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Comment Cars produce more (Score -1, Troll) 976

In an ideal world, we would be able to eliminate CO2 from our atmosphere completely. And ultimately, if we as a species are going to survive, we need to do that. But in the here and now, we have to do the best we can. And cars produce way more of that poison than anyone on a bicycle. The Congressman is just an ignorant jackass who has no understanding of how our biosphere works.
Science

New Research Sheds Light On the Evolution of Dogs 374

Posted by samzenpus from the a-caveboy-and-his-dog dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The first dogs descended from wolves about 14,000 years ago but according to Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods humans didn't domesticate dogs — dogs sought out humans and domesticated us. Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them which raises the question: How was the wolf tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog? 'The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest.' Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated. In a few generations, these friendly wolves became distinctive from their more aggressive relatives with splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. But the changes did not just affect their looks but their psychology. Protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures. 'As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it,' write Hare and Woods. 'But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. 'With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Finally when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply and once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as emergency food, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.' This is the secret to the genius of dogs: It's when dogs join forces with us that they become special," conclude Hare and Woods. 'Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.'"

Comment The harsh reality (Score 4, Insightful) 193

by crazyjj (#43046599) Attached to: The Real Reason Journal Articles Should Be Free

Most academics are publishing to advance their careers/reputations/chances-at-tenure, not as a community service. So publishing in "Bob's Open Source Mathematics Journal/Blog" is NOT the same as publishing in Annals of Mathematics to them. You may be able to talk them into *republishing* their articles in some open-source repository at some later date (and that seems to be the President's goal), but you can forget asking them to forgo the prestige of established print journals for idealism. It's hard enough to get tenure today even with a list of publications in prestigious journals, much less with a long list of publications in fly-by-night open-source journals that your review committee may not have even heard of.

Comment Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score 4, Interesting) 573

by crazyjj (#43033507) Attached to: Time Warner Cable: No Consumer Demand For Gigabit Internet

Just a play from the classic Apple playbook: Any feature that our competitor has that we don't is something customers don't want or need--until we do have it, and then it's awesome.

Actually, in all fairness, it's a play from pretty much everyone's playbook. I mean what do you expect him to say, "Well, the truth is we're jealous"?

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