I've Got Some Bad News, and I've Got Some Good News (Brief Edition)

First, the bad news.

However, you don't have to be depressed about it.

God's Asshole

No, not this guy. Not today, anyway.

It seems that astronomers at the University of Minnesota have found a giant hole in the Universe. Seriously. There's nothing there. It's a billion light-years across, and there just ain't shit in it. For comparison, our own galaxy is 100,000 light years edge to edge. Pretty neat stuff, but no one knows what it means yet.

I find it interesting that the asshole of the universe is not actually in Indiana. That would've been my bet.

Happy Birthday!

Look who's thirty!

The Voyager spacecraft were launched around thirty years ago. They're still operating from way, way, waaaaay the hell away. They're still speeding away from the solar system, traveling about a million miles a day. That's moving. The article has a couple of problems detail-wise, but it's a nice, concise summary.

Nerd Shit

It's not quite like this.

I'm sure you've heard that atoms are mostly empty space. It's true, but it's really difficult to conceptualize that. So we here at Punch and Jude, with an assist from Errol, would like to help.

Check this out. It's pretty cool, in a nerdy way.

Ironic Encounters of the Sociological Kind

If you enjoy laughing at random internet nerdiness (and I know you do), check out bash.org. They keep a database of funny-ass IRC quotes that people submit.

Here's a sample that's so funny it hurts:

<'kylev> BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
<'kylev> hahahahaha
<'kylev> some girl just came onto our floor
<'kylev> and was yelling "sexual favors for anyone who does my sociology paper"
<'kylev> i just asked her what the paper was about
<'kylev> and she said the accomplishments and growth of feminism
<`Neo> bahahahaha

There's lots of good stuff there. Check it out. Your boss won't mind at all.

Mimicry



About two minutes in, you'll get to the mimic octopus, which is one of the most remarkable critters in the world. This short clip doesn't do it justice.

Ponder the power of natural selection as you watch. Enjoy!

Attention NASA

I got that in spades.

Dear NASA:

When you're ready to do something like this, give me a call. I'm on the motherfucker.

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday called for applications for one of the most demanding human experiments in space history: a simulated trip to Mars in which six "astronauts" will spend 17 months in an isolation tank on Earth.

Their spaceship will comprise a series of interlocked modules in an research institute in Moscow, and once the doors are closed tight, the volunteers will be cut off from all contact with the outside world except by a delayed radio link.

They will face simulated emergencies, daily work routines and experiments, as well as boredom and, no doubt, personal friction from confinement in just 550 cubic metres (19,250 cubic feet), the equivalent of nine truck containers.

Communications with the simulated mission control and loved-ones will take up to 40 minutes, the time that a radio signal takes to cross the void between Earth and a spaceship on Mars. Food will comprise mainly the packaged stuff of the kind eaten aboard the
International Space Station (ISS).

The goal is to gain experience about the psychological challenges that a crew will face on a trip to Mars.

Four of the crew will be Russian, and two will come from countries that are members of ESA, agency and Russian officials said at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget.

In all, 12 European volunteers are needed.

A precursor 105-day study is scheduled to start by mid-2008, possibly followed by another 105-day study, before the full 520-day study begins in late 2008 or early 2009.

--snip--

The terrestrial Mars-stronauts will not get much glory for their confinement, nor will they get particularly rich.

They will get paid 120 euros (158 dollars) a day, said Marc Heppener of ESA's Science and Application Division.

They have to stay in "only" 19,000 cubic feet? Shit. Oh, and for $158 a day? For seventeen months? Please, please, Br'er Bear, don' fling me in dat brier patch.

Nerd Shit

We're gonna need a bigger fryer.

Tyrannosaurus rex = Gallus domesticus?

Perhaps. This story is fascinating.

US researchers have identified microscopic traces of soft tissue taken from a 68 million-year-old T-rex fossil in a startling discovery that is yielding clues to evolutionary links between dinosaurs and birds, a study released Thursday said.

The tiny protein fragments were extracted from the leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex that was discovered in the western state of Montana in 2003, but it wasn't until recently that scientists were able to definitively identify them as traces of prehistoric dinosaur collagen.

The collagen should have degraded millions of years before according to conventional wisdom, but paleontologists at North Carolina State University were fairly confident that what they had was the "barely detectable" remains of dinosaur soft tissue based on their chemical and molecular analyses.

However, they could not definitively say that, so they turned to biochemist John Asara at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical School in Boston to make that determination.

It took Asara a year and a half, but he was finally able to sequence the amino acids in the collagen proteins - a proxy for DNA analysis - and conclude that the T-rex femur did indeed contain traces of collagen, a fibrous protein found in bone.

When the researchers compared those amino acid sequences to those of similar proteins in several contemporary animals, they found that the T-rex sequence had similarities to those of chickens, and to a lesser extent frogs and newts.

That finding bolsters a recent and controversial proposal that birds and dinosaurs are evolutionarily related, and change that hypothesis to a theory, the researchers said.

Sixty-eight million year old soft tissue? Amazing.

I wasn't aware that the dinosaur-bird link was "controversial." I thought it was pretty much accepted as fact. But I'm not a paleontologist, either.

Can you imagine the amount of hot sauce you'd need for Buffalo-style T-rex arms?

I'm sure you all know that the Tyrannosaurus was just about the biggest, baddest dinosaur to wander around in the Cretaceous. But what's the biggest predator that's ever lived on earth? No fair using Google.

Neat Stuff

Still a kick-ass book

So it seems that the late Cretaceous mass extinction that finished off the dinosaurs did not produce a rapid diversification of mammals to fill all of the newly-opened ecological niches. That's pretty fascinating, and goes against conventional wisdom in paleontology. I think it's great news. However, I do wonder how long it will be before the IDiots and assorted other Creationists point to this study as an example of how "scientists can't agree about evolution."

Why did I put up a picture of the cover of The Dinosaur Heresies? Three reasons--first, it's still, as the caption contends, a kick-ass book. Second, the cover art is also kick-ass. Third, Bakker made a good case for why dinosaurs must have been homeotherms, and included the argument that, if they had all lain around in states of torpor, little mammals would have been nibbling away at them. There's a really cute illustration in the book of some proto-rodents munching on a sauropod's long tail while the dinosaur slumbers. If you haven't read this book, you really should.

Now, from millions of years in the past to millions of miles away--there's more neat shit from Cassini.

And you thought your town had crazy weather.

This hexagon exists at Saturn's north pole. It's bigger than Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and it's been around for at least 26 years--the Voyager probes snapped some photos of it back in the 1980's. There's another strange atmospheric phenomenon at Saturn's south pole.

Does anyone have any good explanations for these atmospheric oddities? No. But they're working on it.

Maybe I'll have more later about the fucked-up misuse of the DOJ, but it's a busy week for me. So, for now, enjoy the mammals and hexagons.

Should've Upgraded to "Deluxe" Missile Defense System

For just an extra $2.5 billion, you could've gotten the waterproofing and the clear coat protectant.

Okay. Now this is fucking stupid.

Rain KO'd Interceptors During Korea Missile Tests (Updated)

Torrential rains wiped out a quarter of the U.S.' intercontinental ballistic missile interceptor silos in Ft. Greely, Alaska last summer -- right when North Korea was preparing to carry out an advanced missile launch, according to documents obtained by the Project On Government Oversight.

"The flooding occurred during a three-week period between the end of June and early July 2006," POGO notes, in a statement. "The flooding damaged 25% of the U.S. interceptor missiles’ launch capability. These silos house the interceptor missiles that would be used to attempt to intercept a missile aimed at the United States. No interceptors were in the flooded silos."

An internal assessment by Boeing, the silos' chief contractor, shows seven flooded interceptor silos, out of the 26 at Ft. Greely. Two silos have more than 62 feet of water; a third has more than 50. Estimated times of repair range from four to 14 months. Boxcar like structures called Silo Interface Vaults (SIVs), adjacent to the interceptor silos, were also flooded, "two of them by as much as 15 feet of water," POGO says. "Three SIVs must have all electronic and mechanical systems replaced. Four other SIVs have partial damage. One SIV was so damaged that it shifted vertically in the ground like a house shifting off its foundation." It's a strange turn of events, considering "an environmental impact study of the facilities at Ft. Greely notes there is 'little rainfall in the region.'"

The "water intrusion... resulted from the confluence of several unanticipated and highly unlikely events," the Missile Defense Agency said in a statement . "In particular, totally unprecedented rainfall created a rapidly rising ground water condition coincident with steps of construction when the SIVs were susceptible to damage. The Missile Defense Agency allocated resources to repair the damage and recover from the event. Furthermore, steps have been taken to prevent recurrences in the future."

POGO blames Boeing for being "at least partly responsible for failing to protect the silos" from the elements. Nevertheless, the watchdog group observes, the company "will most likely still receive an estimated $38 million to repair the silos and a $100 million no-bid contract to build more silos. Boeing would also receive a $7 million award fee added to the contract."

But the larger issue at work here is: What exactly are we getting, for the $9 billion a year we're paying for missile defense? And why can't it take a little (ok, a whole bunch of) rain?

UPDATE: "This isn't the first problem that they had with the missile silos," notes Center for Defense Information missile guru Victoria Samson. "The February 2005 test failure of the GMD [ground midcourse defense] system [at Ft. Greely] was due to faulty silo arms that failed because they weren't able to handle the heavily salty environment in which they were placed, so Boeing had to pull them out and replace them. That's some real quality control work there. This also shows that the whole argument behind spiral development - that you can test and develop at the same time - turns out to be completely wrong."

One thing I kind of miss about the military is the way they can euphemize just about anything. Next time your house gets flooded, call the insurance company and tell them you've had a "water intrusion." Shit, you could probably get the local news to do a feature on you if you used a phrase like that.

So is this missile defense deal anything more than a giant taxpayer giveaway to Boeing? This system has screwed up just about every test, even the ones that were heavily rigged in its favor.

And it ain't cheap, either.

I Wanna Go Back to My Fish and Poi

It was fun while it lasted.

The humuhumunukunukuapua'a, known to haoles as the painted triggerfish, is no longer the official fish of Hawai'i.

This is sad, mostly because it will result in fewer opportunities to say the word "humuhumunukunukuapua'a." How many other 12-syllable words do you know?

Toad of the Apocalypse

Gaze deeply, and see the future!

Here at Punch and Jude, one of our favorite pastimes is predicting the end of the world. So far, we are 0 for 2,363,715 with our predictions, but that doesn't slow us down. No, sir.

Why not, you might ask?

Because, ever and anon, we see new eschatological signs. Like, for example, this toad.

Sweet Jesus, that's a lot of amphibian.

We've talked about the plague of cane toads before. We've also discussed the plague of hypno-toads.

Beware! The End Times are at hand!

Beauty on a Sunday

Majestic Saturn

Check out NASA's Cassini photo essay. The world around us can be beautiful beyond reckoning.

Missing: A Big Hunk of Earth's Crust

Nope, not in here. Keep looking!

Turns out, and I was just as shocked to hear it as you, that a large piece of the Earth's crust is, uh, missing.

Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth’s crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle - the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick - is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface.

Marine geologist Dr Chris MacLeod, School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences said: "This discovery is like an open wound on the surface of the Earth. Was the crust never there? Was it once there but then torn away on huge geological faults? If so, then how and why?"

To answer some of these questions Dr MacLeod with a team of scientists, led by marine geophysicist Professor Roger Searle, Durham University, will travel to the area which lies mid-way between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean.

Where could it be?

My guess is that Dick Cheney stole it. I don't know what he plans to do with it, but you know it's gonna be evil.

The Messiah Has Arrived...In Lizard Form

The prophets spoke true.

Yes, Jesus is coming--but in the form of a Komodo dragon.

CHESTER, England - In an evolutionary twist, Flora the Komodo dragon has managed to become pregnant all on her own without any male help. She is carrying seven baby Komodo dragons.

"We were blown away when we realized what she'd done," said Kevin Buley, a reptile expert at Flora's home at the Chester Zoo in this town in northern England. "But we certainly won't be naming any of the hatchlings Jesus."

Fuckin' killjoy herpetologist.

Of course, if my job title made it sound like I was an expert in STD's, I'd probably be a bit dour myself.

Nerd Shit

No, you can't have one of these as a pet.

Here's something from the NY Times about the effects of the end Permian period mass extinction on the complexity of marine life.

[N]ew research suggests that [the mass extinction] was followed by an explosion of complexity in marine life, one that has persisted ever since.

Moreover, it happened quite suddenly, according to the study, which was led by scientists at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and published in the current issue of the journal Science. The shift to complicated, interrelated ecosystems was more like a flip of a switch than a slow trend.

The researchers detected the change by analyzing records of marine fossils from 1,176 sites around the world, which are part of a new international archive, the Paleobiology Database (pbdb.org).

They found that marine life before the biggest global die-off, the Permo-Triassic extinction, was evenly split into two types of communities: simple ones, in which most species were anchored in place and got by without interacting with neighbors (like eating them or being eaten by them), and complex ones, with many interrelationships.

But since then, complex communities filled with grazers, scavengers, predators, burrowers and other mobile creatures have been three times as common as simple ones, said Peter J. Wagner, the lead author of the study.

The shift essentially took the oceans from a norm in which anchored (or sessile) creatures, including brachiopods and sea lilies, filtered food carried in currents to one dominated by roaming (or motile) fauna like snails, urchins and crabs.

Dr. Wagner said it was not clear why this particular extinction spasm had this permanent effect on the character of communities, while others did not.

A 2002 study led by Richard K. Bambach, an emeritus professor at Virginia Tech, found the general shift to a higher abundance of motile fauna from the early Triassic Period onward, but it did not examine patterns in individual communities.

But Dr. Wagner said motility was an enduring characteristic of the more variegated biological webs.

“The increased diversity of mobile species would have contributed to more complex ecological communities,” he said. “With sessile guys, everybody is just living next to one another and that’s it. With mobility and higher metabolism, you bump into each other more often, both literally and figuratively, and you end up with a greater number of potential interactions.”

I know, I know. The Dimetrodon was not a marine life form. But damn, they look cool.

The end Permian extinction was the most significant one in the history of life on Earth. The dinosaur mass extinction (end Cretaceous) was chump change in comparison.

And when are we due for another mass extinction?

Don't look now, but we're in the middle of it. And guess what else? We're the cause! Woo hoo! Go humans!

Clever Elephants

Smart and has a good memory

I didn't want to write about anything in the news today, because I'm taking a little break from that.

However, you should read this article about elephants.

It turns out that they are self-aware in ways that previously were only recognized in humans, apes, and dolphins.

There's a lot of beauty and grace in this world, and it's easy to lose sight of that. Maybe this will serve as a reminder.

Run for Your Lives!

The nerds are coming! Leave all snack foods and Japanese cartoons inside!

Just in Time for Lunch

And you thought you had bad luck with the opposite sex.

Sexual cannibalism. And it's not even a story about Germany! Man, this stuff must make evolutionary biologists happy. The unlucky male insects & arachnids? Not so much.

Across the eastern United States, a gruesome ritual is in full swing. The praying mantis and its relative, the Chinese mantis, are in their courtship season. A male mantis approaches a female, flapping his wings and swaying his abdomen. Leaping on her back, he begins to mate. And quite often, she tears off his head.

The female mantis devours the head of the still-mating male and then moves on to the rest of his body. “If you put a pair together and come back later, you’ll just find the wings of the male and no other evidence he was ever there,” said William Brown, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia.

--snip--

Some sexual cannibals, including female Chinese mantises, actually eat a lot of males. “One study estimated that 63 percent of the diet of females are male mantids,” Dr. Brown said. “So they’re the main food source.”

Wow. Sixty-three percent. Still, you gotta admire the male mantis' sense of purpose. Headless, and he still gets it on.

I could go on here about how this is a good illustration of the power that genes have over behavior, and how they are more interested in their own survival than that of the bodies in which they inhabit, but I won't.

You may breathe a sigh of relief now.

Nerd News

It seems that a Russian man has won--and declined--the Fields Medal. He didn't just decline the medal; he also passed on the cash money that goes along with it.

Russian Grigory Perelman, has, apparently, solved the Poincaré Conjecture. If so, good on him. But passing on a million bucks? That kind of math doesn't make any sense to me.

How, you might wonder, could a person tackle such a vexing problem?

Simple. He hasn't spent any time dating. Don't believe me? Check out this photo.

Now you understand what I mean.