CapitalistImperialistPig

Scientists have sequenced the DNA of extinct mammoths , and our Neandertal cousins are next. They are plotting to grow some: Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million. Staple of SF or brilliant conception of Michael Crichton - I vote for the latter. About our cousin: The full genome of the Neanderthals, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals. I'm as eager as the next nut to see a landscape populated by mammoths, dire wolves, and saber tooth tigers. Neandertals - not so much.

. . . even if he did wake up enough to reality to see that McCain-Palin was disaster. In the clip at the link, he spouts the latest riff on the conservative spin on the great depression, and Paul Krugman straightens him out: link .

One rumor has it that Bush plans some sort of mass blanket pardon for his fellow criminals. His father did it, of course. If it happens, we certainly need to amend the Constitution to limit the power of pardon to those not working for the President in any appointive position. We ought to do that anyway.

The Lumonator tackles the subject of education , and sort of seems to be going somewhere interesting until one of his fits takes him and he gets stuck cursing his many enemies. Learning, he thinks, is a bit like a wavelet decomposition - you start out with approximations and gradually refine them putting in more and finer detail. I can see this, to a degree. My toddler grandnephew used to refer to all four legged creatures as "dog" when he was little. It seems that Lubos is doing some tutoring of one of his nephews - my sympathy to Kubo - who evidently needs to do a lot of simplification of rational polynomial expressions. Now that isn't a very useful skill, since most such don't admit much simplification, but it is an exercise in pattern recognition. The trick, of course, is to factor the polynomials. Lubos also thinks that students don't get enough negative reinforcement, so I will offer some for him: your theory of progressive refinement is only the less import...

Real estate - check Investment banks - check Financial markets - check Other banks - check Automobile Industry - check Stock Market - check My 401K - check United States - TBD World Economy - TBD Now when does this creative part kick in?

Larry Summers, the former Secretary of the Treasury and Harvard President, is being talked about for the Treasury position again. This has caused some consternation in the leftosphere. There may be good reasons for opposing him, but the most frequently cited one, his supposed misogyny, is nonsense. It his based on a speech he gave to a conference pondering the paucity of women in tenured positions in math, physics, and engineering. Here is a transcript of that speech . First some facts: there are relatively few women in tenured positions in the above subjects, historically women in science have faced great discrimination, and in recent times women have overcome discrimination to become a strong presence in other fields from construction to law to medicine. So why are physics and math so resistant? Discrimination, overt and other, is one plausible explanation. If Summers had stopped there his speech would have been forgotten. Instead he went on to suggest that differences between me...

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/11/rss-msu-0013-deg-c-month-on-month.html