Judgement Day, Sex what is it good for?, evo-devo, Radio3 2006 WorldMusic Awards, No More Tears Sister

"Judgement Day" if USA hits Iran... aawsat
1- A missile strike directly targeting the US bases in the Persian Gulf and Iraq , as soon as nuclear installations are hit.
2- Suicide operations in a number of Arab and Muslim countries against US embassies and missions and US military bases and economic and oil installations related to US and British companies. The campaign might also target the economic and military installations of countries allied with the United States .
3- Launch attacks by the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi fighters loyal to Iran against US and British forces in Iraq , from border regions in central and southern Iraq .
4- Hezbollah to launch hundreds of rockets against military and economic targets in Israel .

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shiva (1123KB)

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climatescience exec summary (pdf)

"there is no longer a discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere," in the words of a news release issued by the Commerce Department and approved by the White House. The report was published yesterday online at climatescience.gov.
The report's authors all agreed that their review of the data showed that the atmosphere was, in fact, warming in ways that generally meshed with computer simulations. The study said that the only factor that could explain the measured warming of Earth's average temperature over the last 50 years was the buildup heat-trapping gases, which are mainly emitted by burning coal and oil.

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Sex, what is it good for?
psom .. newtonsbinomium
ncbi .. nature
Evolution of sex
this chap Azevido claims its for "robustness" - its not clear what that is...
something like mutations disturb everything
sex disturbs everything
so sex strengthens 'everything' against mutation disturbances
.. I'm not convinced, none of these guys even mentions Bill Hamilton...
there is a book (not seen) "Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems" by Andreas Wagner.

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HOX genes .. nybooks
evo-devo

It is the very constraints created by the Hox genes and the other core processes (e.g., the exploratory behavior of capillaries and nerve endings) that permit complex designs to emerge over a relatively short period of time from a biological point of view (hundreds of thousands of years, or perhaps even less). As Carroll and Kirschner and Gerhart observe, some alteration of genes is still necessary if the changes are to be passed on from one generation to another. But the genetic alterations are considerably simpler and fewer in number than had been formerly imagined.
.. Kirschner and Gerhart move beyond embryology to show that metabolic and physiological processes are also critical to evolutionary change. Their approach, which they call the theory of "facilitated variation," attempts to show how the regulation of genes inside the embryo, as described by Carroll, is part of a larger set of processes that allow organisms to experiment with evolution in a tightly controlled way. According to this theory, the mutations, or variations, needed to drive evolutionary change can occur with little disruption either to the basic organization of an organism or to the core processes that make its cells function.

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bbc
Radio3 2006 WorldMusic Awards
World Music
fly .. songlines
Ojos de Brujo have a new CD: Techari (label Pias)

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Tuesday nights TV: brave women
abc Amazon Sister Leonora Brunetto - not murdered yet? (foreign corresp ABC 02/05/06)

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No More Tears Sister: Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal, 2004 (SBS, Tuesday, May 2, 10pm. Hot Docs) .. On an unassuming afternoon in September 1989, Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, a 35 year-old physician, .. murdered by the LTTE
[if you feel sympathy towards the LTTE check this out:] spur
Judgement Day Sex, what is it good for? evo-devo Radio3 2006 WorldMusic Awards No More Tears Sister