The Edge has a very interesting article written by Freeman Dyson, Heretical Thoughts Abut Science and Society:

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

That's just a taste of a long article that should be taken in in full.  Non-scientist sci-fi fans may recognize Dyson's name.  He's the guy who conceived the Dyson Sphere.

Some scientists tried watching animals with infrared video cameras, and they discovered something new about the California ground squirrel:

It's Californian ground squirrel versus rattlesnake in a potentially lethal showdown. But the squirrel has a secret weapon that until now has remained invisible to the human eye.

The ground squirrel heats up its tail then waves it in the snake's face - a form of harassment that confuses the rattler, which has an infrared sensing organ for detecting small mammals.

This defensive tactic remained invisible to biologists until they looked at the animals through an infrared video camera. Now they believe that many other animals might be using infrared weaponry to ward off potential predators.

Young California ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) are easy prey for snakes, so protective adults harass the predators while puffing up their tails and wagging them.

Graduate student Aaron Rundus and his supervisor Donald Owings of the University of California, Davis, wondered how this might affect the snakes’ interaction with the adult squirrels. So he borrowed a $35,000 infrared camera from another scientist and spied on squirrel-snake stand-offs.

He saw the adults’ tails heat up, presumably due to increased blood flow, when they were warning rattlers away – making the squirrel appear larger to the snake’s infrared organ.

Confronted with a gopher snake, which has no infrared sensory organ, the squirrels wagged their tails but didn’t bother to warm them up first.

Tests with robotic squirrels confirmed that a warmed squirrel tail made rattlesnakes more likely to act defensively, say Rundus and Owings.

The squirrels themselves do not see in infrared, so they cannot see another squirrel's tail heating up. But the snakes can, proving that the squirrels have evolved a specific way to deter rattlesnakes.

“It taught us to focus on the perceptual world of the animal we’re studying” rather than thinking only of human perceptions, says Rundus.

Amazing.

P.S. Robotic squirrels?

I know I haven't done much on the blog this week.  I've been kind of running out of steam.  Also I had to work today (Saturday).  One Saturday overtime per month isn't too bad.  It gives me just enough extra money to make the payment on the new air conditioner that I hadn't planned on buying just yet but had to anyway.

I've also just started playing around with some freeware called Page Plus SE--the non-pro version--which is a desktop publishing program.  Several years ago I put together a sort of chapbook using nothing but Word.  It was a major ordeal, and in a computer crash (the old desktop) I lost all my custom formatted templates that I had made.  I'm hoping this Page Plus will make recreating the book a little easier.  I do still have a few copies of the old book still laying around here.  I think I managed to print up 7 or 8 copies.

Today I broke out an old fanny pack to try carrying work stuff in.  It's from Uncle Mike's, and is blue denim, like jeans.  Has a velcro quick-release pouch for a handgun, plus two other compartments.  Today I just carried a flashlight, my cell phone and some Sqwinchers in it, but it was actually pretty comfortable and didn't get in the way like I thought it would.  I've had it for years.  One of those things I bought to try out and never got around to it.  Now I'll have to see if it's easily washable.  It should be, since it's just denim.  I don't suppose washing will damage velcro, will it?  I think it would probably be a good idea just to hang dry it, and not put it in the drier.  I wouldn't want the velcro to get full of lint.

Maybe I'll come up with something more pertinent tonight, after I've had a nap.