Glass Shards
With the formal release of Windows 7 by MegaHard, the folks at Lifehacker held a straw poll last week of their reader’s favorite OS. [Link] Now, even while acknowledging that we have to expect the population to be quite skewed from the species as a whole, after all most humans are highly acomputeric, [1] this chart is quite intriguing:[2]
I also find it worthy of consideration that XP still enjoys about twice the usage as VISTA and about the same as Linux.
[1] Computer/information illiterate. The average computer user, a MegaHard mind serf, think that being able to log in, use a browser to run a Gooey search, send and receive email via Outlook, and use a spreadsheet or key a memo is computer literacy. There are cases on record from the nineteenth century in Amerika where slaves considered being permitted to decide whether or not to wear their (only) shirt was a freedom.
[2] Yes, I did almost use the “I” word there.

She who did Work
Today is the birthday anniversary of Marie Sklodowska Curie, information courtesy of the Britannica folks. [Link] If you are old enough to have had an analog watch with glow-in-the-dark hands and numerals, then it was because of the work of Marie and her husband Pierre. Supposedly her interred remains also glow.
She is what is sometimes called a ‘twofer’, signifying that she won two Nobel prizes, one in chemistry and another in physics. The first she shared with her husband who died early under the wheels of a beer wain.
Despite the wrangle Hollywood has made of her, she is ample evidence of what is good in the species.


Paleosex
Miscegenation. Such an underused word these days when relativism has become the rule and morality has become spatial.
The Neandertal genome project has produced some furor in the media. Seems that researchers at the Max Planck Institut have opined that neandertals and sapiens did indeed have sexual congress. [Link] At issue, happily is the question of whether the offspring, assuming there were such, contributed to the modern sapiens genome.
Did I miss something here? Has some tryst site been discovered? Are there pictures? Or is this one of those dataless pronouncements made occasionally by overconcentrating scientists?
Not that I am adverse to the theory. In my mind it rather makes more sense for sapiens and neandertals to have had congress than not. That is opinion, no data. And I am not a biologist nor an anthropologist. But I am at sea a bit on how one can make definite statement without data? Or is science different in Europe?
The only way I can hypothesize getting to this is to have not only the neandertal and modern sapiens genomes, but the ancient sapiens genome as well. And then if it does develop that part of the modern sapiens genome is due to neandertal DNA, then we may reasonable, evidentially, infer sapiens-neandertal congress via Occam’s Razor.
But don’t tell the Cabots or the Lodges.
Trick or Treat or Thumbs?
Last night was All Hallows Eve and once more FD SCP and I had no callers. Just as well as I was reminded this morning as I did my morning rounds of blogs and comics. This one epitomizes our experiences with the holy day:


