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“Whether it’s Bitnet, The Tor – which is 90% of the Internet – peer-to-peer sharing, or the streaming capability worldwide. At what point does civil society say that as well as the benefits that brings, this enables huge risk and threat to our society that we need to take action against?”

—  Commissioner Adrian Leppard of City of London Police.

Leppard is in charge of the intellectual property enforcement division.  Apparently, technology isn't his strong suit.  And why would you need to understand technology when in charge of enforcing laws about it?

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They come out at night and have sex.  

On your face.

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These mites live on your face and come out to have sex at night
Our bodies are home to millions of mites, but scientists know barely anything about them

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And the problem with irrationality is that it depresses your natural ability to wonder if you are being irrational. One of the fundamental skills of rationality is noticing that you are confused, which also happens to be one of the fundamental skills of dealing with being chased around Venice by a giant dragon with the head of your second-grade teacher.

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CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
I am going to do something very dangerous today, something that makes me acutely aware of my own mortality. I am going to disagree with Robin Hanson. In my defense, he wrote an entire blog post cal…

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To investigate whether life might exist in this harsh landscape, Benison and her graduate student, Francis Karmanocky III, collected some of the crystals and shaved slivers off for study. When the researchers shined a light through the samples and peered at them through a microscope, they were amazed by the diversity of life trapped within the crystal layers. They observed single-celled organisms known as prokaryotes, as well as green algae, including a variety of green algae called diatoms that are encased in silica armor. Some of the microorganisms were entombed in the crystals themselves, trapped in coffins that slowly grew around them. Oftentimes, though, they were found in tiny bubbles filled with air or water.

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Physics Buzz: Chile’s Volcanic Lakes May Hint At Where To Look For Life On Mars
Conditions in the region are too dry for rain or snow, so Salars Gorbea and Ignorado are only sustained by upwelling groundwater that has been turned extremely salty and acidic through interactions with the surrounding volcanic rocks. “We think the water is interacting with the magma chambers,” …

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Well here's a depressing view on our chances to make progress on climate change.

Either way, we've waited so long to begin cutting emissions that two degrees looks flatly impossible. We're on track for 4°C of warming — which is nearly the temperature difference between the world now and the Ice Age. That's a nightmare for the planet. The World Bank tried to model it and realized that they had no idea what would happen — or whether humans could manage. There's "no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible," they concluded.

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7 reasons America will fail on climate change
Why I’m a global warming pessimist.

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Yeah, whatever you say Chobani yogurt.

Yeah, whatever you say Chobani yogurt.

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I love this deep sky image by Adam Block.

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It seems to me that there's a huge gulf between "rarely" and "never" and it's a little odd that they're lumped together.

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It's called Welwitschia mirabilis.

It is the last remaining plant in its genus, the last in its family, the last in its order.

It comes from a community of plants that thrived more than 200 million years ago. All of them slowly vanished, except for Welwitschia.

Welwitschia was "discovered" in 1859 by an Austrian explorer and botanist — Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch — but dinosaurs "discovered" them, too. Welwitschia plants were around when the killer asteroid hit our planet 65 million years ago. They stayed when the ice came. They stayed when the ice went. They have survived fires, pests, seen an endless parade of new insects, viruses, parasites, people, roads, local wars — and somehow, even today, there are thousands of them in the Namibian desert.

More here: http://www.contriving.net/link/fg

This supremely ugly plant is around 2000 years old.

It’s called Welwitschia mirabilis.

It is the last remaining plant in its genus, the last in its family, the last in its order.

It comes from a community of plants that thrived more than 200 million years ago. All of them slowly vanished, except for Welwitschia.

Welwitschia was “discovered” in 1859 by an Austrian explorer and botanist — Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch — but dinosaurs “discovered” them, too. Welwitschia plants were around when the killer asteroid hit our planet 65 million years ago. They stayed when the ice came. They stayed when the ice went. They have survived fires, pests, seen an endless parade of new insects, viruses, parasites, people, roads, local wars — and somehow, even today, there are thousands of them in the Namibian desert.

More here: http://www.contriving.net/link/fg

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