links for 2006-01-31
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“Researchers have found that the shape of the human skull has changed significantly over the past 650 years.”
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on Academic Freedom
1/31/2006
1/30/2006
Changes in Human Skull Shape Over 30 Generations?
Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: Expanding Heads and Shrinking Faces:
From the BBC news story Time changes modern human’s face:
Researchers have found that the shape of the human skull has changed significantly over the past 650 years. [Nature article]Modern people possess less prominent features but higher foreheads than our medieval ancestors.
Writing in the British Dental Journal, the team took careful measurements of groups of skulls spanning across 30 generations.
The scientists said the differences between past and present skull shapes were ’striking’. [more]
[update:] I’m not that timely after all. I now notice that Afarensis posted on this on the 27th and 29th.
links for 2006-01-30
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via Doug
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Top censored news stories of 2005
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(From The New York Times, Tuesday, August 4, 1998) Dr. Theodore P. Hill asks his mathematics students at the Georgia Institute of Technology to go home and either flip a coin 200 times and record the results, or merely pretend to flip a coin and fake 200
1/29/2006
links for 2006-01-29
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So, empty the cat box already
Happy Year of the Dog
It’s Chinese New Year!
Begins on or near the second new moon after the Winter Solstice. The celebration lasts 15 days in China, but usually just until the following weekend in the US.
1/28/2006
Four Things
Four Things
OK, Dave and Garret both tagged me… These are not prioritized or especially well thought out. 
Four jobs I’ve had:
Drive-In Theater Projectionist
Hard-rock Prospector
Boy Scout District Executive
Archaeologist
Four movies I can watch over and over again:
The Day the Earth Stood Still/Fantastic Planet
Dr. Strangelove
The Pink Panther
Star Wars Trilogy
Seven Samauri
(yes, I can count)
Four places I’ve lived:
(This could be a long list)
Cortez, CO
Osage City, KS
Chemult, OR
Las Vegas, NV
Four TV shows I love:
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (Joel and Early Mike)
The Office
The X-Files (Seasons 1-4)
Babylon 5 and Star Trek: TNG
Four places I’ve vacationed:
Mount Tamalpais State Park, CA
That is 100% of the vacations I have taken since I was 16. I need to remedy that.
Four of my favorite dishes:
Chile Verde Pork at Frank and Fina’s Cocina in Las Vegas
Peanut Butter (fresh-ground) and Jelly (Strawberry preserves) sandwiches
Krusteze water-mix pancakes and apple-cured bacon
Audrey’s home-made pizza
Four sites I visit regularly:
I read a lot of feeds, but these either don’t have one or I find it easier to just go there…
Maps of Recent Earthquake Activity in California-Nevada
Four places I’d rather be right now:
Hawai’i
New Zealand and Australia
Yucatán Peninsula (Yucatán, Campeche, and Quintana Roo)
Give me a wall map of the world and a dart
Four bloggers I’m tagging:
(apologies if you have already done this, everyone else I read has been tagged)
Mr. Random (I’m not sure if Ken will see this)
links for 2006-01-28
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Auschwitz concentration camp liberated on this dayin 1945
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Maybe if I watch it enough times, I will remember it for more than 20 sec.
1/27/2006
Canadian Election Results: What They Mean and What Comes Next
Dave Pollard on the Canadian Election Results: What They Mean and What Comes Next
What progressive Canadians can do:
- Demonstrate in the streets against Canadian participation in Star Wars — and have the damning facts about this wacko proposal so critics can’t argue you’re ‘just anti-American’.
- Get your opposition MPs to oppose tax cuts that will put Canada back into deficits — most Canadians are opposed to stealing from their children.
- Before he gets too cozy with the US neocons, keep reminding Harper (and the media) that the US still owes us $5B in illegally diverted duties on lumber exports — a theft hundreds of times larger than that pulled off by the handful of corrupt Liberals in the scandal that allowed Harper’s win.
- Join the Liberal Party and find a candidate, any candidate who can beat Ignatieff as the next Liberal leader. I’ll offer my recommendations next week.
- Get your MP, of any political stripe, to support an independent bill to introduce proportionate representation in federal elections.
- Until proportionate representation is introduced, consider getting the NDP and the Greens to merge into one party.
Once again, wherever you look, voters seem doomed to repeat past mistakes, and the parties and media seem determined to keep them uninformed. And you wonder why I am so often pessimistic about our future.
It Was Twenty (and 39) Years Ago Today
7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster [Space News - MSNBC.com]
It didn’t explode, the crew didn’t die instantly and it wasn’t inevitable…
I didn’t see it but I was listening to it live on the radio while I was driving. I had to pull into a parking lot and park, I was so distressed and shaking so much.
Quite sad. [Thanks, Dr. Liz]
[via Susan:] I am also reminded that today is the 39th anniversary (1967) of the Apollo 1 fire.
She also pointed to this NASA ‘Day of Rememberance‘ flash page.
Holocaust Memorial Day
Because of Scott, I found out that “Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”