Nat Geo explains that one of the major reasons why Daylight Saving Time still exists is because of businesses—people buy more things when there’s more sunlight after work, so we have no one to blame but our own consumerist lifestyles #RegulatoryCaptureFTW
Daylight Saving Time 101 • National Geographic • YouTube
The Politics of Daylight Saving Time • The debate around whether to fall back and spring forward has been heating up in state legislatures. • 2015 Oct 28 • Brian Handwerk • National Geographic
And since we’re going to go shopping for the holidays anyway, they can afford to pull the rug out from under us now, and there’s nothing they can really do about the lack of sunlight during the winter (yet) so why bother.
Intranasal phenylephrine probably works better (although you run into the issue of rebound congestion and rhinitis medicamentosa.
And IV phenylephrine will definitely cause systemic vasoconstriction, presumably including the arterioles in the nasal mucosa, but this is definitely not standard of care for the treatment of nasal congestion (plus you might stroke out or have an MI.)
Your best bet is to get some pseudoepherine from the pharmacist. I know civil libertarian types are skittish of having to present ID, but if you’re in the drug store, you’re already on surveillance camera anyway. I mean, if you really don’t want to present ID or be recorded on camera, you could always just go to your local meth dealer #NotMedicalAdvice
Bryan Edds essentially argues that the reason why software tends to be crappy and code bases tend towards unmaintainability is because there is an inherent flaw in the nature of capitalism.
Apparently, I really did kind of pay attention during undergrad bio class.
A lot of the biochem has definitely dissipated, but I do still think about genetics from time to time, probably because it was the emphasis to my major.
The biological species concept defines a species as members of populations that actually or potentially interbreed in nature, not according to similarity of appearance. Although appearance is helpful in identifying species, it does not define species.
However, it still has a lot of caveats:
We already pointed out two of the difficulties with the biological species concept: what do you do with asexual organisms, and what do you do with organisms that occasionally form hybrids with one another?
What is meant by “potentially interbreeding?” If a population of frogs were divided by a freeway, as shown below, that prevented the two groups of frogs from interbreeding, should we designate them as separate species? Probably not—but how distantly separated do they have to be before we draw the line?
Ring species are species with a geographic distribution that forms a ring and overlaps at the ends. The many subspecies of Ensatina salamanders in California exhibit subtle morphological and genetic differences all along their range. They all interbreed with their immediate neighbors with one exception: where the extreme ends of the range overlap in Southern California, E. klauberi and E. eschscholtzii do not interbreed. So where do we mark the point of speciation?
Chronospecies are different stages in the same evolving lineage that existed at different points in time. Obviously, chronospecies present a problem for the biological species concept—for example, it is not really possible (or very meaningful!) to figure out whether a trilobite living 300 million years ago would have interbred with its ancestor living 310 million years ago.
There do seem like there are a lot of distinct species that are able to breed with other distinct species and yield viable offspring.
On Facebook, people have been posting articles about coywolves.
Greater than the sum of its parts • It is rare for a new animal species to emerge in front of scientists’ eyes. But this seems to be happening in eastern North America • 2015 Oct 31 • The Economist
While most people think hybrid offspring of different species are generally less vigorous than their parents (and usually sterile like mules), coywolves seem to be doing better than wolves in certain environments.
Although hybrids are typically less fit than straight species, the story of coywolves in the Northeast might be one of success. Their strong jaws will enable them to eat the deer that are abundant in the area, while the coyote-like ability to coexist with humans could be an advantage that wolves lack. “Wolves have not made a comeback on their own in the area because they can’t deal with human development,” Kays says. “In this case, the hybrid has become more adapted.”
Also…
Another advantage of coyotes and wolves mating is that, unlike many interspecies relationships, their offspring are fertile. Kays points out that it is common for members of the genus, Canis, including coyotes, wolves, and dogs, to “hybridize quite readily.”
In retrospect, I think I might have wildly overestimated what Google was capable of doing.
I’m still not entirely sure what Google did with all that dark fiber, though.
But the idea of Google trying to take on the established cell phone carriers seems absurd now, although the idea that wifi was going to be everywhere seems like it’s still happening. (I guess Google does power the wifi at a lot of Starbucks.)
The Google Nexus phone (née gPhone) also did come to fruition, although it runs Android, not Chrome OS.
Still, Chromebooks don’t seem to be going anywhere.
I also ran into mentions of OpenSocial. OAuth at least seems to have insinuated itself into the very fiber of the current incarnation of World Wide Web.
