ninme

The Times - Mammoth DNA extracted from hair reveals ancient secrets

Ten woolly mammoths that died up to 50,000 years ago have had their DNA sequenced using a technique that could revolutionise genetic testing of extinct creatures. DNA sequences from mammoth remains were so detailed that they are expected to cast […]

Categories: Science and Nature

I saw this the other day on Drudge, but it didn’t look like the type of thing I’d need to blog about. Wrong! This is just too funny:

BBC - Russian mother has ‘giant’ baby

A Russian woman has given birth to a baby weighing 7.75kg (17.5lbs), more than twice the average newborn weight. […]

Categories: People and Current Events

Telegraph Blogs - Holy Smoke - Pope’s veiled attack on Muslim countries, by Damian Thopson

Pope Benedict XVI has made a coded but fierce attack on Muslim nations where Christians are treated as second-class citizens and Muslims are forbidden on pain of death to convert to Christianity. In a speech yesterday, […]

Categories: People and Current Events

(Hey Bubblehead! “Thbbbpt!”)

Times Colonist - Willcocks: Submarine purchase gives navy that sinking feeling

The submarines cost about $790 million when Canada bought them. There’s no ready tally of the money sunk into them since, but the repairs and refits to the Victoria [which is in drydock where he’s writing this] have more than equalled […]

Categories: War and Peace

The Western Standard - The Dangers of Not Smoking As with other strains of puritanism through the ages, the stop-smoking inquisition may well be connected to the crisis of our times, by David Warren

I wrote “Prohibition,” and “puritanism,” still emotive terms, and it is necessary to add that North Americans have never had a […]

Categories: History

I managed to skate by this topic all week, but this I just can’t leave:

Telegraph - Ahmadinejad takes insults in his stride. By Bryony Gordon

You can just imagine the scene. Evil dictator with nuclear programme who hates a country so much he has called for it to be wiped off […]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Times Online - Exclusive from Rangoon: blood, fear and courage amid the junta’s deadly force Our correspondent experiences the brutal force of the backlash against pro-democracy protesters

The picture is captioned:

This is the moment that Kenji Nagai, 50, who was covering the Rangoon protests for the Japanese news agency APF News, was shot. He died […]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Telegraph - Burmese military crackdown condemned

Gordon Brown warned the regime that the “whole world is watching Burma”… Alexander Downer, Australian foreign minister, said he would not be following George W Bush’s announcement of further sanctions against Burma, saying they “would have absolutely no impact”. He said China […]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

The Times - Hillary and Bill Clinton show muscle as cover boy Bill gets a negative story dumped

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign forced a magazine to drop a negative story about her by threatening to cut off the publication’s access to the former President Bill Clinton, it emerged yesterday. The ruthless […]

Categories: Politics

“Beep You have five billion messages.”

Times Online - Chinese admit that Three Gorges Dam is an ecological disaster

It was supposed to be one of the engineering feats of the 20th century. But instead the Three Gorges Dam across the mighty Yangtze River in China may prove to be an environmental catastrophe, officials have […]

Categories: Science and Nature

Victoria Times-Colonist - Ban on military recruiters irks students

University of Victoria students are protesting a decision by their student society to ban active Canadian Forces recruiting at a career fair in their building. The outcry, which includes a 350-member protest group on Facebook, has forced the UVic Student Society to […]

Categories: War and Peace

An ad for Shinano Mainichi Shinbun, a Nagano newspaper:

(”Oto-san” is father, “arigato” you know.)

As opposed to this, and this, and this, and this, and most shockingly, something I had a whole rant raging on in my head about but couldn’t put down without it exploding, this

Categories: Business & Media

Reason and Emotion, 1943

Their use of red hair interests me.

So we watched March of the Penguins Friday night, and driving around on Sunday Peter commented as to how surprised he was by how astonishingly awful it was. So I said, “Yeah, I guess that’s what it takes to get a documentary to win an […]

Categories: Entertainment

Telegraph - Science: Is it possible to make science sexy?

Well, a picture of David Tennant is a good place to start.

Rowr.

Categories: Science and Nature

Times Online - Campaign to show the naked truth about anorexia

That’s anorexia. Keira Knightley is not anorexic.

Update:

Here’s another picture, at the Daily Mail, no less (warning, frontal nudity bits) (although, really, it isn’t likely to get you fired for being a pervert) (unless you’re really twistedly perverted). Maybe now they’ll get it into their […]

Categories: Business & Media