Phasmida dryococelus, among the heaviest living insects known to science, shown here roughly to scale if you're using a standard sized computer monitor. Image courtesy of NPR
It’s been quite a week for giant insects. First we hear of extinct monster fleas with a hankering for Jurassic blood. Now an unexpected find; once thought to be extinct “tree lobsters” have been successfully collected and bred in captivity, giving them a chance to beat nature’s wholesale grim reaper. [Read more…]
Update: Top notch comments below the post. Keep it going, readers, this is good, usable stuff.
Rush Limbaugh, with an assist by the Sons of Jacob serving in the Senate, laid bare the misogynistic bent of the modern GOP and their unhealthy projection of their own perversions on women the nation over this week: [Read more…]
A filament breaks free and blasts off the sun on 24 Feb 2012. This one happened on the sun's north pole and poses no danger for earth. Image courtesy NASA SoHo.
NASA scientists are closely monitoring the sun as it heads into the most active phase in its sunspot cycle. The sun’s magnetic poles flip every 22 years, meaning the field strength maxes and wanes in each polar hemisphere a little over once a decade. Each 11 year cycle produces large flares and other phenomena, and if the earth happens to lay in the path of a big one it can cause problems. That’s what happened in 1859, when large flare disrupted early communication networks and lit up skies as far south as Jamaica with rare, ghostly aurora. If something like the Carrington Event were to happen today, the consequences could be even more catastrophic: [Read more…]
Andrew Breitbart, loved by conservatives and at times feared by progressives, passed away early Thursday morning. He was only 43 years old.
Breitbart was walking near his house in California’s Brentwood neighborhood shortly after midnight when he collapsed, his father-in-law the actor Orson Bean told the Associated Press. Someone who saw Breitbart fall called paramedics and revival attempts were made, the AP reports. He was taken to the emergency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in L.A.
I realize Breitbart ignited great passion on both sides of the aisle and there may be a rehash of those issues in the days ahead. I just want people to know that behind the scenes, Andrew had a wicked, irreverant sense of humor and boundless, infectious energy for his opponents, his friends, and this new medium he helped create. Let’s give the man his due, he made a difference and that’s a legacy anyone would want.
The old saying goes “”Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.” But a new fossil from China’s rich Jurassic deposits has turned up fleas that go the other way, gigantum: [Read more…]
I understand fully why we went into Afghanistan. We were attacked, the masterminds were in Afghanistan gloating and threatening to kill more people, we had trained to instigate and support an insurgent driven guerilla war for decades using Afghanistan as our primary model, we had a huge standing military that consumes the lion’s share of our budget. We had better be going into Afghanistan after 9-11.
But now bin Laden is dead (What a great time that would have been to leave, huh?) , most of Al Qaeda is gone, the Taliban has been devastated — even if they claw their way back to power in some regions, it will be a long, long time before they forget what happened when they let a crazed religious nutbag come from outside and drag them into a conflict with the US. We Have Won. So why the hell are we still in Afghanistan?
Results: CNN (AZ, MI) | Google (AZ, MI)
Polls closed.
MI Update 9:00 PM CDT: Santorum 36% Romney 40% Paul 11% Gingrich 7% .. w/57% of vote in Romney is up by 20,000 votes. Santorum looks to be heading for a loss, already moving into spin mode saying “We made Romney compete in his home state.”
AZ Update 8:10 PM CDT: Called for Romney
Update 8:25PM CDT: In Michigan, exit polls of those who said religion mattered a “great deal,” voters chose Santorum over Romney by 40 points, about 60 to 20 or so. For those who said the economy mattered most, voters went for the guy who wanted to shutter their state by more than 15 points, about 49 for Romney to Santorum’s 32 or so, via MSNBC. [Read more…]
Mittens was for meddling in other party’s primaries before he was against it
Update: moments ago a Romney spokesman had an incoherent explanation for why Romney wasn’t being hypocritical in that video clip:
That was a totally different situation, that was when Mitt was a private sector businessman, before he started his political career. He was an unenrolled voter, and that meant he could go into either party primary […] He never in any of the races where he was a candidate ever encouraged Democrats to go into a Republican primary and create mischief and that’s what Rick Santorum is doing.
There was a time when the Romney name in Michigan was akin to the Kennedy name in Massachusetts, well received, liked, even across otherwise contentious party lines. But that was before Mittens volunteered a big op-ed saying Detroit should go bankrupt [Read more…]
New genetic analysis of Neandertal populations over the last 100 thousands years shows an interesting dynamic: the variability is high until about 50 KYA years and then suddenly contracts, sharply: [Read more…]
A school in Florida has been turned over to an organization representing some strange hybrid of the Nation of Islam and the Church of Scientology. At least that’s the way the story below reads to me. [Read more…]