Witness for the prosecution

Pigeons never forget a face

New research has shown that feral, untrained pigeons can recognise individual people and are not fooled by a change of clothes.

I'm waiting for a movie based on a pigeon witnessing a murder in the park, and needing to go on a witness protection program.

Above the eyes

Catalyst: Pet Subjects - Dog eyebrows - ABC TV Science

I found this segment on Catalyst this week pretty fascinating. The key to feeling that we can understand dogs, it suggests, is because they are one of the few animals with expressive eyebrows. This is in contrast to cats (and, I would think, horses.)

Now if you look at the equivalent muscle in the cat, it's not strong, and attaches all the way across the eye ridge. Which means the cat can't do much interesting with that muscle. Whereas the dog's levator anguli oculi medialis is perfectly placed to raise just one edge of its eyebrow. But the deeper why question is, why do dogs have this special eyebrow muscle, and most animals don't? Well the best theory concerns the evolution of social living. In general, the most social animals have the most expressive faces.

One study showed foxes who hunt alone had about half the facial expressions of wolves who work in packs. In fact, in wolves and dingoes, the eyebrows are often even a different colour, exaggerating the movement.

Sounds a plausible theory.

That'll help market share

Tiger planes grounded, pose 'serious risk' | News.com.au

Wow. I've travelled on Tiger with the family maybe 3 times, I think, and always noted that, provided you went with the expectation that you were merely catching a cheap bus line that happens to drive at 40,000 feet, the experience was fine.

But they've had services banned for a week for air safety issues!

With there be any customers left at all after this?

Complicated

Fatima conspiracy theories are damaging the Church

This blog entry at Catholic Herald doesn't fully explain the background, but it would appear that in certain Catholic circles, there is much controversy about whether Russia has, or has not, been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in accordance with the apparent wishes of Mary as expressed via Fatima.

This seems a tad arcane for a 21st century Catholic, who, if raised after the 1960's, probably knows very little about Fatima anyway. In fact, if Australian Catholic practice is anything to go by, attention paid to Mary in any respect by Catholics has taken a dramatic downturn since (I would say) the 1950's. (I grew up in the 1960's, but I think even then Marian devotion was starting to dwindle.) I don't think modern nun-ish feminism has been able to convincingly incorporate her story into anything compelling (maybe the "virginity" is the issue there), and priests simply spend as little time as possible talking about her.

It's a curious thing, to have seen emphasis in the Church change so much in a relatively short time of about 50 years.

Stupid men

Lightning strikes far more men than women, statistics show

Mind you, I have known women who have been completely careless of lightning too.

I have a good "standing outside in the middle of a storm" story, and might post it one day.

Some mildly encouraging news...

Nuclear power debate a 'live debate within the Labor Party', says Martin Ferguson | The Australian

Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said yesterday the topic remained a "live debate in Australia, despite the best efforts of the Greens and the non-government organisations to demonise the discussion".

Speaking in Sydney at a forum on nuclear power, he said Australia would "eventually have to decide on the issue of energy reliability, at the cheapest possible cost".

Modern media questions

David Duchovny and Tea Leoni separate | News.com.au

SEX-addicted actor David Duchovny has separated from his wife, fellow actor Tea Leoni, for at least the second time.

In 2008 the couple split briefly after Duchovny reportedly discovered explicit text messages on his wife's mobile phone sent by actor Billy Bob Thornton.

The pair spent several months apart while The X-Files and Californication star, now 50, entered rehab for sex addiction.

Don't the examples of Duchovny and Sheen indicate that, if you're a person with an addiction issue in your personal life, it's not exactly helpful to play a person who has the same habits on TV? Mind you, Sheen is mad enough to say he doesn't have a problem.

Extremes

Experts warn epic weather ravaging US could worsen

Towards the end of this report about the extremes of recent US weather, we get this comment:

However, the intensity of future droughts, heat waves, storms and floods is expected to rise drastically if greenhouse gas emissions don't stabilize soon, said Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University.

"Even a couple degree warming can make a 100-year event a three-year event," Mann, the head of the university's earth systems science center, told AFP.

"It has to do with the tail of the bell curve. When you move the bell curve, that area changes dramatically."

Is that right? Because if it is, it's a handy retort to climate skeptics who, failing all else, will come up with "but is a 2 degree increase really going to be all that bad?"

And it also suggests that, if indeed formerly 1 in a 100 events do start piling on top of each other at much more rapid intervals over the next decade, this may well be the proof that the public seems to need that serious reduction of CO2 is needed.

More work needed?

Acer's Iconia tablet rivals iPad in price, but not much else

I've been noticing the Android tablets that have been turning up at JB Hi Fi, including this one by Acer. I was wondering if they a good alternative to an iPad, being slightly cheaper and all. (One obvious and fairly big difference is an ability to run Flash.)

But according to the review above, the Acer model has its problems.

I did see a Toshiba one yesterday too, but I had a really bad Toshiba notebook once, so I'm cautious about the brand.

Anyway, we'll see.

Mouse trouble

BBC News - Mickey Mouse tweet by Egypt's Sawiris angers conservatives

One of Egypt's richest men has been accused of mocking Islam after tweeting cartoons of Mickey and Minnie Mouse wearing conservative Muslim attire.

Telecoms mogul and Coptic Christian Naguib Sawiris apologised for re-posting the images on Twitter a few days ago, saying he meant no offence.

But several Islamic lawyers have filed a formal complaint and there are calls for a boycott of his businesses.

Sensitive bunch.

No big surprise

Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show

Electric Air

VoltAir shows off electricity powered plane concept at Paris Air Show that is slated for 2035

Hard to believe it could work, and I assume it is only a small aircraft, but I like the idea.

Whatd'ya know...

More on marathoning and heart disease : Science-Based Running

Interesting report on a recent study with some pretty convincing sounding evidence that too much marathon exercise is bad for the heart.

I am not at all surprised. I would have thought it hard to argue that from an evolutionary point of view, human bodies are made for such protracted and repeated bouts of exertion.

Man trouble

The idea is not new, I guess:

...a team of psychologists based in China and Hong Kong believe the ultimate cause of human war rests with the male libido. Historically, they argue that the lure of an attractive female primed the male brain for conflict with other males, an effect that persists in modern man even though its usefulness is largely outdated.

But the way this was tested does strike me as kind of funny:

Across four experiments Lei Chang and his team showed that pictures of attractive women or women's legs had a raft of war-relevant effects on heterosexual male participants, including: biasing their judgments to be more bellicose towards hostile countries; speeding their ability to locate an armed soldier on a computer screen; and speeding their ability to recognise and locate war-related words on a computer screen. Equivalent effects after looking at pictures of attractive men were not found for female participants.

The effects on the male participants of looking at attractive women were specific to war. For example, their ability to locate pictures of farmers, as opposed to soldiers, was not enhanced. Moreover, the war-priming effects of attractive women were greater than with other potentially provocative stimuli, such as the national flag. Finally, the men's faster performance after looking at women's legs versus flags was specific to war-related words, as opposed to merely aggressive words.

Given the huge disproportionate number of men in China, this is not encouraging research for them (or us, I guess), that's assuming you give any credence to this sort of research at all.

UPDATE: here's the link I forgot to insert.