Dolphins Say Scientist A Dim Wit

A scientist in South Africa is claiming Dolphins are dumber than goldfish.

An examination of cetacean brain structure with a novel hypothesis correlating thermogenesis to the evolution of a big brain

Paul R. Manger

Biological Reviews, Volume 81, Issue 02, May 2006, pp 293-338

Of course he is from a country that once said the same thing about blacks.

I guess you could call this species profiling.

Was his research published in Science or Nature? Nope it was published in the obscure journal; "Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society".
Which warns its authors that; "articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists". In other words 'generalists'.

"Conclusions about the nature and magnitude of dolphin intelligence have not yet been reached. There are many different species of dolphin (see the cetacea article for a full list) and generalisations can be easily misapplied; cognitive differences between dolphin species may be as marked as differences between humans and the great apes."

Most researchers agree that bottle-nose dolphins exhibit a level of intelligence greater than that of a dog and even comparabole to that of some primates--but NOT humans.


"Intelligence" is a term with many definitions and interpretations. It's difficult enough to measure in humans let alone other animals. Large brains are traditionally associated with greater intelligence, and the brain of the adult bottlenose dolphin is about 25% heavier than the average adult human brain. Generally though, larger mammals tend to have larger brains, and so a more accurate estimate of brain power comes from the ratio of brain size to body size - the "encephalisation quotient" (EQ). While river dolphins have an EQ of 1.5, some dolphins have EQs that are more than double those of our closest relatives: gorillas have 1.76, chimpanzees 2.48, bottlenose dolphins 5.6. The bottlenose's EQ is surpassed only by a human's, which measures 7.4 (Australopithecines - hominids that lived around 4m years ago - fall within the dolphin range: 3.25-4.72). But we don't know enough about the workings of the brain to be sure of what these anatomical measurements truly represent. Today, most scientists share the view that it is behaviour, not structure, that must be the measure of intelligence within a species.Guardian Unlimited | Life | Deep thinkers


A Comparison of Primate and Dolphin Intelligence as a Metaphor

Kenneth W. LeVasseur - Dolphin Intelligence & Captivity

Proof of whale and dolphin intelligence


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Manger, dolphins, intelligence, South-Africa, dolphins-dumb, mammals, sea, science, biology, sea-mammals

Trial By Media

The alleged killer of child beauty queen JonBonet Ramsey has been arrested in Thailand, home of the sex tourist industry. Liberal Catnip has published; The Resume of Suspected JonBenet Killer: John Mark Karr

This is a clear case of trial by media, which found the Ramsey family, father, mother and brother quilty. The media replaced the police and the courts in this case and publicly vilified the family whom they judged quilty.

Of course apologies will not be forthcoming by those who profited from the families loss.

The subtext of the media's slur campaign was it's moralistic revulsion towards JonBenet's mother who had made her into a teeny tiny beauty queen. A clone of her mother, who had also been a beauty queen.

The hypocrisy of America, it promotes the expolitation of girls and women through beauty pagents, and then turns around and is morally repulsed by those who participate. They equate child beauty queen's with child exploitation, yet they accept and promote these pagents.

The real child abuser and exploiter who murdered JonBenet was always dismissed as a fantasy until now. The irony is that while the media 's morality play was that of outrage over the exploitation of JonBenet as a child beauty queen, in death she was exploited by them even more.

JonBenet Ramsey murder case, an investigative analysis

The first images of JonBenet Ramsey that were broadcast to the world showed a pretty little girl in heavy make-up and flamboyant costumes parading across a stage. At the time, the media described her as "a painted baby, a sexualized toddler beauty queen."

From the day in 1996 when JonBenet was found dead in the basement of her home in Boulder Colorado, the Boulder police and a large proportion of the world's media believed that her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were responsible for her death.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
JonBenet, Ramsey, Colorado, child-beauty-queen, beauty-pagents, kidnapping, child-exploitation, media, crime, murder,

Who is Fighting AIDS

Leading activists took an angry jab yesterday at major AIDS organizations and the International AIDS Conference, complaining that Bill Clinton and Bill Gates were treated like royalty at the "Hollywood" meeting, while patients and front-line workers have received little profile. 'Hollywood' conference irks activists

This item is locked, however amongst all the AIDS conference news this is the only story critical of the Bill and Bill show in TO. However to his credit Stephen Lewis on the other hand has been focusing on AIDS victims and activists, in particular the Grandmothers from Africa.

American singer Alicia Keys (centre) and UN AIDS envoy Stephen Lewis (right) join grandmothers from around the world affected by AIDS at an event raising awareness about the disease at the International AIDS conference in Toronto, Sunday. (CP / Stuart Nimmo)

Also See

AIDS

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
harper, AIDS, Toronto, AIDSconference, Gates, women, sex, sexuality, STDs, Toronto, Canada,
Clinton, Lewis, UN, grandmothers, AIDSactivists,

Moon Landing Never Happened

Amongst conspriacy theorists there are those who claim that the Moon landing was faked, it never really happened. This became the basis for the movie Capricorn One.

Well now it turns out that NASA is reporting that the 13 hours of video tapes of the first moon landing is missing!!!

The original tapes though were sent from Nasa to the National Archives in 1970, and the tapes has disappeared since. Maybe they are buried with Richard Nixon, who also lost important tapes.

Well it was the sixties after all. "Wow man that was some good shit, now we gotta put these tapes somewhere really safe, man"

Buzz Aldrin poses on the moon, allowing Neil Armstrong to photograph both of them using the visor reflection. (NASA)

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
NASA, space, Nixon, Moon, Moon-landing, Apollo11, Armstrong, conspiracy, first-man-on-the-moon, moon-landing-never-happened, moon-landing, video

Khadr -Canada's Shame

The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr
He was a child of jihad, a teenage soldier in bin Laden's army. Captured on the battlefield when he was only fifteen, he has been held at Guantanamo Bay for the past four years -- subjected to unspeakable abuse sanctioned by the president himself

Because in Canada the State would try him as a young offender...so they have abandoned him to the U.S. Gov't in no rush to bring Khadr to Canada

Its all part of the U.S. Canada security pact. The same pact that saw Canadian Mahar Arar, repatriated by the CIA to Syria to face imprisonment and torture.
The fact remains he is being imprisoned and tortured in violation of International and Canadian laws, with no proof he is a terrorist.

The silence of the Canadian state is shameful.

His is another face that should be made into a poster and placed by the NDP/BQ opposition on their side of the house to face the government.


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Khadr, Arar, torture, US, Canada, terrorist, terrorism, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, human-rights, AI,

Corporate Welfare Bums

File this under Liberal, Tory same old story. Along with subsidies and tax cuts Canadian workers fund the corporate sector with our hard earned tax dollars to the tune of $20 billion. This is just a portion of the Corporate Welfare big business gets. And why would they pay us back, when they fail to reinvest their tax cuts in their own businesses in the first place. Captialists say they hate state regulations but they do love the states handouts.

Following the winter election, the new Conservative Industry Minister, Maxime Bernier, quietly cut off Pratt & Whitney -- the biggest TPC deadbeat -- from the subsidy trough. Furthermore, he helped to discredit the program by making TPC repayments records public. Despite assurances made by the Liberal government that TPC loans were generally in good standing, the data revealed the opposite. A group of 42 recipient companies had yet to submit any reimbursements whatsoever, repayment records for 88 others totaled a paltry $149-million, and another 78 companies had repaid a total of $7.4-million but refused to make their exact repayments known to the public. The data confirmed what critics of Ottawa's corporate welfare program have been stating for years: These programs are a sinkhole for tax dollars.TPC was established to replace the old Defence Industries Productivity Program (DIPP), a corporate welfare plan that paid out $2.15-billion in grants and contributions to businesses over a 20-year period. DIPP was also cancelled by the Liberals because fewer than one in four dollars was repaid to the government. TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS CANADA A SUBSIDY SINKHOLE


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, government, corporate-welfare, TPC, corporations, tax-cuts, R&D, DIPP, economics, capitalism, taxes, susidies

Whales Were Not Always Vegans

So much for the theory that veganism is natural........even vegan whales began as carnivores......then as their food sources changed to plankton, which became more plentiful, they evolved into vegans. Sort of like our urban human vegans who have more vegetable/fruit choices thanks to mass consumer culture; the agribusiness and supermarkets, they love to hate.

Whale fossil sports fierce teeth

By Elli Leadbeater

The whale used large eyes to hunt prey (Image: R Start, Museum of Victoria)

Palaeontologists have discovered a bizarre whale fossil in Australia with a set of fearsome teeth.

The specimen has surprised scientists because it belongs to the group known as baleen whales.

Modern day baleen whales are all placid, plankton eaters, but the new fossil shows the group were not always the ocean's gentle giants.

Also See:

Whales

Dinosaurs

Vegans


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Whales, fossils, prehistoric-whale, bellanwhale, vegans, carnivores, carnivore-whales, whaleteeth,

Harpers P3 Scandal

This is rich. Two newly appointed Harper bueraucrats, who come from the private sector, in charge of selling off or leasing out Government buildings, went to England to investigate the success (sic) of their Public Private Partnerships (p3's)

Of course the many cases of the failure of P3s was never on their agenda. And apparently neither was actually talking to anybody, it seems that their draft report came from pro-privatization websites.

They took a vacation in England with their wives. Nice job if you can get it......now what was that about transparency, accountability....sounds like the same old pork to me.

And like the Liberals its business as usual with our reinventing Government Harpocrites who are pushing privatization and Public Private Partnerships.

And thanks to these guys greed and stupidity this backroom P3 plan may never have been publicly revealed. Instead their report would be issued justifying the governments move to privatize goverment buildings, as if it was factual.

Apologies over advisers' trip an 'embarrassment'

When two-high ranking federal advisers left for London in June, the stated purpose was to learn about British experiments in public-private partnerships. In particular, the trip by Public Works advisers David Rotor and Douglas Tipple was marred by a series of cancelled meetings, forcing Canadian diplomats and senior officials to send six letters of apology to their British counterparts.

Mr. Rotor and Mr. Tipple arrived in London with good credentials, having been hired to overhaul Ottawa's procurement and real-estate businesses through a head-hunting firm that was paid $230,000 for its services.

And while their salaries are confidential, they are each paid more than $100,000 a year, in line with salaries in the private sector.

Upon their return to Canada, Mr. Rotor and Mr. Tipple prepared a 10-page document under the heading "U.K. Trip Notes — June 2006," which has started circulating throughout the government.

The 4,500-word document provides a summary of the information gathered overseas by the two special advisers. About 1,800 words of the document – or 40 per cent of the total trip report – consists of direct and edited excerpts from outside reports available at two British websites: www.amaresearch.co.uk and www.adamsmith.org.

However, there is no indication in the report that some of the material comes directly from either website.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
P3, privatization, public-private-partenerships, Canada, London, UK, Rotor, Tipple, Harper, Government, scandal, Ottawa

A Footnote

Canada's federal statistics-gathering agency admitted Tuesday it mistakenly understated the country's inflation rate over the past five years.
economists were taken aback by the glitch, reported by Bloomberg News yesterday and which first surfaced as a footnote in Statscan's June price inflation, released July 21.

An opps hidden as a footnote. This is like polling, now the inflation rate will have to be stated as "give or take a tenth of a percent".

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
StatsCanada, Canada, inflation, CPI, economics, BankofCanada

The Mulroney Legacy

The reason that Canada cannot produce or distribute generic AIDS drugs falls directly in the lap of the Conservative government. The government of Brian Mulroney that is. It was his government that passed legislation allowing the big Pharmaceutical oligopolies to hold exclusive patents for twenty years, which puts a strangle hold on generic drug manufacturers.

The Mulroney legacy of free-trade denies a free market.

The Mulroney government brought in three pro-big pharma laws. In 1987, Bill C-22 was enacted which weakened the government's ability to use licensing arrangements to allow the public greater access to cheaper, Canadian-made generic drugs. In 1993, Bill C-91 was passed, allowing the big pharmaceutical companies, largely based in the U.S., to extend their brand name patent protection from 17 to 20 years. Also, in 1993, amendments were made to the Patent Medicines Regulations Act, giving Health Canada more tools for rejecting generic drug approval besides simply allegations of patent infringement.Big Pharma's Healthcare Fix

From a public policy perspective, the most important and relevant question regarding the pharmaceutical patent regime is whether or not it is serving the interests of Canadians.

Nearly 20 years after the introduction of Bill C-22, which gave brand-name drug companies longer periods of market monopoly, and more than 10 years after the introduction of the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations of Canada’s Patent Act, it is evident that the shift in Canada’s pharmaceutical policy in favour of brand-name drug companies has been a failure in virtually every measurable outcome.

It is clear that nearly 20-years of concessions to the multi-national brand-name pharmaceutical industry by the Government of Canada has not served the interests of Canadians

The Real Story Behind Big Pharma’s R&D Spending in Canada

Also See

AIDS


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
AIDS, Canada, drugs, big-pharma, generic, generic-drugs, AIDSdrugs,