Fossil Record Is Better Than Thought

See PhysOrg: Dinosaur fossils fit perfectly into the evolutionary tree of life

In The Girls Room

Many articles about women and their desires have been in the news recently.

See:
MSNBC: What IMs say about your relationship

The more frequently women use the pronoun "I" in their instant messages (IM), the more satisfied they are with their partners, a new study finds

IHT:
What do women want? (long but interesting and touching on evolutionary psychology)

In men who have trouble getting erect, the genital engorgement aided by Viagra and its rivals is often all that's needed. The pills target genital capillaries; they don't aim at the mind. The medications may enhance male desire somewhat by granting men a feeling of power and control, but they don't, for the most part, manufacture wanting. And for men, they don't need to. Desire, it seems, is usually in steady supply. In women, though, the main difficulty appears to be in the mind, not the body, so the physiological effects of the drugs have proved irrelevant. The pills can promote blood flow and lubrication, but this doesn't do much to create a conscious sense of desire.

IHT: It's the economy, girlfriend

PhysOrg: Infidelity produces faster sperms

Official Inauguration Recipes

This isn't just the menu from the inauguration luncheon, but the recipes themselves!

See: Recipes from the 2009 Inaugural Luncheon (PDF)

The menu was Fish Stew, Duck Breast with Cherry Chutney, Herb Roasted Pheasant with Wild Rice Stuffing, Molasses Whipped Sweet Potatoes, Winter Vegetables, and Cinnamon Apple Sponge Cake,

Health And Intelligence

Smarter Men Have More Sperm

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Attacks Wind Turbine?

Telegraph: Wind turbine destroyed after 'octopus UFO' seen in sky

President Foodie

Recent links of interest:

Salon: Obama plays food critic on Chicago public TV

Ben & Jerry's 'Yes Pecan'

The Audacity of Hops:

Living With Clones

The NYT on cloned dogs: Beloved Pets Everlasting?

The most difficult thing about the cloned puppies is not telling them apart, but explaining why they don’t look exactly alike

Proposal To Open More N.P. Trails To Bikes

See NYT: Expansion of Biking in Parks Is Proposed

Spiked Eggnog Is Safe Eggnog

See PhysOrg: Microbiologist Tests Safety Of Spiked Eggnog

With one in every 20,000 eggs contaminated with Salmonella bacteria, drinking homemade eggnog can be something of a gamble. But an experiment designed to test whether the alcohol in spiked eggnog can kill the deadly bugs suggests that, in general, few bacteria survive in a mixture containing both raw eggs and 20 percent rum and bourbon.

Java Juice

Diesel, Made Simply From Coffee Grounds

Analysis showed that even the grounds contained about 10 to 15 percent oil by weight. The researchers then used standard chemistry techniques to extract the oil and convert it to biodiesel. The processes are not particularly energy intensive, Dr. Misra said, and the researchers estimated that biodiesel could be produced for about a dollar a gallon.

Take That Ice Age

Study: Did Early Climate Impact Divert A New Glacial Age?

Using three different climate models and removing the amount of greenhouse gases humans have injected into the atmosphere during the past 5,000 to 8,000 years, Vavrus and Kutzbach observed more permanent snow and ice cover in regions of Canada, Siberia, Greenland and the Rocky Mountains, all known to be seed regions for glaciers from previous ice ages. Vavrus notes: "With every feedback we've included, it seems to support the hypothesis (of a forestalled ice age) even more. We keep getting the same answer."

Update 1/7/2009
New World post-pandemic reforestation helped start Little Ice Age

Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites of both pre-Columbian population centers in the Americas and in sparsely populated surrounding regions. They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands-abandoned as the population collapsed-pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling, at its most intense from approximately 1500 to 1750, known as the Little Ice Age.

It Is Not About The Tools

Recent Mark Bittman articles of interest:

So Your Kitchen Is Tiny. So What?

...when it comes to kitchens, size and equipment don’t count nearly as much as devotion, passion, common sense and, of course, experience. To pretend otherwise — to spend tens of thousands of dollars or more on a kitchen before learning how to cook, as is sadly common — is to fall into the same kind of silly consumerism that leads people to believe that an expensive gym membership will get them into shape or the right bed will improve their sex life. As runners run and writers write, cooks cook, under pretty much any circumstance.

Fresh Start for a New Year? Let’s Begin in the Kitchen - Here, then, is my little list of items you might spurn, along with some essential pantry and long-keeping refrigerator items you might consider.

I'm not sure I could get by without canned beans and I would add whole nutmeg to the list.