-dragon. Flora has seven babies on the way.

Asexual reproduction among reptiles is not uncommon. For instance there are multiple species of Amazonian all-female Virgin Whiptail lizards. And, yes, they do bump uglies. For fun, presumably, and mating behaviours appear to reinforce hormonal cycles as well.

I readily confess that I lack the biological knowledge to tease out the hapliod/diploid problem here. Googling did not help answer my basic "WTF!?" question: How many chromosomes these critters have, and what difference it makes.

Flora.


Girl cooties!

Link