I’ve finally joined the twitter crowd (See the twitter ‘widget’ to the right). Got to say I’m fairly impressed. Its great to find a site that specialises in something, for once. Too many services try to be the be-all of websites - but twitter knows what it does, it does it simply, and it does it well. Nice for a change. Typical of Ruby on Rails applications (even though they’re supposedly switching soon). I see myself using twitter a lot in the future.
Thought this was pretty amazing. I’ve seen the clip of the crows using the traffic lights before, but this is something else. Really fascinating.
P.S: I’m really sick of video sites that don’t make it easy to embed videos using SWFObject. Flashvars are awful -_- … Now everyone on IE gets the stupid Eolas flash prompt… Other bloggers will know what I mean…
Ground-living vertebrates have declined by 25%, with most of the slump occurring since 1980. Marine species held fairly steady until the late 1990s before falling sharply to give an overall drop of 28%. Freshwater species have decreased by 25%, primarily since the late 1980s.
Loh says the most dramatic declines have been observed in the tropics. Tropical ground-living species have seen an average population drop of 46%, while their temperate cousins have shown no overall change.
They don’t seem to be 100% sure on the numbers, but they could possibly even be conservative.
Based on the popular Japanese manga created by Akira Toriyama, whose work spawned best selling graphic novels, video games and a phenomenally successful television series, Dragonball centers on the heroic Goku, a powerful warrior who protects the Earth from an endless stream of rogues bent on dominating the Universe and controlling the mystical objects from which the film takes its name.
Yes thats right. If your brain hasn’t exploded just yet.. Go here. Now. Look. There is a real life Dragon Ball Z movie in the works. It actually looks really nasty - but the insanity behind it being done is still just too much to bear.
Bad astronomy has a good write-up on the supposed link (or lack thereof) between autism and vaccinations.
I just can’t make this any clearer. Vaccines do not cause autism. Study after study has shown this, in multiple ways. The removal of the MMR (mumps-measles-rubella) vaccine in Japan did not lead to a decline in the number of cases of autisms diagnosed; instead the number of children falling in the autism spectrum increased.
I looked into this alot when my daughter was going through some of her vaccinations and came to similar conclusions. I’m all for research into the cause of autism and studies done on vaccinations and their safety, but this has been done. Its been looked into time and time again, and the results are conclusive. Sadly, there has already been damage done by the one highly questionable study that sparked alot of this as well as general claims of “toxins and evils” in vaccines…
And there is a chilling side to this. Vaccines are among the greatest achievements in human history. This is not hyperbole. Millions upon millions of lives have been saved by vaccines. Smallpox is gone. Polio is gone. A vaccine has been developed to prevent HPV, saving millions of women from the horrors of cervical cancer.
If vaccinations decline, then we will see an increase in mumps, measles, rubella, whooping cough (pertussis), and many more terrible afflictions… problems that are ultimately completely curable. This is stone, cold fact. Worse, these problems are far more severe in children.
Update: Respectful insolence has provided their own summary of the ‘autism epidemic’:
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
It seems as though it has been found! Further plans are currently underway…
Yes, thats right. 18 children. The Duggar family are supposedly followers of the Quiverfull movement, which is basically just against all sorts of birth control, as well as even “Natural Family Planning“.
The Pharyngula article I picked this up from has some interesting (and some, youtube-ish) comments. The main theme in the discussion, apart from a few nuts is generally just feeling sorry for the kids in the family…
Newest trailer to The Dark Knight is out… and I’ve already forgotten about Iron Man.. Easy to notice two-face and someone even noticed on Digg that scarecrow makes another appearance.
