myblog -may '07

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." -Lawrence Peter Berra

new word: parthenogenesis.. means: "virgin birth"

A captive hammerhead shark gave birth to a pup without mating, reported researchers on Wednesday. It is the first time that parthenogenesis, as virginal birth as called, has been observed in a shark.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, a team of scientists led by Dr Demian Chapman of the Pew institute for Ocean Science found no trace of DNA of male origin in the baby shark.

“The findings were really surprising because as far as anyone knew, all sharks reproduced only sexually by a male and female mating, requiring the embryo to get DNA from both parents for full development, just like in mammals,” said Dr Paulo Prodöhl of Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. “The discovery that sharks can reproduce asexually by parthenogenesis now changes this paradigm, leaving mammals as the only major vertebrate group where this form of reproduction has not been seen.”

read more of the shark who gave virgin birth

so, after a long period of silence (read: hard work at work, and being so exhausted when i get back) i shall post about how i had a good day at work today
so.. day began as usual.. go through all the stuff i have to be doing.. (usually around 5 things at a given time.. so you either do them parallelly, or.. well, not get much done..) then i realized (because they came to tell me.. for some reason i dont get emails for my division) we had an "all hands" meeting.. so everyone in my division (the lab i work at has [all?] 5 divisions there) was called downstairs, and the big honcho guy, (vp of our division) came over to talk to me!! wooohoo! only me! (it was about my shorts.. in case you were wondering) hahah.. it was awesome.. he's a really cool guy too.. and danny big honcho (also known from now on as "the delicate flower") was visibly jealous.. even though he denies it.. then later i finally had another "learning session" as i am going to refer to them from now on.. which is where i one on one with someone on my team (in this case the guy in charge of me.. called my "connections coach".. sort of like a mentor) and i finally understood some really basic basic thing about what my team does.. gah.. hahah.. it felt really nice.. (remember ive been here already 4months.. i still am not fully upto speed).. anyways, i also talked to my manager about this thing i have to start working on, and so he told me to setup a meeting between the 3 of us, and maaaan.. basically i was hosting my first meeting!! i felt soo important, i was explaining stuff, making decisions, it was awesome.. hopefully my manager at some point starts to realize im working (i dont know if i posted this yet, but yeah, my manager thinks i dont work "hard enough".. or "enough" at all.. haha... geeze.. and i have soo much to do all the time, its nuts.. oh well.. anyways.. so yeah a good day.. and then i had soccer today too! woohoo! except, holey, there were these two guys on my team.. hooooooooooley.. its like they had glue on their shoes or something, cuz they could not pass that friggin ball if their life depended on it!! geeeze!! so obviously we lost 5:1.. I KNOW!!!! if the ball went their way, thats it, forget about it.. the balls lost.. cuz obviously anyone who cant pass a stupid ball is also unable to shoot for their life.. so we lost, and it was sooo frustrating, cuz we had good players, and we were definitely dominating the field.. but those two guys.. GAH!!!
so yeah, good day at work today, lets have more of these..

from "Where did life come from? Is evolution the best scientific answer?"

One chemist has calculated the immense odds against amino acids ever combining to form the necessary proteins by undirected means. He estimated the probability to be more than 10 to the 67th to 1 (10^67:1) against even a small protein forming by time and chance, in an ideal mixture of chemicals, in an ideal atmosphere, and given up to 100 billion years (an age 10 to 20 times greater than the supposed age of the Earth). [129] Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically, any odds beyond 1 in 10 to the 50th (1:10^50) have a zero probability of ever happening ("and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!"). [130]

really great interesting read regarding the biology behind the creationist standpoint.. and how an atheist position, or even evolution make no sense.. (ie, are impossible)

haha i found this quote on one of the atheist forums i frequent:

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund. -- F. J. Raymond

seems like im left-brained.. thats what i guessed i was before taking the brain test (also one of the more fun tests to take.. i really enjoyed it)

you are Left-brained!

Most left-brained people like you feel at ease in situations requiring verbal ability, attention to detail, and linear, analytical ability. Whether you know it or not, you are a much stronger written communicator than many, able to get your ideas across better than others.

It's also likely that you are methodical and efficient at many things that you do. You could also be good at math, particularly algebra, which is based on very strict rules that make sense to your logical mind.

Kung Fu Clowns

Pulp Muppets.. pulp fiction.. except.. theyre.. muppets..

blonde takes a pregnancy test.. hahahah soooo funny.. "yeh, in fact, its a boy.. " "oh YAY!!"

friggin awesome narrated animation.. men in black (nothing to do with the movie..)

An animated sequence of Colby Buzzell's story. Part of the OPERATION HOMECOMING documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words

friggin insane sport acrobatics this is sheer strength like ive never seen.. (you might wanna mute it, the music is crap)

Hackers use Windows Update to download malicious code (i ended up just pasting the whole article in here.. )

Microsoft's Windows Update has a component called Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) that downloads updates while you're busy doing other things with your computer. If you get disconnected, the update will pick up where it left off when you get back on the network.

Sounds great, right? Well, generally it is. But since BITS is part of your operating system, your firewall doesn't really check to see what it's downloading. And while there is pretty much no risk of automatically downloading a virus or trojan through Windows Update under normal circumstances, hackers are starting to use BITS to download code to computers that have already been affected.

Say you click that file attachment in an email from an unknown source, expecting to see compromising photos of a young starlet. Turns out there's no photo, so you shrug and move on. Next thing you know, you're computer's trying to download all sorts of files to capture your passwords. Normally your firewall would help protect your computer from such attacks, but since BITS can fly under the radar, you may be out of luck.

According to a Symantec researcher there's no way to prevent hackers from using BITS right now, but Microsoft could redesign BITS to require a higher user level in order to work. Or Microsoft could only allow BITS to download files from trusted sources.

while the title is a little over the top, this stuff is still quite useful: 15 Coolest Firefox Tricks Ever:

11) Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.

13) Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.

14) Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized. This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.

15) Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:

* 0: Display a close button on the active tab only
* 1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
* 2:Don’t display any close buttons
* 3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)

"naw, thats too close! back uhp.. back uhp..." awesome dog video with a southern wrangler.. sooo cool..

the abortion quiz, its mostly geared towards christians, but its still interesting..

1. A preacher and his wife are very, very poor. They already have 14 kids. Now she finds out she’s pregnant with the 15th. They’re living in tremendous poverty. Considering their poverty and the excessive world population, would you consider recommending she get an abortion?

2. The father is sick with sniffles, the mother has TB. Of their four children, the first is blind, the second has died, the third is deaf, the fourth has TB. She finds she’s pregnant again. Given this extreme situation, would you consider recommending abortion?

3. A white man raped a 13-year-old black girl and she’s now pregnant. If you were her parents, would you consider recommending abortion?

4. A teenage girl is pregnant. She’s not married. Her fiancé is not the father of the baby, and he’s upset. Would you recommend abortion?

heres a riddle for all you quick-thinkers :

The poor have it,
The rich need it,
And if either were to eat it,
They would surely perish.

(this one took me 30seconds (including reading time), can you beat that? )

i am my team's "secret weapon".. quoth my manager.. more news to follow

because i know i have some new readers interested in this stuff, me responding to an atheist forum, (again):

> I will gladly rescind the above claim if JC himself visits me this
> Saturday at 11AM with a bottle of wine. Upon verification of his
> identify and claims I will pay:
>
> his travel expenses (round trip from/to anywhere)
> the cost of the wine
> $1000 per day Jesus is involved in fulfilling my request
> $2000

not to butt into this silliness, but i am certain, that if faced with a guy at any point on saturday who claims to be Jesus, you would just laugh and find them ridiculous.. much less invite them into your home. what if he had a mexican accent? what if this person didnt use the name "Jesus" (thats the hellenized version of joshua by the way, which is Jesus' actual name, if we are to get nitpicky) would it still be proof enough? nop. as a matter of fact, nothing, not the most precise exact set of fulfilled requirements you set out will ever be enough for you to believe in Him. why? because you dont want to believe, and therefore no amount of "proof" will ever be enough.. see? thats also why it never happens that way. if your heart is open, then the proof will be abundant, as more than one of us has found it to be. but if not, then Jesus Himself, knocking on your door, with wine in hand, at 11am on saturday, will not be enough proof.. you would just figure it to be a "coincidence" that some crazy guy who read your post would pose as "Jesus" and pull a prank on you.. or.. maybe you thought somebody slipped you something and you were hallucinating.. or or or or..

no proof will ever be enough for you, be honest at least in regards to that.. if you were open to the truth, you would already have arrived at it.. without any need for any more supernatural appearances..