The “Lost World” of Antarctica

The thing about Antarctica is it’s cold. Really cold. As in an average temperature of about 15 F on the warmer coastline and even more frigid in the interior. So maybe it’s no surprise that warm seeps and hydrothermal vent communities in that neck of the woods would march to their own beat. That’s exactly what a team of researchers has announced:

(Houston Chronicle) — Interestingly the life found at these hydrothermal vents varies significantly that made in the first discovery of hydrothermal vent life, back in the 1970s, on the Galapagos Rift, as well as elsewhere since then. “What we didn’t find is almost as surprising as what we did,” said Oxford University zoologist Alex Rogers, who led the research. “Many animals such as tubeworms, vent mussels, vent crabs, and vent shrimps, found in hydrothermal vents in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, simply weren’t there.”

One of the things that’s exciting about this isn’t simply the evolutionary divergence, the warm seeps under the frigid Southern Ocean and ice shelves are about as close as anything on earth to what could lay under the thick ice of Jupiter’s second moon Europa.

Some more pics:

Iowa Caucus: the afterbirth

Results: AP | CBS | CNN | DMR | Google | NYT | Politico | Daily Kos

Mitt Romney squeaked by Rick Santorum by a whopping eight votes as of this morning to edge out a razor-edged win in the Iowa caucus. The former Massachusetts Governor and current serial flip-flopper will now take to the airwaves proclaiming the unbridled, unstoppable power of his Eight Vote Mandate By The People. Santorum meanwhile will be met with dozens of steely eyed advisers intent on convincing him he could actually win, mostly so that said steely eyed advisers can try to separate as much money from Anyone-but-Romney voters and divert it into their paychecks and expense accounts as they possibly can before the cruel ministrations of electoral reality set in. [Read more…]

Iowa: Results coming in, three way tie shaping up

Results: AP | CBS | CNN | DMR | Google | NYT | Politico | Daily Kos

10:45 PM: 90% of 1174 precincts in: Romney 25% | Paul 21% | Santorum 25%

Note* Paul projected to finish 3rd, still way too close to call between Mitt and Rick

Note* .. this is looking to be three way tie no matter who tops out tonight. In 4th place is Gingrich 13%, then Perry 10%, Bachmann 6%, and Huntsman 1%. Word is rampant Bachmann’s staff will urge her to quit after tonight.

9:45 EDT: 479 of 1774 precincts: Romney 23% | Paul 23% | Santorum 23% [Read more…]

Let the games begin again, and speaking of games …

More games, this time in the state of Iowa, where a horde of baby-cookin psycho conservatives will square off against a couple of merely bug-fuck crazy established Republicans for a title that means absolutely nothing. I should be around tonight, bringing you all the gory details as they emerge. Win, place, or show? Anyone but Romney? We’ll soon find out.

I can do this now, because, and really I do thank whatever powers that be, the holidays are now officially over. O-V-E-R goddamit! Which means those of us stuck in dead-end retail tech support jobs, We who Spent the last three fucking weeks explaining to grandpa and grandma how to set up little Johnny’s Christmas PC, or how to insert a gaming disk (No, the disk drive release is not a coffee cup holder Bill in Pa), or the mysterious inner world of plug-in surge protectors (No, Na-na Betty from Phoenix, the micro-transformers in the surge protectors bear no relation to the video game characters called Transformers), may get some actual relief. [Read more…]

The plot thickens in ClimateGate

 

The search for the leaker of thousands of private emails, used to harass and impugn the reputation of the world’s top climatolohiusts, is narrowing down. Dare we dream a suspsct soon emerges to Ollie North fanfare levels? They seem to want to be caught, even leaving a taunting note in the database:

(SideneyHerald) — The stunt was enough to jump-start a police investigation that had long seemed dormant. In December, citing a request from British law enforcement, the US Justice Department asked that Automattic, the parent company of the blog host WordPress.com, preserve three days of digital logs for three blogs where the links to the latest emails first appeared.In a raid in Leeds, Britain, the police also confiscated laptops from the home of one blogger; he says the police have told him he is not a suspect.

Personally, I think all emails everywhere should be public. Total transparency, 100%, for everyone, serves both science and democracy best. I don’t write anything via email I’m the least bit worried about and just assume it’s all being read, at least by a machine looking for keywords anyway, if not an actual nosy person at the NSA or God knows where.

Note: BTW folks, I hope to get back to a more regular blogging schedule about the middle of this week. I work in tech support/customer service, it’s been brutal the last coule of weeks.

Welcome 2012, let the games begin

The year the ancient Mayans said would be the last. And why shouldn’t we believe in the prognostications of Mesolithic shamans? I don’t know about you, but I’m going out in style. In the past, for decades, I was an avid body nazi, I ate, drank, and slept training. Over the years I tried many workouts the one I found the most effective is called Cybergenics. It’s brutal, but oh, man the results, people would come up and accuse me of being on roids.

Over the last five years I got badly out of shape. But then last year I managed to get back into it even completing an eight week Cybergenic cycle. Before I broke my back in September in I had gotten in half decent shape.  That injury ended that. But now I’m on the mend and my resolution is to get shredded, one more time. I have a great training partner, in fact she’s a female body builder, and I know what I’m doing. If I can keep it up, by the time the end of world rolls around I’ll leave a finely honed corpse. And if the world doesn’t end? There’ll be time to enjoy it!

Maybe I’ll even chronicle the adventure here. Although it’s all a lot easier to blog about than to do.

How about you? Any changes in the works for your New Year?

 

Syria could be the next domino to fall

Activists published photos purportedly showing a mass protest in the city of Hama. Image courtesy BBC

Tens of thousands of protestors reportedly took to the streets a big number and larger problem for a small nation like Syria. The number of protestors arrested or killed is hard to say, this is a tightly controlled, closed country. But it may not be for long: [Read more…]

Major sites consider going dark in opposition to new Internet legislation

You may not have heard much about the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA over the last few weeks. Holidays can be like social Trojan horses when it comes to unpopular new laws. But the netroots has heard of it — we’re against it — and now the Internet giants of our era are considering a dramatic move to bring the ill-conceived idea into the harsh scrutiny of the soon to be very pissed-off public eye: [Read more…]

How big is Saturn?

 

 Answer: Pretty fucking big! I saw this on Phil’s site and of course had to swipe it immediately. What you’re seeing is an outline of the lower 48 states superimposed to scale on Saturn. The thin line bisecting the outline is the rings seen edge on, the banded items below the outline on Saturn’s surface are the shadows cast by dozens of major rings and hundreds of minor ones. You can’t even see the poles or the rounded limb of Saturn in this image, the planet is simply too large. Click image to embiggen and enlighten.