We had a glitch with the database server, but we’re back!
07/30/2007
links for 2007-07-30
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the peer reviewed paper…
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[via Ed]
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heh! The more you’re familiar with Myers-Briggs and its uses and misuses, the funnier this is
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add external storage via the USB port, but say goodbye to the warranty…
07/29/2007
07/28/2007
Great Moments in History, July 27, 1974
[via Mic Check Radio]
Justice begins for Tricky Dick…the House Judiciary Committee votes to recommend the first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon.
Karen Allen in Indy 4?
This just in from Kevin:
“Indiana Jones. I always knew some day you’d come walking back through my door. I never doubted that. Something made it inevitable.” (…) Official word (and picture) comes down that Karen Allen is returning as Marion Ravenwood in Indy 4, which is definitely a welcome inclusion. Update: More pics, and a Comic-Con presentation rundown, here.
Wow, great news in the fanboy nation. Thanks, Kevin!
07/27/2007
links for 2007-07-27
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Mmm, Python… [h/t Garret]
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I’ll have a look at some of these later, like the phpMyAdmin one…
07/25/2007
Humans have elegant skulls due to chance and isolation
More on the skull shape of humans. [h/t Mic Check Radio] Here is another post.
Chance and isolation gave humans elegant skulls [New Scientist]
Only chance kept us from looking like our crag-browed Neanderthal cousins. A statistical analysis suggests that the skull differences between the two species stems not from positive natural selection but from genetic drift, in which physical features change randomly, without an environmental driving force.
Some anthropologists had put the cranial differences down to natural selection arising from Neanderthals’ use of their teeth as tools, for instance, or from modern humans’ speech. To test if genetic drift could have been responsible instead, Timothy Weaver of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues compared 37 measurements of the skulls of various modern human populations with those of Neanderthals. After a comparison of the mean divergence between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals and the mean divergence among groups of modern humans, they conclude that genetic drift is responsible (Journal of Human Evolution, DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevo4l.2007.03.001).
The development of culture weakened the influence of the environment upon both Neanderthals and modern humans, says Weaver. But ultimately the two species drifted apart genetically when they became isolated from each other.
[From issue 2613 of New Scientist magazine, 24 July 2007, page 19]
links for 2007-07-25
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the ‘Pick the Brain’ site looks like a great resource [h/t Garret]
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“It expands the view of the limitless possibilities of the human brain and will hopefully help open people’s minds (so to speak) about how we think about “normal” human behavior” [h/t LBnuke]
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Many are not exactly ‘instant.’ Oh, that It were so easy.
07/24/2007
I Am Deeply Disappointed to Report This
Weekly World News Killed By Aliens, Zombie Elvis, Declining Circulation [mediabistro.com: FishbowlNY]
(…) The imaginative tabloid, which gave the world Bat Boy, Ed Anger and a woman celebrating her 7-year wedding anniversary with a space alien, is no more. They’re shuttering the publication in August. No reason was given.
(…) Unfortunately, the tabloid’s circulation sharply declined over the past five years and there’s also speculation that publisher American Media’s financial troubles might have something to do with it.
Sigh. Oh Bat Boy, we hardly knew ye!