Jesus Shark

Captive shark had 'virgin birth'

Female hammerhead sharks can reproduce without having sex, scientists confirm.

The evidence comes from a shark at Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska which gave birth to a pup in 2001 despite having had no contact with a male.

Genetic tests by a team from Belfast, Nebraska and Florida prove conclusively the young animal possessed no paternal DNA, Biology Letters journal reports.

Seth Cooke took this article and ran with it...

"The shark story (the first of those two linked to above) is fantastic for two reasons. Firstly it's extremely heartening to know that our evil ocean dwelling distant relatives aren't such vile alien killers after all and enjoy a bit of kinky eat me/beat me sex. Biting in the bedroom is great and I'm glad they think so too. Thus bridges are built between species that otherwise seemed irreconcilable. Everyone can be happy.

Secondly, the notion of a virgin hammerhead giving birth has filled my mind with reimagined Synoptic Gospels in which Jesus is a shark. Exactly the same stories, everything identical, just that one detail altered. It'd be like Porco Rosso only instead of an idealised post WWI Mediterranean it'd be all up in your Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and instead of a pig biplane pilot bounty hunter you'd have Jesus as a fucking evil shark."

That's my paper!

Corrections, May 25, 2007

View from my window (door, actually)

5/25/07, 2PM. I sent this to Andrew Sullivan. Come visit, y'all.

TSA Confiscates Congressman’s Last Meal During Food Stamp Challenge

Today, four members of Congress conclude the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge, in which lawmakers chose to live “on three dollars of food per day, the same amount an average participant in the Food Stamp Program receives.”

One of the participants, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), “stuck to the challenge” even as he traveled to speak at his alma mater’s commencement exercises, bringing along his “pasta and sauce, as well as the last of my jelly, peanut butter, and bread.” After the ceremony and late for his plane, he rushed through the airport choosing not to check his bags to save time. He writes:

I step up to the metal detector, take my shoes off, place my bag through the scanner and come out the other side to the most dreaded words in travel, “Bag Check!” […]

As the agent sifted though my bag, I tried to recount what could possibly be in there that was threatening… my mouthwash? Toothpaste? Yeah, it was those two, but it was also my peanut butter and jelly. […]

He politely put the peanut butter and jelly to the side, closed my bag and gave it back to me. I was too astonished to talk. I took my bag and walked towards the gate thinking about the 4 or maybe 5 meals that she had taken from me. What am I going to do now? It’s not like I can just go to Safeway and grab another jar. I have .33 cents and a bag of cornmeal to last today and tomorrow.

While Ryan took the loss in stride, comforted by the fact that he could soon lift his $21/week spending limit come Tuesday, one in 10 Americans constantly live with such restrictions and “over 80 percent of food stamp benefits go to families with children.”

Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) explained that “nearly 36 million Americans” do not “consistently have enough food to feed themselves or their families.”

He added that on such a low budget there’s “no organic foods, no fresh vegetables, we were looking for the cheapest of everything.” “We got spaghetti and hamburger meat that was high in fat — the fattiest meat on the shelf. … It’s almost impossible to make healthy choices on a food stamp diet.”

You can read more about the Food Stamp Challenge and H.R. 2129, Feeding America’s Families Act HERE.

– Ryan Powers

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/21/food-stamp/

Let math help pick your music

MUSIC INTELLIGENCE: 2012

MAY 7, 2007

Mike McCready’s company, Platinum Blue, uses computers to analyze the mathematical patterns in songs. McCready and Malcolm Gladwell discuss how this technology can help the music business identify potential hits, and what Gladwell should listen to next. From “2012: Stories from the Near Future,” the 2007 New Yorker Conference.

Click here to hear it. About
10-15 minutes, but worth it.

Congresscritters try to survive on $21 in food stamps for a week

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) are among a handful of congresscritters participating in an experiment in which they must subsist on standard US food stamp rations for one week.

The shocking conclusion, so far? $21 worth of stamps a week doesn't add up to much, and it's "almost impossible" to maintain a healthy diet for $1 a meal (huh, wonder why America's poor suffer obesity in such great numbers?).

Both lawmakers are blogging about the experience: McGovern here, Ryan here. Snip from Ryan's latest post:

My biggest concern today is running out of food before the end of the week.

One loaf of bread doesn’t make as many sandwiches as you’d think, and I’m running through my cottage cheese pretty fast as well.

The budgeting was hard enough, rationing what I do have will present another challenge.

Link to Washington Post story (thanks, Rebecca).

(From Boing Boing)

High-Dynamic-Range Photography: A Guide

If you've seen a particularly eye-popping, out-of-this-world night photograph of a city skyline, or a particularly apocalyptic cloudscape with cartoonish color saturation making the rounds on blogs lately, there's a good chance it was made using high-dynamic-range imaging, or HDR software. And while these images may look like the work of a pro photographer, or at least a seasoned digital-imaging or special-effects expert, the tools to easily make your own amazing HDR images are widely (and in some cases freely) available.

(more of the how-to)
(more HDR images)


Oh! And here's a guide to how to fake HDR in photoshop if you didn't take three pictures...

Loan tiny sums to micro-enterprises in the developing world

Kiva.org is the world’s first peer-to-peer, distributed microloan website. A great idea where PayPal meets Gates Foundation. The site allows you to lend a small amount of money, say $25, to needy microenterprises in developing countries. You receive repayment at the end of the loan period . This sounds like a great idea



read more | digg story

Bayeux Tapestry Animated

A terrific animation of an 11th century artwork. Some details of the tapestry's history and construction here.