Oh, and one other thing

I heard on NPR that a Federal Appeals court has given Bush to detain American citizens on American soil as enemy combatants...
Nothing about it elsewhere though. Strike that:

"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the president of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda," wrote Judge J. Michael Luttig in the opinion for the three-judge panel.

"We conclude that the president does possess such authority," wrote Luttig, a conservative whom the Bush administration has been considering for a possible Supreme Court nomination.

The ruling by the court based in Richmond, Virginia, was a major victory for the Bush administration. Andrew Patel, an attorney for Padilla, said he thought it would be appealed to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
"It is very troubling that a court would be willing to uphold executive detentions in a democracy. Terrorism does not change over 200 years of legal tradition," he said in New York.

He acknowledged in a footnote that Padilla cannot be held indefinitely. But he can continue to be detained for the duration of hostilities and Luttig said the United States remained engaged in the conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Fortunately, there is one voice of sanity:

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff said the ruling required congressional action to set out standards on what constituted an enemy combatant and what review should be mandated.

"The executive cannot have the unilateral authority to designate an American citizen as an enemy combatant and lock them up for life without meaningful standards and judicial review," the California Democrat said.

All I can say is be afraid, be very afraid.

A Followup to Comments

Comments on my previous post call for a more indepth folloup - because they are on target. So let's develop it a bit more.

From Eschaton:

THERESA ROY, RESIDENT OF ST. GABRIEL: I'd rather have them here dead than alive. And at least they're not robbing you and you have to worry about feeding them.

From St. Louisans survive lawlessness in French Quarter:

A St. Louis lawyer and his wife spent most all of four days in a French Quarter hotel while the streets outside were filled with looters. Finally, they escaped New Orleans in the back of a pickup.

"There was mass looting going on, the Walgreens next to us was wiped out clean," said Scheer, 36, a self-employed lawyer. "We never once saw a National Guard presence anywhere in the Quarter. We had to walk by gangs of thugs on the sidewalks with lead pipes, golf clubs, pistols under their shirts. We tried to maintain tunnel vision."

From Workbench:

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

A little background on this second quote:

Around 500 people stuck in downtown New Orleans after the storm banded together for self-preservation, making sure the oldest and youngest among them were taken care of before looking after their own needs.

When buses charted by the group to escape New Orleans never showed up, they camped out beside a police command center on Canal Street, believing it was the best place to get aid, protection, and information. They were told they could not stay there and should leave the city on foot over Highway 90, which crosses the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the suburb of Gretna, a city of 17,500 people.

As pointed out at Pandagon there are two competing naratives at work here. One posits anarchy and violence in the wake of the complete collapse of government in New Orleans - and note only in New Orleans (at least I haven't heard of looting elswhere). The shows people trying to save themselves in the wake of govenmental collapse:

Well, yesterday we talked about how the media exaggerated and spread unsubstantiated rumors that made it sound like a riot in New Orleans. And now that survivors are getting out and getting comfortable and telling their stories, it's looking like what could be predicted by the theory that good crowds produce good thinking is shaping up to be true. I point everyone to this Kos diary by two survivors that Steve Gilliard has highlighted. The people who wrote it tell a compelling story of good crowd rule--people leaning on each other, bouncing ideas off each other, protecting each other. But there's another side of it, which is that the predominant, negative view of crowds--that they are automatically prone to violence--caused the police and military routinely to overreact and disperse crowds, which was counterproductive.

You can see both themes competing with each other in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article (linked to above):

A group of about 200 Monteleone guests decided to try to walk out of the city to the east, and got to the on-ramp at the Crescent Connection bridge, where they were met by Gretna, La., police with shotguns. "They told us the bridge was closed to foot traffic," Scheer said. "Some locals had joined us and became extremely unruly, threatening to rush the officers. They fired their shotguns into the air."

In one paragraph you have both. A group joins together for mutual aide, the police overreact and of course there are unruly locals. Here's another paragraph - one that really makes you think:

In an interview with UPI, Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his department shut down the bridge to pedestrians: "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

The increasingly desperate group set up camp on the New Orleans side of the bridge, where they were seen by several media outlets, until they were chased off at gunpoint by Gretna police:

Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

Criminals or the Police... who do you think they felt they were more in danger from?

The point here is that is still time to counteract the perception of lawless anarchy. Most of the stories I am hearing follow a similar pattern. People in an extremely desperate situation band together to try and survive in the face of a neglectful government are treated as roving bands of criminals by the people who are supposed to help them. Reversion to anarchy and criminal thuggary in the face of disaster is a common theme in fiction and being in that situation, I suppose it's inevitable that this assumption rears it's ugly head. "We were hiding from possible criminal elements..." one thinks it would be hard to tell, in that situation, whether the group you see is just a collection of people trying to survive or something worse. Such is the power of the mob rule mythology.
I use the word mythology deliberately because a lot of these news reports and stories have a certain "just so" quality that serve no purpose other than to confirm preexisting stereotypes and seem to be nothing but boundry maintenence mechanisms (simplistically, boundry maintenece mechanisms create sharp ideological boundries between two groups - reinforcing a positive image of one group and a negative image of the other).

What Gives Me Hope

Coturnix at Science and Politics has an incredibly interesting post about "mob rule", "crowd rule" and heroism. I strongly recommend it to everyone.

Why I'm Starting to Get Really Pissed Off

Let's start with Nixon sues to shut some relief Web sites. Apparently the web sites were run by someone with ties to racist groups:

Missouri's attorney general filed suit Wednesday seeking to shut down at least 10 hurricane relief Web sites that he said are quietly run by a man with ties to a racist group - and that may not benefit storm victims at all.

"This is a horrendous use of the victims of Hurricane Katrina to the benefit of a hate group," Attorney General Jay Nixon said at a news conference. He said Weltner is associated with the National Alliance, which Nixon's office described as "listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the nation's most active neo-Nazi hate groups."

So if you are looking for a place to donate stay away from these sites:

donate-katrina.com,
katrina-donations.com,
katrinafamilies.com,
katrinafund.name
neworleanscharities.com
katrinafund.ws,
christiandonations.org,
parishdonations.com,
clergydonations.com
internetdonations.us.

One of the sites, katrinafamilies.com, featured pictures of people in the flooded streets of New Orleans and the appeal, "We Need Your Help Now!" When a visitor to the site clicked on "Make a Donation," he was transferred to another site, internetdonations.org.

From there we move via Eschaton to The Raw Story where we learn of plans for rebuilding New Orleans:

"The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

From there we move to War and Piece:

The guy who callled me back yesterday who was supposedly a spokesman for FEMA? It turns out the WaPo reported as recently as March 2005 that he had been hired as one of three staffers to run a Bush administration Social Security "war room", modeled on the "Coalition Information Centers that promoted the administration message around the world during the war in Afghanistan"

Read the rest to understand what this means.

Onwards to The TPMCafe for an excellant analysis on the Bush Personality Cult. Pay attention to the comments.

Then to here where we learn 11 Republican congressman have voted NO on the bill to provide aid to the victems of Katrina.

Then of course there is the farcial "Bi-partisian" investigation concocted by the Republicans ans announced at a news conference with no bipartisianship in evidence.

Yup, I'm pissed.

Bush and Katrina

From the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.

Well, they failed to insure domestic tranquility, they failed to promote the general welfare, and the verdict is not in on providing for the common defense. As for securing Blessings of Liberty....

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.

Let's see...

At first the evidence was scattered and anecdotal. But now it's pretty clear that a key aim of the Bush administration's takeover of the NOLA situation is to cut off press access to report the story.

First, there were the FEMA orders barring members of the press from photographing anything to do with the recovery of the bodies of the dead.

Perhaps there could be guidelines about photographs which in any way clearly identified the deceased. No one wants to get first confirmation of the death of a loved one by seeing their body on the nightly news. But a blanket ban serves only to prevent the public from knowing what really happened last week. And the right of FEMA or any branch of the federal government for that matter to issue such a ban on American soil seems highly dubious to me. It's one thing with military casualties: the military operates under its own legal code and not under normal civilian rules. But this is happening on American soil. This isn't a war zone. Nor is it any longer a situation where police or National Guard troops are in the midst of retaking control from mobs or looters. This is a recovery from a natural disaster.

Now comes this post from Brian Williams, which suggests a general effort to bar reporters from access to many of the key points in the city.

Take a moment to note what's happening here: these are the marks of repressive government, which mixes inefficiency with authoritarianism. The crew that couldn't get key aid on the scene in time last week is coming in in force now. And one of the key missions appears to be cutting off public information about what's happening in the city.

This is a domestic, natural disaster. Absent specific cases where members of the press would interfere or get in the way of some particular clean up operation, or perhaps demolition work, there is simply no reason why credentialed members of the press should not be able to cover everything that is happening in that city.

Think about it.

From Brian Williams:

At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

So the first ammendment has gone by the wayside as well. Granted, no laws have been created to bar the press from New Orleans but freedom of the press is being abridged none the less. The question is, what is going to be done about it?

Katrina Death Toll

From ABC News Reporter's Blog:

Death Toll Mounts

Dennis Powell
Rich Esposito Sept. 5, 2005

Two senior-level state and federal sources say that the death toll could top 6,000. Both believe that the majority of deaths — 80 to 90 percent — were caused by a slow response from FEMA and Department of Homeland Security.

In the meantime, several blogs are reporting that the press is being banned from New Orleans. I have been searching for more since it first hit Eschaton. So far, there is nothing in the MSM...
I would take it with a large amount of caution until further proof shows up...

Americablog has more... more proof would be nice. Anybody out there have anything more solid?

Irish Elk and Fallow Deer

The above is a picture of the skull of an Irish Elk.

According to National Geographic News a study in Nature has linked Irish Elk to Fallow Deer:

Scientists at University College London studied DNA and skeletal remains of the extinct giant deer, or Irish elk, to construct its family tree. This is the first time this method has been used to reveal an extinct animal's living descendants, according to the study team.

The researchers found that the giant deer, which stood seven feet (two meters) tall at the shoulder, is closely related to the modern fallow deer, a much smaller species that still inhabits the former haunts of its Ice Age relative throughout Europe.

The giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus) roamed Europe and Central Asia alongside humans until its extinction some 8,000 years ago. The animal was just one of a number of colossal deer species that no longer exist today.

The team identified skeletal features that are unique to both fallow and giant deer. They also found that the vertebrae of the fallow deer were once adapted to support very large antlers.

Further evidence of a close ancestral link came from mitochondrial DNA taken from both animals' bones. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down through generations from mothers to their offspring.

The NGN article also contains an interesting discussion on using a similar techniques with Homo floresiensis:

Recent technological advances have raised hopes that scientists may be able to pinpoint our own closest relatives in the human family tree.

Researchers are currently trying to extract the DNA of Homo floresiensis, whose remains were found last year on the island of Flores in Indonesia.

Nicknamed "the Hobbit" because of its tiny stature, H. floresiensis is believed to have diverged from modern humans some two million years ago.

However researchers are skeptical about whether techniques that worked for extinct Ice Age animals like the giant deer will work on this diminutive species of human, which lived only some 18,000 years ago.

The problem, says Ian Barnes, is that the remains come not from Ireland or Siberia, as in the case of the giant deer, but from a tropical island.

"DNA degrades over time, and like any chemical reaction, it will degrade faster if the temperature's higher," he said. "The problem with a lot of the remains that we are asked to look at is that they've been at too high a temperature for too long a period of time.

"Our best estimate is that there won't be any DNA surviving in that [H. floresiensis] material."

Comets and Organic Molecules

Deep Impact collision ejected the stuff of life


Millions of kilograms of fine dust particles and water and a "surprisingly high" amount of organic molecules sprayed into space when NASA crashed its Deep Impact spacecraft into Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005, reveal a trio of new studies.

The observations bolster theories that comets may have seeded Earth with the raw materials for life and suggest they may be sponge-like – rather than hardened – at their cores.

Observers estimate the impact released about 5 million kilograms of water from beneath the comet's surface and between two and five times as much dust. There was so much dust, in fact, that mission members have not been able to see the impact crater with the high-resolution camera on the mission's flyby spacecraft, about 500 km away.

But here is the interesting part:

The team estimates the impact blasted away a crater about 100 metres wide and up to 30 m deep. Crucially, organic molecules were among the material ejected. Neither the full range of molecules nor their abundances have been determined yet, but researchers say they have found a surprisingly high amount of methyl cyanide, a molecule seen in large quantities in another comet.

This supports theories that comets may have brought water and the building blocks of life to Earth, and the team hopes to eventually "identify all the species comets brought in abundance to early Earth", says A'Hearn.

Interesting!

Vikings!

King loses mother but gains a daughter

Mitochondrial DNA and forensic anthropology has been used to identify the remains long thought to be the mother of Sven Estridsen,apparently the last viking king.

Jorgen Dissing, at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen, Denmark, extracted mitochondrial DNA from the pulp of molars from the skeletons. Mitochondrial DNA is useful for analysing ancient remains because there are many copies per cell so DNA breakdown causes fewer problems during analysis than it can in nuclear DNA samples.

If Estrid is Sven's mother the DNA should be identical because mitochondria are passed exclusively from a mother to her offspring. But they weren't. Moreover, the condition of the teeth and bones suggest that the woman was around 35 when she died, Dissing told the International Association of Forensic Science meeting in Hong Kong last week. Historical records tell us Sven's mother died aged around 75.

For more about how anthropologists determine age, gender, stature and ethnicity from a skeleton you can go here

Just for kicks, here is an interesting article on viking hoards.


A replica of a viking ship...

And finally a link to where you can get your own viking helmet

Now if we could only get the church of the FSM to incorporate vikings into it's services...

Here's the Question

Josh Marshall has a slightly different take The real story about the Brown memo below is, How did it get public? The knives, or rather, not the knives, but the long knife seems to be out for Michael Brown now. Now I for one have never seen Bush fire anyone, but assuming Bush and company decide to scape goat Brown (who deserves to be fired) does Bush come out of this unscathed?

Also from Josh Marshall:

But according to this August 30th article in the St. Petersburg Times, on Sunday the 28th, Mayfield arranged a video conference call with President Bush himself at the Crawford Ranch during which he explained the hurricane's force and destructive potential.

So the question is, if Bush makes a sacrificial lamb out of Brown does it end there?

From Daily Kos:

As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

A link is provided to Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA:

The firefighters, several of whom are from Utah, were told to bring backpacks, sleeping bags, first-aid kits and Meals Ready to Eat. They were told to prepare for "austere conditions." Many of them came with awkward fire gear and expected to wade in floodwaters, sift through rubble and save lives.
"They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."
The firefighter, who has encouraged his superiors back home not to send any more volunteers for now, declined to give his name because FEMA has warned them not to talk to reporters.

From later in the same article:

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

So who do we focus on and hold accountable?

This Could Be Big

Yahoo News is reporting that:

The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000
Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.

Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown had positioned front-line rescue teams and Coast Guard helicopters before the storm. Brown's memo on Aug. 29 aimed to assemble the necessary federal work force to support the rescues, establish communications and coordinate with victims and community groups, Knocke said.

Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed, he said.

"There will be plenty of time to assess what worked and what didn't work," Knocke said. "Clearly there will be time for blame to be assigned and to learn from some of the successful efforts."

Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."

"FEMA response and recovery operations are a top priority of the department and as we know, one of yours," Brown wrote Chertoff. He proposed sending 1,000 Homeland Security Department employees within 48 hours and 2,000 within seven days.

Knocke said the 48-hour period suggested for the Homeland employees was to ensure they had adequate training. "They were training to help the life-savers," Knocke said.

Question: Why wern't they already properly trained?
Second Question: Doesn't saying "They were training to help the life-savers," contradict "...Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed..." or am I missing something?

The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.

Meanwhile, the airline industry said the government's request for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday afternoon...

Republicans are, however impressed with Brown:

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the administration is "getting a bad rap" for the emergency response.

WTF?? You have the head of FEMA telling local first responders not to save lifes until they get an explicit request from local and state governments, and the federal government doesn't ask the airline industry for help evacuating storm victems till 3 days later - but they are getting a bad rap?

Let's look at this again, maybe I'm missing something:

The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.

State authorities suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,

From the New York Times:

Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett.

Okay, that makes more sense.

Chimpanzee Fossils

As recently reported in Nature, fossil teeth of chimpanzees have been found. They date to about 545,000 years ago. Besides being some of the few chimp fossils found, they also demonstrate that chimps - in the past - were not confined to the same dense forest environments they are found in today. Who knows, maybe competitive exclusion is the reason why chimps and humans separated.

In Memorium

Bob Denver passed away today due to complications from cancer treatments. He was 70 years old.

"I certainly didn't set out to have a series rerun forever, but it's not a bad experience at all,"

How Cool Is That!

In my recent post on Ichthyostega I mentioned I didn't have access to Nature. Low and behold when I checked my email On Friday I had all the articles on Ichthyostega - sent by none other than Per Ahlberg the lead author of the paper! Thanks again!

The article is even more interesting than than descriptions of it in the press. Before I go into it a little background information is necessary (Run away! afarensis is going to talk about bones again!).
Below is a picture of human vertebrae. There are three different types pictures: (7)cervical, (12)thoracic and (5)lumbar. Additionally, humans have sacral and caudal (or coccygeal - the remnants of the tail) vertebrae. This differentiation - based on form and function - is called regionalization



Human vertebrae share several common features. First, a round heavy body. Second, a round opening (the vertebral foramen). Third, several processes (two - usually - transverse and one spinous). The tranverse processes and spinous processes (along with the pedicle) form the vertebral arch. Additionally, the thoracic vertebrae contain facets for articulation with the ribs. The human vertebral column forms an S-shaped curve.



If you look closely at the middle picture above you will note that the spinous processes change orientation based on where they are on the vertebral column (I will get back to this later). So what does this have to do with a Devonian fossil?

In order to reconstruct Ichthyostega Ahlberg et al used 9 different fossils to create a composite vertebral column (necessary because none of the fossils had a complete vertebral column). This was possible because the fossils contained overlapping segments. It should be pointed out here that the osteology of these early vertebrates is somewhat different from that of humans. The Ichthyostega vertebrae has several pieces as you can see in the drawing below.



Several interesting features of the new reconstruction stand out. First, was the identification of regionalization in Ichthyostega vertebrae. As I understand it (having a background in anthropology rather than say comparitive anatomy or paleontology) this is not seen in fish and can be construed as an adaptation to life on land. This is where things get interesting. Ichthyostega vertebral arches change in orientation based on where they are in the vertebral column and in the lumbar area there is some overlap. Additional changes in the reconstruction involve the ribs. Previous reconstructions showe Ichthyostega with no neck. Which is not the case in the new reconstruction. Another change involves the ribs - which overlap. Taken all together the osteology of Ichthyostega indicates some interesting things about locomotion. The zygapophysis, pictured above, stiffen the spine and are adaptations to life on land. The morphology of the ribs and vertebrate restricts lateral flexion - but the lumbar vertebrate allow for some vertical flexion. I should also point out that Ichthyostega has ears specialized for underwater hearing. Taken all together the morphology shows one, ultimately unsuccesful, attempt to solve the problems of life on land.

Speaking of the Devil

As I am blogging this morning I'm watching the news (first time in a while) and low and behold Fox news is following the Republican "shift the blame" policy in their interview with Chertoff. I don't have transcripts but there were several leading questions during the interview. So Chertoff got to talk about how local officials were telling him a different story than what the press was and about how much easier it is to work with republican governors like Haley Barbour than it is to work with democrats like Kathleen Blanco...

And now Britt Hume is whining about how people are blaming the White House but not local officials - didn't mention all the budgett cuts that affected the situation. Wankers!

WOW! and now Kristol is bowing to political winds and criticizing the head of FEMA - wonders why he's in charge...

Political fallout...
Kristol... folks are proud of what Bush achieved and think Bush is a good leader...fallout won't matter to Bush

Wallace and Kristol... should proceed with plans to repel estate tax, social security, etc.

Wankers!

You Heard it Here First

Deep Scope is starting to get a lot of attention here and here for example. But you heard it here and here first!

Our Government at Work

From MSNBC:

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration had sought control over National Guard units, normally under control of the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request, noting that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. State authorities suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who is an adviser and does not have the authority to speak publicly.

Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state's victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.

Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis "has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."

In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."

Then, of course, there is this and this

Up till now I have refrained from posting about Hurricane Katrina, but the tactics we are seeing from the government has repulsed me beyond measure. As Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, said to Tim Russert "Shut up and send help"

Of Crabs and Hagfish

There are a number of videos available from the Deep Scope missions mentioned in a previous post.
One of the more interesting is a confrontation between some crabs and a hagfish

here
Other videos are available atNOAA Ocean Explorer

New Species of Squid Discovered

After dodging Hurricane Katrina, researchers in the Deep Scope exepediton reports the discovery of a new species of squid pictured above.

From Science Daily:

The ship's crew took special precautions as they cruised from Texas back to the Viosca Knoll to avoid hurricane debris. They encountered extensive garbage, but nothing that threatened the ship. They also saw signs of damage on oil rigs and heard reports from other ships that all rigs within a 50-mile-wide swath beneath the hurricane's path appeared to be thrashed beyond operable condition.

Last year, the system captured footage of a six-foot squid believed to be a new species. This year, at a site hundreds of miles away, the camera caught footage of what appears to be the same species, which would suggest that the squid is not rare, and would also illustrate how poorly explored the deep sea remains if such a large animal could have gone undiscovered. The squid appears to have been attracted by a flashing light lure designed to mimic a deep-sea jellyfish's bioluminescent display. Much remains unknown about how animals use bioluminescence, and one of the key goals for Eye-in-the-Sea beyond basic observation is to use the bioluminescence lure and other techniques to learn how animals use the light they produce.

Even more interesting is news about a new species of crab:

Frank has been conducting detailed studies of how the eyes of animals on the deep seafloor work, in collaboration with others aboard. Working with animals collected in special light-tight devices that avoid damage to delicate deep-sea eyes, Frank has discovered a species of deep-sea crab that can detect ultra-violet light, despite there being no known ultraviolet light in deep water. UV sensitivity is common in animals that live closer to the surface, but has never been discovered in a deep species. The reasons for this seemingly bizarre ability are not clear, but the sensitivity could point to a deep-sea light source about which researchers are not aware, or to some unknown characteristic of known light sources such as bioluminescence--the light chemically produced by countless open ocean organisms.

More info on Deep Scope - includes more pictures and periodic dipatches.

Grasshoppers Being Murdered By Hairworms

The above is a picture of a parasitic hairworm - a species of Nematamorph. They have a unique pattern of reproduction:

Gordian worms or hair worms are nematamorphs, a phylum of freshwater invertebrates. Gordian worms live most of their lives as foot long, ribbon thin animals, in the rivers, where they mate and produce eggs. Once eggs develop into larvae, larval gordian worms must infect an aquatic insect larvae, which metamorphosizes and carries the gordiid onto shore. Once onshore, the gordiid encysted inside the aquatic insect must be eaten by a cricket or grasshopper, in which the gordian worm feeds and matures. Gordian worms only feed while inside their cricket or grasshopper host. For the gordian to complete its lifecycle, the infected cricket must then die and fall into water.

A mystery has always been how they get their hosts to fall into the water. Recent research has taken a step towards solving this mystery

Now Biron and his colleagues have shown that the worm brainwashes the grasshopper by producing proteins which directly and indirectly affect the grasshopper’s central nervous system.

Two different proteins seem to be involved. One mimics the hosts protiens and affects the central nervous system. The second is:

"...linked to geotactic behaviour – the orientated movement of an organism in response to gravity."

You can watch a video of a grasshoper plunging to it's death here

Added About an Hour Later: National Geographic News also has a story on this:

"It's one of the most horrific things I've ever seen," Loxdale said. "It makes the science fiction film Alien look pretty tame in comparison."

For example, a type of parasitic flatworm targets cockles in New Zealand, driving the marine mollusks to the surfaces of muddy bottoms in shallow waters. There, oystercatcher birds snap the cockles up and eat them, flatworms and all. The shorebirds serve as the final hosts in the flatworms' complex life cycle.

"Parasitic wasps can also make the host weave a special cocoon-like structure to protect the wasp pupae [offspring] against heavy rain," Thomas added.

While revelations about the hairworm's antics may inspire a new generation of sci-fi aliens, the study team says their findings may also help the development of new medical treatments.

Biron says mind-altering human pathogens—such as those that cause rabies, sleeping sickness, and toxoplasmosis—may manipulate their victim in similar ways.

So apparently, this is not unprecedented. Given the rampant amount of chemical warfare going on in the insect world I can't say I surprised to find out that some parasites use chemical means to control their hosts behavior.