Teleidoscope

Wed, Aug 20, 2008

Magpies

Posted at 12:31 pm MDT to Current Events

This is cool. There are only a few species that are known to recognise themselves in mirrors (as opposed to thinking they are seeing another animal). Humans, apes, dolphins and elephants are all large brained mammals.

Now scientists have shown that european magpies can recognise themselves in mirrors, even though they have very small brains by mammalian standards, and a very different brain organization.

The test was pretty straightforward. They put little stickers on the birds, on their necks under their chins where they could not see them directly. If there was no mirror, the birds did nothing. If the sticker was black, and blended into the feathers, the birds did nothing. If the sticker was a contrasting color that the bird could notice in the mirror, it pecked or scratched it off, then stopped pecking or scratching.

So they clearly knew the bird in the mirror was them.

I wonder if magpies have a way to tell each other: "Hey, dude. You have a shmutz on your chin"?

Equally cool: there are links in the comments of the item I linked that lead to scientific records of magpies (both european and american) having funerals when their neighbors die.

The aliens are among us.

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Wed, Aug 13, 2008

Primary Results

Posted at 9:12 am MDT to Current Events

The state primaries were yesterday.

Jared Polis won for the Democrats in my district. I am pleased that we have avoided both the surrogate Republican and the Democratic machine candidate.

And the good people of Colorado Springs seem to have experienced a rush of brains to the head, since they declined to nominate wingnut Douglas Bruce (the only man ever censured by the state senate) for another term.

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Wed, Aug 06, 2008

Good news, Bad News

Posted at 4:59 pm MDT to Current Events

Sometimes it seems like every time there is evidence of civilization in this country, it comes along with evidence of bigoted idiots.

Acording to a link on Language log the union at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Shelbyville, Tennesee recently signed a new contract that provides 8 holidays including Eid-al-Fitr, the last day of Ramadan (the eighth holiday was previously Labor Day. The other holidays are New Year's, MLK, Memorial Day, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the employee's birthday). There are only 250 Muslims among the 1200 members of the union, so I think that union includes some nice civilized people: the new contract was approved by 80% of the members.

On the other hand, the Executive Director of "English First" denounced the contract as "multiculturalism run amok".

Hmmm. I wonder if the union knows that because Muslims don't use a leap month like the Jewish and Chinese calendars, Eid-al_fitr should happen 13 times in 12 Gregorian years? I wonder if Tyson knows?

In other news, according to John Scalzi on tor.com, scientists have found a lot of lowland gorillas in a previously unexplored swamp in Africa.

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Thu, Jul 31, 2008

Semi-Ept

Posted at 1:43 pm MDT to Current Events

Interesting.

The Shafroth campaign has enough awareness of the blogoverse to have someone scanning for mentions of him in blogs, but they respond to what they say are inaccuracies in an email.

Apparently my little 'add a comment' link is merely decorative. Or else maybe they don't want to commit to a public discussion?

They included an offer of a followup phone-call, if I will provide them with a number to call. I think not. I am sufficiently unimpressed by their website, and I have no intention of getting on a list consenting to incoming spam-calls.

I'm not going to quote from the email either: I assume if they wanted a public discussion they would have used the comments, so I am going to respect their privacy.

Somehow this reminds me of those bozos who were claimed to be representing the blogging world in negotiations with the AP, but you needed to use email or the telephone to get information about them.

I should probably check my logs and find out if anyone is actually reading this blog these days besides the handful I more or less know about.

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Democratic Primary

Posted at 9:07 am MDT to Current Events

There are three Democrats in the race for my local Congressional District: Jared Polis, Joan Fitz-Gerald, and Will Shafroth.

A few weeks ago I was called by a political poll about the race. As far as I could tell from the questions they asked, Will Shafroth was running on a platform of having a wife and kids, not on policy matters. I found that a little odd and suspicious until this morning, when I checked wikipedia on all three candidates. The article on Jared Polis describes him as 'openly gay'. Suddenly all the 'family' questions made sense. Shafroth was running on a "I am a man and not gay' platform". Ewww.

According to Shafroth's website, he has been endorsed by both Denver newspapers, which swing much farther to the right than the Boulder area that the Representative will actually be representing. This would suggest to me that he is the surrogate Republican in the race (this is a fairly solid Democratic seat) even if the push-poll questions had not made me suspicious.

I'm having trouble deciding between Polis and Fitz-Gerald.

I like Jared Polis' policies on various issues, and his website seems to address more of them and in more detail than Fitz-Gerald does. He has been a successful creator of several businesses and worked as head of the State Board of Education (an elected post), and created a foundation that, among other educational endeavors, supports education for immigrant children and homeless and at-risk children. He has also pledged not to take PAC money.

He seems competent (unlike Shrub's business background of repeated failures), and I like his ideas. He has a well-done personal website and one for his educational foundation as well as the political one that's tied to the campaign, so he seems to be a resident of the 21st century. But he does lack legislative experience.

Fitz-Gerald was the first woman President of the Colorado State Senate, and is very plugged into the old-style Democratic organization. She was previously a County Clerk (in a strongly Republican county) who introduced Vote-by-Mail to Colorado. She has most of the big endorsements from Democratic politicians and unions.

Legislative experience is desirable, but I am very disappointed with the way the organization Democrats in Congress have failed to do the things we elected them to do in 2006. They threw away two years in which they could have made corrections to the appalling course this country has been on. Legislative experience is way too likely to mean 'business as usual' in all of the worst ways.

I think I am going to vote for Polis in the primary.

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Thu, Jul 17, 2008

Sean Tevis for Kansas

Posted at 7:52 pm MDT to Current Events

A liberal inhabitant of the 21st Century and the Internet is running for State Representative in Kansas against an incumbent, who is anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, pro-censorship and pro-'intelligent design in schools'. He has a fundraising website in the style of the XKCD comic, and is trying to get 3000 donors by July 28 (according to the site, no candidate for State Representative has ever had more than 644 donors) partly because setting a record will get him publicity.

He was told he needed $26000. And calculated that $500 from two people he knew plus an average $8.34 each would put him over the top

According to the website, he currently has just under 2900 donors.

I think Kansas would benefit from having someone to counterbalance the creationists.

I recommend clicking through to see the website, even if you don't donate.

I also recommend XKCD.

I heard about this on Pharyngula, a science/liberal/atheist blog.

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Sun, Jun 15, 2008

Floods

Posted at 8:41 am MDT to Current Events

Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Lighton the Iowa floods:

You know another big difference between this and Katrina? In New Orleans, the official hurricane evacuation plan was "Everyone who has a car, use it to get out of town." The ones who stayed were the poor, the helpless, the stubborn, the tourists, and some emergency personnel. In Iowa, you've got the whole community and its resources.

The thread has some great comments, and links to some wonderful/horrible photos of the flooding. Also an interesting playlist.

The odd thing about the saturday photos is that it was a bright, sunny day with a blue sky, and still the water was rising. It makes for a moment of cognitive dissonance: I think movie/TV visual shorthand may tie clouds and flooding more tightly together than is really the case. And of course, in a snow-melt flood, sun would be exactly what you didn't want.

---

And while I'm doing current events links, John Scalzi on "Whatever" had a wonderful rant on Fox News stupidity on Thursday that has been linked far and wide. (But that doesn't make it any less wonderful.)

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Mon, Jun 02, 2008

Earth-sized Extrasolar Planet Detected

Posted at 5:35 pm MDT to Current Events

According to Stein at the Dynamics of Cats Sci Blog, there has been a report at the AAS meeting of a small planet orbiting a very small star about 3000 light years from here. The reported probable size is 3.3 Earth masses (With a range of probable size from 1.7 Earth masses to 8.2. The gravtity lensing was pretty fuzzy.).

If someone had told me when I was taking astronomy classes back in college that we would be detecting Earth-sized planets 3000 lightyears away in my lifetime, I would have thought they were nuts.

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Thu, May 29, 2008

Mama Fish

Posted at 6:08 pm MDT to Current Events

Another link to a blog with a link to a cool scienctific paper with wonderful illos.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula discusses a report on Materpiscis attenboroughi, a fossil fish from the Devonian (417 to 354 million years ago) that's so completely preserved thereis an identifiable embryonic fish complete with umbilical cord preserved inside it.

There's an artist's rendition of the fish giving birth, besides a photograph of the fossil and dsome diagrams showing what you are looking at.

And in the comments there is a neat explanation of why a retrovirus (ERV3) being present in our genome (built into our chromosomes) makes viviparity possible: the genes from the retrovirus are what keep the mother's immune system from attacking the father's genetic material in the baby. (Mostly: my Mom was RH negative and my Dad was RH positive, in the days when about all they could do was worry about babies after the first one... )

It seems that genes from retroviruses are also involved in creating the structure of the placenta.

And there is a family of asexual fishes called bdelloids that has hijacked genes from all kinds of other creatures (funguses! plants!) other bdelloids (which sounds like sex the long way around).

Biology and evolution are weird and wonderful.

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Wed, May 28, 2008

Azhdarchids

Posted at 4:29 pm MDT to Current Events

Azhdarchids were huge pterosaurs: as tall a giraffes when they were standing on all fours. Darren Naish, who writes Tetrapod Zoology, ones of my favorite blogs, has just published a formal article about how Azhdarchids lived. He has blogged about it, but the formal article is also available on-line, for free, at PLoS ONE, which is an online open-access journal.

It has free pictures, which is great: the articles co-author Mark Witton, is one of the best current dinosaur artists. Who has a great Flickr site with lots of his paintings and commentary.

They got written up in New Scientist. Also the Sun, a British tabloid that tweaked their human vs. azhdarchid size comparison drawing to have the human be a recognizable (I assume) British soccer star.

These critters weighed 250 kg and were able to fly, but Naish and Witton believe they did most of their hunting walking around like storks.

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Fri, May 23, 2008

Robert Asprin, RIP (1946-2008)

Posted at 4:38 pm MDT to Current Events

Besides being a good writer, Robert Asprin was an acquaintance of mine. Though I'm not sure I was an acquaintance of his. I suspect there are a lot of people in that situation.

I remember him more as a filker than an author, and I think he was mostly out of the SCA before I joined it.

I first encountered him at the first WorldCon I attended, Iguanacon in Phoenix in 1978. He was one of a group of filkers singing in the main lobby of the con hotel. (This was before conventions started programming space and time for filkers to perform in.)

I hung out with the filkers at several other cons where Bob held court. He was amazing, able to sing and talk through the night. And he made an excellent de facto master of ceremonies, making sure that anyone who looked like they might have a song got their chance to perform.

He had something to do with setting up the first Filk Con (which I attended), too. I think that was more as instigator than actual organizer. If Bob had real genius, it was in his ability to catalyze communities. Filkers. The SCA Dark Horde. Thieves' World shared fiction. He was one of those people who networks the universe.

The world is smaller with him gone. And quieter.

I learned to drink Irish whisky while hanging around with Bob and his crowd of filkers. I'm glad it's possible to get Tullamore Dew again (half the distillery burned down, and they weren't exporting it for a number of years). Nothing else would be appropriate to toast Bob's passing.

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Tue, Nov 20, 2007

Myspace Suicide

Posted at 5:19 pm MST to Current Events

Sunday Nov 18, 2007

The media and blogoverse have been full of a story about some evil people who drove a 13-year old girl to suicide. The Making Light entry has a lot of useful links to articles for anyone who hasn't seen them yet.

The people who tormented me in junior high school didn't have the internet available, but they did what they could with fake phone calls and notes left in my locker.

Looking back, I don't think I was quite sane, and certainly not 'normal' (whatever normal means) in junior high school, but some of that was a reaction to the way I was being harassed. Years of never quite feeling safe takes its toll...

In the first few years that I lived here in Colorado I took a bunch of odd evening courses on verious topics: spinning, weaving, tarot, herblore. A woman I had been in high-school with showed up at the first session of one of the courses (I think it was the herb course). After class she took me aside and apologized for the way I had been treated in high school, and never returned for the next session.

(I haven't taken any evening classes in ages. I took one phase of a course on Hardanger needlework when I was working in Minneapolis, but the second phase's schedule slipped so that my contract would have ended before the class would end. )

After the Columbine shootings, Slashdot ran a series of articles called Voices From The Hellmouth about people who were tormented in school for being different.

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Mon, Nov 12, 2007

Give One Get One

Posted at 10:33 pm MST to Current Events

The One Laptop Per Child project has developed rugged, inexpensive laptop computers for use in schools where technology is otherwise unavailable. In the process they have made technological advances in both hardware and software. Special low-power swivel displays that are still legible in sunlight. Mesh networking. Extreme power efficiency. New ways of handling security to make them harder to hack.

The first generation of the laptops are now in production. They are a bright lime green, partly to make them readily identifiable, so it will be trickier to put them on the black market, partly to make them fun for the kids. I imagine later generations of them may be done in different colors so that the feature mix can be told apart.

I'm not sure which countries the first million or so are scheduled for -- Microsoft has been trying to bribe and strongarm countries into not taking them, because they don't run Windows -- so the list keeps mutating.

Geeks in the developed world have been frustrated because they couldn't get samples of the hardware to experiment with. But just now, for a 14 days period the Foundation is making a limited number of the PCs available on a "get one give one" basis: you pay for two laptops, and one is shipped to you and the other to a child somewhere in the third world.

I ordered mine today. I'm glad I have small hands, since the keyboards are designed for children.

The original goal was to create a $100 laptop. Economies of scale haven't kicked in yet, and the dollar has tanked, so the current price for two laptops, for purposes of the program, is just under $400, plus shipping. I think the price of the donated laptop is tax deductible.

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Fri, Oct 12, 2007

Al Gore and the Nobel

Posted at 10:40 pm MDT to Current Events

Someone pointed out that Al Gore is the first person to get an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, in the same year and for roughly the same body of work. Also an Emmy, and a David Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Filmmaking, and a Spanish award.

I think he is running out of different awards to win.

There is satiric article online about the Supreme Court awarding the Nobel to Shrub instead. (Molly Irvin would have loved this.)

There is one other person who won both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize: George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel for Literature in 1925. But he did not win his Oscar until 1938.

People are speculating that the Nobel committee were sending messages this year: the Medical Nobel was for stem-cell research, and the Peace Prize is for global warming.

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Thu, Oct 11, 2007

Patent Trolls

Posted at 10:27 pm MDT to Current Events

Patent trolls are companies that buy up old patents for the purpose of using them for extortion, not creation or manufacturing. According to the latest article at Groklaw, a patent troll has filed suit against Redhat and Novell.

Funny thing, that. Last week Steve Ballmer, head of Microsoft (a company that averages payments of a billion dollars a year for violating other peoples patents) stated that someone would sue "Linux" over patents. People pointed out that there had never been a patent suit against Linux or FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).

And now, lo and behold, it happens.

The problem with patents is that they are mostly used these days as weapons of mutually assured destruction for each others' product lines, and patent trolls have no products except litigation. Things could get expensive before this is over.

But they seem to have picked a bad patent for their opening bid: people are already mentioning prior art. And there is also the question of why they sued Redhat and Novell, neither of whom were major players in the development of the software that supposedly infringes. Both companies are mostly distributors.

Groklaw is going to be busy... and I hope the MoFos of Morrison & Foerster have a strong patent division. It seems that SCO has just been a warm-up.

May they all be judged.
May their actions be publicly weighed against truth and fairness.

May those who act out of greed watch the treasures they reach for turn to dust and ash as they grasp for them. (Earth)
May those who scheme to twist justice and equity be drowned in their own corruption. (Water)
May those who act out of arrogance be driven forth into a blaze of public scorn. (Flame)
May those who seek to profit without recompense from the ideas of others find their hopes swept away as by hurricanes. (Storm)
May those who deal falsely see the fruits of their own actions turn to rend them like wolves. (The Wood)

May they be judged in their acts and in their words and in their hearts, in their going out and their coming in. May they be judged.

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Mon, Sep 17, 2007

MOFOS

Posted at 10:50 pm MDT to Current Events

Novell's litigation lawfirm is Morrison & Foerster www.mofo.com. They are switching in the special team for the SCO bankruptcy hearing tomorrow. Five attorneys (possibly in addition to others that are already registered for the Delaware courts). Two full partners, three associates. Four of them are bankruptcy specialists (including a member of the American Bar Association Bankruptcy and Chapter 11 Committee and the head of the Mofo New York office Business department, who has published articles on bankruptcy.

And the fifth member of the team has some interesting expertise:

Ms. Dyas earned her J.D. from the University of Texas Law School in 2002, and her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. Her doctoral research analyzed the linguistic features of deception under oath in English and certain romance languages.

Lawyers with Attitude.

There are a bunch of people from the Groklaw readership attending the hearing tomorrow. This should be interesting.

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Fri, Sep 14, 2007

SCO Declares Bankruptcy

Posted at 8:14 pm MDT to Current Events

The trial in the SCO vs. Novell case was due take place (finally) on Monday. The main purpose was to determine how much money SCO owes Novell.

Today SCO declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which puts all court proceedings on hold. They didn't even mention Novell in their list of creditors, even though the expected judgemment is undoubtably the cause of the backruptcy action. The SCO/Novell court has already determined that SCO converted -- stole -- funds belonging to Novell. Possibly as much as twice the current value of the company. The trial Monday was supposed to determine the exact amount.

So there will be no trial in Salt Lake City next week. But I suspect that the motion practice will be flying fast and thick. And I suspect Judge Kimball out in Utah is pretty thoroughly annoyed. (If he wasn't already annoyed by SCO's shenanigans.)

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Wed, Sep 05, 2007

ISO and Microsoft

Posted at 9:59 pm MDT to Current Events

Microsoft has been trying to force approval by the ISO of a standard for online documents they proposed. They have been blatantly stuffing the ballot box, and got caught engaging in outright bribes.

For now, the ISO has refused to fast-track the proposed standard. (The vote was September 2nd.)

The final vote is in February. More sleaze is expected.

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Fri, Aug 31, 2007

Luddites at SFWA

Posted at 5:22 pm MDT to Current Events

The officers of the SF Writers Association have done something very stupid and illegal. They sent DMCA takedown notices to a site called scribd.com for every document on the site that mentioned Asimov or Silverberg (not just documents that were written BY Asimov or Silverberg). This included book reviews and a course syllabus.

DMCA takedown notices can legally only be sent by the copyright owners or their legal representatives. They did not own or represent the owners of most of the documents

And forcing takedowns of reviews and such (and books that had been uploaded by their own authors) is kind of counter-productive if you want to pull in new readers for SF.

The current officers of SFWA seem to hate electronic media. To think that I once dreamed of becoming a paid SF writer and being able to join that organization.

Also discussed at Making Light.

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Mon, Aug 27, 2007

Olympia

Posted at 9:21 pm MDT to Current Events

Olympia in Greece is being threatened by forest fires that are burning up a lot of the country and have already killed more than 60 people. Some of the fires are believed to be the result of arson.

I visited Olympia during the Mediterranean cruise I took a few years ago. It was wonderful. They had fixed up Olympia for the Olympic Games earlier that year.

I hope they can at least save the museum.

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Sun, Aug 12, 2007

Big Companies

Posted at 2:42 pm MDT to Current Events

Our company, as a small suppplier, has had problems with big companies that try to dictate outrageous terms or retroactively chnage deals on us. But I don't think we have ever had to deal with outright extortion. We should probably consider ourselves lucky.

Teresa Neilsen Hayden at Making Light has a commentary on an exchange of letters between an officer of a large Australian book store chain and the head of a small publishing company. Some of the comments are a lot of fun, too.

This weekend seems to be full of examples on how not to do business:

1. (SCO) Don't sue your customers.

2. (A&R) Don't try to extort money from your suppliers at usurious interest rates. Especially, don't do it in writing.

I wonder if going to Business School sonehow destroys common sense.

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SCO PSJ

Posted at 1:32 pm MDT to Current Events

A quick recap:

SCO is the company that sued IBM for billions of dollars, claiming that Linux violated some of their UNIX copyrights. Then they sued Novell for saying that the copyrights in question actually belong to Novell. Redhat sued SCO, more or less for slandering Linux. And SCO sued some of their own customers, more or less for switching from SCO UNIX to Linux and claimed that all Linux users should pay them lots of money for the copyrighted material that was supposedly in Linux. There were also counterclaims all over the place.

After years of litigation SCO was never able to identify the copyrighted material of theirs that was supposedly in Linux.

On Friday the judge in the SCO/Novell case (same judge as for SCO/IBM) published a 110 page Preliminary Summary Judgment that Novell did own the copyrights, and decided a number of other contractual questions in Novell's favor as well. See the Groklaw report for more details.

SCO's claims against Novell are basically gone. Novell's counterclaims mostly stand, including one for conversion (i.e. theft) of license fees that SCO should have handed over to Novell.

SCO probably doesn't have the cash to pay the license fees that were withheld, much less damages asked for in Novell's counterclaims.

SCO's side of the IBM case mostly falls apart because if they didn't have the copyrights, they had no standing to sue. Some of IBM's counterclaims don't make sense any more, but others (like a Lanham act claim that SCO was engaged in the business equivalent of libel) become basically a slam-dunk.

This coming week could be very entertaining as the repercussions of the PSJ begin to take effect.

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Wed, Aug 01, 2007

I35W

Posted at 11:53 pm MDT to Current Events

A chunk of I35W in Minneapolis has fallen into the Mississippi during rush hour. It's playing hell with communications, as well as killing at least 7 people and injuring at least 60... there are about 50 vehicles still being searched for, and a freight train was crushed when the bridge fell on it.

I think the piece of the highway that fell was farther north than I have ever driven on 35W. When I worked in North Minneapolis and lived in Minnetonka, I used 494 and 694, which go around the outside of the city, for commuting, not 35 where it goes through the center. When I drove back and forth between Denver and Minneapolis I used 35W and 35 for the stretch from Minneapolis to Des Moines, but I'm fairly certain from the reports that the fallen bridge was farther north (or the reporters are confused about Twin Cities geography, which is also possible).

I hope my niece Anna is OK. I don't know what her commute is like.

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Wed, Jul 04, 2007

Olbermann's Commentary

Posted at 9:12 pm MDT to Current Events

Link found on Making Light: Olbermann's commentary on MSNBC. Titled "Bush, Cheney should resign".

I'm faintly relieved to see something like this in a mainstream news outlet. I honestly have very little hope for the near future of this country's political processes. But it is good to see that revulsion is being expressed in the official media, not just the blogosphere.

Happy Independence Day.

Sigh.

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Sun, Jul 01, 2007

Allies

Posted at 10:56 pm MDT to Current Events

There is a thread on MakingLight pointing out that official reports by US forces are now labelling all dead Iraqis as members of Al-Qaeda. One of the comments pointed out at least one case reported by the BBC where there are reports that the people actually killed were in fact allies of the Iraqi government. I won't insult the dead by describing them as allies of the US forces, since apparently the US authorities no longer recognize allies.

I am beyond being appalled by this evil war and the administration that instigated and administers it.

A line that has not yet made it into the posted bits of Techlands comes to mind: "If [he] was an animal, someone would shoot him so they could check for rabies."

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