The 50th Carnival of Evolution went up a few days ago — my apologies for being late, but I’m traveling. Which also explains the paucity of entries lately.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The 50th Carnival of Evolution went up a few days ago — my apologies for being late, but I’m traveling. Which also explains the paucity of entries lately.
It always seems to be the case that there are gaps in the fossil record just where things get interesting — probably with good reason, that forms in transition will be relatively rare. One such gap is the period where insects first emerge and begin to conquer the terrestrial world, a period called the arthropod gap, between 385 and 325 million years ago. Here’s a new specimen from that relatively barren stretch of time, Strudiella devonica.
It’s a classic insect: a body divided into three regions (head, thorax, abdomen), six legs, a fairly general set of omnivorous mouthparts. It lacks wings, but the small size suggests it may be in a nymphal stage (also, the genitals at the tip of the abdomen didn’t make it), so that may not mean much.
Garrouste R, Clément G, Nel P, Engel MS, Grandcolas P, D’Haese C, Lagebro L, Denayer J, Gueriau P, Lafaite P, Olive S, Prestianni C, Nel A (2012) A complete insect from the Late Devonian period. Nature 488, 82–85.
(Whew, that’s a lot of authors for a short paper.)
My wife keeps sending me photos of Australian plants for this series. I think she wants to go back.
(via Australian Geographic)
There has been a new outbreak of Ebola in Uganda. This kind of stuff worries me, not in acute “oh-we’re-all-going-to-die-now” sort of way, but in a long term perspective. We’re all sitting here fat and happy and swarming, and what’s going to wipe out this species some day is a combination of resource depletion and new diseases — famine and plague, to name two of the horsemen.
But I thought this bit was bizarre.
Ondoa described the Ebola-Sudan strain detected as "mild" compared to other types of Ebola, noting that victims’ lives can be saved with intervention.
20 people infected.
14 dead.
“Mild.”
I do all my work at a desk — I’m not hauling mud! — and I don’t look this good.
(via Entomolog)
Richard Muller used to be a doubter — he didn’t think global warming was a concern, and he didn’t think people were responsible for it. Now he has changed his mind, and he explains why.
Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
You mean, sometimes evidence works? Wow.
I saw this on @cstross‘s twitter feed and had to laugh. Audiophiles and other bewildered purchasers of high-end electronics can get thoroughly deranged and start throwing ridiculous sums of money at the most trivial components — like cables. How would you like this extra-special X-Box cable? I found one place selling it for $85; the non-elite cables without the virus protection are about $8.
If you really want an amazing deal, though, go for an AudioQuest K2 terminated speaker cable.
It’s only $8,450. And Amazon has 5 in stock! Order fast before they’re gone!
I don’t think they’re selling, though. The most wonderful thing about over-priced (or possibly typoed) cables are the reviews. You must read the reviews! Even the 5 star reviews are loaded with snark, but my very favorite is this one-star review. It’s a whole tragic story.
We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.
PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long… I will type as fast as I can.
DO NOT USE THE CABLES!
We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this… accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the… whispers… began.
Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly… we began to UNDERSTAND.
No, no, please! I don’t want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out… oh, god, the screaming… the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!
WHY CAN’T I FORGET THE WORDS???
We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.
Do not use the cables!
I want to read more of the author’s work. Alas, after that one flash of brilliance, most of Whisper’s work is pedestrian: shoes, exercise equipment, computer accessories. No audio gear, though, which is only to be expected if he has to wear earplugs all the time.
