Oceanography update: Rough Sex at 40k Leagues Under the Sea

From Scientific American, an article regarding the mating habits of squid that makes one glad to be a mammal:

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=rough-sex-at-40000-leagues-under-th-2008-12-24

"What do you do to pass on your genes to the next generation if you are really hard up, it’s too dark to see clearly and you are literally under enormous pressure? The short answer: play rough and weird."

To cross over into anthropology for a moment, I would venture to say that "rough and wierd" may describe a fair amount of activity in SL. Just an educated guess, that is.

Public Health update: Papal mortality and Welsh rugby

The most recent issue of the British Medical Journal, the Christmas edition, continues the tradition of prior years in reporting on the truth (or lack thereof) in popular medical knowledge.

Here is a sample of one of the medical myths put to the test:

Payne GC, Payne RE, Farewell DM. Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic church: should Pope Benedict XVI be worried? BMJ 2008;337:a2768. doi:10.1136/bmj.a2768

Objective: To explore the perceived wisdom that papal mortality is related to the success of the Welsh rugby union team.

Design: Retrospective observational study of historical Vatican and sporting data.

Main outcome measure: Papal deaths between 1883 and the present day.

Results: There is no evidence of a link between papal deaths and any home nation grand slams (when one nation succeeds in beating all other competing teams in every match). There was, however, weak statistical evidence to support an association between Welsh performance and the number of papal deaths.

Conclusion: Given the dominant Welsh performances of 2008, the Vatican medical team should take special care of the pontiff this Christmas.

A link to the editorial covering all the myth-busting articles can be found here:

Delamothe T. Editor's Choice: Everything you know is wrong. BMJ 2008;337:a3027. doi:10.1136/bmj.a3027

Archæology: top ten discoveries of 2008.

Archaeology Magazine has again given us their list of the top ten archaeologic discoveries of the year.

The year is not quite exhausted, however, leaving enough hope that one may still yet unearth something truly wonderful in the waning days of December.

However, I am certain that this one find (mentioned tangentially in the above top 10 list), will be hard to top:

Gilbert TP et al. DNA from Pre-Clovis Human Coprolites in Oregon, North America. Science 2008; 320 (5877): 786-789. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154116
http://www.scienceonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5877/786

The interested reader may search for the images of the artefacts via the usual routes; I have a strict no-fæces-images rule for this site.

And if one of my readers does come upon something to challenge the abovementioned top ten discoveries, or even the coprolites, please forward the details straightaway. You may use your judgement in forwarding actual samples.

A great day, comrades: we sim into history.

As I was subject to a fair amount of unclaimed time this weekend, I took on a new project: running an OpenSimulator environment at home.

Using a somewhat-recent personal computer running Windows (a choice of necessity, not preference, I assure you), I successfully installed and configured diverse and arcane files.

Then, using the better parts of my talents (the creative ones, as opposed to technical), I designed and placed 4 sims on my grid.

Photographic proof is as follows:

Fig. 1: in which I tolerate the Windows interface.

Fig. 2: in which I claim these sims in the name of Caledon, ex patria.

The fact that I can log in to my grid from my laptop and play with 4 sims, each with 45000 available prims, is awesome, as in full-of-awe. (Compare the Russian word грозныи, grozny.)

The area is desolate, though, and bereft of state channel chatter, or any friends visiting -- a definite shortcoming.

A full discussion of materials and methods for this experiment will be available upon request.

A Summary of Effects of Recent Changes by Linden Lab.

Linden Lab, unaware that they are actually an entertainment provider, successfully decreased the entertainment value of their product, simultaneously increasing customer ill-will towards them.

To prove this, I have the statistics and p-values and references &c. laying around here somewhere ... but suddenly, I just don't feel like writing.

Editorial: Instability of Saint Kitt Islands.

Recently, I began a review of the Tunguska Event, a cataclysmic explosion which leveled thousands of square kilometres of Siberian forest. The initial lack of attention paid by the scientific community, due to the remoteness of the disaster and relatively low loss of life, belied the severity of the event.

More recently, I have been informed that certain parties have deemed Saint Kitt Islands to be safe for general public activity. I am afraid that the available data do not support such a conclusion, and that over-confident reliance on such advice may result in terrible loss.

I would refer the reader to another August, just a few years back, in 1883, when the island of Krakatoa between Sumatra and Java detonated with world-wide effects. Tsunamis were observed throughout the neighbouring coasts, as far away as South Africa. Wave height monitors recorded fluctuations from the event in the Thames. Noctilucent clouds were observed from the ejecta, as with Tunguska.

The data that Professor Krogstad and I gathered predict that significant seismic activity is not only possible, but is imminent.

Saint Kitt Islands were formed from volcanic activity resulting in an island and atoll. The weathering patterns on the volcano itself suggest a young age, perhaps under 50 years. Seismic activity predicts potential surrounding activity, consistent with known patterns of island-building volcanic activity. Seawater temperatures surrounding the island (unpublished data) point towards other submarine volcanic activity in the area. Further geophysical studies will be required to determine the amount and extent of landmass building that has occurred in the region.

Krogstad A, Nicholas K. A biologic and geologic survey of Saint Kitt Islands. Proc Royal Soc 1898 ; 5.

At the time of the initial survey, the cauldron was quiet, and no evidence of volcanic activity was apparent. Even the casual lay-observer on St Kitt now can see the evidence of accelerated instability from the volcano and surrounding sea bed.

Based on the available evidence, allow me to illustrate my prediction for the very near future of our beloved crown colony:






I shall be in contact with the Guvnah straightaway, and I will urge the public not to congregate on or near Saint Kitt Islands, for fear of a disaster of eschatologic proportions.

If any reader wishes to see the raw data upon which these recommendations are based, please contact me at your leisure.

In assistance to Caledon, I remain,
your humble servant,

Kate Nicholas, FRS

Tunguska, part 2.

The Tunguska event occurred at a remote time in a remote place. This fact has served both to add mystery to the story, and to frustrate those interested in knowing what happened.


The explosion was centered in the middle of Siberia, some 1000 km northwest of Lake Baikal (the largest freshwater lake in the world).

To reach the site, one could start from the Imperial capital of St Petersburg, taking the overnight train to Moscow.

From Moscow, one would board the still-new Trans-Siberian Railroad, leaving again in the evening, heading east towards the Urals, through Ekaterinaburg (where the Tsar and his family would be killed by the Bolsheviks), then skirting the edge of Kazakhstan, through Novosibirsk, then Krasnoyarsk, then to the town of Tayshet.

This town is at the 'shoulder' of the curve where the railroad turns to the southeast, to Irkustk and Lake Baikal.

From Tayshet, then, one must hire teamsters: horse-drawn sledges would provide the best transport over still-primitive roads.

Head north-east, passing well-west of Bratsk, and after 500 km or so, one would reach the town (although that would be a generous description) of Vanavara.

Vanavara lies about 70 km to the southeast of the Tunguska site. This is a small settlement with a trading post, and really the closest developed area to the site.

From here, one would need to speak with the indigenous people, the Tungus (now known as the Evenks), for guidance on reaching the blast centre.

This area of Siberia is still unpopulated and undeveloped in 1908. The Tungus people live as reindeer herders, maintaining a semi-nomadic culture in the forest. The western settlers are here as hunters and trappers and such, or here to escape the reach of the Tsar's empire.

After the "reforms" of the church in 1652 by Patriarch Nikon, the so-called Old Believers who did not support the changes were exiled to Siberia. A number of these staroobryadtsy ("old ritualists") lived in the area. (Due to a difference in how times of the day were called by the Old Believers -- compare our uses of "dinner" and "supper" in English -- their testimonies about the disaster would be called inconsistent with those of the other population.)

The wilderness around the Tunguska site is made up of taiga forest, a sub-arctic type of biome consisting of coniferous trees, and only the hardiest of deciduous trees, e.g. spruce, larch. The forest is dense, and the ground cover is moss and lichen. A forest fire, started by lightning, had destroyed a considerable area about one hundred years prior, and most of the trees that would be claimed in the blast would be only 100 years old.

The Tungus tribe gave its name to two rivers in the area, tributaries of the great Yenisei which flows north into the Arctic Ocean: the Nizhnyaya ("Lower") Tunguska and Podkamennaya ("Stony") Tunguska rivers. "Stony" is the usual English translation, but it literally means "under-stone", as the river flows under pebbles for part of its course. The Stony Tunguska is the closest to the blast site.

What would become the epicentre is a swamp; the first expedition to the site in 1927 would label them the Northern and Southern Swamps. Flies and mosquitoes form large clouds over the swamps during the short-but-hot summers. Other wildlife in the region are reindeer (a herd of 700 or so kept by the tribesmen), bears, turkeys, and smaller forest mammals.

The Tungus practice a animistic/naturalistic polytheistic religion. The loan-word "shaman" comes from their language, and coincidentally, a shaman of one of the local tribes would be blamed (or lauded, depending on which tribe was doing the talking) for the blast, having called down the wrath of Agdy, the god of thunder.

By all accounts, the morning of June 30 was clear, hot, and dry. There were no clouds in the skies over most of the region. It was a Tuesday; by the old-style Julian calendar, it was the 17th of June, one week before the feast of the nativity of St John the Forerunner for the Orthodox, and close to the summer solstice for the Tungus' native religion.

What happened next was otherworldly: at 7:14 AM local time, an explosion occurred near 60 degrees north latitude and 101 degrees east longitude, destroying some 10,000 square kilometres of forest.