The cow jumped over the ... wooden things made for jumping over.

I think cow jumping is going to be my new hobby--as in riding a cow and making it jump over things.

Beaver Fever ... no thank you.

Well, I don't think she knows how bad giardiasis can be.

Google's web search and the food web

The food web is re-engineered based on Google's ranking algorithms.

License to Slob

The new fashion trend for men: a slightly enlarged belly. Evidently exercise is out and it's cool to let go a little bit around the mid region. My favorite quote: "I sort of think the six-pack abs obsession got so prissy it stopped being masculine."

French Cowboys and Cowgirls

Add 2 parts French, 1 part American cowboy culture, a splash of Harley Davidson (that's right), shake for 2 minutes and you get the Festival de country music de Mirande, an American country festival in the small town of Mirande, France. How exactly, the Harley's got thrown in I don't know, but I would go.

Don't mix morphine and Wallabies

Well, not unless you want to crack open a cold one, relax, and have fun watching them hop in circles until they fall over. About half of the world's supply of legally grown poppies are grown in Tasmania. Wallabies there have been going into the fields and eating the poppies. They get high on the opium then go in circles, creating crop circles, until they crash. Deer and sheep have been known to take part in the sacred ritual as well.

Udate to "Twittering Iran's election" below

The New York Times has just published online a more extensive piece on the role of social networking, such as Twitter, in the aftermath of Iran's election. Nice, I beat the New York Times to a story.

Tweeting Iran's election

I have been following persiankiwi on Twitter and have been impressed with the real time updates as news about the activity in Iran. There is little other media coming out of the country. As the AP claims, the tweets are probably a little biased because access to the internet and/or cell phones are limited mainly to the more well to do and liberal. Nevertheless, persiankiwi has been providing many real time updates on action in the streets of Tehran right as it is happening. persiankiwi lost touch with several comrades today and at the end of the day was hiding from militia while waiting for a doctor to show up in order to take care of another friend who got on the wrong end of a baton. The pictures and video coming through Twitter links is raw and really shows the mahem.

The Origin of One Species

A new hotspot for the beginning of the human race has been identified through DNA testing: the border region of Angola and Namibia. This seems to be a little further south in Africa than previous theories suggest.

Greek Bronze

A find like this is very rare--even more so when it is bronze. A Greek fisherman netted an ancient statue from the waters around Kos and Kalymnos. Most Greek bronzes were melted at some point to re-mold into weaponry. This 2nd century BCE piece joins only a handful of recovered original Greek bronze statues.

Mansinthe

A sleepy Swiss village with lovely farm houses, and . . . Marilyn Manson: yes, the two can coexist. Although Mr. Manson has never been to the town of Kallnach in Switzerland, he is tied to it because of his love for fine absinthe. In an arrangement between the brewer's distributor and Mr. Manson, a brewer in Kallnach now produces Mansinthe. I might have to try some of this, if I can afford it. It came out in 2006 selling for $65 for 24 ounces. I am guessing that it is pricier now.

Work, work, work. Hello, boys . . .

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Some of the latest news chooses to focus on the extremely popular rally held in the honor of the coming inauguration--that hasn't happened yet. The AP is reporting that Obama's popularity around the world is already starting fall. But really, is that a surprise?

"The idealism has diminished," said Samuel Solvit, who heads an Obama support network in France. "Everyone was dreaming a little. Now people are more realistic."

Well, that is expected with all the hype that was behind his election. I have to wonder, though, if the popularity is not going too far already. The AP writer worries about: "a deepening global recession, new hostilities in the Middle East, complications in closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan." And yes, most of it is worry, but with all this going on, the soon to be president is focusing on, "performers including Bono, Beyonce and James Taylor." And we cannot forget that Stevie Wonder and Shakira were there. Sometimes it seems that there needs to be all work and no play--who cares about being a dull boy.

Sex sells, and dresses too

I just came across a couple articles that I thought should be passed around. Viagra pills are becoming all the rage in Afghanistan, and now women may register their dresses online before parties in order to avoid that horribly embarrassing moment of wearing the same dress as someone else. And some people wonder what good technology is.

Romans vs. Germans

Okay, forget all the other stuff below. This is really cool. Think of the opening scene of Gladiator. My favorite quote from the article: "We will need to take a new look at the sources." Surprisingly this happens often. The Roman defenses in the Germanic area were sparse at best, and the Romans never established, as far as we know, a definitive and stable line of defense. Add this to the fact that the fortifications they were building were not built to last, and we end up with little knowledge of what actually took place and less knowledge about where it took place. This is a field that is open to much discovery, as we can see from this article.

Which came first, the Dinosaur or the Spider?

British scientists have found what is perhaps the oldest evidence of spiders--a web fixed into amber.

"Oxford University paleobiologist Martin Brasier said the 140-million-year-old webbing provides evidence that arachnids had been ensnaring their prey in silky nets since the dinosaur age. He also said the strands were linked to each other in the roughly circular pattern familiar to gardeners the world over."

Keeping Time

I hope you are all ready to grow a second older but not gain any real time. The clock watchers of the world have decided that we need to add a single second to the year in order to keep calendars in time with earth's motions. The earth is continuously slowing down, so time has to be added to the calendar. It's going to happen on December 31 at 6:59:59. Prepare yourself.

Scraping Plaque

Dirty teeth lead to preservation of history. From the AP:

"Dental plaque scraped from the teeth of people who lived as much as 9,200 years ago revealed traces of cultivated crops, including squash and beans . . . They studied 39 teeth from six to eight individuals. Found in northern Peru's Nanchoc Valley, the teeth were uncovered in the remains of round house structures in a settlement dated to 9,200 to 5,500 years ago. Some teeth were dirtier than others. We found starch grains on most of the teeth. About a third of the teeth contained large numbers of starch grains."

I have supported the preservation of historical record for a long time. I guess this means that next time I don't feel like brushing my teeth, I have a good excuse.

Moon Shadow

Make sure you step outside on Thanksgiving night to observe the close proximity of the moon, Jupiter, and Venus. And if you are in the mood on Monday, they are even closer. If you miss this, don't worry. You can catch it again in November of 2052.

Copernicus Rises Again

In keeping with the same general topic as my last post, the remains of Copernicus have been identified through DNA testing. For those of you not astronomically inclined, he was the dude who forwarded the theory that the sun, rather than the earth, is the center of this universe. It was thought that he was buried in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, but no one knew exactly where in the cathedral he was buried until now. DNA was matched by analyzing one of his teeth and some hair that was left in a book that he owned.

History Again

Some say that history is stagnant. That could not be farther from the truth. History does, in fact, keep changing--or at least the modern perception of history keeps changing with research advances. Recently archaeologists, digging around on two different parts of the globe, contributed to our understanding of ancient peoples. In Turkey the earliest evidence (8th century BCE) of the theological idea of the soul was uncovered in the form of a grave stele. Etched in the stone is an indication that there was thought of an afterlife and the soul within that afterlife. In Germany archaeologists discovered the earliest evidence (4600 years ago) of family structure in that area. Grave sites revealed that families (mother, father, and children) were buried together after being killed in what was probably a violent attack. Study of the teeth showed that the women were leaving their own family group to join that of their husband's (or whatever the equivalent of a mate was called at that time).