Live Like Dirt

Albino hummingbird

2012-01-29T17:33:00.004-03:30

There are some cool pictures of an albino hummingbird over at Discovery News. I had to post this here so I could be sure my mom sees it. She likes birds. I like albino animals. This little guy has it all. Hat Tip to Why Evolution is True.

El Mirón: Old Bones, New Dates

2012-01-27T23:09:00.002-03:30

There's some exciting news from Spain pertaining to the skeletal remains that were excavated from El Mirón cave back in 2010 and 2011. Originally, the bones were dated indirectly - meaning they were assigned a date based on the stratigraphic level from which they were exhumed. That level was about 15,000 years old which placed it in the Lower Magdalenian period (Lower Magdalenian secondary human burial in El Mirón Cave, Cantabria, Spain, 2011. Lawrence Guy Straus, Manuel R. González Morales, and Jose Miguel Carretero).

Well, now the bones have been dated directly. It turns out they are actually closer to 18,500 years old. I think that would technically mean this individual could be considered to be from Solutrean period. Pretty awesome. Seeing as this date came from the Max Planck Institute in Germany I hope it means we'll be hearing about the genetic analyses soon. Yee haw.

Dormouse, more like dorkmouse.

2012-01-26T20:54:00.001-03:30

Okay. I know I said I'd try to slap up another post about dating European Upper Paleolithic cave art this evening, but alas I'm having too much fun writing a term paper on the zooarchaeological record of Cantabrian Spain. I tend to make almost all my papers about Upper Paleolithic Cantabrian Spain these days. That way I can cut out the good parts and stick 'em in my thesis later on. Bwa ha ha ha. So... in lieu of cave art please accept this snoring dormouse. She's hilarious!

Busy little beaver

2012-01-24T21:44:00.000-03:30

I had intended to post Part II of the dating Paleolithic Art series this evening, but I spent the evening reviewing zooarchaeological literature from El Mirón and the Cantabrian region in general. Now, I'm gonna try to get Part II up by Thursday evening. I must say, writing this thesis and doing four other fourth year courses and a paleontology lab is a bit time consuming. Now, I'm off to go get some groceries. In the meantime enjoy this lovely quote from Stephen Fry.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.

The evolution of wheels

2012-01-22T19:02:00.001-03:30

In How the Mind Works Stephen Pinker wrote the following:

Many textbooks point out that no animal has evolved wheels and cite the fact as an example of how evolution is often incapable of finding the optimal solution to an engineering problem. But it is not a good example at all. Even if nature could have evolved a moose on wheels, it surely would have opted not to. Wheels are good only in a world with roads and rails. They bog down in any terrain that is soft, slippery, steep, or uneven. Legs are better. Wheels have to roll along an unbroken supporting ridge, but legs can be placed on a series of separate footholds, an extreme example being a ladder. Legs can also be placed to minimize lurching and to step over obstacles. Even today, when it seems as if the world has become a parking lot, only about half of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with wheels or tracks, but most of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with feet: animals, the vehicles designed by natural selection.

Pinker makes a good case, and until today I found no fault with his argument. There are, however, two points that I did not take into consideration. The first being that wheels can be useful for purposes other than travelling along flat tracks of land. Wheels can be useful when travelling downhill. The second point is that although it might be impractical to evolve wheels as separate appendages, it could be practical to have the ability to transform oneself into a wheel when a situation called for such action. This little video is what lead me to reconsider Pinker (via Pharyngula).

This is nonsense

2012-01-21T20:08:00.000-03:30

It's been nearly a month since Christopher Hitchens died. In the immortal words of Hank Snow, I still miss someone. It makes me sad to think about how I won't be able read his columns anymore. I miss the way in which he would annihilate pseudo-intellectualism while simultaneously promoting dignity and better qualities of human nature. When he died I didn't write anything about him. There was nothing I could say that wasn't said better than those that knew him intimately. One of my favorite things he ever wrote was about the arrogant anthrocentrism inherent in religious thinking. Maybe it struck a particular chord because he invoked the very dear subject of hominid evolution while doing so.

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primate, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks "That's enough of that. It's time to intervene," and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.

Cheers, Mr. Hitchens.

Hard Charger - Chrome Lord

2012-01-21T13:51:00.000-03:30

This is last night. Hard Charger at Distortion, St. John's, NL.

Why I am against the legalization of marijuana in Canada

2012-01-19T22:34:00.000-03:30

Today, the Vancouver Sun published the results of a new poll which showed that 66% of Canadians are in favor of legalizing marijuana. I imagine the actual percentage is probably a little bit higher than that. It's just that some marijuana smokers are bit reticent about answering truthfully in case 'the man' is listening.

Okay, horribly unfunny pot paranoia jokes aside, the reason I am not particularly fond of marijuana legalization is rather simple. Legalizing marijuana puts the sale and distribution of pot in the hands of the government. That's okay when it comes to medicinal marijuana. When used for medicinal purposes it should be treated like medicine. Current Canadian law already does this.

The real problem arises with recreational use. This is because the legalization of marijuana would allow the government to tax the sale of marijuana. It would allow the government to control the production of marijuana. This would undoubtedly lead to government control of the marijuana market by creating yet another state subsidized monopoly. Think about the monopoly the Canadian government already has on alcohol. Think about how much a case of beer costs these days. Think about how the government sells alcohol to restaurants, bars, and other licensed establishments at artificially inflated prices. Think about how this cost is then passed to the consumer. Now think about how alcohol is cheaper in countries where this type of market control does not exist. Do you really want the government to get involved in dealing pot? One thing history has repeatedly shown us is that governments are, by their very nature, poor business managers. It's rather foolish to think it would be any different with marijuana.

The answer is not legalization. The answer is decriminalization.

The government has no right to tell adults what kind of substances they are allowed to ingest on their own free time. The government has no right to tell people which plants they can grow and at what prices those plants can be sold. Only the free market can make those decisions. When it is allowed to do so the free market almost always makes decisions that favor both the consumer and the private citizen.

Internet Protest Day

2012-01-18T09:09:00.000-03:30

Today is the day when the internet protests SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). By the internet I mean Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit. The last I heard both facebook and twitter aren't joining the cause. That's too bad because neither of those sites could really exist in their present form if SOPA or PIPA gets passed. Although this is about American legislation, and I am a Canadian, these bills effect the world. I'm not going to provide any details about why these bills are bad. The internet is still uncensored. Make use of it while you can.

We shouldn't forget about the RWA (Research Works Act) either. It's bad for similar reasons, although this matter isn't simply about censorship, but public health. If passed Darrell Issa (R) and Carolyn Maloney (D), the bills two biggest supporters, will be known forever as the two most anti-scientific American representatives in recorded history. Perhaps we should reflect upon these simple words Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Archibald Stuart, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it" (December 23, 1791).

St. Joseph's Mechanical Penthouse

2012-01-17T08:08:00.000-03:30

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://itsadammowery.bandcamp.com/album/st-josephs-mechanical-penthouse"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;St.Joseph's Mechanical Penthouse by Adam Mowery&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p> My buddy Adam Mowery has a new album out today. Eleven songs for $5. That's less than 50 cents a song. You can't find anything that cheap on iTunes. Here are the details:

Popping out in January 2012, St. Joseph's Mechanical Penthouse, Mowery's third release over a six month period, boasts a meaner, cleaner and leaner production than any previous release in Mowery's catalogue. Recorded over an 18 month period, SJMP collects many songs from Mowery's live-set with his killer back-up group, his Giants of Industry. A few of the tracks, "The Black Path," "Invisible Ink," and "Center of a Long Time," made previous appearances in demo form on Four Track Mind, a cassette issued by Hamburger Tapes in July 2011. However, in their new incarnations these tracks are beefed-up with badass bass and drums and lovingly layered with synths and keyboards to reach maximum catchiness and ear-worm potential. An unabashed pop album, SJMP also presents some of Mowery's best vocals to date, and his most cohesive guitar work. Lo-fi, yet listenable, St. Joseph's Mechanical Penthouse is 28 minutes of home-made power pop bliss, tailor made for repeat plays.

All songs written by Adam Mowery. The Giants of Industry are... Jud Crandall - drums (#2, #5,# 7, #8, #11), backup vocals (#7, #11) Adam Kierstead - bass (#2, #5, #7, #8, #11) Adam Mowery - All other sounds. All songs recorded by Adam Mowery, except #2, #5,# 7, #8, #11, recorded with Pierre Cormier.

Epic Psychic Fail

2012-01-17T07:53:00.000-03:30

This has to be some of the worst cold reading I've ever seen. I see a word that starts with "F" and ends with "ail". Does that mean anything to you?

How to date Upper Paleolithic cave art. Part I.

2012-01-16T22:07:00.001-03:30

European cave art spans a time period of approximately 20,000 radiocarbon years. So far only 61 images from 19 different caves had been dated. Since there are 350 European caves known to contain Paleolithic art, that means roughly 95% of European Upper Paleolithic cave art remains undated. At the moment I'm putting together a presentation for my Pleistocene Art class on the subject of dating cave art. More specifically it's a presentation on Paul Petitt and Alistair Pike's paper Dating European Palaeolithic Cave Art: Progress, Prospects, and Problems (2007). It's been quite interesting to learn about these processes, the progression, and the problems that arise while attempting to place an age on when these pieces of art were made. I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned with all of you out there in bloggity blog land. Petitt and Pike break their paper up into a number of different sections, each dealing with a different type of dating methodology. I'm going to follow their model for this little impromptu blog series. Shall we begin?

Bulls from Lauscaux Cave, France.

Relative Stylistic Schemes

Back in the days before any form of direct radiocarbon dating was available, archaeologists, namely Henri Breuil and later Andre Leroi-Gourham, developed a methodology which relied on a premise adopted from the study of art history. The premise is "that style, technique and subject will meaningful vary over time" (Pike and Pettit, 2007). This was applied to cave art by using art mobilier (portable paleolithic art such as stautes, figurines, engraved bone, etc.) as a foundation and than linking it stylistically to parietal art (painted cave art). After this was completed other examples of parietal art that didn't match up with existing forms of art mobilier was incorporated into the chronology on the basis of stylistic evolution.

Remember, this was back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before anything in Paleolithic archaeology was radiocarbon dated, let alone cave art. At the beginning of the twentieth century European archaeologists had labelled a series of archaeological cultures on the basis of stratigraphy and changes in artifact types. These cultures were named after the places where the first examples were discovered. Very roughly it went like this (oldest at the bottom, most recent at the top):

Azilian
Magdalenian
Solutrean
Perigordian
Aurignacian

Okay, that's a really rough breakdown of Breuil's scheme. Breuil also liked to break the Magdalenian into six different sub-periods (although that was more in regard to tool types, not art specifically). Nowadays, most archaeologists would replace the Perigordian with the Châttelperonian or Gravettian cultures. Also, there is the Mousterian culture, which belonged to the Neanderthals and co-existed with the Châttelperonian and Aurginacian cultures. But the debate about whether or not Neanderthals created art is a wholy different subject for another day.

So it worked like this: Breuil would look at a piece of art mobilier that came from a stratigraphic level assigned to the Magdalenian era. Then he would try find a corresponding image or style in a piece of parietal art. If he could do this successfully than that painting would be assigned to the Magdalenian. So on and so forth until an entire scheme was developed that could show the evolution of artistic style throughout the entirety of the Upper Paleolithic.

Engravings from Domingo García

The first problem with relative stylistic dating schemes is that they were devised with a fairly limited sample size. Both Breuil and Leroi-Gourhan only used archaeological sites in south western France. Another problem was that they excluded engravings. Pettit and Pike cite the Paleolithic engravings of Domingo García (Spain) as a prime example. These are two points that Pettit and Pike point out in their paper. One thing they didn't touch on was the underlying assumption that the evolution that artistic style would be unilinear. There is no evidence that necessitates such an assumption is justified. This ties into the larger problem of relative stylistic schemes: they weren't tested against other forms of dating.

You can hardly blame Breuil or Leroi-Gourhan for that, other dating methods had not yet been devised during their respective periods of research. At the end of the day you were left with a hypothesis, albeit a very well developed and reasonable hypothesis, but an untested hypothesis none the less. Still, as we shall see in subsequent blog posts, both Breuil and Leroi-Gourhan's stylistic schemes actually fared reasonably well once radiocarbon dating came on the scene.

Rockhoppers

2012-01-14T21:41:00.001-03:30

When I was younger I considered penguins to be my favorite animal. I used to know the names of a lot different species, most of which I could identify by sight. Although I might not have the penguin recognition ability I once possessed as a child, I'm still pretty good at it. I'm not sure if I ever chose a favorite species, but I remember being particularly fond of the Rockhopper penguin. As best as I can remember, these guys were grouped as a single species, at least according to the penguin literature of the 1980s. However, after doing some google-fu I just discovered there's a bit of an argument about their classification nowadays. There are three main views.

A Naturalist on the "Challenger" by H. N. Moseley (1879)

1. Rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes chrysocome) consist of a single species that inhabits three different ecological zones.

2. There are two species of Rockhopper penguins: the Northern Rockhopper (Eudyptes moseleyi) and the Southern Rockhopper (Eudyptes chrysocome).

3. There are three species of Rockhopper penguins: the Northern Rockhopper (Eudyptes moseleyi), the Eastern Rockhopper (Eudyptes filholi), and the Western Rockhopper (Eudyptes chrysocome).

I guess there is some genetic difference between the Eastern Rockhopper and Western Rockhopper, but I don't really know enough the minutia of this argument in order to have an informed opinion on it. That is, an opinion more informed than what is already outlined in wikipedia. I do know that Rockhoppers travel between Antarctica and South America and they're are especially good at hopping on rocks.

Their numbers are also beginning to dwindle away. So much they are now considered an endangered species. Causal factors include pollution, ectotourism, climate change, and predation. I don't really have a happy ending for this story. It's kinda like I just checked in on an old friend I haven't seen in a long time only to learn that he got hit by truck and now eats through a tube. Poor little Rockhoppers.

Gigantopithecus: back for another round

2012-01-14T09:21:00.000-03:30

Over at the Smithsonian blog there's a short little article summarizing some of recent research on the diet of Gigantopithecus. It looks like Gigantopithecus was a herbivore that consumed plants with a high sugar content. The argument is that Gigantopithecus' extinction is most likely linked to dependence upon this diet, climate change, and an extremely slow maturation rate.

As is often the case the humor lies in the comments section. I can't help but think the Smithsonian attracted some of these folks by titling the article Did Bigfoot Really Exist? How Gigantopithecus Became Extinct. Here's my favorite comment:

The giant ape is probably extinct, but the elusive creature you call “bigfoot” is the sasquatch. I know they are still around, as I have seen three, plus two others through a thermal imager in the dark. They are not an ape, they are probably an ancient race of giant indians. Specimens are rarely found and all bodies have been confiscated. The national guard collected several dead specimens in May, 1980 near Spirit Lake, Mt. Saint Helens. Numerous new sasquatch footprints are documented every year thoughout the US and Canada. Unfortunately some are hoaxed, but I have studied many that were not.

I must admit this guy is pretty creative. I've never heard the "ancient race of giant indians" hypothesis before. Funny stuff, but you have feel a bit sad for Gigantopithecus researchers. They can't discuss any of their findings in the popular science press without folks like this showing up. Pitchforks in hand, drool bibs tied tightly around their necks, they begin barking on about conspiracies. I guess I'm not that much better. Whenever a Gigantopithecus article comes out I always use it as a way to make fun of the Sasquatch crew (ad hominen style - I think that's the only rational response to "giant indian" theories). The cycle continues...

Poorly written documents

2012-01-13T21:50:00.000-03:30

Perhaps you've seen this interweb page: Sorryworld.ca. Meh, I dislike Harper & co. as much as the next guy, but it's a bit smarmy for my taste. More importantly, it is factually incorrect. The page claims that Canadians have "religious freedom". That's not exactly true. Here's why.

Okay. First, you have to start by reading the Fundamental Freedoms section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom of association.

Sounds pretty good, eh? The general interpretation is that everyone is free to believe (or not to believe) in their preferred brand of superstition and/or rationalism. However, you have to go back to the beginning of the Charter and read the preamble:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.

Yep, religious freedom in Canada only extends to monotheism. That means polytheists and atheists are out of luck. As you can probably surmise, I don't particularly care for the preamble. It's one of the reasons why I think the US Constitution is a superior document (see the establishment clause). Any questions?

Keynes vs. Hayek

2012-01-12T18:29:00.000-03:30

"The economist who knows no history understands far less than his opposite number in the historical profession; but his claims are far greater. Therefore, he is much wider off the mark." —Murray Rothbard

World's smallest living vertebrate

2012-01-11T23:27:00.000-03:30

We have a winner! It's this little guy, Paedocypris progenetica. Hailing from New Guineau P. progenetica has an average length of 7.7mm. This beats the old record of 8mm of some Indonesian fish. Glad to see the title go to an amphibian, especially when you consider that the odds are stacked against them. How so you ask? Well, fifty percent of all vertebrates are fish, whereas only 18% of vertebrates are frogs.

How and why two American representatives plan to make the free dissemination of scientific knowledge an illegal activity

2012-01-09T15:56:00.001-03:30

To begin, here is another list of open access archaeological journals. Actually, it's a bit more than that. It's a searchable database. It won't cost you anything to use and it is open to everybody. This is the type of database which certain members of the American congress, namely Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA), want to outlaw. The reason is simple, I shall explain.

Elsevier is a large scale publishing company which makes a great deal of money selling academic journal subscriptions to universities and other academic establishments. They do a great job at this and provide a valuable service which is used by university students and professors across the world. They not only supply these institutions with physical copies of certain journals, but also provide a wide range of publications which are accessible online to members of said institution. To people that are not members of such institutions these journals are protected behind pay walls which prevent them from being accessed free of charge. That's fine. As nearly all of these journals do not permit advertising, subscription fees are the way they make money.

This publishing model originated in the eighteenth century and at the time was a highly effective way to create a system that could be trusted to be reputable and peer-reviewed. In that regard this model still does an excellent job. However, this publishing model is extremely slow. In recent years online only publications have been able to speed up this process (and they have done so without accepting advertising money). This is beneficial not only to those people who may be interested in the material being published, but also the peer-review process itself. Furthermore, these publications, such as PLoS One, have gone a step further. They have bypassed publishing companies like Elsevier altogether and allowed open access to all of their various journals.

As you can imagine, open access journals, such as PLoS are extremely attractive to scientists working in fields that are doing cutting edge research. PLoS, and similar open access journals, are now giving the traditional publishing model provided by Elsevier a run for their money. Not only are they able to provide the same services as Elsevier, but they are doing it faster and much more cost effectively.

In response Elsevier has decided not to compete. Instead they began giving financial donations to politicans like Carolyn Maloney and Darrell Issa. In return Maloney and Issa have created a bill known as the Research Works Act which, in part, reads as follows:

No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that--
(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or
(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

This is particularly nefarious because it is not only targeting open access journals, but also tax-payer funded research. Maloney and Issa effectively want taxpayers to pay for state funded research twice. Once to have it conducted and then again when they want to read about it. The actions of Maloney, Issa, and any other supporters of the RWA demonstrate an outright contempt for democracy, science, and the fundamental principles of free market economics. They not only pose a threat to stuffy academics like myself, but the larger global population.

Open access journals are beginning to revolutionize how medical literature is disseminated. It's a much bigger issue than limiting access to a few hundred archaeological journals which are of interest to a small nerdy subset of the population. They are putting peoples lives at risk, especially when one considers how open access scientific journals impact the development of medicine to fight AIDS, new developments in vaccines, and other much needed medical information across the world. Maloney and Issa are advancing this bill soley for their own financial interests. They are anti-scientific, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-humanist.

UPDATE: To my American readers, here is Carolyn Maloney's contact page and here is Darrell Issa's contact page. If you support putting an end to the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699) please send them both a message and let them know what you think.

Destroying science in America

2012-01-08T22:41:00.003-03:30

I really dislike the current American government. First, there's the recent revisions to the NDAA (Title X, Subsection D). Then there's SOPA. Now there is a bill which aims to destroy open access science publishing in the United States. This affects not only Americans, but everyone in the world who believes that the pursuit of scientific knowledge should be an open endeavor. In recent years open access journals have proven to be a highly successful model which is more adept and handling the fast-paced nature of recent scientific developments (particularly those that relate to the practice of science based medicine). The sooner the current schmucks presently residing in the oval office and the US Congress are removed, the better. This has proven to be the most war-mongering, crony-corporatist, anti-scientific administration the United States has ever seen... and they saw eight years of George W. Bush.

Look, I like Americans and I have great deal of respect for the principles which that country was founded upon. As far as I'm concerned the US Constitution is one of the most intelligently constructed legal documents ever written. I am greatly saddened that those in positions of power in the US no longer respect it as much as some inconsequential foreign blogger.

UPDATE: More from it is NOT junk: Elsevier-funded NY Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney Wants to Deny Americans Access to Taxpayer Funded Research.

Future Archaeologists

2012-01-08T02:22:00.001-03:30

Hot Mustard

2012-01-05T14:51:00.001-03:30

It's the first day of classes and I've got a nicotine patch on my arm. What do non-smoking people do between classes? Eat clementines and bananas. That's what I've discovered so far. I have a smoked meat sandwich with me too. That's for later. It has some locally made hot mustard on it. Linda gave me a jar of the stuff for Xmas. It's pretty good, but it's not real hot mustard, just the closest thing to hot mustard that I've come across on this island. There are at least seven different types of honey mustard at my local Sobeys. I growl at them every time I walk by. Honey mustard is not real mustard. It's mustard for people who don't like mustard, but want to seem hip around their mustard loving friends. This doesn't work. We're not fooled. We can see through your pseudo mustard pretension. I think this place needs more Montreal style Jews. That way we'd probably have more hot mustard, and maybe, if we're lucky, a deli.

Metal Album of the Year: 2011

2012-01-03T21:41:00.000-03:30

Okay. This is the highly official livelikedirt Metal album of the year: HELM. It reminds me of all the things I like in metal, like Black Sabbath, Venom, High On Fire.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://helm.bandcamp.com/album/helm"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;HELM by HELM&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>And it only costs $5 internet bucks.

Pseudoscience and undergraduates

2012-01-03T20:36:00.002-03:30

There is a good reason why I often feel that I'm surrounded by idiots. Here's the abstract to a new survey conducted by the American Astronomical Society:

A survey of the science knowledge and attitudes toward science of nearly 10000 undergraduates at a large public university over a 20-year period included several questions addressing student beliefs in astrology and other forms of pseudoscience. The results from our data reveal that a large majority of students (78%) considered astrology “very” or “sort of” scientiﬁc. Only 52% of science majors said that astrology is “not at all” scientiﬁc. We ﬁnd that students’ science literacy, as deﬁned by the National Science Foundation in its surveys of the general public, does not strongly correlate with an understanding that astrology is pseudoscientiﬁc, and therefore belief in astrology is likely not a valid indicator of scientiﬁc illiteracy.

You can read the paper in its entirety here.

There's a new shark in town

2012-01-03T16:55:00.000-03:30

Image courtesy of ABC News.

There's a new shark in town and its name is... actually, I don't think it has a name yet. Marine biologists working along the coast of eastern Australia have documented 57 sharks, all of which appear to be hybrids between the Australian black-tip shark (Carcharhinus tilstoni) and the common black-tip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus).

This is the first documented case of shark hybridization in the wild. According to researchers from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries it is suspected that this hybridization is occurring because of global environmental changes. Basically, the Australian black-tip is smaller and common in tropical and sub-tropical waters, whereas the common black-tip is larger and usually found in colder waters. This hybridization allows the new hybrids the benefit of surviving in colder waters that were previously outside the range of the Australian black-tip's ecological niche.

It will be interesting to see what the long term effects of this will be. Will the Australian black-tip disappear? What about the common black-tip? Is it possible they might both be replaced by a new hybridized species that can survive in a broader range of ecological settings? Now, we wait...

Today, my favorite song is Lonely Boy

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-03:30

I like starting the day with a nice glass of rock and roll. Last year I often found myself posting a song on facebook in the morning before I headed off to school. Last week I was listening to an interview with David Wild, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and he likes to do the same thing too. Except he uses twitter and calls it "a song of day" or something like that. As my fondness for facebook continues to diminish, and my fondness for twitter increases, I decided to do the same thing.

More than likely I won't be posting my favorite song of the day here on the blog unless I have something I'd like to say about it. If you wanna know what my favorite song of the day and you don't have twitter, just look at my twitter feed on the right hand side of this here bloggity blog. It'll pop up there.

Now, as I just mentioned three sentences ago, I probably won't be posting my favorite song here unless there is something I want to say about it. I wanna say something about today's song "Lonely Boy" by the Sex Pistols. This tune is one of the few songs not sung by Johnny Rotten, but by the Sex Pistols guitarist, Steve Jones. To the best of my knowledge this song first showed up on the soundtrack to The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. The importance of the Sex Pistols and their impact on punk rock is highly debatable. If you've ever read the book Please Kill Me, which documents the early punk rock scene in New York, one of the authors, Legs McNeil, attempts to makes the case that the Sex Pistols killed punk rock, or at the very least were responsible for the crash of punk rock's first wave. Okay, that might be true. This all happened before I was born. Ultimately it's not really that important, but I think when music critics talk about the Sex Pistols they all too often get wrapped up in the image and forget they had some really awesome songs. This is one of those songs.