Ida: The Missing Link?

So, this 47 million year old fossil from the Eocene Era was recently discovered in Germany. Darwinius Masilae or Ida as it's affectionately being called is amazingly complete (95%) and is being hailed as the "Holy Grail" by some scientists.

The lemur-like skeleton features primate-like characteristics, including grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and relatively short limbs.

"This specimen looks like a really early fossil monkey that belongs to the group that includes us ...is one of the important branching points on the evolutionary tree but it's not the only branching point."
[Biological Anthropologist Brian Richmond]

Or to put it more clearly, a missing link between higher primates (ie monkeys) and their more distant distant cousins (ie lemurs and such)

As is the S.O.P. for science, their is some disagreement about just how significant this discovery is. Some are saying that it's more of a "third cousin twice removed" than any sort of direct ancestor.

And predicatively the reactionary right perceives this, as well as any other evolutionary discovery, as threatening to their world view. Check out this Freeper article (and the comments below if you want a laugh)

Here's another righty website that says more or less the same thing. And quotes something called the Institute for Creation Research. LOL!

National Geographic Story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/fossil-ida

http://darwiniusmasillaelink.com/darwinius-masillae/

So I guess the ultimate implications of this discovery remain to seen and will most likely fall somewhere between missing link and media hoax.

Danger Mouse On Some Other Shit!

So this looks awesome...

Hip-hop producer Danger Mouse is to release a blank CD, after record label EMI reportedly cancelled his new album.
Dark Night Of The Soul, a collaboration with rock group Sparklehorse, also features Iggy Pop and The Flaming Lips, along with artwork by David Lynch.
It has already been streamed online, but Billboard magazine said a "legal dispute" with EMI derailed the project.
Danger Mouse, who is half of pop group Gnarls Barkley, said he hoped people would still get to hear the record.
A spokesperson for the producer said: "Danger Mouse remains hugely proud of Dark Night of the Soul and hopes that people lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, are as excited by it as he is."
He added that the album, which comes with a limited edition, "100+ page book" of David Lynch photographs inspired by the music "will now come with a blank, recordable CD-R".
"All copies will be clearly labelled: 'For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.'"

Nina Persson of The Cardigans and A Camp is amongst the guest stars
It is unclear at this stage whether the record has been postponed or scrapped altogether. EMI could not be reached for comment.
'Excited'
At the time of writing, the entire 13-track album can be heard on the website of US public radio station NPR.
The free, legal stream has been the site's most popular page for more than 24 hours - but it is unclear how long the audio will remain available.
"We don't have a definite take down date," NPR Music producer Robin Hilton told Billboard. "It's up in the air."
Other guest stars on the record include The Strokes' Julian Casablancas, The Pixies' Frank Black, Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys, and Nina Persson of The Cardigans.
Danger Mouse first came to attention with a bootleg CD that mixed a capella tracks from Jay-Z's Black Album with music from The Beatles' White Album.
He has since gone on to produce cartoon band Gorillaz and alt-rock icon Beck.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8053471.stm

Where the Wild Things Are

Wow! I haven't been this excited about a movie release in...
...well I don't even remember.

Almost everyone my age remembers this book from when we were little and I'm sure most would agree that it's one of the best childrens books ever.

So, normally I would be skeptical about the ability of Hollywood to adapt it to film. Luckily this project, which has been nine years in the making, will be directed by Spike Jonze. The screenplay was co-written by Jonze and celebrated novelist Dave Eggers. The film features music from Arcade Fire and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and will be released this fall.

Can't wait!

GRB 090423

NERD ALERT:

NASA's Swift satellite last week recorded what they think is the most ancient event yet witnessed by man- GRB 090423, a burst of gamma radiation released in the annihilation a star some 30 to 100 times the mass of our sun. GRB 090423 was thought to have collapsed into a black hole some 13.1 billion years ago, when the universe was a mere 5 % of the age it is now, providing astronomers with a tantalizing glimpse into the distant past. With a redshift of 8.2, GRB 090423 is also the most distant visible object ever observed (the previous record was . Astronomers are counting this as conclusive proof of the existence of massive stars in the reionization period, and hoping it will help them to ascertain exactly when in the evolution of the universe galaxies formed.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17035-most-distant-object-in-the-universe-spotted.html

AMERICA: Prepare for an old-fashioned Tea Baggin'

If you've not heard about this yet....

Take a look.

The second item on the agenda:
"[Are you fed up with a congress and president who] are spending trillions of borrowed dollars, leaving a debt our great-grandchildren will be paying?"

The ever delusional Michel Malkin claims on her site that if the party "...takes shape as an anti-spending movement, it could revive conservatives much as the 1970s tax protests did."

Uh, where have these folks been the last 6 years? Everyone was fine writing blank checks for Bush to throw away to the tune of billions a year in a bullshit war?

Ohhhhhh, now this is interesting. Admittedly a left wing site, but go google Freedom Works yourself. This, for instance, is not partisan.

Freedom Works was supposedly created as a counter to MoveOn. The only difference being that; where as MoveOn is an actual grass roots organization funded by small donations, Freedom Works is a Washington DC based think tank. A "non-profit" organization, designed to assist (read: organize and fund) "activists". The chairman is that other republican Dick, the one from the House, Rep. Army.

I'm not here to defend Obama's policies. Nor am I presumptuous enough to think I have anything approaching an answer to our country's economic woes. But this kind of "astroturf" movement masquerading as a populous uprising needs to be called out for what it really is; a beltway lobbyist backed organization bent on helping the richest Americans to keep from paying the 3% more in taxes that they already were before the Bush Admin. In light of this, it comes as no surprise that folks like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, all of whom have made extraordinarily lucrative careers out of telling ordinary folks how to feel, are fervently backing this.

So the answer to where these people were when billions of dollars turned up missing in audits was; in Washington lobbying on behalf of companies that were receiving those billions in taxpayer dollars.

None the less, however much i disagree with the spin, the right to protest is what makes America, America. Unfortunately, I think that soon enough, actual grassroots organizers (if there are any in this situation) will discover like the folks who protested the invasion of Iraq, that an even more defining feature in America nowadays is that protests are downplayed or simply ignored.

DOGGSTEP???

Wow! So it appears that Dubstep has officially arrived. Snoop D-O-2xG's new joint, Snoop Dog Millionaire, finds the Dogfather rapping over the Chase and Status produced Eastern Jam.



Although the results are kinda WTF?; this maybe a glimpse of the future of mainstream hip hop or Dubstep or both.

Quoth the Plastician:

...I've stated earlier in this post, this is the tip of the iceberg. I've been working with the people who put this together for the last month or so sending over some dubstep tracks for a mixtape which is being put together using dubstep tracks and rappers over in the USA. Thats what this snoop track was originally intended for but as it went so well, they're pushing it for his album already which is fantastic as thats kinda what we hope will happen for all the tracks we put on the mixtape!!

There's a whole heap of rappers writing to tracks from Joker, Plastician, Crissy Criss, Maniac and a load more as I type this, so look out for more collaborations popping up in the coming weeks.

A lot of the rappers were a bit unsure about flowing on what one very well known artist described as "some crazy techno kinda stuff" but I'm sure now that Snoop took the plunge a lot more will be more inclined to give it a go.

Could Thugstep be the new sound of '09?

Download the leaked file Here

Mad Money Man Not So Mad At Daily Pwning

After the faux populous bluster of the Santelli incident, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart invited the man over for an interview; presumably to ask how it was that one who has been deeply immersed in the world of finance for thirty years could lay the blame for our country's economic woes at the feet of a man who's been in office for less than 90 days. Santelli declined. Several weeks later after the surfacing of this video, Stewart went on a rampage:



After some more back and forth asked Jim Cramer on the Show.




In accordance with our bitterly divided electorate, reactions to Jon Stewart fall into two polar categories

A) He's picking up the slack of a failed institution (the forth estate)

B) He's a partisan hack; a mouth piece for the Obama Admin/Democratic Party, etc. Someone who owes his entire career to our bumbling 43 president.

Just to point out the obvious, The Daily Show has been airing since '96 and Stewart has been anchoring it since '98 (an eternity in the entertainment business). And if one cares to watch those pre-Bush Admin. episodes it would be clear that The Daily Show was always a parody news program that parodied real journalism. Jim Cramer's show Mad Money could rightly be classed as financial journalism so...

People have said that Stewart chose to go after Cramer because of Cramer's attack on Obama. But it's fairly clear that Stewart's indictment is of CNBC and big media in general, Cramer just happened to be a visible face.


Other people dismiss Stewart as a liberal Rush Limbaugh. And though they both are technically entertainers, the similarities pretty much end there.

Stewart is family man who was basically your typical comic until the all this 9/11 madness spurred him to become something more. In disbelief of what was rammed down our collective throats in the name of fighting terrorism, he began to use his platform to speak out against the coercion of corporate media by the government.

I won't call Rush stupid like a lot of people I know, because he's obviously very shrewd and knows exactly what he's spouting and why. What I will say is Rush is an addict (if you know anything about addicts, that fact should explain almost everything). A very sick man consumed by emotion, lashing out with righteous rage in every direction. He uses the label of comedian as a shield for his polemical, and often racist/misogynistic pontifications.

What I'm basically trying to say is that though the two men occupy what could technically be called a similar field, they've arrived there from opposite directions.

As much as his detractors would have you believe otherwise, Jon Stewart is an anomaly. A comedian who due to extraordinary circumstance (the said utter failure of the forth estate) has crossed over into the world of serious journalism.

Blackwater's Iraq contract not renewed!

Remember when our government felt like this. When those people who claimed Bush was going to declare martial law and rule as el presidente for life seemed believable?

Well we're probably still effed-in-the-a, but at least the Obama admin. is doing a couple of positive things. Refusing to do business with a company like Blackwater definitley falls into this category. In case you didn't know, six Blackwater employees were charged with the voluntary manslaughter of 17 innocent Iraqis back in 2007. Only one has plead guilty, but the company's infractions have been serious enough that the Iraqi government has refused to renew their operating licence. Although they are still employed elsewhere, the Iraq contract made up "1/3 - 1/2" of Blackwater's business so this is a critical blow to the company.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/30/us.blackwater.contract/

Blackwater has also changed it's name to Xe (zee). Changing one's name is a popular PR strategy for an entity whose reputation has been ruined (read: School of the Americas).

And as a bonus, this asshole has left the company.

CEO Erik Prince, a rich conservative-christian who's father, a rich conservative christian in his own right, co-founded the Family Research Council. Prince the younger is a homophobic zealot and former Bush cronie, who once complained that the administration was not socially conservative enough.

Arrevaderchi douche-nozzle!

(Oh and if you're interested in finding out more about Blackwater, there's an execellent book by Jeremy Scahill called Blackwater: Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army)

Crikey!!! Ancient Hollywood sized snake discovered in coal mine

      

Scientists have discovered the remains of a pre-historic monster in the rain forests of northern Columbia.  Titanboa Cerrejonensis, a snake so big it snacked on crocadiles, is believed to have existed 58-60 million years ago when tempuratures  were considerebly warmer (10 degrees on average) than they are now.  Being the largest animal during this era it reigned supreme as defacto king of the jungle.

"Truly enormous snakes really spark people's imagination, but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood," said Jonathan Block, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Florida, who co-led the work.

"The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie Anaconda is not as big as the one we found." 

"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips," said David Polly, a geologist at the University of Indiana at Bloomington.

Yikes! 

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090204/tod-oukoe-uk-snake-giant-cb1d00a.html

ZOMG!!!

There's a black man in the White House. That even sounds strange...

and awesome!

Even better than the destruction of the tacit understanding that, to be president one must be an aging white man; is that this milestone comes on the heels of a president that will probably be remembered as the most inept man to ever hold the office. Worse than Grant. Worse than Johnson. Worse than Nixon (who at least was a skilled politician).

Bush, although he may be a decent enough man personally, is a stubborn, intellectually-lazy simpleton. And while this combination of traits makes for a good fratboy it makes for a terrible leader. Bush was unbelievably under-qualified for the office of president; a quick look at his history as failed entrepreneur clearly shows his deficiency as an administrator. It's amazing he ever got that far, to say nothing of the fact that he was re-elected in 2004.

The events of today seem especially dramatic to me because of my age. The first election I ever participated in was the stolen election of 2000. So Bush has been the Commander-in-Chief all of my adult life. It seems strange to think that the focus of so much of my ill-will for so long is finally gone. And that I never have to listen to his ridiculous pronouncements again.

I doubt he, or anyone else for that matter, will ever be tried for basically shredding significant portions of the constitution. But, it does bring me some satisfaction that Bush will most likely live a good while longer (maybe 20 years?) and endure scathing criticism from all sides without a mouth-piece to defend himself. It's telling that the last couple of months have found him making a desperate PR blitz in an attempt to salvage his "legacy" (Cheney hasn't backed down from anything he's ever asserted, including the fiasco in Iraq).

Anyway, as the picture suggests, this post is supposed to be about our first black president. It's just that one must factor in Bush and his unprecedented incompetence to understand why we're so elated.

OK. This country faces some enormous challenges to be sure. But If Obama comes through on even a fraction of what he is talking about doing, it'll make it all worth-while. Even just lifting of the ban on stem-cell research. Or real funding for alternative energy. Or closing Guantanamo. Or submitting to the Geneva Convention.

I like that although Obama touched on defense, he spent most of his time talking domestic affairs.

And as I've said before, even just as a symbol his ascendancy is enormously important. It smashes the one-dimensional caricature of American leadership internationally and signifies so much for minorities here at home.

Of course I don't think he's going to solve all of our problems and some of his appointments are a little troubling...

but I'm willing to suspend my judgment.

And right now I feel hopeful that at least we may be heading in a different direction.

The Folly of Israel

Man, I guess it’s that time of year again. The bloodshed in the Holy Land has been spilling over into news publications for the last two weeks.

I’m not here to take sides as the title to this post might suggest, this he started it / she started it shit is the problem. I’m just pointing out that for all of Israel’s bluster and brute military strength, they’ve really accomplished next to nothing in the last 60 years. Though countless militants have met violent ends, the rockets are still raining and the radical Islamic ideology is as strong as it has ever been.

Which begs the question; after employing the same strategy to solve a problem again and again over the course of 60 years without lasting success, at what point do you admit that it’s not working and try something else?

Hawks instantly fly off the handle when anything other than force is suggested to solve a violent situation. They accuse the diplomatically inclined of being apologists or even terrorists if they’re feeling hyperbolic. If they could hold the Ad hominem attacks and conduct a civil discussion they would learn that of course we all deplore terrorism, any rational person does. The argument is that, in this case, force as a strategy isn’t cutting it.

Look there's is a quick way to gain the moral high ground in the Muslim world and invalidate the Jihadist rhetoric. It’s what the rational voices have been calling for for decades: moving back to pre-1967 borders. The standard argument by Israeli hawks is that conceding this would only embolden the terrorists. What they don’t realize is that their approach lends these radicals credulity in the Muslim world.

I mentioned this in my post about terrorism, but I’ll say it again, it doesn’t matter how sophisticated your arsenal is, you can’t bomb an idea. It must be discredited. We’ve made the same mistake in Afghanistan. It’s employing the wrong tool- if a saw is what’s required for the job, but you have a hammer, it does’t matter how hard you hit the thing you’re not going to get the results that you are looking for. But really that metaphor doesn’t do this situation justice. A better parallel would be trying to extinguish a grease fire with water, thus spreading what you hoped to suppress. Israel’s attacks on a UN run school and a mosque, regardless of the validity of their claim that they were targeting militants, has done nothing but harm their case in the long term.

There’s ample evidence to support the ultimate futility of this strategy. Take Lebanon. In 2006 Israel invaded Lebanon in retaliation for rocket attacks by Hezbollah. In the 33 day war that ensued heavy civilian casualties were sustained. And as a result, now Hezbollah controls the government.

“You can’t solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it”

-Albert Einstein

Some one needs to rise above the tit-for-tat or this will continue ad-infinitum. Now, realistically, who do you think that's going to be; fundamentalist militants whose moral code is 1000 years out of date or a first world country.

edit: It looks as though Israel is acting unilaterally as is their custom. They've declared a cease fire, but refuse to leave Gaza. Well, I guess we're just going to have to wait and see how long this lasts. You can be sure however, that nothing has been accomplished in terms of the PR war. And that this has only fanned the flames of resentment. The prospect of further violence is a matter not of if but when. Unfortunately, this is a situation in which we all lose; the US, moderate Arabs, moderate Jews- pretty much everyone except for Likud the Jihadists.

Black Holes...

This is something interesting I just found.

It seems that barely a month after the confirmation of the existence of a super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy (something that had been suspected for quite some time), a team of Finnish scientists have proved that black holes "preceded galaxies"

"We finally have been able to measure black-hole and bulge masses in several galaxies seen as they were in the first billion years after the Big Bang," said co-author Fabian Walter of the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany.

"The evidence suggests that the constant ratio seen [in nearby galaxies] may not hold in the early Universe."

He added: "The implication is that the black holes started growing first."

Read the full BBC artical here

Project Chanology

The folks at 4chan have actually started something worthwhile; an autonomous collective known only as Anonymous. The name is derived from the title given to users in the /b/ forum who post without registering.

It seems that they became incensed by a ridiculous Scientology video starring who else but Tom Cruise, that happened to make it onto Youtube.



It wasn't the absurdity of the piece, which was meant for Scientologist eyes only, that set them off; but rather that Youtube was strong-armed, through threat of litigation into removing it from their site- something "Anons" saw as a direct attack on free speech. This set off an e-call to arms.

I think it's time for /b/ to do something big. People need to understand
not to f*k with /b/, and talk about nothing for ten minutes, and expect people
to give their money to an organization that makes absolutely no f*king
sense. I'm talking about "hacking" or "taking down" the official Scientology
website. It's time to use our resources to do something we believe is right.
It's time to do something big again, /b/. Talk amongst one another, find a
better place to plan it, and then carry out what can and must be done.It's
time, /b/

-Anonymous

The person that posted this was really only advocating standard hacker tactics, but the Anonymous Movement has now mutated into all out warfare against the controversial "Church". Thus, what started on an Internet forum has now moved into the streets. Members donning the V for Vendetta masks (to assure anonymity) are taking part in organized protests in almost every major city where the "Church" can be found.

The anarchic, faceless quality of the movement makes it extremely difficult to litigate against, which happens to be the "Church"s proffered mode of attack. Elegant in it's simplicity this demonstrates the true value of the Internet in connecting disparate people for a common cause.

Here is an in depth artical about the whole phenomenon:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.lisamcpherson.org%252Fpc.htm

We Danced, We Wept, We Rejoiced

11/4/08, 8:30 PM PST, Mission District, San Francisco, CA:

I wasn't in front of a TV, but I could hear the shouts through the window, notifying me that we had a new president and that his name was Obama. I was not prepared however for what I would witness when I stepped out into the street.

Bedlam.

People of all ages and colors ecstatic. Joyous war whoops. Shouts of "U-S-A!!!".

Every passing car honking- people hanging out the windows screaming themselves horse.

I walk down to the corner store to buy a drink. The TV is on. Half a dozen or so black and Latino teenagers staring at it silently. Dumbfounded.

I continue down the street to 19th and Valencia, hundreds of people clogging the intersection blocking traffic in an impromptu block party.

People waving flags, banging pots and pans, dancing, embracing, weeping, reveling.

Countless cameras flashing.

Everyone's on the phone, sharing in the beauty of this moment with those that can't be here.

A lone trumpeter begins to play the star-spangled banner. Within seconds the whole crowd joins in. Erupting into raucous applause upon conclusion.

More crying.

Fireworks exploding.

Some guy on the corner shouting into a bullhorn, "Barrack Obama has made history" over and over again.

All of this swelling into an orgiastic cacophony of exuberant goodwill toward man.

This is the sound of passengers taking the wheel back from the drunken captain that had nearly lost the ship.

From what I can gather This scene was mirrored all over the country tonight. Has there ever been this intense an initial reaction to the outcome of an election? I don't believe there has.

Let's be clear though. This is just preface. The grown-ups may be back in charge, but there is quite a mess yet to clean. And as tempting as it may be to stick it to those who only a few years ago proclaimed the inevitability of permanent republican majority, doing so will solve nothing. America stands at a crossroads. This is one of the most important times in our relatively brief history. Let us not squander this opportunity.

LO-Fucking-L!!!

I know, she's sick, and that's not really very funny. What's funny is that a bunch of right-wingers jumped on this and it looked like it might be some much needed negative publicity, at least indirectly, for the Obama campaign. But McCain just can't catch a break. What with more and more prominent conservatives jumping ship every day, the continued Sarah Palin corruption investigation, and now this. Brutal. I might almost feel pity for the man if he hadn't sold out every principle he'd ever stood for.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/24/mccain.sticker/index.html

LHC to be continued....

So the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)- the biggest super collider ever, at over 27 KM long(!)- was switched on back in September. September 8 to be exact. This event, which is the culmination of years of research and development and upwards of $10 Bil., was heralded as a breakthrough in modern physics. Located in parts of Switzerland and France (yes it's that big), the LHC is supposed to prove the existence the elusive higgs-boson particle which gives everything its mass (this illustration dumb the concept down considerably http://www.coimbra.lip.pt/atlas/higgsmec.htm). This can only be achieved by recreating conditions similar to those shortly after the big bang. And that is exactly what scientists built
the LHC to do.

Unfortunately for us, due to a large helium leak thought to be caused by an electrical short, the massive atom smasher went off line after less than two weeks in operation. And it will most likely be out of commission until the spring of '09. I guess this is all part of the beta stage in development, but I have to admit, that after all the hype- some people went so far as to claim that it would destroy the earth- I was disappointed by this seeming anti-climax.

Make no mistake, though, finding the higgs-boson would be huge. It is believed that the discovery of this particle, which has been theorized but never observed, would offer conclusive proof to the theory of super symmetry thus completing the standard model- somewhat of a holy grail to particle physicists.

As Michael Dine, professor of physics at the Santa Cruz Institute of Particle Physics (UCSC) explains:

"Much of today's research in elementary particle physics focuses on the search for a particle called the Higgs boson. This particle is the one missing piece of our present understanding of the laws of nature, known as the Standard Model. This model describes three types of forces: electromagnetic interactions, which cause all phenomena associated with electric and magnetic fields and the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation; strong interactions, which bind atomic nuclei; and the weak nuclear force, which governs beta decay--a form of natural radioactivity--and hydrogen fusion, the source of the sun's energy. (The Standard Model does not describe the fourth force, gravity.)"

[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-exactly-is-the-higgs]

I guess spring is not all that far away when one considers the magnitude of looking into an abyss this profound.