Fortune 500 companies and even defense contractors have been hit. Now Blizzard Entertainment, the unit of Activision that produces the mega successful massive multi-online role-playing games World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo III, has reportedly been hacked. [Read more…]
I just got back from visiting with the friend I briefly mentioned earlier. For those of you who didn’t catch it, she was bitten by a brown recluse in two places. These were classic recluse bites, I would say based on what I’ve since read and seen online, there were signs of clear and pronounced envenomation. Like clockwork the bite sites enlarged and burst into widening wounds, by the weekend they were weeping, angry red holes in her flesh almost the size of a silver dollar and on the verge of revealing underlying fascia. She doesn’t have health insurance, she was laid off some time ago, her resources are drying up quickly. There’s not a good time for this to happen, but there is a terrible time and this was it. [Read more…]
Reconstruction of Homo habilis at the Westfälisches Museum für Archäologie, Herne, courtesy of the Wikipedia.
At one time the proposed hominid line taught to new anthropology students was pretty simple. It went something like Australopithicus to Homo habilis, habilis to H. erectus, erectus to us. This was debated, but it was a basic view the fossil evidence supported.
It’s more complicated now, that tree is bushy, but the good news is some details have been filled in. One of the details is or was Homo rudolfensis, henceforth called Rudy here, a proposed subspecies that lived about 2 MYA. But Rudy was only represented by a handful of teeth, bone scraps, and one beautifully preserved, fairly complete skull dubbed KNM-ER 1470 found by none other than Richard and Meave Leakey at Koobo Fora, Kenya, in 1972. That may have changed this week: [Read more…]
This ad appeared yesterday showing a man who was laid off from his job of many years after a Bain managed buy out and bankruptcy. He eventually found a job as a janitor at half his previous pay, but without health benefits. You know how this day story ends, those of us living from shitty paycheck to shitty paycheck see it all too often. His wife developed undetected cancer, it progressed, until the symptoms were so pronounced he had to take her to an ER. It was too late, she died 24 days later from stage 4 metastatic cancer. The Romney campaign was quick to point what would have saved her though! [Read more…]
On Monday Pat Robertson (R-Fraud) blamed the Sikh shooting on atheists, kicking off a round of well deserved criticism. But William Saletan rides to the rescue! [Read more…]
As has been noted, domestic cats descend from predators well honed by evolution to be killers. Not since the days of raptors have such well-engineered killing machines silently stalked and taken down prey. House cats have been bred by humans for traits we find appealing for a lot less time than dogs (Sorry, cat vs dog lovers), so they’re a bit, more, well, raw might be the word in terms of evolutionary modifications. Now we can prove it! [Read more…]
You know who’s to blame for a right-wing Christian lunatic gunning down helpless men, women, and children in a Sikh temple? Atheists, that’s who! At least according to Pat Robertson. Some of the comments on Youtube are at least hopeful.
To those of you already saturated, I’m sorry for posting so much on this. But I’ve been waiting for it for years, and NASA/JPL is really delivering the goods. There’s a hi-res version of this in the works that chief scientist Mike Malin claims “will just be exquisite.”
Lovely picture taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as Curiosity was descending to Gale Crater. Click image for info at Red Orbit.
You can’t bring Mars to the lab, but you can bring a lab to Mars! In fact I still can’t quite believe that EDL scheme worked so well! But that’s what Curiosity really is, a scientific laboratory, and here’s a few details on the goals and philosophy behind it. [Read more…]