Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island
Topic: Science
12:46 am EDT, Apr 24, 2008
Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out, new research shows.
In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say.
A North Dakota judge issued a ruling in Sierra Corporate Design v. Ritz that has some pretty stunning implications about the use of the "host -l" command when accessing DNS records. In the judgment (which was prepared by the plaintiff's counsel and sent to the judge), the use of the "host -l" command is tantamount to computer hijacking and hacking.
Riiight...next thing you know, they'll decide ping* is cracking too.
*Rattle, Aestetix, I know you guys said you can send "+++ATH0" to a modem in a ping and disconnect the person, but, really, who still uses dial-up?
Japan as a country never stops amazing us. I am sure you have heard of, or seen the “Nyotaimori” (literally means female body plate), where the restaurant serves sushi and sashimi on a naked woman’s body.
Wow, this is one aspect of Japan I've never heard of, but then, in a country where they have BuraSera (bloomers [of] sailor [uniformed school girls] stores) and used panty machines, it's not THAT surprising.
This video makes fun of modern newbie computer users. It's from a show called Oystein & Meg (Oystein & I) produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting television channel (NRK) in 2001. The spoken language is Norwegian
The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter. Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature.
Sammy told of the day when he had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked '62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.
Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.
Whether we are readers or writers, teachers or editors, all of us in professional communities must understand three things about complex writing:
* it may precisely reflect complex ideas, * it may gratuitously complicate complex ideas, * it may gratuitously complicate simple ideas.
...
Here is an example of the third kind of complexity:
The absence from this dictionary of the a handful of old, well-known vulgate terms for sexual and excretory organs and functions is not due to a lack of citations for these words from current literature. On the contrary, the profusion of such citations in recent years would suggest that the terms in question are so well known as to require no explanation. The decision to eliminate them as part of the extensive culling process that is the inevitable task fo the lexicographer was made on the practical grounds that there is still objection in many quarters to the appearance of these terms in print and that to risk keeping this dictionary out of the hands of some students by introducing several terms that require little if any elucidation would be unwise. -- From the foreword, Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language
This means,
We excluded vulgar words for sex and excretion not because we could not find them. We excluded them because many people object to seeing them. Had we included them, some teachers and schoolboards would have refused to let this dictionary be used by their students, who in any event already know what these words mean.
You'll also find the above excerpt discussed in American Lexicography, 1945-1973, an article by Clarence Barnhart, published in American Speech in the summer of 1978. (Subscription required for access to full text.)
2. "I use The Google," in reference to the popular search engine. October 24th. Interview with Maria Bartiromo of CNBC.
Yes, it's "The Google," though my boss said that before. He was hunting around the desktop shortcuts to IE and Word looking for one called "The Google." He also held the mouse upside down and pushed the mouseball with his index finger like it was a trackball, so I guess there are stupider things, but the following one seems even dumber to me.
3. "It was not always certain that the U.S. and America would have a close relationship." June
It's one thing to be technologically-challenged. That's normal. That quote is nonsense though.
