It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
— Charles Darwin
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
— Charles Darwin
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Bush administration plan to allow commercial logging inside the Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws.
China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars that will bring back samples to earth and land on one of the red planet’s tiny moons, Xinhua news agency said. Russia will launch the spacecraft in 2009 and it will carry China-made survey equipment.
Despite a number of recent deaths and infections in Indonesia that looked as though they may have been an infection cluster, the World Health Organization has confirmed that there is no evidence that bird flu has gained human-to-human transmissibility.
Repairs on the levees in New Orleans, Louisiana, which burst last year under the fury of Hurricane Katrina should do some good but are not enough to handle another storm that size, a US military official said Tuesday.
Astronomers using radio telescopes from around the world have discovered a spinning neutron star with a superpowerful magnetic field — called a magnetar — doing something no magnetar has been seen to do before: emit radio pulses. The strange behavior has forced them to scrap previous theories about radio pulsars and promises to give new insights on the physics behind these extreme objects.
Scientists have not been able to make a definitive link between the amount of anthropogenic mercury in air and the levels of methylmercury in fish. Until now.
An earlier proposal by astronomers to boost the number of planets in the solar system to 12 or more has proved unpopular with colleagues, and a new definition that would demote Pluto from planetary status will be voted on by astronomers meeting in Prague.
I’m expecting a snark fest from this MSNBC headline: Polar bear genitals shrinking due to pollution; shrinkage could endanger animals with already low reproduction rate. To beat you to the punch, consider this: maybe Australia should send some kangaroos north for a vacation, since kangaroos around Australia’s national capital will soon be fed a contraceptive pill by authorities trying to control their booming population.
The issue of the closure of the EPA libraries is still around, but no champion in congress has come forward to oppose closure. Here’s an update on the story. IT’S TIME TO UP THE VOLUME!!
Scientists may have to rethink accepted theories of how and when the ancient earth’s atmosphere became oxygenated after new discoveries in ancient sulfur isotope ratios raised serious questions, researchers said on Wednesday.
Norway’s first hydrogen filling station for motor vehicles opened Tuesday as a step in creating a clean-air highway in southern Norway.
Buying indulgences for environmental sins? British motorists will be able to neutralize their CO2 emissions by paying an average 20 pounds a year towards offsetting their pollution after oil company BP launched a new Internet scheme on Wednesday. Drivers will be able to calculate their annual CO2 emissions using the http://www.targetneutral.com Web site and help fund environmental projects like wind farms.
If you missed this story over at orange you gotta check it out.
It’s now official – Pluto is not a planet:
Two buckets today?
Who should stay and who should go?
I’ll pull mine…
might overturn Bush’s veto? Times Online
Link
WASHINGTON – The company lobbying for a Pentagon contract to insert radio frequency identification chips under the skin of U.S. military personnel has already had its technology cloned by two experts.
VeriChip Corp. is “in discussions” with the Air Force, Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs to sell its radio frequency identification chips, said Scott Silverman, CEO of VeriChip’s parent company.
VeriChip says that the devices are secure, but Annalee Newitz, a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and software engineer Jonathan Westhues, say that’s not true.
Newitz wears a VeriChip under her arm, and last month at a computer hackers’ conference in New York, she and Westhues made a copy of her VeriChip — and her private medical data — using a homemade device.
“VeriChip puts absolutely no security on this at all. There’s no encryption, no security features,” Newitz told The Examiner during a phone interview Monday from her San Francisco home.
“These are basically modified pet tags. All they’ve done is tweak that a little bit for humans,” Newitz said, adding that she was “stunned” that VeriChip wants to put the device in U.S. troops. “You’re not concerned that your pet’s tag might be read by an enemy on the field.”
Additionally, once implanted, the chips can last a person’s lifetime and can’t be updated with new security technology, Newitz said.
The military, suffering from gross mismanagement, equipment and personnel shortages, is going to blow more taxpayer money on modified pet tags? This is wrong on so many levels.
Boy, I’m not doing too good today… I didn’t see that you had posted this, Booman. Thanks. I wish I could delete my double posting of this below. I didn’t see Knox’s bucket before I posted it in CG’s. Now I didn’t look at the comments here before reposting. Yikes.
Fixed.
without a prescription for women over 18. If you’re under 18 you still need one. A victory – long time coming.
Link
Now let’s get the silly age restriction ditched so that younger girls can easily get it and no one will have to show photo ID as proof of age.
better link
try again?
LINK
Now about the under 18 thing: what were they thinking, they should make it harder for them to get because teenagers make better parents? You can do more damage to yourself with a bottle of tylenol than you can with plan B.
It’s a crappy compromise which they justify by saying its safety hasn’t been proven in those under 18. Now we work on that.
I know, I know…but teenagers have been using oral contraceptives for how long now? And that’s on a long-term basis, not occasional short-term use.
It’s BS.
Yes it is. It’s all about trying to appease the right who want total control over their daughters’ sexuality.