You can watch an interview with Michael Moore on Real time with Bill Maher on Evil Bobby. I don’t know where they get their facts from, but according to Moore, the US is just behind Costa Rica [in health care], and right before Slovenia.
Would sure be interesting to see the study he was referring to.
What are the mediators that shape our demise, our ability to think independently, to integrate and resolve complex situations? What is the cause that we stop being righteous and fair? How do we loose proverbial teeth in asserting what’s right? Why do not we see things for what they are? What happens to once sharp minded people as they grow old? Why do we let ourselves be extorted? Why do we not try to mend things as they progress? Why do not we act?
There are some people who claim fish aren’t meat. I’m not sure how many people take that statement or that sort of people seriously, but here’s an interesting tidbit.
If you go to the page of Tree of life project and click on Sarcopterygii (which means the fins (pterygii) have meat (sarco) - a rough translation), you’ll find that at the bottom of the cladogram,there are terrestrial vertebrates, like mammals, birds, reptiles…
Yes, our clade is a sister taxon of Nemo, the adorable clown fish.
Sarcopterygii and Actinopterygii are joined together in a clade called “Osteichythyes”, which means “bony fishes”. This means that we’re scientifically, well… fishes.
Extreme caution! Politradar has detected heavy activity in the States, indicating an emergence of a new politician of female gender. A horrendous combination to have, for sure. The politradar first picked up first signs of the creation when the subject started reading the Bible, and later, as a consequence, found God (funny, everyone was looking everywhere else). She has also stopped indulging in Earthly pleasantries ever since she got out of jail. She is now a totally different person. Our calculations indicate that this person will become a major political player in less than a decade. Don’t believe us? It has happened before.
This is getting silly:
US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues’ work, have friends outside the United States, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to administrators by the FBI.
Federal agents are visiting some of the New England’s top universities, including MIT, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts, to warn university heads about the dangers of foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive academic research.
FBI is offering to brief faculty, students and staff on what it calls “espionage indicators” aimed at identifying foreign agents.
Unexplained affluence, failing to report overseas travel, showing unusual interest in information outside the job scope, keeping unusual work hours, unreported contacts with foreign nationals, unreported contact with foreign government, military, or intelligence officials, attempting to gain new accesses without the need to know, and unexplained absences are all considered potential espionage indicators.
Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to monitor their colleagues for signs of suspicious behaviour and report any concerns to the FBI or the military.
What is this, ze zird Reich?
Notice how Israelis fight terrorists. Luckily they knocked them down before they had the chance to fire their shoulder propelled grenade and detonate nuclear weapons. See the video here.
Youtube can suck the proverbial phallus:
Note that this isn’t the first vid that has been taken off the air. Why? Who benefits? When you answer that question, you get to the bottom of things.
As some of you might have noticed, the U.S. just got the fourth branch of government. Joining the Judicial, Executive and Legislative branch, the White House just announced that they’re creating a new, improved branch. It will be called Super Branch, immune from rocket fire, political satire and any oversight.
Read more about it here
We visited some nice karst meadows a few days ago. My camera isn’t currently available, so I’m posting pics from an anonymous photographer. With her consent, of course. Sorry, no butterfly pictures.
This is what I found today “around” my home:
Ochlodes venatus
Limenitis reducta
Limenitis camilla
Pieris rapae
Pieris napi
Leptidea sinapis/reali
Melanargia galathea
Maniola jurtina
Argynnis adippe
Argynnis paphia
Clossiana dia
Lycaena phlaeas (mating pair)
Kanetisa circe (first personal sighting around here)
Iphiclides podalirius (first personal sighting around here)
Pieris brassicae
Brenthis daphne
Satyrium pruni Didn’t catch it, so the ID may be dubious. Damn! By phenology (time of occurance) it COULD be S. pruni, as it’s a bit late for a similar species, S. spini.
Polygonum c-album
Neptis rivularis
Aphantopus hyperantus
Gonepteryx rhamni
Mellicta athalia (aurelia?!) I have to recheck these two.
Araschnia levana
Brenthis ino
Pergarge aegeria
Coenonympha arcania Interesting enough, no C. pamphilus this time.
Melitaea diamina
Polyommatus icarus
My father and I (well, mostly him) cut grass, the old style, with a scythe, a few days ago. It was really time for it, as stems started to fall down under the weather, and any prolonged waiting would make cutting almost impossible. Yesterday, the hay was caught by rain, and it had just started to dry well as we speak. I presume this because distinctive smell of hey rushed through my window. At least one of components that gives this distinctive smell is cumarin.
An interesting data. When cutting the grass, my father found about half a dozen Anguis fragilis (slow worm), and I found one too, although I was at it for only 30 minutes. There were some little ones there, too.
As I was rushing to the city (Ljubljana), I, in a haste, pulled on some socks and my army boots and off I went. I first felt a slight fold due to a sock that eventually faded away. Or so I thought. As I pulled the boots off a few minutes ago, I noticed something I hadn’t expected, but wasn’t surprised either, on my socks.
And this fell out when I turned over the boot.
Yes, it’s a cricket, Acheta domestica. This one must have escaped my not so escape proof cricket cage. Luckily I don’t keep scorpions as pets.
It surely isn’t the time to be thinking about this, but it has crossed my mind (numerous times) during the course of the week.
Ever wondered how animals manage to survive in the cold of winter without warm mittens and scarfs? Since they don’t come in beetle size, luck would have it that they’re specially adapted to life challenges thrown their way in sub-zero temperatures.
Animals employ a number of tactics to survive in harsh, cold environment. One, used by say birds, is to get your ass feathers out of there. But seriously, for animals that do not migrate, a more robust, terminator approach is needed. I’ll focus on three methods employed, namely preemptive ice crystal formation, supercooling and antifreeze deployment.
Supercooling
This method is the ninja method I would use if I were a beetle or a fish living under the Arctic ice. The idea behind this principle is to prevent formation of ice all together. For ice crystals to form, they need something to start from. (Artificial snow needs nuclei for crystals to form as well). And animals use that to their advantage. By excluding nuclei (which serve as starting points for crystal formation) from their tissues (extracellular spaces and cells), they can allow their tissue temperatures to reach sub-zero values and not freeze. However, should a nuclei appear, no animal can move fast enough to escape the wrath of ice sludge. Milk shake anyone? This method is often complemented by anti-freeze method, by accumulating glycerol or some other substance with anti-freeze properties. I turn to those next.
Anti-freeze
A method known to many from various every day scenarios, like sprinkling of salt on roads in winter, or putting anti-freeze liquid into your car. Certain organic molecules like glycerol or some glycoproteins prevent ice crystals not from forming, but from becoming too large. As ice crystals grow, they can damage cell wall, which can have deletarious consequences. These molecules lower the temperature where these crystals start to grow.
Preemptive formation of ice crystals
This is a method where animals form crystals (sounds, silly and counter productive, huh? Bare with me), but not in the cells. Rather in extracellular spaces. How does this help, one might ask? As it turns out, by supplying nuclei (pl. for nucleus, as you might have figured out by now) to the intracellular space, crystals start to form, excluding solutes. This raises the osmotic pressure in the extracellular level which causes water to move out of the cells (through membranes) by osmosis which in turns rises osmotic pressure in the cells, lowering the freezing point! This protects the cells from forming ice crystals that can damage it.
Different cell types are differently resistant to ice crystal formation. This is why they can deep freeze blood and sperm, but not Disney. Another valid point! The speed of ice crystal formation is also essential. Faster = smaller crystals = better.
We spent four days in Piran at the Marine biology station counting plankton and benthos.
We used a plankton (250 micron) net to haul on-board five loads of plankton, collected some rocks and identified whatever we could, and finally, we dredged shell bottom and soft bottom. Former was way richer in macrozoofauna. I don’t feel like going through the species we encountered, but I estimate, all in all, to about 200.
We spent a lot of time counting plankton. A lot. Based on our findings I estimated that in northern Adriatic sea, about 20x50 km and 20 m deep, lives about 1014 phyllopod crustaceans (sea water flees) (Penilia avirostris). Other common animals were Acartia clausii (a copepod), Doliolum muelleri (thaliacean tunicate - a salp), Oikopleura dioica (apendicularid tunicate) and some others.
We found that our samples differed to some degree, indicating that you can’t sample the same fauna in two hauls with the net we used, probably due to water currents.
I occasionally took the opportunity to go snorkeling, but that was limited to late hours of the day. We worked from 9 am to 10 pm on day one, 11 pm on day two and midnight (fun and joy of statistics) on the third day. You can imagine there was little time and sometimes energy, to do all the things one has set out to do. Unfortunately no one wanted to go diving with me, even though we could get all the equipment.
Also, my snorkle was having fun with me, letting in water, which made the experience… less pleasant, and let’s leave it at that.
On day 4 we visited the mariculture I’ve been familar with to some degree. I was there in previous years with the station when they studied the effect of mariculture “ponds” on sediment underneath it. It’s amazing to see the way fish (Dicentrarchus labrax) feed - swimming in circle and creating a number of eddies on the water surface. The power of 20k fish!
I’ve been a naughty boy… again. I should have studied, but I really had to take advantage of the beautiful sunny weather. Went butterfly and dragonfly hunting, and then some more. 9 pics inside.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Cuba was on the verge of a “major transition,” and chided Spain on Friday for not doing more to support dissidents in the communist island nation.
I wonder, how much is the U.S. doing to support dissidents in communist China? C’mon Condy [govt], enough with the crap.
Due to exam period I can barely find time for things I normally do, but I finally managed to complete the task I took upon my shoulders months ago. Web site for Slovenian butterfly study and conservation society now includes over 150 (ok, 151) pages with butterfly images.
The next thing to sort out is text layout. I still need to figure out how to change the position, and so forth, of the text. I suspect this will involve some php editing and I will get right to it - as soon as I study some more. There is really no time to waste, as this has been the deciding factor for the lack of posts recently. Hopefully I’ll be back on track before the end of the month
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