Chat/Comment thread

Buz, there is a typo in your signature's second sentence that appears unintentionally ironic.

Never worked for me.

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Color-changing FrogCredit: Stefan HertwigCalled Rhacophorus penanorum, this tiny frog species, whose males grow to just 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters), was discovered in Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, in the Heart of Borneo. Also called the Mulu flying frog, the amphibian has a small pointed snout and is unusual in that the species has bright green skin at night but changes color to display a brown hue during the day. Its eyes follow suit to change color as well. And while the minute animal may not fly with the birds, it uses its webbed feet and aerodynamic flaps of skin on the arms and legs to glide from tree to tree.

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More cool here.

Heh...I watched and was thinking he is pretty cool, but it's hard to out-cool something that flies...and then he hit the finger. I like that.I'll call it a tie, but only because the Pacman frog has the advantage of tech. If the flying frog had Bluetooth, it would be no contest.

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And you know it makes me wonder
What's going on under the ground...
Do you know? Don't you wonder?
What's going on down under you...

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Newly discovered carnivorous plant devours underground worms

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The carnivorous plant Philcoxia minensis resides in Serra do Cabral, Minas Gerais, Brazil (A), has some of its tiny leaves above ground (B), though most reside below ground (C & D) where they snag wormy snacks for the plant, helping the plant digest its meals.

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Rafael Silva Oliveira, PNAS

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Carnivorous plants fascinate me. We live near a rare, well-kept-secret (collectors are bastards) black spruce quaking bog, where the kingdom boundaries are crossed regularly by green raiding parties--but this Brazilian has novel tactics.You'd think a pack of evolutionists would spend more time marveling at what evolution hath wrought.Don't worry. Uncle Omni is here to serve.

It's hard not to feel some sense of rough justice at the death of this particular murderous thug.On the other hand, I'm not too comfy with presidents having a license to kill.

I think you misread my tone, NoNukes. I feel a great deal more than that without any help.It was rough justice, the kind of rough justice we had before laws and trials, when "let's kill him like he killed some of us" was how things were done. Call it pre-Aeschylus justice, before Athene and Apollo supplanted the Furies.Call it a war. Call it a lynching. Call it an endless vendetta. But don't call me a supporter of it. Even the early headlines on the drone strike were appalling--we definitely killed somebody; we think it was Jihadi John.Humans still experience the rage and crave the vengeance that law tries to contain; in some ways, we built the law the way good werewolves have familiars lock them up during the full moon. I was acknowledging that I understand and share some of those emotions, in part because denying the legitimacy of grief and anger won't get us anywhere. The image of a president with a global kill button seemed enough to suggest the many downsides, given this venue.When we went after Saddam, at one point early on the U.S. targeted a building where he was thought to be hiding. He wasn't there, but a number of civilians were, including women and children. The news reports were saturated with regret at missing Saddam, and all I could think of was those dead kids and their mothers whose lives were considered trivial next to the satisfaction of smart-bombing Saddam on live TV.I had already warned people that we would lose more American lives there than we did on 9/11, to general incredulity--folks anticipated another turkey-shoot, but the intent to occupy was clear, and occupying any part of the Middle East always ends badlly.When I heard the 'Shucks we missed!' news reports years ago, I despaired at the lives lost and the lives to be lost and the evil we were going to do to ourselves as we set the entire region aflame.I still care more about sparing the innocent than hammering the guilty, but I guess I was too telegraphic in that prior post. Consider this an unpacking.

Quetzal's remarks about the overwhelming technology were spot on, as were his concerns about possible heavy U.S. and civilian casualties during urban fighting, although those tolls characterized the occupation more than the war.

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No. Not, however, because I have any concern either for Iraq itself or the "morality" of a war there. My main concern is that this one promises to be much bloodier and more costly than the previous. Oh, I have no doubt that we'll quite handily obliterate Iraq's armor and what is jokingly known as an "air force". After all, even though ol' Saddam has been busily getting his mitts on as many goodies as he can over the last ten years, the overwhelming qualitative advantage remains.

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However, a full-scale invasion is much more problematic than simply booting him out of Kuwait was. Consider - at no time during Desert Storm was there any urban warfare (with the exception of Khafji, which was Saddam stupidly sticking his neck out to get cut off [...] How many civilian casualties do you think we'll have if we have to lay seige (or worse, fight through) some place like Basrah or Baghdad?

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Message 12The invasion went great, though sold with lies. The occupation was bungled. An already bad idea became a disaster.

No problem. I welcomed the opportunity to clarify my views: my initial comments were inadequate.

That explains the repetition.I wonder if each of those three men thought that song was about him.

Have to disagree. I grew up with American Bandstand ("I give it an 87, Dick, good beat, easy to dance to"), and while he may have hosted some puttings, Dick Clark personally never, ever, put the ram in the rama lama ding dong.

Doesn't matter. A bunch of colored people and white colored-people-music lovers put the ram and the dip back into the American ding dong.Dick was the suit who figured out one way to make TV money on it.Also: Slow is good.

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Pfizer and Allergan merge in $160B tax inversion deal
USA TODAY - ‎59 minutes ago‎

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U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (PFE) and Irish rival Allergan(AGN) Monday announced a record-breaking $160-billion merger, the largest in health-care industry history and the biggest yet involving a controversial tax-saving strategy.

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Another U.S. corporation dodges U.S. taxes.I understand that they used their corporate religious rights to pray on the issue of fiscal damage to their own.Now the Irish will get a cut every time someone takes one of those little blue pills. Wasn't the canned Guinness hurtful enough?Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.