Sarychev Peak in the Kuril Islands exploded earlier in June and the ISS luckily was passing over it and was able to take the pics here. It's a fantastic photo but what will really bake your noodle is to see the 3D version made from multiple exposures.
Notice something else, how the clouds parted due to the rising cloud of vapor. Pretty cool!
Love or hate Dawkins, he presents some of the clearest arguments out there for the value of the scientific outlook (with apologies to Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris, who aren't scientists). In his essay below, he outlines our human tendencies to find purpose in the universe where there is no evidence of it. One of his better presentations (if nothing else, for the Expelled parody!).
Ladies and Gentlemen, I was asked again today how I can have ethics or morals if I do not believe in a God or Gods. Aside from the obvious reply "You saying without God you would have no morality? That's scary!", I find that this is a continuous broadsides to non-believers that lacks any real understanding of our view of religion and our issues with it.
Leave it to the acerbic and brilliant Christopher Hitchens to so succinctly state the issue at hand from my perspective. I certainly do not know if there is a higher power, but if there is, it's not at all like it's argued for. Below is Mr. Hitchens' opening argument (in two parts) to address this. For those who believe (and possibly find this offensive..though I would wonder why dissenting views are threatening to them), I ask that you come to understand the non-belief position before rejecting or arguing against it. As a ex-believer, its only common courtesy to see both sides as I am forced to do.
There is a nice documentary from Australia about atheists. For those of you who are not Atheist, it's a fantastic expose on their rationale and thinking. If you disagree with Atheists, best to know how they feel as opposed to assuming (bad sound in this video, but a scathing rebuttal to not actually caring what athiests "believe").
"This will be the one pictured in the textbooks for the next hundred years"
An amazing discovery that will change the way we see our development as a species. Spectacular!
From the details:
• Ida is believed to be the most complete primate fossil ever discovered. She is 95% intact and so well preserved that her tissues, hair and even her stomach contents are visible. By comparison, the much more recent fossil "Lucy" from Ethiopia is only 40% complete.
• She died 47m years ago in the Eocene epoch and was discovered in Messel pit, a world-renowed fossil site near Darmstadt in Germany, in 1983.
• The Messel site has yielded thousands of superbly preserved fossils including eight species of crocodile, 20 or so snakes, more than 60 specimens of pygmy horse, the largest ant ever to crawl the planet and eight fragmentary primate specimens.
• Ida is named after the daughter of the researcher who assembled the team of scientists that have spent the last two years studying her in secret. Her formal scientific name is Darwinius masillae in honour of Charles Darwin's 200th anniversary year.
• Ida is obviously a primate because she has nails on her digits rather than claws and she has opposable thumbs and big toes.
• Ida is female because she doesn't have a baculum, or penis bone.
• She dates from around the time that our branch of the primates (the haplorhines) which includes monkeys and apes split from a second group including the lemurs, lorises, pottos and bush babies (the strepsirrhines).
• Key features of her skeleton suggest she is not an ancient lemur. She has no "grooming claw" on her second toe, a feature that all lemurs share. She also does not have a set of fused teeth in the middle of her bottom jaw called a "tooth comb". Finally, the tarsus bone in her ankle is shaped like our ancestors. So it is likely that she is a very early haplorhine primate.
• Ida's left wrist was broken, but had partly healed. The researchers believe this injury would have hampered her climbing and may have contributed to her death.
• Ida's large eye holes in her skull suggest she was probably adapted for night vision and so was nocturnal.
• Her milk teeth are in place with adult teeth forming behind, indicating that she was still a juvenile – probably six to nine months old.
• Ida's last meal is visible in her preserved stomach contents. It contained fruit and leaves, but no insects.
