Silflay Hraka

Climate models have been missing a significant variable–accurately depicted Phytoplankton.

Phytoplankton perform two-thirds of all the Earth’s photosynthesis — the process by which plants turn light, nutrients and carbon dioxide into food. The amount of CO2 processed by phytoplankton during photosynthesis affects concentrations of CO2 in the water, which determines how much of the greenhouse gas the oceans can absorb.

Current marine-modeling systems don’t factor in the phytoplankton’s ever-evolving nature.

First reference I’ve seen of the integration of at least an aspect of the Gaia Hypothesis into the Gaian climate models. I wonder if it will be possible to add it to previously existing climate software modularly, or if the code will have to be rewritten from scratch.

Mickey Kaus: Powerline agrees that passing immigration reform would help Democrats by countering the ‘do-nothing’ charge. But the Republicans who are desperate to get the issue ‘off the table’ seem to feel a bill would help Republicans (largely, I’m told, by ending a divisive intraparty debate in which GOP hardliners inevitably alienate moderate swing voters with their harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric).

Doesn’t this mean that Republicans are in the same position vis a vis illegal immigration now that Democrats were in October 2002 when they voted for the Iraq invasion?

“Many of us are depressed,” says Bob Filner, whose district includes parts of San Diego. “Our leadership has been co-opted. Dick Gephardt is steering us in the wrong direction. The Republicans have put us in a complete bind for this election. Gephardt thinks we have to be with the President and that we can knock this [issue] off the table with a quick [prowar] vote. But this is with us until Election Day.”

Gosh, that strategy worked so well, no wonder the Republicans want to emulate it!

I get the feeling that for both parties “off the table” really means “hope its absence shuts up the base.”

They haven’t realized that the base drives the conversation now, not the other way around.

I’m not sure that even the Voice of God himself could issue a commentary “Duh” stupendous and resonant enough for the following;

A third day of deadly clashes between Hamas and Fatah fighters suggests that the Palestinian unity government, put together under Saudi auspices at the end of March, is something of a fiction.

Wife is watching the Gilmore Girls finale, which means by default that I am watching the Gilmore Girls finale. Never have I so wished for a car bomb to explode in the middle of Star’s Hollow. Damn thing has more good-byes than The Return of The King.

As Dad would say, in the punch line to one of his interminable jokes; paaaaaaaatience, jackass.

An article in USA Today reported on a Pentagon-funded study which confirms what military historians already know–an average insurgency can run for a decade, but most fail in the end. Translation: If we’re going to be successful in Iraq, we’re going to have to make a long-term commitment. That doesn’t mean 170,000 U.S. combat troops stationed there for 10 years, but it does mean a substantial force–tens of thousands of soldiers–will be needed for many years to come. If we’re planning to start withdrawing in September 2007–or even September 2008–we might as well run up the white flag now and let the great Iraqi civil war unfold in all its horror.

Most Americans seem resigned to that fate. In fact many think that the civil war has already begun, and we can’t or shouldn’t do anything about it. We hear all the time that “we have no business getting into the middle of someone else’s civil war”–often from the very same people who in the 1990s were (rightly) urging that we get involved in the civil wars of the former Yugoslavia or who today (rightly) urge us to get involved in the civil war in Sudan.

Human incidences of Mad Cow Disease are onthe decline. The infection route prions causing the disease take has been finally been uncovered as well.

Scientists at the Whitehead Institute in the USA have found that small regions within the proteins called prions that cause mad cow and similar diseases, are responsible for their infectious properties. Moreover, these regions regulate the ability of prions to cross species barriers.

Prions are highly robust and infectious proteins, most notable for their central role in bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called mad cow disease. But very little is known about how prions form aggregates of malformed proteins that ultimately result in disease. This study provides initial insights into how prions recruit and distort healthy neighbouring proteins.

I wonder if the OCA will see those stories as good news, bad news, or more evidence of the cover-up, man.

I remember this feeling.
From the very first moment, it’s like a live wire jammed into your Disney Lobe, a part of your brain that’s been rewiring since you were very small, just so it could release endorphins at this very moment. All that’s missing is Disney himself in a white robe and sandals, carring a lamb, projected against the sky. If they’d done that I would have bloodied my knees.

Not this one, though.
I’ll say this for the quantity of pubic hair in the bathtub: it’s not a lot. I prefer to think of them as “Jiminy Crickett’s eyelashes,” which is how I explained them to a disbelieving child.