Can you help a squirrel out? All he wants is a cool drink—and a great photo opportunity.
This is quite troubling. “The Tasmanian Devil, a rare carnivorous marsupial found only on Australia’s southern island state of Tasmania, faces extinction in 10 to 20 years without a cure for the facial cancer now decimating the population. With half the population of this fierce, black furry animal now wiped out, leaving less than 75,000 devils, Professor Hamish McCallum at the University of Tasmania is battling to establish offshore colonies of healthy devils.”
Tangled Bank 75 is available now. Check it out for recent news from and great writing on science, medicine, and nature.
Bigotry That Hurts Our Military: It’s a most excellent editorial on “don’t ask, don’t tell” by Alan K. Simpson, Republican senator from Wyoming from 1979 to 1997. You should definitely read the whole thing because it’s insightful and telling. To get you started, here’s an excellent snippet: “My thinking shifted when I read that the military was firing translators because they are gay. According to the Government Accountability Office, more than 300 language experts have been fired under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. This when even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently acknowledged the nation’s ‘foreign language deficit’ and how much our government needs Farsi and Arabic speakers. Is there a ‘straight’ way to translate Arabic? Is there a ‘gay’ Farsi? My God, we’d better start talking sense before it is too late. We need every able-bodied, smart patriot to help us win this war.” Again, you should definitely read the whole thing.
You can’t go wrong with this photo of a momma cat holding her baby. Just look at them!
WOW! “Radar scans of Mars have unveiled a vast reservoir of nearly pure frozen water around the planet’s south pole, a deposit so rich that if it were spread evenly on the surface it would be 36 feet deep. […] Overall, the ice, which covers an area larger than Texas, is unevenly deposited, with sections as deep as 2.3 miles, the researchers report in this week’s issue of the journal Science.” I’ll say it again: It’s looks increasingly as though there was life on Mars at some point in the past. The water/ice found thus far is a fraction of what we believe to have been there at one point. Finding this enormous deposit of ice along with what is undoubtedly proof of liquid water still milling about the surface as discovered just months ago seem to indicate the planet was once a thriving ecosystem with ample fuel to support life—even if it was all microscopic.
Take a look at the new clouded leopard discovered in Borneo. What a stunningly beautiful creature!
Get your doubt on with Skeptics’ Circle #56. Don’t let critical thinking be something other people do. Let ‘incredulous’ be your defining word.