LA Times: John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-2006.
"John Kenneth Galbraith, a longtime professor of economics whose bestselling books ... urged government to divert more of the nation's wealth to social needs, died Saturday. He was 97."
Did everyone remember Secretaries' Day?
Slate: Keep Your Roses. I hate Secretaries Day.
"Maybe part of the problem is that in the 50 years since the holiday began, the duties of a secretary have been farmed out across the office, and the job definition is no longer clear."
Local10 News: Man Offers Free Breast Exams, Finds Some Takers.
"Broward sheriff's deputies have arrested a 76-year-old man they say was going door to door offering women free breast exams."
Physics.org: Scientists penetrate fossil magma chamber beneath intact ocean crust.
"Although gabbros have been sampled elsewhere in the oceans, where faulting and tectonic movement have brought them closer to the seafloor, this is the first time that gabbros have been recovered from intact ocean crust."
Rex Hammock: The Times-Picayune wins a Pulitzer.
"The T-P did not even have the ability to print a paper in the days following Katrina."
It's kind of warm here again today. Yesterday it hit 92F (That's 33 for you Celsius people), and we had rolling black-outs through-out the Houston area.
Science News: Branchless Evolution -- Fossils point to single hominid root.
"A team led by anthropologist Tim D. White of the University of California, Berkeley unearthed 31 fossils of Australopithecus anamensis, the earliest known species of this ancient hominid genus." ...
"Anatomical similarities indicate that Au. anamensis evolved directly from an earlier hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, between 4.4 million and 4.1 million years ago, the researchers assert in the April 13 Nature. By 3.6 million years ago, they add, Au. anamensis had evolved into Australopithecus afarensis, the species that includes the partial skeleton known as Lucy."
Slate: The Golden Age of Skyscrapers.
Vote for the World's Ugliest Dog.
NYT: Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals.
"Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land." ...
"In an interview, Dr. Shubin, an evolutionary biologist, let himself go. ‘It's a really amazing, remarkable intermediate fossil,’ he said. ‘It's like, holy cow.’"
Green Gabbro: Insert 'In Soviet Russia...' Joke Here.
"So I'm browsing through the latest issue of Tectonophysics when I see that ‘[s]everal long-range seismic profiles were carried out in Russia with Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE).’ Holy oxymorirony, Batman!"
And the time is 01:02:03 on 04/05/06.
Science News: Uncharted Territory. Ultraslow ridges hold new clues to crust's formation.
"... Gakkel Ridge is one of only two places known on the planet where the tectonic plates that make up Earth's hard outer crust slide apart and expose large slabs of the mantle on the seafloor. That mantle is normally buried under 6 km of crustal rock."
Nature: Study challenges prayers for the sick.
"Distant prayers do not help people recovering from heart surgery and could even cause them more health problems, according to the results of a large and controversial clinical trial that critics have labelled a waste of money."
