Dogs:

Cats:

Book note: I have received my copy of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of The Intersection, and am now reading it for review. I am probably going to finish it this weekend, so you can expect something on Monday or Tuesday.

This is illegal. Do not do this in the US. Or, do it only for CD’s that you totally own. Like, you are the artist formerly known as Prince and you are going to rip your own DVD off of your own DVD. That is probably not legal either.

So, for those of you tuning in from Bora Bora:

And remember, Linux is not for everyone.

Arrrrrr….

…. or is there a honest to goodness glitch in the way browser shares are counted?

There is indeed evidence that IE browser share has dropped at the expense of Firefox over recent months. There is some evidence that there are problems with the way in which different versions of IE are counted which could be screwing up the stats. Regardless, Market Share by Net Applications, the service which provides a monthly market share assessment, has failed to produce the July 1 results claiming that the data are under review.

Can you say … “Confirmation Bias?”

Some details of this murky situation and links can be found here.

The Citizens Jury on Election Recounts is a privately funded entity that has assembled 24 jurors and given them stipends and various resources to evaluate the recount process and make recommendations. The “jurors” are randomly selected regular people.

Continue reading Minnesotan Citizen Jury will Evaluate Recount Process →

Have you ever noticed that many google servies, like most or all of the google apps including Gmail and Google Docs, are “Beta”?

Well, not any more:

Like many software products, Google’s Gmail service was first released with a “beta” label on it. In the software industry, a product that is in beta is still in its testing phase. Beta versions, which are sandwiched between internal “alpha” versions and final “release” versions, typically have a lifespan of weeks or perhaps months. But Gmail was different. Released on April 1, 2004, it was still in beta five years and tens of millions of users later.

That is changing Tuesday. Gmail is finally shedding the beta label, signaling that Google considers the product to be fully baked. Google is also taking three other applications — Calendar, Docs and Talk — out of beta.

NYT

The best of last June
Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference, I was hoping to meet T. Ryan Gregory yesterday. He is listed on the Evolution 2008 program as an author of a talk on genome size. Goodnews/badnews: Gregory did not show, but the talk, given by his coauthor working in his lab, was excellent, so we didn’t need him.

The research was done, and the paper delivered, by Jillian Smith. The title of the paper was “Genome size evolution in mammals” but it was more focused on specific results Jillian had come up with regarding bats.

source The bottom line is this: Genome size does not have a lot of function or interest other than simply knowing the size of the genome you are about to delve into on a research project (so it’s like knowing how far away your field site is so you can budget travel, or how big your grocery store run is so you can decide if you can walk to the store or drive, etc.). But there are a couple of ways in which genome size might be interesting in a way that relates to adaptation and/or evolution.
Continue reading Genome Size and Flight in Bats →

Organ virtuoso Qi Zhang plays her electric rendering of “Ridiculous Fellows” from Prokofiev’s “The Love for Three Oranges” orchestral suite. This exhilarating performance from TEDx USC features the Yamaha Electone Stagea, a rare, imported instrument specially programmed by Qi herself.

An oldie but a goodie:

Hat Tip: The Intersection.

Cats:

Dogs:

Hmmm… don’t have one for dogs this week.

Hat Tip: The Millikan Daily

Woooo!!!!

Hat Tip: Dump Bachmann where you will find more from Ed.

The best of last June

There is new information from an older idea (from about 2000) by Paul Sherman and colleagues. The idea underlying this research is simple: Symptoms of illnesses may be adaptive. Indeed, this may be true to the extent that we should not call certain things illnesses. Like “morning sickness.”

Broadly speaking, there are two different kinds of reasons that a woman may experience nausea in association with pregnancy. 1) This pregnancy thing is a complicated mess with all kinds of hormonal (and other) things going on, so you puke; or 2) a woman who is pregnant feels nauseous for good evolutionary reasons.

Continue reading Morning Sickness is an Adaptation, not a … Sickness →