Delicate, thin-shafted plumage would have made flapping difficult
Two species of prehistoric birds were gliders.
Their feathers probably would have buckled or snapped during strong flapping or sharp maneuvers, so the primitive birds may have been limited to gliding, says Robert Nudds, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Manchester in England.
The ancient birds may have simply glided from one branch to another, the researchers say, or “parachuted” from high spots to low by splaying their wings and slowing their descent.
The map is not the territory
dream name
Farley King.
spam name
Sekula Colberg.
The Marshlands
The BP oil spill has finally hit Louisiana’s coastal marshlands. The above photo was taken during Gov. Bobby Jindal’s recent tour of the eco-disaster.
Favela painting
In 2006, Dutch artists Haas&Hahn started Favela Painting, a “community-driven art intervention” in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. With the help of local youths, who are paid for their efforts and taught construction skills, the duo bring brightly-colored murals and other artistic scenes to the poorest areas of Rio.
Their ultimate goal is to paint an entire hillside favela.
(Via Flavorwire)
Know what’s worse than terrorism?
I have arrived
I got to my mom’s house — the future scene of clusterflockstock II — an hour ago. Turns out the hot tub hasn’t been functioning* so I threw soap in the master bath and turned on the jets. The bubbles are already over two feet taller than the tub itself. I leave this metaphor for y’all to reflect upon while I jump inside.
* Remember, they intend to sell the house. So there isn’t enough reason to fix it, sadly for us.
Peekaboo 1 & 2
or Views of a Window-sill.
That’s my supper trash in the little white bag, twisted up and ready to carry out to the litter bin, and the little prop-up under-the-window ‘table’ that it’s resting on. The peephole is apparently for water runoff. I guess in a bad storm water might seep through the window, run down the window frame to that sloping “sill” and then go out the little opening to the outside.
Dear Clusterflock
So, I had an idea:
Inspired by two people whose writing I greatly admire, Cary Tennis and Heather Havrilesky, I’d like to offer my services as Clusterflock’s first advice columnist, under the banner Ask A Flocker. I’d love to hear what y’all think of this idea. If it’s a go, I’d also welcome suggestions on best ways to allow anonymous letters from Clusterflock readers — I’ve grabbed askaflocker@gmail.com, but it has been suggested that the comment form might be a better mechanism. And I’d be happy to open this up to other Flockers – perhaps it could become a group exercise.
Thoughts?
We are ready to die protecting the honor of our beloved Prophet
Yesterday, Andrew posted the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day contest. Today Pakistan blocked access to YouTube and FaceBook.
Andrew is very powerful.
and on the 8th day
Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit genomic research organization, published results today describing the successful construction of the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell. The team synthesized the 1.08 million base pair chromosome of a modified Mycoplasma mycoides genome. The synthetic cell is called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 and is the proof of principle that genomes can be designed in the computer, chemically made in the laboratory and transplanted into a recipient cell to produce a new self-replicating cell controlled only by the synthetic genome.
(via marginal revolution)
this just in
Cigarettes in the Theatre – Two Door Cinema Club
Something sweet and gentle to drift away on.
quote out of context
It’s a 15 paragraph character destruction that, since it’s now on the web, must be considered one of the top flames of all time.
duality
headline of the day
Miss USA: Muslim Trailblazer Or Hezbollah Spy?
Mia’s Trip to the Beach
This past weekend, neighbors took Mia with them on a trip to the Texas coast. It was Mia’s first visit to the beach, and, except for a sunburn (despite the 2 tubes of sunblock we sent with her), she had the time of her life.
I just got an email from another neighbor who asked Mia yesterday about her trip. Here’s the conversation:
Susan: “What sort of things did you do on your beach trip?”
Mia: “Oh, played in the water, went to dinner, went to some stores, rode on the Pixie.”
Susan: “Pixie? What’s the Pixie?”
Mia: “It’s a boat.”
Susan: “Oh.”
Mia: “You can drive your car right up onto it.”
Susan: “Oh, like a ferry?”
Mia: “Oh yeah, pixies, fairies, I always get those mixed up.”
4,200,000 Gallons A Day
Using a well-established scientific technique to measure flow from the biggest of three leaks near the seafloor, [Steve Wereley] determined that the flow coming out of the end of the pipe could be 10 times the size of the official figure.
“What I get is 25,000 barrels a day coming out of that tiny hole — that’s a 1.2-inch hole,” he said, adding that it seemed “incomprehensible.”
Wereley says the oil in this part of the pipe is under tremendous pressure. Add his current figure to last week’s estimate of about 70,000 barrels a day, and his total approaches 100,000 barrels a day. And, there’s another leak he has yet to analyze.
and
When asked Wednesday what the likelihood was that BP’s figures were accurate, Wereley said he didn’t see “any possibility, any scenario under which their number is accurate.”
quote out of context
When Armstrong left for a few weeks, he asked Landis to “make sure the electricity didn’t go off and ruin the blood,” according to the e-mail quoted by the Journal.
climb on
Jordan Romero, 13, began his march upward Wednesday from a north-side camp at 21,500 feet, and hopes to attain the 29,035-foot summit on Saturday and complete his
controversialbid to become the youngest person to attain mountaineering’s ultimate single pinnacle.
Fuck the controversy.
it’s a sky orange sky
For the first two billion years of Earth’s history or so, the sky was probably orange. We’re not sure whether that’s really true — no one’s been able to hop in a time machine and go back and check — but based on what we know about the chemistry of that time period, there’s a good chance the atmosphere’s primary component was methane (CH4), which would’ve cast a strange pall over our young planet.
What turned the heavens blue? Algae apparently.
Aston Martin One-7710
A mystery customer bought ten Aston Marton One-77s. Each costs around one and a half million dollars.
The One-77 was revealed last year by the Warwickshire-based company. It has been designed to rival such hypercars as the Bugatti Veyron and Lamborghini Reventon, both of which forged a new class of £1m-plus vehicles. It will feature a 7.3-litre V12 engine producing 700bhp — enough to give it a top speed of about 220mph and a 0-60mph acceleration time of 3.5 seconds. It is easily the most extreme Aston to date.
This one buyer will own 13% of the cars made.
it does matter
In the never ending battle between matter and antimatter, matter wins by 1%.
The seemingly inescapable fact that matter and antimatter particles destroy each other on contact has long puzzled physicists wondering how life, the universe or anything else can exist at all. But new results from a particle accelerator experiment suggest that matter does seem to win in the end.
The experiment has shown a small — but significant — 1 percent difference between the amount of matter and antimatter produced, which could hint at how our matter-dominated existence came about.
What’s the matter now?
The Sauna World Championships
ESPN’s Rick Reilly channeled his inner George Plimpton by entering a competitive sauna competition in Finland:
You’d be amazed at how much fun it is to watch a grown man come apart like a $9 sweater. A Belarusian started out sane, just sitting there. Every 30 seconds a pitiless stream of water came out from a ceiling shower in the center of the sauna and splashed on the molten-hot rocks, creating a 100% humidity level in the room that would melt gold. About two minutes in our man started rocking a little. At three his eyes started blinking oddly. At four he began twitching. At five his eyes got huge. At six he started swallowing each breath like a gulp of scorching soup. Then he started glancing around wildly, as if to say to the others, Are you mad? Don’t you see what’s happening? They’ve locked us in a Crock-Pot! He started wiping his eyes and mouth. He moved his hands out toward his thighs to rub them, then realized that’s not allowed and did so anyway, crazily, as though he were covered in lice. The judges flagged him once, then twice. Then he lurched for the door, and he was out. Sanity and cool air whooshed back into his brain, and suddenly he was normal and smiling again.
In each opening heat only two of the six moved on. Our friend Rick Ellis from New York went 8:03, to advance. I was waiting to congratulate him when I noticed something awful. There were two big patches of skin missing on his upper lip, just under his nostrils.
Regulation temperature for the sauna is 261 degrees Fahrenheit.
