A new report from Thailand indicates the discovery of at least one dog infected with the H5N1 strain of avian flu. We are quickly learning the breadth of hosts capable of contracting and carrying the disease (we already know cats and humans can get it). This raises a serious question about vectors for spread of the contagion, not to mention a litany of concerns about how many mammals can be infected, how that might translate to increased exposure, unforeseen reservoirs of infectious material in animal populations, and overall spread of the virus.
Friday Ark #102 is up and running and will continue growing throughout the weekend, so check it out for links to all sorts of cool animal pics.
If you don’t think climate change is happening, there are fruit flies who will prove you wrong. “Populations of fruit flies on three separate continents have independently evolved identical gene changes within just two decades, apparently to cope with global warming.” The ‘warm-adapted inversions’ in the genes are spreading northward around the globe at a rate of “100 kilometres per 25 years, or 400 kilometres per century” — and that’s a lot of specific genetic changes to argue against. “Comparisons of contemporary and historical profiles of inversions proved that inversions once found only at warmer latitudes had spread as average temperatures had increased further away from the equator, say the researchers.” Oh, and I suppose there’s some IDiot out there who will explain this as yet another intervention by some arbitrary designer somewhere; failure to do so means it’s yet another definitive and irrefutable sign of evolution in progress.
Check out this hawk photo! Click on it and click on it again when the new page loads to see the larger version. Stunning.
According to the administration, things are going swimmingly in Iraq. That must be why we sent 13,000 extra troops in the last five weeks, meaning we now have 140,000 military personnel in that country.
American Talibangelists recently produced a television program attempting to link Darwin to Hitler (i.e., Hitler did what he did because he believed in evolution). Of course it’s laughable since Hitler’s own writings (e.g., Mein Kampf) and speeches clearly show he did what he did because he felt it was his Christian duty and god’s will. I mean, this is the man who said: “And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.” He also said: “And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.” That anyone can then blame his atrocities on the theory of evolution or Charles Darwin specifically is nothing more than now anticipated religious lies and deceit, the very kind of dishonesty they claim to abhor. In the same spirit of this weak minded linking of the tyrannical despot to a science maven of historical significance, I offer this like minded and comparably reasoned comparison: If Hitler’s actions are to be blamed on Darwin and the theory of evolution, equally “on 9/11, the World Trade Center was knocked down by creationists who hate evolution.” Any questions?
I keep saying the housing market is going to collapse and leave a lot of people homeless, both figuratively and literally. Atrios has excerpts from a most excellent Business Week article. At least read his summary of the findings, if not the entire article (to which he links). Most of the problem has to do with falling home prices and the extensive use of ARMs during the last few years. It’s frightening:
There was plenty more going on behind the scenes they didn’t know about, either: that their broker was paid more to sell option ARMs than other mortgages; that their lender is allowed to claim the full monthly payment as revenue on its books even when borrowers choose to pay much less; that the loan’s interest rates and up-front fees might not have been set by their bank but rather by a hedge fund; and that they’ll soon be confronted with the choice of coughing up higher payments or coughing up their home. The option ARM is “like the neutron bomb,” says George McCarthy, a housing economist at New York’s Ford Foundation. “It’s going to kill all the people but leave the houses standing.”
[…]
Most of the pain will be born by ordinary people. And it’s already happening. More than a fifth of option ARM loans in 2004 and 2005 are upside down — meaning borrowers’ homes are worth less than their debt. If home prices fall 10%, that number would double. “The number of houses for sale is tripling in some markets, so people are not going to get out of their debt,” says the Ford Foundation’s McCarthy. “A lot are going to walk.”