Gordon Brown was reputed to have a bit of a temper when prime minister, especially when he got bad news. Which is why his staff when needed to bring him some resorted to an old trick: a bad news sandwich. Give a bit of good news, then a bit of bad news, then a bit of good news again. I want to try this as well, to take the bitter taste of Palin away. So this is another cute animal video post.
Now the next post down is Palin, but the post after that is kittens!
Find Owls Near You. Does what it says on the tin.
Is it a monster? Or could it be something thought to have been extinct aeons ago?
In a shudder inducing post at Circus of The Spineless GrrlScientist describes a new species of bloodsucker from Amazonia that feeds on the mucous membranes in the nose:
As if most people don’t have enough blood-suckers in their lives, a new species of mucous-membrane infesting leech was discovered in the nostril of a 9-year-old girl. She frequently bathed in lakes, rivers and streams in the Amazonian part of Peru and was distressed when she felt “a sliding sensation” in the back of her nose.
The girl’s physician, Renzo Arauco-Brown, at the School of Medicine at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, removed the leech and sent it to Mark Siddall, a leech expert and curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Despite careful study, Dr Siddall and his colleagues were unable to place this specimen into any of the known leech families.
However, they did note that the specimen had eight very large teeth embedded in its jaw.
Hang on a minute -a jaw and teeth on a leech? Isn’t that evolutionarily and taxonomically unlikely?
Now I’m no evolutionary biologist, nor do I even play one on TV, but the first thing I thought when I read the species description was “That’s a conodont, surely”.
Conodonts are extinct chordates resembling eels, classified in the class Conodonta. For many years, they were known only from tooth-like microfossils now called conodont elements, found in isolation. Knowledge about soft tissues remains relatively sparse to this day. The animals are also called Conodontophora (conodont bearers) to avoid ambiguity.
The conodonts are currently classified in the phylum Chordata because their fins with fin rays, chevron-shaped muscles and notochord are characteristic of Chordata.
They are considered by Milsom and Rigby to be vertebrates similar in appearance to modern hagfish and lampreys, and phylogenetic analysis suggests that they are more derived than either of these groups. This analysis, however, comes with one caveat: early forms of conodonts, the protoconodonts, appear to form a distinct clade from the later paraconodonts and euconodonts. It appears likely that the protoconodonts represent a stem group to the phylum containing chaetognath worms, indicating that they are not close relatives of true conodonts.
Wouldn’t it be so cool if Tyranobdella turned out to be related to the conodont? And if the conodont is still about the place, what other lifeforms thought extinct millions of years ago are lurking in the planet’s more obscure corners?
‘Nomnomnomnom’ goes the kitteh:
They could have turned off the Gulf oil leak like a tap. But they chose not to, and Obama was a wimp.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the well lacked a remote-control shut-off switch that is required by Brazil and Norway, two other major oil-producing nations. The switch, a back-up measure to shut off oil flow, would allow a crew to remotely shut off the well even if a rig was damaged or sunken. BP said it couldn’t explain why its primary shut-off measures did not work.
U.S. regulators considered requiring the mechanism several years ago. They decided against the measure when drilling companies protested, saying the cost was too high, the device was only questionably effective, and that primary shut-off measures were enough to control an oil spill. A 2001 industry report argued against the shut-off device:
“Significant doubts remain in regard to the ability of this type of system to provide a reliable emergency back-up control system during an actual well flowing incident.”
However, a spokeswoman for Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority said the switches have “been seen as the most successful and effective option” in North Sea usage. Several oil producers, including Royal Dutch Shell, sometimes use the switch even when it is not required by country regulations.
(via Digby)
If you read nothing else on US politics today, readPapers, Please: Asserting White Supremacy Since 1492, a fantastic post from Jesus General on the naziesque ID laws passed by Arizona and the non-reaction of the allegedly libertarian teabaggers:
Even more noteworthy about all this is the reaction from the Tea Baggers — or perhaps I should say the lack of reaction from the Tea Baggers. We’ve sat through months of Tea Bagger complaints about government overreach and the threats to our liberty from government intrusions into our lives. In every case, there’s been little to no empirical evidence that their complaints were based on any reality.
The most generous perspective on those complaints is that the Tea Baggers bought into lies from Republican leaders who sought to increase their profile through fear mongering. A less generous perspective would be that they generally knew they were complaining about nonsense but did it anyway because it made them feel better because they didn’t have to admit openly that their real complaint was that a black man was in the White House.
So what are we to make about the overall lack of response to the Arizona “Papers, Please” law? Here is a genuine example of government overreach. Here is a genuine example of the government trying to infringe upon people’s individual liberties. Why aren’t the Tea Baggers protesting this? Why don’t large numbers of Tea Baggers go to the state capitol in Arizona with guns and threatening signs? Where are all the “Don’t Tread on Me” banners?
I don’t think that there is a “most generous” interpretation this time. It’s not plausible that the Tea Baggers are unaware of the law and it’s not plausible that they are unaware of how it will impact people’s lives. It seems to me that the only realistic interpretation is that they don’t care how the Arizona law will impact people because it won’t impact them or people like them — i.e., white people. Tea Baggers aren’t stupid and know just as well as the rest of us that white people won’t be stopped and asked for their papers like brown people will. More….
This Dynamic Planet is an online, interactive world map of volcanoes, earthquakes, impact craters, and plate tectonics, jointly produced by the USGS and the Smithsonian.
(Click image to go to interactive map)
Clicking on a feature within the interactive map zooms in to even more detailed maps and information. I’m going to be playing with this for days. Weeks, even.
UPDATE
BBC’s The Beauty of Maps:
Historical Maps– Experience five of the world’s most beautiful old maps and discover their secrets
Digital Worlds– Find out how we map virtual spaces and understand our world today
British Museum: Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art