You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

— Woody Allen

How’s the economy going?  New census numbers indicate it’s bad and getting worse.  The number of people without insurance went up last year while the median income for both men and women dropped.  Poverty remained unchanged, and no progress in that case is as shameful and discouraging as it would be if the number increased.

Look at this caterpillar.  It doesn’t even look like a bug, let alone one that’s still alive, yet it is.

Check out these images of animal hybridization.  Sure, they’re photoshopped, but they’re quite cool — although some are disturbing combinations that don’t look very nice.  [via PZ]

Dr. Charles asks if your doctor is prepared for avian flu and other pandemic threats, and he provides a synopsis of what physicians should be doing to prepare.  He also notes the importance of preparation by non-medical personnel, an important factor for both disease and terrorism threats.  Do you have a supply of sealed fresh water, non-perishable foods, and other supplies?

Grand Rounds 2.49 is available.  Head on over for the best of the medical blogosphere.

It’s a bug-eat-bug world, and those photos prove it.  Beautiful pics of one bee’s untimely demise.

Of course, we can’t go without the gratuitous kitten photo.  In this case, he’s helping with the electronics.

xocobra and I talked about the housing market just this past weekend, and I said then what I will say now: it’s a-gonna fall, and it’s a-gonna fall hard.  I think the next two years will show that.  In the meantime, just to give you some perspective on where it’s been since 1890 and how high it’s gone recently compared to history, take a look at this chart (see the link below that to a larger version for more clarity).  As Atrios says, “This is not going to be pretty.”  I strongly expect a rush on bankruptcies and foreclosures over the next 24 months, and the seller’s market will make a very painful conversion into a buyer’s market.  I can only hope I’m wrong about that, but I doubt I am.

Regrettably, all the smart people think America’s actions in the Middle East have strengthened Iran tremendously.  “The US-led ‘war on terror’ has bolstered Iran’s power and influence in the Middle East, especially over its neighbour and former enemy Iraq, a thinktank said today. A report published by Chatham House said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had removed Iran’s main rival regimes in the region. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its invasion of Lebanon had also put Iran ‘in a position of considerable strength’ in the Middle East, said the thinktank.”  As usual, this administration is blundering along claiming one set of goals while accomplishing something entirely unrelated.

I’m buying one (or more) of these tee shirts.  They say “I Am Not A Terrorist” in Arabic.  I can’t wait to wear one to the airport.  I mean, given my intact government security clearance, it would be rather entertaining to see how that turns out, eh?

The analytics software I installed the other day is working right nice at the moment.  I’ve never been one to monitor my site usage or statistics because they’ve never interested me, and I don’t blog for an audience.  Still, I’ve been looking for an easy way to at least see what’s going on, and this new package has indeed given me some great overviews.

Here’s one day of traffic based on where the viewer is located.  Again, this is one day, so this map will grow more crowded (cumulatively) as time goes on.  I just thought I’d share this as it’s pretty cool to see.

Note that each dot is a specific location where one or more people visited the site and does not represent the number of viewers from each spot.

First, New Scientist regarding a discovery off the coast of Taiwan that indicates yet another hostile environment that supports life:

Microbes discovered by a lake of liquid carbon dioxide under the sea off Taiwan could help us locate life on Mars, researchers say.

Japanese and German researchers have found billions of bacteria and other tiny organisms living in a layer of sediment which traps the CO₂ under the seabed. Their survival in such a hostile natural environment suggests that something similar could be happening on other planets.

If water and CO₂ are present below the surface in polar environments, says Fumio Inagaki at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokosuka, “I expect that life signatures utilising chemical materials and CO₂ for growth might be found.”

And from Carl Zimmer comes the explanation of “[h]ow five big questions about biology on our planet are shaping the search for life on other worlds”:

There are many strange landscapes in the solar system, but perhaps none stranger than that of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Deserts blanket Titan for hundreds of miles, rippling with wind-sculpted dunes that rise more than 300 ft. Images taken by the Cassini spacecraft over the past two years also reveal riverbeds sculpted by liquid methane, canyons, and what appear to be a volcano and a shoreline. When Cassini dropped the Huygens probe onto Titan’s surface in 2005, the 701-pound craft landed in a substance with the consistency of wet sand. Shrouding it all is a smoggy, orange-hued atmosphere 10 times thicker than Earth’s and made up of complex organic molecules.

“Titan is so cool,” says Peter Ward, who leads NASA-funded astrobiology research at the University of Washington. “Titan is the most exciting place in the solar system astrobiologically. It has the most exciting chemistry set in our solar system by far. If there’s life on Titan, it’s alien life–really alien life.”

But finding microorganisms on Titan–or anywhere in the universe–is no easy task. Titan has carbon-based molecules, for example, which is one of the necessary ingredients for life as we know it. But the recipe may be different there than it is here on Earth.

“Methane plays the same meteorological role on Titan as water does on Earth. So what would life look like if it drank a glass of methane in the morning, rather than a glass of Florida orange juice?” asks molecular biologist Steven Benner, a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. No one knows, but it is one of many questions intriguing astrobiologists.

While the article is quite long, it’s well worth your time.

Remember a few decades ago when the very topic of alien life caused laughter and scorn, and no respectable scientist would even mention the possibility?  Now, only the ignorant would deny there is probably life out there, and scientists the world over agree wholeheartedly that we are not alone.

My, how times change.

I love precipitation.  Add to that how desperately we need it and you’ll understand my appreciation for the rain we received during the last two days.  Sure, it wasn’t enough to break the drought — hell, it wasn’t enough to even put a dent in it — but it was welcome nonetheless.  At this point, we’ll take what we can get.

But there’s an adverse side effect of rain that I’m not particularly fond of.  It washes away my perimeter defenses on the patio.  That fine layer of Sevin dust that I so carefully plan and execute to protect myself from the insect pestilence has now been washed away entirely.  What little remains is nearest the doors, something for which I’m thankful, of course, yet the exterior edges are completely unprotected now.  When I stepped outside this morning to give offering to the birds and squirrels, I was made aware of why it is so important for me to keep my patio shield at full power.

There were ants everywhere, and not just a few or a dozen.  There had to be a hundred of them if there was one.  And they weren’t alone.  There were earwigs, a few centipedes, and two small beetles I did not recognize.  I also found some bizarre little creatures I have yet to identify despite seeing them recently squirming about just outside of the fence.  They are small, light-colored, worm-like things, although they are not worms for they have legs, but they only have legs (at least that I can see) at the fronts of their bodies, and they twist and wriggle about with an apparent lack of mobility skills.  They seem parasitic in some way, although that is based solely on observation and gut feeling.  The various lizards hunt them and often leap from the bushes in predatory attacks as these small creatures make themselves easy targets with their directionless writhing on the ground.  Two of those devils were on the patio this morning as well, and in their usual fashion, they were aimlessly twisting and turning and getting nowhere fast.

The contemptuous way in which these various insect beasts pervade my outside refuge as soon as my guard is down can be considered nothing short of invasive and cruel.  Especially the ants given my severe allergy to their stings.

Despite the ongoing incursion that besets me this morning, I did not reinforce the borders and otherwise dispatch the loitering armies of mayhem that now enjoy relatively unencumbered access to my sanctuary.  The ground is still wet and any Sevin dust put down now would undoubtedly cake into useless ground cover.  For now, the evil minions are free to roam and explore and hunt.  They still can not approach the doors without wading through the toxin that survived the rainfall.  That will do for now.  As the day progresses and the heat serves to evaporate what little moisture remains, I am armed and ready to do battle with the marauding pests that even now taunt me from just outside my home.  Their time will come, I assure you.  I will first sweep them all to the outer edges of the patio, a move as much meant to relocate them as it is to clear the rain debris, and then I will engage my full forces in a launched strike that will lay waste the advancing creatures and once again ensure the safety of the patio.

At least until it rains again, or the wind blows hard enough to move the dust, or I am forced to sweep the patio…  But I shall endure and prevail, I say, for my home is my castle, and the deadly moat of killer dust will be maintained and strengthened as needed.  I will not be intimidated, and I will not be held captive or laid seige to.  Intended mainly to stop the ants, the rest of the insect community must also be made aware of my resolve in this matter, so they too shall suffer under the weight of my retaliation.

So there.