Evolution

If you've ever been involved in any sort of home construction, you know it always takes longer than the contractors say it will. For the past 10 weeks, the Tobaks have been doing a swimming pool project. So far, so good.

Last night, as the Bay Area cooled down from a three-day heat wave, my wife said, "It would sure be nice to get water in the pool in the next two weeks."

"What do you mean?" I exclaimed, "You know the pool company is scheduled to come out tomorrow and fill it up on Tuesday. Two weeks? We'll be swimming in two days!"

"Uh huh," she said.

The next morning, my wife pulled the pillow off my snoring head and announced, "We have no water."

I replied with a blank, bleary-eyed stare.

"The pool guys are all here and we have no water."

"Okay," I replied, "I'm getting up."

Apparently, a stuck check valve in our irrigation system had been dumping precious water faster than our well pump could pump it. Our holding tanks were dry.

No water meant the pool guys couldn't do their thing. An hour later, the whole gang packed up and left.

When you live in a rural mountainous area, this sort of thing happens from time to time. That means every few years.

So I'm sitting here trying to figure out how my wife knew something was going to happen. She couldn't possibly have known. Wait, I know. She sabotaged the irrigation system just to appear prescient. Nah, that's just crazy.

When I asked her about it, she said she'd just had a feeling.

That got me thinking: Is there such a thing as intuition? And if so, what is it and how does it matter to you and me?… Read more

Alltel, the largest rural cell phone provider in the U.S., plans to use the same technology to build its 4G network that AT&T and Verizon Wireless have chosen, a move that should provide better coverage for next generation wireless users.

But don't expect a major 4G upgrade from Alltel overnight. The company said during its quarterly conference call on Thursday that it would likely take three to five years to deploy the new network.

Still, the fact that yet another wireless operator has committed to using Long Term Evolution or LTE, is a big deal. Since … Read more

Some paintballers choose brute force to slather their opponents into submission, but that just doesn't seem very sporting. Something like the laser-sighted "Airsoft Submachine Gun" at least tests one's shooting skills, but even that still seems a bit primitive. Why, after all, should you make yourself a target at all?

The true guerrilla pigment warrior would opt for something like the "EMT Wireless Paintball Sentry Turret," a remote-controlled weapon that can rain 400 pellets at a time on your opponent as you observe the mayhem from a safe distance, sipping your tea. The turret … Read more

Yahoo, Time Warner reportedly talk deal to thwart Microsoft http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886157-7.html http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886254-7.html

Gates to Google: 'Your business applications stink' http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9884752-16.html

Adobe bites its tongue after iPhone Flash jab http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9886265-60.html

Warning: Your iPod may get you mugged http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9885873-7.html http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/ 1282422/researchers_ipods_attract_violent_crime

Is Microsoft’s ‘Singularity’ the OS of the future? http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886184-7.html

NIN’s music experiment sells big numbers http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/05/076221… Read more

Scientists have created mice with abnormally long forelimbs by outfitting the rodents with a chunk of DNA that directs wing development in bats, according to Technology Review.

The slightly longer forelimbs of the transgenic mice do make them more batlike. But the mice won't be flying out of the cage, says one of the scientists. First mice would have to develop very different forelimbs, like those of bats, which are longer and have membranes stretched between the bones. So we shouldn't see Mighty Mouse anytime soon.

Are winged swine on the horizon? That would give new meaning to … Read more

The Internet fridge I saw at CES doesn't do what I want it to do. It does not know when I am running out of milk. It does not sniff out the moldy cheese hiding behind the mustard to tell me it's time to throw it out. What the Internet fridge does is this: It has a mounting bracket and a power port on its front so you can install fridge-centric devices.

Stay with me here.

Whirlpool makes the refrigerator in question. I really don't expect you're going to buy one. Another company, Data Evolution, makes … Read more

It's not too often that we see a piece of audio equipment that looks like part of a wall. But then again, when the price tag is around $50,000, all bets are off.

The system you see pictured here, which may resemble the partial construction of a well-appointed den or library, is actually a set of "MMthree Reference Speakers" from Evolution Acoustics--a gargantuan setup that boasts three-way loudspeakers and a 1,000-watt amplifier. A list of specs helps explain the unwieldy size: It begins with "dual 15-inch treated paper woofers, two 7-inch ceramic midranges and … Read more

It's official. We rule over chimps.

Researchers at UC Davis conducted a study about primate locomotion. They tested humans on a treadmill as well as chimps that were trained to walk on two legs and to "knucklewalk." (I must pause here to shed a tear for memories of my departed Uncle Spiro.)

They found that humans consumed 75 percent less energy in going from point A to point B than chimps, which use all four limbs to walk. Hence, chalk one up for the two-legged crowd.

But even more interesting, they found that two of the five … Read more

For those who envision evolution creeping along only on glacial time scales, let this be a lesson.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and elsewhere have documented the super-swift recovery of tropical Hypolimnas bolina butterflies, also called blue moon or great eggfly butterflies, from the onslaught of a bacteria that killed only males. The bacteria had reduced the male population to about 1 percent of the overall species, but within 10 generations over less than a year in 2006, the males had recovered to 39 percent of the population, according to the researchers.

"To my knowledge, this … Read more