Cooling Fin

Cooling Fin

kasey-tongueEvolutionary adaptations are sometimes bizarre, like the one that dogs and wolves evolved to shed excess heat. Their tongues are big liquid drenched cooling fins coated with capillaries  and vessels near the surface – if you click on the thumbnail to enlarge the photo you can see that. This is an adaptation that evolved over time, just as the thick fur that coats them to protect from cold did.

When Kasey runs in the winter she doesn’t pant, but when the temperature is above fifty degrees or so and she becomes active she pants a lot.

Putting Faith in its Place

Putting Faith in its Place

A good logical examination of faith, and why you shouldn’t go overboard with it and try to control others by its dictates. Those should be personal for you, but not for everyone else – their beliefs might be different and nobody can prove who is correct.

This comes from one of my favorite youtube rational thinkers, Qualia Soup.

G-20 Protestors Get Violent

G-20 Protestors Get Violent

The usual Anarcho-communists showed up to violently protest capitalism and the G-20 global summit in Pittsburgh, and you can see some media hypocrisy in the coverage. [Aside:They call themselves “Anarchists” because nobody calls themselves communist or Marxist in this century without getting laughed at.]

The protests did grow violent with Black Bloc’ers and the like rolling dumpsters into the police lines and smashing windows. Here you can see the AP coverage, where you don’t see the violence or get a mention of it:

At Russia Today, a state funded media outlet from Russia, they do post some scenes from the demonstrations and you can see that the police had this well under control. If you compare to the US media coverage of the tea party protests you might scratch your head, but on the other hand most people in the US could give a crap about the G-20, or the marginal protesters that usually show up at their meetings.

The citizenry is however highly interested in the Health Care town halls, so anything beyond milling people at those demonstrations was bound to get reported. The other difference: I don’t think anyone showed up at the G-20 protests toting semi-auto rifles and handguns. One last note: There were also “Don’t Tread on Me” Flags and Guy Fawkes masks at these protests, which makes me wonder if some Paul bots showed up for these as well since they have the same anti-government sentiments that the anarchists do.

Russia Today’s Coverage:

Detailed accounting of the property destruction at Reuters.

Update: There’s another important difference between the G-20 Protests and the Tea Parties that fabled lizard Kilgore Trout points out:

The right wing blogs are crowing over the violent g20 protests today and calling out the lefties. The big difference of course is that lefty networks and pundits didn’t promote these protests. Democrat politicians are not endorsing them or speaking to the crowds. These are fringe leftists and are pretty marginalized from the mainstream.

Update 2: For those who might think I’m out of line speculating on Paleocon Ron Paul’s supporters being there, here’ s Paleocon Pat giving WTO protestors and Tom Hayden a reach-around at the 2000 WTO protests. The paleotards will do anything to destabilize existing parties so they can come to the rescue in the chaos with their traditional, tribal, “third way against the New World Order” isolationist crowd:

In the struggle to subordinate market choices to “social solidarity,” the left is understandably worried that the current anti-trade standard bearer is Pat Buchanan, a man whose social values are tribalist and traditional. In their discussion of news coverage of the protests, the leftist media critics at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting zapped CNN and others for paying too much attention to Buchanan: “Though right-wing nationalists appeared to make up–at most–an infinitesimal fraction of the actual protesters in Seattle’s streets, the media seemed to anoint Buchanan as a major leader of the anti-WTO movement.” In one important sense, Buchanan is just that. He is the only prominent presidential candidate advocating the anti-trade agenda of the protesters, the only agenda they share. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Beltway-oriented shows like Inside Politics interviewed him rather than, say, Walden Bello or Tom Hayden.

Late September Moon

Late September Moon

moon-092309-II

A took a few photos of the moon tonight, one was taken at the full 300mm focus of the lens at 200 ISO setting and 1/25 shutter speed. The other was taken at 70 mm with a plain auto setting to allow a long exposure. In the photo on the left you can see the hazy clouds that I had to focus through causing the light to diffuse and bloom.

moon-092309

Evolution of the Mosasaur

Evolution of the Mosasaur

Species have migrated from sea to land and sometimes back again throughout evolution, here you see the evolution of the Mosasaur, and how it evolved from a small, land lizard into a fearsome sea predator.

Sublimation: Fun With Dry Ice

Sublimation: Fun With Dry Ice

fun-with-dry-iceI had some dry ice left over from repairing the freezer (we stowed the frozen food in a cooler with Dry ice while I disassembled, repaired, and reassembled the ice maker) Dry ice sublimates much faster when you put it in water, as they do to make smoke at Rock concerts and clubs:

When dry ice is placed in water sublimation is accelerated, and low-sinking dense clouds of fog (smoke-like) are created. This is used in fog machines, at theaters, discothèques, haunted houses, and nightclubs for dramatic effects. Unlike most artificial fog machines, in which fog rises like smoke, fog from dry ice hovers above the ground. Dry ice is useful in theater productions that require dense fog effects.

The Death of a Good Man: Norman Borlaug RIP

The Death of a Good Man: Norman Borlaug RIP

Norman_Borlaug

The anti-Christ of the Luddite factions in Greenpeace has died. Norman Borlaug was the pioneer of genetically modified crops that have kept billions in the subcontinent of Asia from starving to death as the Club of Rome report “Limits to Growth” had predicted in 1972. Literally billions are alive today because of Norman’s work.

Even with that proof of the value of GM crops and their long use the radical anti-science left in Europe still makes resistance to GM crops a staple of every demonstration, and there are even factions doing the same here in the US.

Norman was one of the good guys, and he will be sorely missed – it would be hard to find someone else who has really done more for all of humanity.