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This explains so much.

(The further you get from this image, the more it looks like Marilyn Monroe)

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I love living in the future.

Watching evolution in a lab: scientist observes E.Coli developing a new and extremely complex behaviour in a lab, is able to "replay" the event from previous frozen samples and demonstrate it over and over again with variations.


Edit: Quoth PZ Myers on this,

The citrate+ trait was first observed in the population called Ara-3 at roughly generation 33,000. By looking back at the frozen populations, they determined that the initial mutation that enabled growth on citrate actually appeared sometime between generation 31,000 and generation 35,000. These early generations were not as efficient at growing on citrate, so another mutation is thought to have occurred around generation 33,000 that allowed much more rapid growth. E. coli from generations prior to 31,000 had no significant, detectable ability to grow on citrate.

So they pushed it back further, by taking samples from earlier generations and allowing them to replicate again, replaying history. If the citrate mutation was a rare, unique mutation, they wouldn't expect to see the novel trait arise again. What they saw, though, was that the bacteria sampled after the 20,000th generation re-evolved the citrate capability with a greater frequency — there is something that arose around generation 20,000 in the Ara-3 population that did not make them citrate+, but did make it easier for subsequent generations to evolve citrate+, confirming their hypothesis of a historical contingency.

Quoth Michael Behe on this, "Duh, I eat poop!"

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Norway realises that gays are people, too.

(Or, if you INSIST on reading it in English, try Aftenposten.)

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Norway is awesome, today!

Also from Norway, we have Lioncam: a live webcame of a lioness and her three cubs.

EDIT: OMG SHE'S GROOMING THEM RIGHT NOW SO CUTE!

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Arizona's "poor people and darkies shouldn't get to vote" voter ID laws have swept up a 97-year-old woman.

She hasn't had a driver's license in decades, she never had a passport, and she was born in Kentucky before that state started issuing birth certificates. She can't get a "delayed" birth certificate without witnesses - and everyone who qualified has been dead for decades. She's voted in the last 19 Presidential elections, women gained the right to vote at all during her lifetime, but the new poll tax laws have finally made it impossible again for her.

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