romunov’s blog et al

tony g at The Nature Writers of Texas notes that the collared-dove (Streptopelia decaocto) is spreading through the States. The mentioned bird has been quite common for a few decades. Here is a picture of a pair. They are regular morning and evening customers at my small pond where they drink. You can often observe mated pairs, but cats take a toll on them as well and they will become widowed from time to time.

I strongly suggest you check out this clip from Countdown with K. Olbermann. Thank you Wot is it good 4.

qrswave takes a swing at 9/11 and the official story and response from the govt. You go girl.

What usually takes 20 minutes by bike, today took 90. It was a bit too windy to photograph butterflies or plants - they just wouldn’t stand still.

Apis mellifera - bee. Notice the stuffed pollen pouch on the hind leg.

Polyommatus icarus

I suspect this is from a genus of Lysandra.

And a Colias. This goup is in slovene called “senožetniki” if I recall correctly.

And these two are still waiting my attention: Epilobium angustifolium

Oenothera biennis

Special thanks to Sanja (read Sanya) for identifying them for me.

Here’s a snippet from this site.

This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.

Worth a read.

Too bad most of you won’t understand it. Thank you, honey. :*

It proves deep-held suspicions that the Gene Revolution is not about ‘solving the world hunger problem’ as its advocates claim. It’s about handing over control of the seeds for mankind’s basic food supply—rice, corn, soybeans, wheat, even fruit, vegetables and cotton—to privately owned corporations.

Let us not forget that in Iraq, it’s illegal to store your own seed to sow the next year. You have to buy from companies like Monsanto, that carries a “terminator” gene, which means, it’s viable only for one season. Can you say biofascism?

link

Here is a list(with pictures) of most Gentiana you will find in Slovenia.

Below are two “famous” plant species common in the Alps.

This is Leontopodium dioica. This flower is often mentioned in various books and movies. For example, in Band of brothers (the mini series), when they find a dead German soldier leaning on a tree trunk, someone explains to the grunt that the flower on his jacket stands for an achievement - climbing a tall mountain.

And this is pretty common here in the Alps as well. I don’t have a back story for this one. There is one - a long one - of how the plant appeared on earth, but it’s a story and I’m not about to tell, because it’s stupid. Potentilla nitida.

Wonderful writings of Burning Silo reminded me of our trip to mountains (Komna) and that I had a picture of Gentiana myself!

What you’re looking at is Gentiana clusii. It used to be endangered, but the species did recover and is now everywhere (if you know when to look).

I would just like to say that I’m a bit away. I’m having helluva time, btw! Off to the library and back to Ljubljana.

What you see here is a spider from a family called Salticidae. Their eyes can have up to four layers of receptive cells. Their vision is probably exceptional - for a spider!

A professor walking on fire reminds me of my high school biology teacher that read astrological charts.

And this is what I don’t get: How do human languages correspond to biodiversity.

When the nonprofit organization Terralingua mapped the distribution of languages against a map of the world’s biodiversity, it found that the places with the highest concentration of plants and animals, such as the Amazon Basin and the island of New Guinea, were also where people spoke the most languages.

Here’s my theory. Dense forrests like those of Amazon, or any other rain forest for that matter are quite hard to move about. This would enable the gene and culture flow to be at minimum. This enables sporadic small cultures to develope on their own, devoid of outside interference. And as these forest have a myriad of microclimates, this enables species speciation through evolution and natural selection.
I’m also a bit sceptical that humans are THAT important factor, because they’ve been inhabiting south America for about 10.000 years. A bit short time for animals and plants to adopt the new link.

Here’s an example of how can a few facts be interwined into a “probable” theory that is basically bullcrap:

Generations of the Tulalip and Yakima tribes and other Native American groups have relied on Pacific salmon as a key resource; they also value the fish very highly and harvest with forethought.

“They treat salmon with respect so that the fish return every year,” said ethnobiologist Eugene Hunn of the University of Washington.

The tribes hold annual salmon ceremonies to honor the fish. The first catch of the season is celebrated with singing, dancing, and the passing of salmon tales from generation to generation.

Yet commercial fishing has led to drastic reductions in salmon populations—some species face endangerment.

Here it is (the loony theory):
Because the conquerors killed or deported native Americans to confined reservations, the traveling salmon doesn’t hear their song and feel their dancing, so they’re not compelled to return in such great numbers as before.

Sounds pretty sensible, huh? Well, if you live in 1492 at least…

Notice how they mostly talk of animals.

It’s interesting how fewer than 1 in 10 babies in the States are overweight. As we already know, this may pose health concerns later in (shorter) life.

Sara Keng, a 29-year-old stay-at-home mother of three from Woonsocket, R.I., said she wasn’t surprised by the study’s results. She blames the increase on “super-sized'’ foods and harried parents who rely on fast foods to feed their families.

I’m not too sure that it’s the size of meals that matters the most. There may be quality factor as well. Various additives may help you grow fatter, even though you may eat moderately.

Published with reserve, it should be interesting if true:

An Irish technology firm issued a challenge to the world’s scientific community on Friday to give its verdict on technology it says smashes one of the basic laws of physics by producing “free energy.”

In layman’s terms, they get out more energy than they put in.

See Another day in the empire for a bit more details. Sooner or later there will be too much evidence showing government involvment to out flat deny such charge.

And here’s another piece to the puzzle that shows that the official 9/11 story is utter bullcrap.

What are you guys doing? I’m away for one day and there’s so much new news. Lets start with this, shall we?

The Deputy Prime Minister made the admission during talks with Labour’s Muslim MPs on how best to tackle Islamic extremism. During the 90-minute meeting, Mr Prescott briefed the MPs that the police only had enough evidence to bring serious charges against some suspects but not others.

What do “terrorists” do before bording on a suicide mission, sometimes boarding without passports? Actually, they buy cakes.

The arrested may have been infiltrated and made do a hoax run, to gather support for the “anti-terror” war.

And isn’t this interesting, a bunch of Israeli lawyers are now suing Lebanon for starting the war. Before we go any further, let us not forget that the captured soldiers were inside Lebanon. They have been breaching the Lebanese border since at least 2000.

Since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, there have been hundreds of violations of the “blue line” between the two countries. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) reports that Israeli aircraft crossed the line “on an almost daily basis” between 2001 and 2003, and “persistently” until 2006.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

This is why I hesitate to hail the “great UK arrest”. With time, more and more pieces won’t fit no matter how you turn them. Kinda like the 7/7 bombing.

And what are they hiding? Is there something that they could unearth that could damage their splendid performance?

The Government issued a stern warning to the media not to put the probe into the alleged terror plot at risk by publishing information about suspects.

And another one about the Holocaust:

Krege and his team found no evidence of individual graves, bone remains, human ashes, or wood ashes.

I might start building a database, more and more evidence is piling up that the myth is nothing but a walking pile of bovine hind excrement.

And here’s another “only democracy in the Middle East” bit for Peter.

Earlier today, August 11, the Israeli Army and Border Police shot an Israeli demonstrator with rubber bullets from close range in the head and neck, causing serious injuries. The man, who is a lawyer, was taken by the army to Tel Hasomer hospital from where he is reported to have suffered brain damage.

In total 9 people were shot with rubber bullets in a non-violent demonstration in Bil’in. Those shot included 2 villagers of Bil’in as well as citizens of Denmark, France, USA, Japan and Israel. Other people from United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark were beaten, struck with rifle butt or injured by sound grenade fragments.

They use American counting machines in Mexico.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist who claims he was robbed in the July 2 election, said the recount of 9 percent of ballot boxes was only half complete but inconsistencies from the original tallies already topped 100,000 votes.

If you have a slight interest in the battle between Evolution and ID, read the article here. Kudos to PZ Myers. How does this guy find time to blog, work and interact with bystanders and his family? I suspect he’s a robot or has invented a chilly dog that gives you energy to last you a week with no sleep.

He also posts a story on a study about various things:

They also collected other data on age, gender, education, genetic literacy, religious belief, attitude toward life, attitude toward science and technology, belief in science and technology, reservations about science and technology, and political ideology, and carried out a statistical analysis to determine the relative contribution of these variables to ignorance about evolution.

I guess Slovenia can do better.

Bullemhead reports that OLGA’s tab and chord database went offline again, thanks to DMCA.

This is how they argue:

…ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come.

What a load of crap. I search a tab because it cuts corners and because I’m not skilled enough to transcribe the music myself. It would take me too much time to figure every song out myself.

Several months ago I received an “infomail”, regarding various interesting traits from animal kingdom. The email goes on to say about the enormous pig ejaculation and the longevity of its orgasm.
I have another such insegnificant (to any non-pig breeder) data. In cephalopods, a male inserts an “arm” into felame’s mantle cavity and breaks it off. This arm is called a “heterocotyl”. It keeps ejaculating sperm (and othewise moves) for two about days. This is why they described this male’s arm as a worm species of Heterocotylus. We use the term for “intromittent appendage of all cephalopods”, says Invertebrate zoology, 7th edition.

Imagine this head line in the New York Times: Palestinian shot dead an Israeli and wound his son! Now imagine this in great big bold letters. Pretty common title, don’t you agree?

Well how about “Israeli settlers opened fire on a man and his son“?

And if this doesn’t convince you that the two-party system is up just for the show, I don’t know what will.

And yet another, what appears to be a hoax unrolls in England. Let’s see how many “strong” words they use:
thought
believed
“confident”
thought to have involved
“of some kind”
2x believe
understood to be
suspected
“interesting items”

“mass murder on an unimaginable scale”.

Check the news - wait for the country of Lebanon.

In more pleasing, yet disturbing news, US lags behind grasp of evolution and genetics. Fox “News” reports another side.

“A better explanation for the high percentage of doubters of Darwinism in America may be that this country’s citizens are famously independent and are not given to being rolled by an ideological elite in any field,”

… only on Fox.

Another here’s what I call a stupid lapsus, this time from England.
See what they have to say about some mussels developing thicker shells in response to a newly introduced crab species. This is what they have to say:

“We wanted to know, how is it that these mollusks can recognize a crab that is historically not present in North America?” Freeman said.

Evolution doesn’t work that way. Animals don’t actively fight the threat. Instead, they develop, through mutation or alternative molecule signaling, another trait, in this case, a thicker shell that prevents crabs from crushing it to smithereen. Some other mussel may develop a mounted minigun on their mantle, which would help them survive. Others would build another mechanism that would not help them fight this predator. What is left to do is that mussels “prove” that their new mechanism works. And 15 years is probably more than enough for the crabs to weed out thin shelled mussels and leave thick shelled ones intact. It’s called natural selection.

And they obviously know that:

The mussel’s inducible response to H. sanguineus reflects natural selection favoring the recognition of this novel predator through rapid evolution of cue specificity or thresholds

BUT, they go on:

The mussels most likely evolved quickly because they are used to being prey to many species in these waters.

Here’s another no brainer example of how natural selection works. If you don’t swim, you sink. Simple as that.

It would seem roofies are quite the nuisance in Greece.

Urchins are dying along the West US coast. Not good.

And here’s a history story. History is, next to biology, my second sweetheart.

The lack of police patrols and maximum-security penitentiaries didn’t translate into a lawless society, however. Murder rates per capita in 14th-century England were a fifth that of Washington D.C. in the 1990s, according to estimates by the British government.

Ok, I’m beginning to foam. I’m outta here.

If you’re an old fart like me, you probably won’t welcome any change that comes with new version(s) of various program. That was the case with new Winamp. I just don’t like if this particular program has more bells and whistles than it needs. You can download previous versions from OldVersion.com.