I thought I'd take just a little break from politics in The Media Bar (don't worry, I'm gonna be catching up today on the politics I missed out on yesterday with my fucked up internet, so don't you worry about any politics shortage here).

Today, we are having some dinosaurs! How cool is this? The National Geographic Channel featured a dinosaur mummy encased in stone! The mummy might contain fossilized bones and skin tissue, and possibly muscle and organs. It's like when that researcher discovered soft tissue in a dinosaur fossil. Only bigger. And better.

Watch it after the jump!

MORE naked Daniel Radcliffe. The footage, taken from the front row of the show, is remarkably clear. NSFW, obviously.

Interview: Securing gay rights in Jamaica vital to AIDS struggle

Scientists turn tequila into diamonds: "The key to the surprising discovery is tequila's ratio of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, which lies within the 'diamond growth region.' The resulting diamond films could have inexpensive commercial applications as electrical insulators."

Is "Dollhouse" doomed before it even starts?

Glenn Close, the amazing star of the amazing "Damages," receives the THR Leadership Award, honoring women in entertainment

MoD "pleased" compensation claims from dismissed gays are settled

Video of Drew Barrymore at the LA Prop 8 protest

Keith Olbermann may not vote, but he does care about us gays. Tonight he takes on Prop 8 in his "Special Comments." And he just renewed with MSNBC through 2011

Document Found Older Than Dead Sea Scrolls. With all the talk of Prop 8 and religion, this little bit of info seemed especially appropriate.

Interview with a bed-headed Robert Pattinson of "Twilight"

Nathan wins Top Design

The kind of bacteria in your gut may be making you fat. So eat your Activia!

Ryan Kwanten gets nekkid again on "True Blood." (NSFW) The more he gets naked, the more I'm gonna post about it.

3G tethering coming to iPhone

Another kind of Butt Bandit

Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton dies

Seann William Scott talks about squirting during sex. (Video - posssibly NSFW)

More Whoopi: We Have Finally Become Part of the Fabric of the United States of America

Tom Ford to direct movie based on Christopher Isherwood book

"Clash of The Titans" to be remade!

Wanda Sykes talks to Ellen about Prop 8.

"Five Years on Mars" -- Did anyone else this this one-hour special on The National Geographic Channel? I loved watching those cute little Mars Rovers. It was "Wall-E." Only good.

Adam Levine throws Halloween party

The New York Times has a great interview with Rutina Wesley, the actress on "True Blood" who plays Tara Thornton, the smart, mean and sexy best friend of Sookie.
“I get to create this girl and make her not the stereotypical — for lack of a better phrase — black woman with an attitude. We see a lot of that. But with Tara we’re also going to see a woman who has been through a lot of things.”

Gay double wedding, includes the father of the groom. I think I saw that on Ashton Cruz . . . .

Ryan Reynolds runs the New York City Marathon in 3:50:22.

John Cho, of Harold and Kumar fame (and the new Sulu in the new Star Trek) comes out against Prop 8

Heroes execs fired! Better late than never . . . .

Prisons go green (There was a dumb prison-sex joke that I resisted here. You're welcome.)

Below, a hot Anderson Cooper and his package work out with Kelly Ripa last week.
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The Economist has an article with a new twist on efforts to understand the evolutionary implications of homosexuality. (I'm sure y'all don't need me to tell you that gay sex is not all that successful on the reproductive front.) A few years ago, there were some studies that demonstrated a link between male homosexuality and female fecundity. There was also a study that found that the more older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay. As well as left-handedness being more likely among gay people. But this new study is saying this:

[Brendan Zietsch of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, and his colleagues] think that genes which cause men to be more feminine in appearance, outlook and behaviour and those that make women more masculine in those attributes, confer reproductive advantages as long as they do not push the individual possessing them all the way to homosexuality.

There are also data which suggest that having a more feminine personality might indeed give a heterosexual male an advantage. Though women prefer traditionally macho men at the time in their menstrual cycles when they are most fertile, at other times they are more attracted to those with feminine traits such as tenderness, considerateness and kindness, as well as those with feminised faces.

. . . When the relationships between twins were included in the statistical analysis (all genes in common for identical twins; a 50%overlap for the non-identical) the team was able to show that both atypical gender identity and its influence on the number of people of the opposite sex an individual claimed to have seduced were under a significant amount of genetic control. More directly, the study showed that heterosexuals with a homosexual twin tend to have more sexual partners than heterosexuals with a heterosexual twin.

If a woman prefers a long-term relationship with a slightly feminized man and slightly masculinized women have more sex partners then what I am inferring from this little bit of information is that female mate choice is driving the existence of homosexuality. Wait, does that mean that our moms DID make us gay?!

The Tyrolean Iceman has offered up another mystery. (The first one being: who stole his genitals?) He is from a human lineage that is no longer in existence, and scientists don't know what to make of that.

The so-called Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,000-year-old mummy found in an Alpine glacier roughly two decades ago, lived in an era when people were smelting copper and living in cities. But a recent study of his mitochondrial DNA — circlets of genetic material passed on solely through mothers — revealed something astonishing about this recent human ancestor. He is from a distinct genetic group that mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps no one sharing his genetic lineage survived into the present day. Or perhaps humans are evolving so quickly that even our close ancestors are genetically distinct from us in significant ways.

This new information might be in line with recent evidence that human evolution is accelerating.

There was an "The Iceman No Longer Cometh" joke trying to be written here, but it seems kind of mean now that we know he doesn't have any family. Poor guy's been through enough.

Via DoorQ:

I wanted to take a moment to provide some meta information about not just our election struggle, but the ongoing, and probably eternal, conflict between various interest groups. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has some insights into the factors at the core of that struggle.

Haidt studies morality and emotion in the context of culture. He asks: Why did humans evolve to have morals -- and why did we all evolve to have such different morals, to the point that our moral differences may make us deadly enemies? It's a question with deep repercussions in war and peace -- and in modern politics, where reasoned discourse has been replaced by partisan anger and cries of "You just don't get it!" Haidt asks, "Can't we all disagree more constructively?" He suggests we might build a more civil and productive discourse by understanding the moral psychology of those we disagree with, and committing to a more civil political process. He's also active in the study of positive psychology and human flourishing.

In this video, taken from the endlessly fascinating TED series of lectures, Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.

And Haidt is surprisingly funny.

Don Draper's Guide to Picking Up Women (The hot guy from Mad Men)
Jerry Lewis likes to call people "fags."

Barack Obama offers Jennifer Hudson some kind words

Zac Efron tops . . . whatever he wants. But in this case, the box office. When, exactly, did he stop being a boy and start looking like a man?

The father of molecular gastronomy gives an interview

SF streetcar to be dedicated to Harvey Milk

Saving you from drowning in a sea of passwords -- a picture

This week's Tennis Ad-in/Ad-out column by Jon Wertheim

Dan Savage hosts HUMP! - the annual amateur porn festival.

Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepard's mother, is honored with Cronkite award

I loved this article on the Antikythera machine, the 2000 year old computer.

In honor of Halloween, Scientific American tell us why and how we're afraid.

What's scarier, a deadly snake slithering across your path during a hike or watching a 1,000-point drop in the stock market? Although both may instill fear, researchers disagree over the nature and cause of this very powerful emotion.

"When you see the stock market fall 1,000 points, that's the same as seeing a snake," says Joseph LeDoux, professor of neuroscience and psychology the Center for the Neuroscience of Fear and Anxiety based at New York University. "Fear is the response to the immediate stimuli. The empty feeling in your gut, the racing of your heart, palms sweating, the nervousness—that's your brain responding in a preprogrammed way to a very specific threat."

Does this mean that watching Elisabeth introduce Sarah Palin is like watching the stock market plunge a thousand points?

Find more videos like this on !! omg blog !!
Video footage of Daniel Radcliffe naked in Equus. (NSFW)
Bono to write the occasional column for The New York Times

The director of Quantum of Solace: "Daniel and I are very much in sync; he's a highly intelligent and sensitive actor. His achievement has been to humanise Bond, so that he could be one of us - not a hero, but an antihero with a dark side. Meeting him made me want to jump in, take the risk.'"

Beyonce enjoyed gaining weight for her role as Etta James

The Bastard Life website (Kinda NSFW). I don't get this website at all. It's supposed to be about sex for straight people, gay people, bi people, but there's something kind of creepy about the weird whiteness of the site. But they had this pic, so . . . .

No pride march for the gay king of Poland

CNNSI's Jon Wertheim's Weekly Tennis Mailbag

You don't need to be smart, just controlling. There's a new scientific appreciation for the importance of self-control. This trend began with Walter Mischel's astonishing marshmallow experiments, in which the ability of a four-year old to resist the temptation of a second marshmallow turned out to be a better predictor of future academic success than his or her IQ score. In other words, willpower trumped raw intelligence."

The New York Times' endorsements through the ages


From a DVD on the making of Mika's Paris concert. And, Mika is working on new album.

Maybe William Shatner will be invited to George Takei's first anniversary?
Chicago is on the ball. Homeless shelters to get gay training. Between this and the gay high school, Obama's home state shows us how it's done.

The illusion of movement in these colored circles is just an illusion. No, really. They aren't moving.

You missed you some Maddow today? Don't worry because we have your Rachel Maddow in GQ!

Patti Labelle at Splash last night

Obama on SNL?

The Road, starring Viggo Mortenson and based on the brilliant book by Cormac McCarthy, has been moved to 2009.

People growing up watching black and white television dream in black and white. I don't know if I buy this or not, but if it's true, I'm looking forward to 3D TV even more.

Pink interview: "I wanted being a performer to change my life, but I didn’t want to let it change who I was."



I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is how this game is played.

Via Daily Kos:

An exciting, recent fossil find suggest Texas was a hotbed of primate evolution 45 million years ago. Unfortunately, as the Texas Freedom Network has been blogging for months, recent history suggests Texas is leading the rest of the nation backwards in our understanding of science in general and evolution specifically.

The Young Earth Creationists just aren't having it, though. Their, uh, version of a scientific theory is being put in the ring with Science. Dentist, op-ed contributor, Young Earth Creationist, and head of the Texas Board of Education Dan McLeroy has written an especially optimistic piece for The Waco Tribune. Mr. McLeroy writes:

All we must do to maintain science’s credibility and to decide if there are weaknesses in the evolutionary hypothesis is 'to use evidence to construct testable explanations' and see where the evidence leads. Let the best scientific explanation win.

Someone is totally gonna get hurt.

This photo, released on September 19, 2008, shows a new species of soft coral (octocorals) recently found on Australia's coral reefs.(GARY GRANITCH/AFP/Getty Images)

From The Big Picture:

World Animal Day was observed earlier this month - on October 4th. Started in Florence Italy in 1931 at a convention of ecologists, World Animal Day has since expanded its focus from its original intent, which was to bring attention to endangered or threatened species. The day is now set aside as a time to reflect on all of the animals we share this world with, and our involvement with them - and to spur action to commemorate that respectful relationship. Half the world's mammals are declining in population and more than a third are probably threatened with extinction, according to an update of of the Red List (an inventory of biodiversity issued by the IUCN), released on October 6, 2008. Below is a collection of recent photos of animals around the world - Happy (belated) World Animal Day.

Click thumbnails to enlarge.

In honor of and preparation for Halloween, I imagine, The Science Times section of The New York Times has a few new articles on blood. In "The Wonders of Blood" Natalie Angier examines what makes blood so, well, wonderful:

Yet to scientists who study blood, even the most extravagant blood lore pales in comparison to the biochemical, evolutionary and engineering marvels of the genuine article.

. . . Blood is the one tissue that comes into contact with every other tissue of the body, and it is through blood that our disparate parts communicate, through blood that our organs cooperate. Without a circulatory system, there would be no internal civilization, no means of ensuring orderly devotion to the common cause that is us.

If you need something a little more vampiric, you can check out the article on the real vampires of the world, "A Taste for Blood."

You can also listen to these articles in today's Audio Espresso by clicking "NYT Science Times 10-21-08" on the audio player.

And if that's still not enough, you should read my take on "True Blood." It's one of the best and sexiest things going on TV these days.

Wake Up With These:

Tell Me More (45:00):
Stories: 1) Colin Powell Endorses Obama 2) ACORN Investigated For Bogus Voter Registration 3) ACORN Responds To Voter Registration Lawsuit 4) Toppling Adult Illiteracy 5) Powell's Endorsement And Getting Over Racism

Fresh Air (45:00):
Stories: 1) Food As A National Security Issue 2) A 'Boogie Man' With A Legacy Of Complicated Moves

This American Life (55:00):
How to Win Friends and Influence People. Stories of people climbing to be number one, including a reading by David Sedaris. How do they do it? What is the fundamental difference between us and them?

The New York Times:
The Front Page 10-21-08, Summarized (4:34)
The Science Times 10-21-08 (21:40)

Audio player after the jump. Or click here to launch the player in a new window so you can browse while you listen. Or, head over to The Media Bar and listen there.

In one of the Psychology Today blogs, Satoshi Kanazawa discusses two kinds of fallacies that many people often commit and the kinds of people who commit them:

[P]olitical conservatives are more likely to commit the naturalistic fallacy (“Nature designed men to be competitive and women to be nurturing, so women ought to stay home to take care of the children and leave politics to men”), while political liberals are equally likely to commit the moralistic fallacy (“The Western liberal democratic principles hold that men and women ought to be treated equally under the law, and therefore men and women are biologically identical and any study that demonstrates otherwise is a priori false”).

. . . It is actually very easy to avoid both fallacies – both leaps of logic – by simply never talking about what ought to be at all and only talking about what is. It is not possible to make either the naturalistic or the moralistic fallacy if scientists never talk about ought. Scientists – real scientists – do not draw moral conclusions and implications from the empirical observations they make, and they are not guided in their observations by moral and political principles. Real scientists only care about what is, and do not at all care about what ought to be.

Of course this remedy works only if all people simultaneously behave this way, otherwise, as soon as someone starts talking about how whatever is ought to be, someone else is going to say the exact opposite. Thankfully for me and this blog, people will never just talk about what IS (and even if they did, they'd never agree on what IS really is.). Which, um, is my way of saying that whatever I say IS is, it's right! And, anyway, talking about what ought to be is the only way to hop, skip, and jump from a bad IS to a new IS.

But that does not mean that we shouldn't be as rigorous as possible in our thinking of the world around us. Let's face it - we do commit fallacies, both the left and the right. And more often than not, it gets in the way of making any real headway.(Remember when Rachel Maddow said, "It's a fuzzy line between changing people's minds and changing the world.")

I think Kanazawa might agree with me. He says, "We can never devise a correct solution to a problem if we don’t know what its ultimate causes are." Which might just be another way of saying, "Sometimes what is is just not enough.

This week's Economist takes a look at how a poorer, hotter world will "bode ill for life’s infinite variety."

GREEN-MINDED folk of many shades came to Spain this month, to talk about the need to save from human recklessness as much as possible of nature’s bounty of genes, habitats and species. They brought bad tidings. Common birds are in decline across the world. Almost one in four species of mammals is in danger of extinction. If current trends continue until 2050, fisheries will be exhausted. As it is, deforestation costs the world more each year than the current financial crisis has cost in total, one economist argued.

While some of the language used might be hackneyed (I mean, who doesn't know that it's very In to be Green?), this article can serve, yes, as a reminder to Be Green, but, I think, as importantly, it can be used to leverage our understanding of how to implement an effective global response to a global crisis. Global financial institutions have demonstrated that they can work quickly and cooperatively to mitigate the effects of a major crisis. As this article points out, they might have to do it again, and they will have already had practice doing it.

From Science Daily:

New research has provided the first detailed look at the internal head skeleton of Tiktaalik roseae, the 375-million-year-old fossil animal that represents an important intermediate step in the evolutionary transition from fish to animals that walked on land.

The new study reminds us that the gradual transition from aquatic to terrestrial lifestyles required much more than the evolution of limbs . . . Fish in deep water move and feed in three-dimensional space and can easily orient their body in the direction of their prey. A neck, seen for the first time in the fossil record in Tiktaalik, is advantageous in settings where the body is relatively fixed, as is the case in shallow water and on land where the body is supported by appendages planted against a substrate.

From a photo series of The Sun on the Boston Globe site The Big Picture:

The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of tthe significance of this unusual calm, but are continually monitoring our closest star with an array of telescopes and satellites.

Apple has launched a new MacBook made of titanium. It has a glass button-less trackpad and costs $100 less than previous incarnations.
Engadgethas a pretty exhaustive list of all of the specifications.

I'm a PC guy, but this sure is pretty.