Isegoria

This seems like something that should happen on a popular sitcom during sweeps week. World’s tallest man saves ailing dolphins:

Bao Xishun, the world’s tallest man, reaches in to retrieve objects from the stomach of a sick dolphin at an aquarium in Fushun, in China’s northern Liaoning province, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006. Bao, whose arms measure more than a meter in length, was called in by the aquarium after experts failed to surgically remove unidentified objects from the stomachs of two dolphins. Bao was able to reach in and retrieve the objects, which turned out to be pieces of plastic from their pool surround. Despite a few remaining small pieces of plastic in their stomachs, local experts expect the dolphins to recover soon. The 2.36 meter-tall Bao was confirmed as the world’s tallest man by the Guinness Book of Records in 2005.

A new documentary, Relentless Enemies, tells the story of superlions marooned on an island:

“We discovered this tiny sandy island in the Okavango,” says Dereck. “It is extraordinary because it became totally isolated from the mainland 15 years ago when the course of the river changed, and a huge herd of buffalo and lions were trapped on a piece of land measuring 200 square kilometres.”

Through this twist of geographical fate, these two ancient species are now engaged in a desperate battle of survival — watched by six bemused refugee wildebeest and a handful of similarly outnumbered warthogs.

Thus, the island has become a unique, ecological experiment. In order to exist without the customary spectrum of weaker African prey like zebra, giraffe and impala, the Duba lions have had to develop distinct strategies in order to trap the single available food source.

They have adapted to this challenge by hunting during the day under the baking African sun, swimming through deep rivers in the hunt for buffalo. This water-based training programme combined with a diet of protein-rich buffalo meat has led to the development of huge muscles, and these super-cats now dwarf other lions.

The island lions also use highly advanced psychology in their quest for food, predicting the course of the buffaloes’ daily trek by anticipating their need for water — then lying in wait at the precise spot along the river where the herd will eventually stop for refreshment.

In turn, the buffalo have responded to the threat by merging into a vast mega-herd of 1,200 beasts — five times the size of a normal group. They have also, at times, turned on the lions, killing isolated cubs.
[...]
A subspecies is emerging which the experts have named the Duba swamp lion — as opposed to the jungle lion, the desert lion, or the lion of the mainland African plain. It is distinctive in appearance, with a bigger, thicker neck and an extra-strong chest. The lionesses are almost the same size as the male lions on the Botswana mainland.

I can’t believe this exists: an animation test of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are rendered via computer graphics — from 1983. It’s surprisingly good.

David Kirby and David Boaz have been Examining the Libertarian Vote in Depth:

In our study, “The Libertarian Vote,” we analyzed 16 years of polling data and found that libertarians constituted 13 percent of the electorate in 2004. Because libertarians are better educated and more likely to vote, they were 15 percent of actual voters.

Libertarians are broadly defined as people who favor less government in both economic and personal issues. They might be summed up as “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” voters.

In the past, our research shows, most libertarians voted Republican — 72 percent for George W. Bush in 2000, for instance, with only 20 percent for Al Gore, and 70 percent for Republican congressional candidates in 2002. But in 2004, presumably turned off by war, wiretapping, and welfare-state spending sprees, they shifted sharply toward the Democrats. John F. Kerry got 38 percent of the libertarian vote. That was a dramatic swing that Republican strategists should have noticed. But somehow the libertarian vote has remained hidden in plain sight.

This year we commissioned a nationwide post-election survey of 1013 voters from Zogby International. We again found that 15 percent of the voters held libertarian views. We also found a further swing of libertarians away from Republican candidates. In 2006, libertarians voted 59-36 for Republican congressional candidates — a 24-point swing from the 2002 mid-term election. To put this in perspective, front-page stories since the election have reported the dramatic 7-point shift of white conservative evangelicals away from the Republicans. The libertarian vote is about the same size as the religious right vote measured in exit polls, and it is subject to swings more than three times as large.

Based on the turnout in 2004, Bush’s margin over Kerry dropped by 4.8 million votes among libertarians. Had he held his libertarian supporters, he would have won a smashing reelection rather than squeaking by in Ohio.

President Bush and the congressional Republicans left no libertarian button unpushed in the past six years: soaring spending, expansion of entitlements, federalization of education, cracking down on state medical marijuana initiatives, Sarbanes-Oxley, gay marriage bans, stem cell research restrictions, wiretapping, incarcerating U.S. citizens without a lawyer, unprecedented executive powers, and of course an unnecessary and apparently futile war. The striking thing may be that after all that, Democrats still looked worse to a majority of libertarians.

Because libertarians tend to be younger and better educated than the average voter, they’re not going away.

Another interesting stat:

One more bit from our post-election Zogby poll: We asked voters if they considered themselves “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.” A whopping 59 percent said they did. When we added to the question “also known as libertarian,” 44 percent still claimed that description. That’s too many voters for any party to ignore.

This footage of a C-130 Deploying It’s “Angel Decoy” seems like something out of the latest X-Men flick.

(That means it’s pretty cool looking.)

Study says bees can find explosives:

The researchers found that ordinary honeybees can readily be trained by being exposed to the odor of an explosive, then given sugar water as a reward. After a few times, the bee, anticipating the sugar water, will stick out its tongue at the smell of the explosive.

The Los Alamos study was designed to test technology pioneered by a small British biotechnology company, Inscentinel. The company has developed a small portable sensing unit — a box, basically — into which three strapped-down bees are placed. The bees’ so-called proboscis extension reflexes are automatically detected by a camera and associated software, with the results available on a laptop computer.

Haarmann said the study showed that trained bees can detect explosives in a parts-per-trillion concentration, even when masked by other odors.

While that is similar to what dogs can do, Haarmann said, there are situations in which using bees might be preferable. The bee box, he suggested, could be held by a robotic device right next to a suspected bomb while the operator watched the laptop from a safe distance.

Phil Carter says that the Iraq Study Group talked to generals when it should have talked to corporals and ends with these words on bureaucracy:

To be fair, many of the panel’s 79 recommendations do sound practical — they’re the kinds of strategic and tactical course corrections that should have been made long ago. The reason they have not been previously adopted or implemented is also telling. Strategist and historian Eliot Cohen gets it precisely right in today’s Wall Street Journal when he writes that our looming defeat stems from “an unwillingness or inability to grab the bureaucracy by the throat and make it act.” Diplomat Robert Komer wrote much the same thing a generation ago in his classic study of Vietnam titled Bureaucracy Does Its Thing. Forget about its technological sophistication or vaunted all-volunteer force — today’s American military is the largest and most lethargic bureaucracy in world history. Its job in Iraq has been made tougher by the grafting of numerous civilian headquarters onto its existing Hydra-headed command — first the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, then the Coalition Provisional Authority, then a U.S. Embassy, and now a U.S. diplomatic mission and a nascent Iraqi government. The Iraq Study Group, the Pentagon, and the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad have all displayed an almost pathological inability to listen to and learn from their own people. Our enemies suffer from no such bureaucratic encumbrances; they learn, they adapt, and they evolve much faster than we do. It’s a shame we needed the Iraq Study Group to show us that.

John Jay talks about The Color Purple:

Today’s installment of Scientists You Should Know is brought to you by the color purple. Mauve, in fact. This past April marked 150 years since mankind stopped relying on plants and bugs to supply the colors of its world, and mauve was the first of those artificial colors. Before you snicker, consider that mauve was once such a novelty that an entire decade was named for it.* Before the discovery of purple dyes derived from coal tar, literally thousands of shellfish had to be slaughtered to obtain a few grams of purple — making it so expensive that it became a royal color in ancient times.

Until the advent of the artificial aniline colorants, most dyes were of plant (such as madder), insect (such as cochineal) or (I shit you not) bird fecal origin. Imagine the work it took to collect enough poop, bugs or plants to dye a garment, and you can see why a coal tar-derived synthetic dye was a huge leap forward — at least for the clothing manufacturers, if not for the insect-gatherers. We’ll leave the birds right out of it, because I’m quite sure even the people who made their living from that extraction were happy to learn a new skill or two.

The dominion of plant and animal dyes came to an end over the Easter academic break in 1856, when an 18 year old student of the Royal College of Chemistry, working in his home laboratory, was trying to make quinine from coal tar, which was a common, oily by-product of the process of making coke and town gas from coal. The project had been suggested to William Perkin by his mentor, the German organic chemist August Hofmann.

As Jay reiterates in Educated Beyond our Intelligence, Perkin was just 15 when he went to college and 18 when he made one of the most important chemical discoveries in history — which would be hard to do in a modern school environment:

We treat adolescents and young 20-somethings like pets in this society. We don’t expect much from them, and with some rare exceptions, we don’t get a lot from them.

The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote:

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Frankly, I thought the notion of Peanuts Meets Marvel was too geeky, even for me — until I took a look.

(Hat tip to Drawn!)

When someone asks you a question like, What are the most northern, southern, eastern, and western states of America? you have to assume it’s a trick question:

If you note the map above, Alaska is clearly the most northern state, and Hawaii, at 20º North, is without doubt the most southern state. (Note how much further south it is than Florida}

As far as the most western state, note how Alaska’s Aleutian Islands stretch right up to the edge of the Western Hemisphere at the 180º line of Longitude, thus the most western state in the country.

Alaska is also the answer for eastern, as the Aleutian Islands stretch across the 180º line of Longitude, into the Eastern Hemisphere, and up the edge of the Russian Federation.

This frame from a larger Dilbert strip really spoke to me.

The CDC tracks the loss of natural teeth by state, and the numbers (for adults 65+) are much, much higher than you might expect: 42.8% in West Virginia, 38.1% in Kentucky, 32.2% in Tennessee, 31.9% in Alabama, etc.

Richard Stuebi asks, What is Energy Worth?:

Everyone pays attention to — and often whines about — the price or cost of energy. I would like to pose a different question: what is the value of energy? What is energy really worth?
[...]
A healthy adult can exert about 100 watts of effort for a reasonably sustained period. [...] Thus, over the course of a 10-hour day, a human might produce 1000 watt-hours — or 1 kilowatt-hour. From your local utility, you probably pay about a dime for a kilowatt-hour. On the other hand, if you were to pay that adult a (low) wage of $5/hour for that degree of effort, that kilowatt-hour would cost $50.

In other words, electricity is priced about 1/500 the equivalent value of human effort.

Oil is even more of a steal. There are 3412 Btu in a kilowatt-hour, meaning that an adult can produce about 3412 Btu of energy effort in a 1o-hour day — or 341 Btus per hour. In a barrel of oil, there are 6.2 million Btus — equivalent to over 18,000 man-hours, which would cost over $90,000 at a (low) wage of $5/hour.

At $60/barrel, oil is priced about 1/1500 the equivalent value of human effort.

And we complain that energy is expensive? Try replacing our taken-for-granted energy forms with the work of humans — and paying a wage for it!

This frame from a larger Dilbert strip really spoke to me.