What a catch

O_O

Bike sharing is unamerican and could lead to forced abortions!!! (Later he backtracks and says he must look over the legislation before making any commentary)

I find it strangely sweet that a British embassy has issued directions on how to be safe when throwing rotten tomatoes.

quote:

Please crush tomatoes before you throw them, the blow will be less painful

quote:

Originally posted by Hive:
I find it strangely sweet that a British embassy has issued directions on how to be safe when throwing rotten tomatoes.

quote:

Please crush tomatoes before you throw them, the blow will be less painful

Is it common to pelt your officials with rotten fruit? If so, I'd like to borrow that custom.

Oh, hey, the PM's missus has had a baby.

Also, Minneapolis pays 7 arrested zombies $165,000.

quote:

Originally posted by ladykatza:

quote:

Originally posted by Hive:
I find it strangely sweet that a British embassy has issued directions on how to be safe when throwing rotten tomatoes.

quote:

Please crush tomatoes before you throw them, the blow will be less painful

Is it common to pelt your officials with rotten fruit? If so, I'd like to borrow that custom.

Throwing stuff at elected officials is a venerable tradition in British society. Sadly the even more venerable tradition of elected official calling each other out for duels is no longer extant. Pity.

quote:

Originally posted by Dr Marvinmarymac:

quote:

Originally posted by ladykatza:

quote:

Originally posted by Hive:
I find it strangely sweet that a British embassy has issued directions on how to be safe when throwing rotten tomatoes.

quote:

Please crush tomatoes before you throw them, the blow will be less painful

Is it common to pelt your officials with rotten fruit? If so, I'd like to borrow that custom.

Throwing stuff at elected officials is a venerable tradition in British society. Sadly the even more venerable tradition of elected official calling each other out for duels is no longer extant. Pity.

now that i would pay to see!

Absolutely disgusting.

NY taxi driver stabbed, throat cut for being Muslim.

Still horrific, but perhaps not as random as that article makes it seem. Apparently the attacker has spent some time in Afghanistan and allegedly said something to the driver like, "This is a checkpoint!" Soooo...perhaps a far more personal, specific attack on a Muslim than the general "Muslims are evil" vibe this country has been giving off.

The terribly ironic thing is that he was in Afghanistan with a volunteer group that is supposed to encourage peace across racial and ethnic boundaries. Apparently that message didn't sink in very well...

quote:

Originally posted by TheatreGeek:
The terribly ironic thing is that he was in Afghanistan with a volunteer group that is supposed to encourage peace across racial and ethnic boundaries. Apparently that message didn't sink in very well...

or he suffered from post traumatic shock and it wasn't identified early enough.

Poor widdle baby kitty

New Burgess Shale site found! This stuff is amazing. Soft body preservation during the Cambrian explosion when life diversified.

Also, Chicxulub may not be alone. Second asteroid hit, was double whammy for dinosaurs.

I've read reports that there are scientists questioning if Chicxulub (the Gulf of Mexico hit) was the true cause of the KT extinction. There was some evidence of dinos a few thousand years after the hit. Some felt it was an issue with the accuracy of dating. Others, proof that Chicxulub didn't do it. An asteroid hit would destroy the food chain and within 100 years everything would be gone.

A double whammy could explain that. First hit, knock out a large portion. Second hit, fatal blow.

Clearly the asteroid impacts were caused by a worldwide flood. QED.

I'd not heard about that Burgess Shale discover! That Cambrian stuff is just plain awesome. Giant critters, small critters . . . BTW, what's your take on the notion that there wasn't so much a Cambrian explosion as a sudden and rapid assimilation of more chitinous creatures into the fossil record? That is, the Precambrian might've been just as full of life, but life of a type that couldn't be recorded int he record as effectively.

That's exactly the case. We're finding more and more localities of soft body preservation and the complexity is amazing. The Edicarians in Australia, Newfoundland and Russia are cutting edge paleo. DNA studies have also shown some of these creatures have roots well before the Cambrian time.

The explanation I've heard is the hunters started to get better (teeth, better locomotion), so everything else had to build better defenses (hard shells).

The Snowball Earth theory (~600 MYA) also may have slowed development. Only localized pockets of life near thermal vents could survive. Once the Earth thawed there was a huge vaccuum of space and life experimented to fill the void.

I've not heard of the Snowball Earth theory. Anything a little pop sci (bio class was more than twenty years ago now) that I could read to catch up?

I read this book last summer.

This site has more info.

The theory started from evidence of glacial till in tropical latitudes ~600 million years ago. There's also a huge block of cap carbonates over the glacial til. There was quite a bit of computer modeling to see if it did go snowball, could it reverse itself. Ice reflects sun and could create a vicious cycle chilling the Earth and never releasing it. They suggest volcanic eruptions could have released enough CO2 to create a greenhouse effect. They also suggest it may have cleaned house for the Cambrian explosion.

It's still heavily debated, but very interesting work.