Charles Darwin's secret 200 year old experiment

Or ...

How Charles Darwin Terraformed a Barren Rock

A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret. Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice. Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest". What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.

By a bizarre twist, this great imperial experiment may hold the key to the future colonization of Mars.

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Ascension Island, a British overseas territory in the south Atlantic, was originally a nearly-lifeless, uninhabited rock. It had no freshwater except for rainfall which quickly evaporated. But in an experiment, Charles Darwin and his friend Joseph Hooker introduced non-native plants that they hoped would encourage water retention. The result is that today Ascension Island has lush, vibrant forests:

Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens – where Hooker’s father was director – shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.
The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The “cinder” would become a garden.
So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.
Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot.

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Does Language Shape the Way You Think?

In the New York Times, Guy Deutscher has a lengthy article about the speculations of some linguists that the language that we first learn strongly shapes and limits how we think. One interesting example that he cites is an Australian aboriginal language that has no personal spatial descriptors, such as the English phrases “to my right” or “behind me”. Instead, it uses cardinal directions in everyday conversation:

But then a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr, from north Queensland, turned up, and with it came the astounding realization that not all languages conform to what we have always taken as simply “natural.” In fact, Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward.”

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Old People Enjoy Hearing about Young People Being Stupid

Researchers in Germany examined what news stories older people like to read. They found that grandma and grandpa tend to prefer stories that cast younger people in a negative light:

“Living in a youth centered culture, they may appreciate a boost in self-esteem. That’s why they prefer the negative stories about younger people, who are seen as having a higher status in our society,” said Dr. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, of Ohio State University.[...]
All the adults in the study were shown what they were led to believe was a test version of a new online news magazine. They were also given a limited time to look over either a negative and positive version of 10 pre-selected articles.
Each story was also paired with a photograph depicting someone of either the younger or the older age group.
The researchers found that older people were more likely to choose to read negative articles about those younger than themselves

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Sarcopenia explained

Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists [and] drug and food companies...

With interest high among the aging, the market potential for maintaining and rebuilding muscle mass seems boundless. Drug companies already are trying to develop drugs that can build muscles or forestall their weakening without the notoriety of anabolic steroids. Food giants like Nestlé and Danone are exploring nutritional products with the same objective.

In addition, geriatric specialists, in particular, are now trying to establish the age-related loss of muscles as a medical condition under the name sarcopenia, from the Greek for loss of flesh. Simply put, sarcopenia is to muscle what osteoporosis is to bone...

Researchers involved in the effort say doctors and patients need to be more aware that muscle deterioration is a major reason the elderly lose mobility and cannot live independently...

A task force of academic and industry scientists met in Rome last November and in Albuquerque last month and has submitted a proposed definition of sarcopenia for publication in a medical journal. The meeting received financial support from several drug companies and food companies...

Causes of the loss of muscle mass or strength might include hormonal changes, sedentary lifestyles, oxidative damage, infiltration of fat into muscles, inflammation and resistance to insulin. Some problems stem from the brain and nervous system, which activate the muscles.

Experts say the best approach to restoring or maintaining muscle mass and strength is exercise, particularly resistance training...

“There’s a lot more to the story than simply having a lot of muscle tissue,” said Brian C. Clark, an expert at Ohio University. “Most of the drug stuff has been targeting muscle mass.”

So the definition is shifting to include muscle strength and function. The academic-industry task force recommends testing whether a person can walk four meters, or about 13 feet, in four seconds...

Demonstrating such benefits and cost savings would help counter criticism that doctors and drug companies are trying to turn a natural consequence of aging into a disease.

 New York Times

Bang the Drum

Bad Cops

Bad Cops

Witnesses say New York police officer refused to give CPR to dying 11-year-old

Wisconsin sheriff hopes to restore trust as former sheriff awaits trial on federal drug charges

Arizona cop is fired after threatening to arrest KFC employees over refund policy

Iowa police officer fired after drug charges

Illinois police sergeant had secret life as serial rapist

Two years after being suspended for allegedly groping woman at traffic stop, Texas cop is finally arrested

Lunatic Fringe

Lunatic Fringe

Otherwise known as the Seditionists

When dealing with wingnuts ... Remember the rule: 

If they accuse someone of something, then they're already guilty of it.

 

Liars and Fools

Faux News military analyst and retired three-star US General Thomas McInerney encourages American soldiers to disobey lawful orders until he sees Obama's birth certificate.
That's treason, Thomas.

Faux's Glenn Beck explains that his new website, The Blaze, is inspired by the writings of a slavery supporter.
And we are surprised, how?

Lush Dimbulb lies that President Obama is like "some" African-Americans who say "Fourth of July ain't no big deal to me, yo".
So, what is he bitching about - it means nothing to him except a long weekend in the Dominican Republic with the 'boys'.

Batshit crazy wingnut Pamela Geller says she supports — and wants to bring to America — a violent UK English-only group.
Haven't we got more than enough wingnuts here as it is, bitch?

Hate radio squawking head Michael Medved explains in writing that God would vote repugican.
Then 'god' is an idiot just like he is.

Hate radio polls listeners on whether the US should "register" Muslims in a "national database" during "a time of war".
And you know what the results were? Neither does the real American people either. But we can be safe in postulating that the percentage was extremely high in favor (darn near 100%).

Need we say more?

If conservatives act like morons on camera, why does it matter if a liberal is holding the camera?

The Daily Caller has a post up about our good friends at New Left Media who do all the great video documentaries of Sarah Palin's book signings, Glenn Beck's rallies, and the Teabagger conferences. Putting aside the fact, for a moment, that the Daily Caller can't even be bothered to get its facts straight - for instance, Erick and Chase at New Left never tell people they're working on a school project, they identify themselves as journalists, albeit college students who are journalists.

Somehow, that's very very sneaky to conservatives, actually telling people who you are when asked. So sneaky in fact, that the two guys who are just barely old enough to drink have now bamboozled the Teabaggers, the Beck fans, and the Palin fans with their young whipper-snapper tomfoolery.

An example the Daily Caller gives of just how sneaky Erick and Chase are when exposing what utter morons conservatives are at these rallies: Erick and Chase tell people that they attend Wright State, a college in Dayton, Ohio. Put aside for a moment the fact that the guys actually do go to school at Wright State. It seems that some of the people attending these rallies, and being interviewed by the guys, thought that Wright State was spelled Right State, and therefore the guys worked for RightState.com, a non-existent conservative Web site.

And this is the Daily Caller's smoking gun that Erick and Chase are sneaky, and that conservatives attending these rallies aren't morons?

Favorite quote from the Daily Caller piece:

Whiteside said it’s not his or Stoll’s fault if an interviewee confuses Wright State with Right State.

No, it's not his fault that he told people the name of his university, when asked, and the people were simply morons.

But putting even all of that aside, is the Daily Caller really trying to tell us that the attendees at all these rallies are willing to be total idiots on camera for Chase and Erick because they thought the guys were conservatives? So you mean, they'd act smarter, or less crazy, if they knew the guys were liberals? How about they just act normal, and tell the truth, regardless of who's doing the interview.

One in Five

Wanna hazard a guess as to which one in five?

And yet another mosque attack that involved a gun

Are we really surprised considering the constant stream of attacks by the Teabaggers?

A group of teenagers in western New York has been accused of harassing members of a mosque by yelling obscenities and insults during evening prayers for Ramadan, sideswiping a worshiper with a vehicle and firing a shotgun outside, the authorities said Tuesday.

The teenagers were cornered by members of the mosque, who held them for the police. They were charged with disrupting a religious service, a misdemeanor.

The obscenities episode occurred Monday and the shooting last Friday, both outside the World Sufi Foundation mosque in Carlton, N.Y., the authorities said. They said a 17-year-old fired the shotgun; no one was hit.

And they just keep coming ...

Seattle shop clerk attacked and called a terrorist

The Teabagger call to violence continues.

Writing the court, a Seattle detective said Stainbrook entered the 7-11 store in at 362 Denny Way. The clerk was standing near a coffee machine when Stainbrook accosted him.

"For unknown reasons a person threw change on the floor near the victim's feet then punched the victim on the left side of the head," the detective said.

"After the suspect struck (the clerk) with his fist he said, 'You're not even American, you're Al-Qaeda. Go back to your country.'"

United Airlines and Dulles security treat Pakistani military officers as terrorists

United Airlines threw nine high-ranking Pakistani military officers off a Washington-Tampa flight on Sunday and turned them over to Dulles security, who detained and grilled the men. The officers were on a junket in the USA, and had been traveling extensively; one of them said words to the effect of, "I hope this is my last flight." This was interpreted as a terrorist threat by a flight attendant. Dulles security did not let the men contact their embassy or the US military officials who were hosting them.

The Pakistanis were finally released after police at Dulles determined they did not pose a threat. But instead of proceeding to Tampa, the delegation was ordered to return to Pakistan by their military superiors in Islamabad, in protest of their treatment, the Pakistani official said, adding that they were "verbally abused." The group of officers spent the next 48 hours in Washington, waiting for the next available flight home, and were scheduled to depart the United States on Tuesday evening. The Pakistani officers were originally en route to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa to attend the annual conference of the U.S.-Pakistan Military Consultative Committee, said Maj. David Nevers, a Central Command spokesman. He said Centcom officials hoped to reschedule the conference.

Pakistani officials leaving in protest

Non Sequitur

Want a cheap Van Gogh ...

What about a inexpensive Monet?

60% of the world's oil paintings come from this village

Eight Foot Shark Caught in Potomac River

8-Foot Shark Caught in Potomac River

Don't believe him? He has the pictures to prove it. Dean put out a net Monday at Cornfield Harbor in the Potomac three miles north of Point Lookout with hopes of catching cow-nosed rays for a Solomons Island Marina biologist.

Beer Facts from Around the World

Yes, there are some countries in which the consumption of beer, along with other alcoholic beverages, is prohibited. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is brewing, selling, and imbibing the ancient drink.
Mesopotamia: Beer dates back to at least 4,000 BC. The earliest Sumerian writings mention it. The earliest recorded recipe for brewing beer found so far is from the ancient Babylonians. It is thought that the drink arose independently in several locations during the switch from hunting and gathering to agricultural communities, as stored crops fermented naturally and produced alcohol.
New Zealand: Beer was unknown in New Zealand until introduced by Europeans in the 1800s. The first beer brewed on the island was made from an indigenous evergreen tree and was intended as a cure for scurvy. Captain Cook brewed it himself in 1770, and it worked.
Mongolia: In the 2010 World Beverage Competition, the top beer prize went to the United States. However, Mongolia won both a gold medal and a silver medal for Fusion Beer and Borgio, both brewed by the Mongolian beverage company APU.

Peru: When drinking beer with a group in Peru, one person buys a bottle, pours a glass, passes the bottle on to the next person, drinks it, pours the dregs on the floor, then passes the glass to the next person, who repeats the process. The last person to get a drink from the bottle usually buys the next bottle. Sometimes shenanigans result as some try their best to avoid taking the last drink!
Ireland: In 1756, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease on a building in Dublin that has been producing beer ever since. Guinness, still run by Arthur’s descendants, is now produced in more than forty countries.
South Africa: Umqombothi is an ancient South African beer made from corn and sorghum. It is also the title of a song about beer sung by South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka, that was featured in the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda.
Czech Republic: According to global statistics for 2004 (the most recent year available), the Czech Republic leads the world in per capita beer consumption. Over 156 liters per year are consumed per person in that country. That’s 41.5 gallons for every man, woman, and child!
Australia: All the large breweries in Australia are owned by only three companies. The one most familiar to Americans is Foster’s, which is brewed mainly for export and isn’t all that popular in its home country!
China: The biggest beer market in the world is China, which consumes more beer than any other nation. However, that doesn’t mean the Chinese are big beer drinkers; only that there are more people in China than anywhere else. Beer companies are trying to take advantage of that market by making beer a popular social drink instead of “something you only drink to get drunk.”

Denmark: In April of 2010, workers at the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen went on strike to protest new rules limiting their workday beer consumption to lunchtime only. The strike ended a few days later when management promised to meet with the union.
USA: The US state with the highest per capita beer consumption is Nevada, at 44 gallons a year per person. However, you can imagine a lot of that is consumed by tourists. The next highest state is New Hampshire at 43 gallons per person per year.
Germany: The beer brewed in German homes for thousands of years was ale, until about 500 years ago when lager became popular. There is no written evidence of the earliest beer, but a Bavarian grave dating to about 800 BC contained beer made from bread. When the Roman Empire invaded Europe, soldiers found the residents of what would become Germany were already mass-producing beer.

(Image credit: Flickr user Eli Duke)

Antarctica: The McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica has three bars, although only one, Gallagher’s Pub, serves beer year-round. In December, as new supplies come in, old or spoiled beer is destroyed by driving nails into the cans. There are competitions to see who is the best nail-driver!

Third largest gold nugget in the world discovered in Australia

Journalist Jeroen van Bergeijk, who profiled me for a Dutch magazine a few years ago, has been keeping me up to date on his new life to Australia. His wife is taking a winemaking class there, and to pass the time, Jeroen has been prospecting for gold. He told me, "after weeks of metal detecting, I only found about 2 grams of gold, but hey, it's a start."
Another local gold prospector has gotten a bit more lucky.
Says Jeroen:

A Perth-based goldbuyer bought and sold the worlds third largest nugget here recently. These things are EXTREMELY rare. This thing weighed 23 kg (gold value alone around 860.000 US dollars). There's only two in the world that are heavier. This particular nugget was sold privately to an undisclosed buyer in the US within 24 hrs. The nugget had been found a couple of weeks ago with a metal detector somewhere in the goldfields around here. Through various tests it had been established that the thing has a 92% purity.

The third largest gold nugget in the world

Spontaneously combustive plant sets house on fire

After more than a month, the cause of a house fire in Greene County is now known. Fire investigators say a July 25th fire was caused by spontaneous combustion. When investigators started searching for an origin they say it started in the same spot where a plant was sitting.

"Spontaneous combustion is something where you have to have a lot of variables come together and it has to be just right," said Jonesboro Fire Department Fire Marshall Jason Wills. "It looked to me like someone had come up on my front porch and started a fire," said homeowner Brian Duncan. Wills said it's rare, but spontaneous combustion does happen. "It happens in organic material in the process of decomposition," said Wills.

That process lets off heat and with the help of the sun can get hot enough to catch fire. The heat of the fire caused some of the glass in the front door to break allowing the smoke to penetrate the house. "We basically had to have the whole house painted on the inside, floors repaired, carpet repaired," said Duncan.

$20,000 in damage later, Duncan is warning his friends and family members about spontaneous combustion. "It's something that does happen, but this is the first one in our area that I'm aware of," said Wills. Wills also said he doesn't want this to alarm people. For something like this to happen a lot of variables have to line up just right.

Cash pours out of burst pipe in Chennai

It had all the ingredients of an Indian comic thriller. Early in the morning, a lorry laden with wood rams a pipeline and it bursts. Then, along with water, currency notes come gushing out. Soon, rumours spread that money is pouring out of a pipeline and people rush in to collect the notes. There is chaos and traffic in the area is brought to a halt. The drama, that unfolded on the Vyasarpadi bridge early on Tuesday, lasted nearly 30 minutes. The police said later that some thieves had hidden the currency notes under the pipe that was hit by the lorry.

According to the police, a lorry from Andhra Pradesh was headed towards Choolai to unload its load of logs at a few companies there. Thanks to the ongoing construction work on the new four-lane Vyasarpadi bridge, the traffic moved slowly in both directions. The many potholes underneath the bridge also contributed to the slow movement.

The driver of the wood-laden lorry while trying to avoid hitting another vehicle moving ahead, turned left and hit a pipeline underneath the railway bridge. The pipeline burst and water gushed out. Also, all of a sudden, currency notes in the denominations of Rs 20, 50 and 100, totalling nearly Rs 5,000, came out. The notes scattered all over, around 6.30 am. Several two-wheeler riders stopped and collected the cash. The news then spread like wildfire and scores of people from areas like Sathyamurthy Nagar and Vyasarpadi made a beeline to the spot. They abandoned their vehicles by the roadside and began gathering the wet currency notes. The resultant traffic snarl lasted nearly half an hour.

"There was complete chaos as the air was full of sounds. Initially, everyone thought the pipeline was full of cash. When there were no more currency notes, some of them even tried to break the pipeline further. Later, it was found that some thieves had hidden the currency notes behind the pipeline which may then have gushed out with the water," a middle level police officer said. Since the incident happened underneath the railway bridge, the Korukkupet railway police took up the case and later took the wood-laden lorry and its driver to the police station for further inquiry.

F-22 Double Rainbow

Skill, timing, and the sun came together in this air show photograph by Bernardo Malfitano

An F-22 at Miramar at the top of a loop. He is pulling so many Gs, the low pressure air over the fuselage (that is “sucking” the airplane into the loop) gets cold enough for the water to condense… And the angle is just right for sunlight to undergo total internal refraction and make rainbow colors around the airplane (although I had to under-expose quite a bit for the effect to be visible).

The picture won second place in the Museum of Flight photo contest.

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'Double rainbow' guy goes corporate

'Double rainbow' guy goes corporate

Paul "Bear" Vasquez pitches a way to capture a "full-on double rainbow, all the way across the sky." 

His new video 

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