Ancient armored amphibian had world’s oddest bite

A peculiar amphibian that was clad in bony armor prowled warm lakes 210 million years ago, catching fish and other tasty snacks with one of the most unusual bites in the history of life on Earth.

The creature called Gerrothorax pulcherrimus, which lived alongside some of the early dinosaurs, opened its mouth not by dropping its lower jaw, as other vertebrate animals do.

Instead, it lifted back the top of its head in a way that looked a lot like lifting the lid of a toilet seat.

“It’s weird. It’s the ugliest animal in the world,” Harvard University‘s Farish Jenkins, one of the scientists who describe the mechanics of its bite in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, said in a telephone interview on Friday.

“You almost can’t imagine holding your jaws still and lifting your head back to take a bite,” Jenkins said. … – nd

I’d love to take sight seeing tours of the ancient Earth in a time machine.

Burglar: I was held captive by ghost for 3 days

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – A burglar who broke into a house claims he was held captive by a “supernatural figure” for three days without food and water, officials said.

Police official Abdul Marlik Hakim Johar told The Star newspaper the house’s owners found the 36-year-old man fatigued and dehydrated when they returned from vacation Thursday.

He says they called an ambulance to take him to a hospital. The man told police that every time he tried to escape, a “supernatural figure” shoved him to the ground.

Abdul Marlik could not immediately be reached and other police officials declined to comment. – msnbc

Was the man mentally ill? I’d like more details on this. Very interesting. The photo is a girl from a Malaysian Ghost Festival on wikipedia.

Ghost Festival in Malaysia is modernized by the ‘concert-like’ live performings, it has its own characteristic and is not similar to other Ghost Festivals in other countries. The live show is popularly known as ‘Koh-tai’ by the Hokkien-speaking peoples, it was performed by a group of singers, dancers and entertainers, on a temporary stage that setup within the residential district. The festival is funded by the residents of each individual residential districts.

Another wiki article describes the Ghost Festival.

In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm. During the Qingming Festival the living descendants pay homage to their ancestors and on Ghost Day, the deceased visit the living.

Recall this strange article from 2006 which may provide some even more relevant cultural background:

Malaysian ‘ghost tree’ creates new haunt for tourists

Thousands of people have been flocking to a small and hitherto unremarkable village in northern Malaysia to see what is being called the “ghost-tree” – a tree on which what appears to be a grotesque human face has appeared. It is a betel nut tree, a type of palm that is as common and everyday a sight in the tropics as an oak tree in rural Britain. But etched on one of the fronds of this particular tree is something that looks like a monstrous face, its teeth bared in a snarl and its eyes lost in shadow. It may sound like the plot of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, but people in rural Malaysia are taking it very seriously. Village elders have warned the thousands coming to see the face just to look and not to make any comments, for fear of arousing the wrath of the ghost. You could be forgiven for suspecting the locals have been indulging a little too much in chewing the betel nuts, the mildly intoxicating fruit of the tree, which are popular in many parts of Asia. Sceptics have pointed out that the face appears to have changed dramatically since the first pictures of it emerged a few days ago, and become considerably larger, more distinct, and scarier and suggested that enterprising locals may have decided to give the thousands flocking to the site more to look at. … – independent

Did magnetic blip cause super volcanoes and trigger mass extinction?

More than 250 million years ago, a plume of super-hot material began rising through Earth’s mantle, upsetting convection in the core and throwing the planet’s magnetic field into disarray. That event may have caused one of the worst mass extinction events in the planet’s history, leaving behind a barren volcanic wasteland something like this scene from modern-day Iceland.

It was a dying on a scale never seen before or since on Earth. The slaughter was everywhere; the fertile ocean and balmy supercontinent Pangea were transformed into killing fields, littered with the bodies of ancient animals. By the time the dust had settled on the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, 90 percent of life on the planet had been snuffed out.

Now a new theory suggests the catastrophe was set in motion 15 million years earlier, deep in the Earth. On the edge of the molten outer core, a plume of super-hot material began rising through the mantle, upsetting convection in the core and throwing the planet’s magnetic field into disarray.

The weakening of Earth’s magnetic field exposed the surface to a shower of cosmic radiation, says Yukio Isozaki of the University of Tokyo. He believes the radiation broke nitrogen in the atmosphere into ions that acted as seeds for clouds enshrouding the planet.  “This would’ve caused severe cooling and a drop in sea level” as the cool temperatures allowed massive ice sheets to accumulate on the continents, Isozaki said. “If you check the rock record at that time, tropical coral reefs die first. Then you start to see fauna from mid latitudes move into the tropics. It all points to cooling.”

The superplume disrupted the magnetic field and put a strain on creatures living on the surface, but it was only the beginning. Five million years later it reached the surface, Isozaki said, and the hot material punched through the crust, erupting as three successive supervolcanoes. …  – msnbc

A strange sea monster was cast ashore in Guinea.

This from Pravda. I’m not sure it is fair to call something that is dead and decaying “ugly”. It may have been quite an attractive monster while it was alive.

A strange ugly sea monster was cast ashore in Guinea. The partially decomposed monster has 4 paws, a tail and long fur. The scientists who examined the creature said that they had already seen such animals before, but they have no clue to their definition.

The guitar that inspired my trading up experiment, Taylor 714ce intonation test results.

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I’m dreaming of a Taylor 714ce guitar.

Why would anyone need a $2800 guitar?? In my case, I’ve realized as I’m working on perfect “absolute” pitch, that the guitars I have now are out of tune on some notes.

I never thought to check before, but using the free AP Guitar Tuner for Windows–or any other analog chromatic tuner– you can do this with your own guitar. Tune each open string perfectly, then  check each fretted note. Some of my fretted notes are out of tune. This finally explains why, even when perfectly tuned, my chords don’t sound right sometimes.

Anyway,  I played some shows with Jason Mraz before he hit it big and Jason is my ear guru. This is the guitar he plays, so I’m expecting that it will play in tune beautifully.

Taylor 714ce Intonation Experiment Results:  At Skip’s Music in Sacramento today 12/14/08, I brought my laptop in and used the AP guitar tuner to check every fretted note on a Taylor 614ce and a 714ce. The 614 was off as much as my Martin, but the 714ce’s fretted notes were all within 5 cents of true. Beautiful. The action was great too.

Action test:  Play Van Halen’s Spanish Fly if you can learn it from tab. It is a real workout.  There are many people imitating Eddie from transcriptions, but listen to his extended in concert solos and you’ll hear the raw creativity that shows his genius. Van Halen was the first band I saw in concert. Though some connections, someone who ran sound for Jason Mraz, I obtained a rare bootleg version of EVH testing some guitars in a store playing Hotel California and some other stuff.  So cool. I used to have dreams he was teaching me stuff and when I woke up I could remember it.

Anyway, getting back to intonation, I’ve known that the fretted note on the 12th fret should be the same as the harmonic on the 12th fret, and that the bridge positioning determines this, but what if some notes are out and some notes aren’t as you move up the fredboard?

Would this always be due to incorrect spacing of frets? If the G note played on the 3rd fret is off, would the other notes on the 3rd fret be off as well? C, F, Bb, D, G.

Experiment Results: No, that isn’t the case. With my Martin DM 769325 the G on the 3rd fret is sharp 15 cents, when the low E is in tune, but the other notes are dead on or are only off about 5 cents on the other strings when they are perfectly tuned.

Between one note and the next on a chromatic scale, there are 100 cents. Half way between a B and a C note is a quarter tone, 50 cents. The human ear can detect an instrument which is out of tune by 7 cents or more. This is why my G chords never sound just right on my Martin.

Here are the factors influencing intonation adapted from fretnotguitarrepair:

Incorrect positioning of the saddle or bridge
If the strings are too long the intonation is flat. If too short, the instrument will play sharp when the open strings are perfectly tuned. My E is off 25 cents, A is off 20 cents,  D is of 15 cents,  G is off 5 cents, B is off 20 cents, high E is off 10 cents.

Grooves in the saddle or bridge from wear and tear
Grooves worn down where each string rests on the bridge will change the string length and throw off the intonation.

High action
If the strings are too high off of the fretboard, the stretching before contact sharpens the note slightly. High action at the nut causes chords with notes fretted on the 1st to 3rd frets to sound terribly out of tune.  This may be contributing to my problem with the G note.

Excessive Relief
The strings distance to the fret can be dramatically increased on necks that are too bowed.  A truss rod adjustment can fix this problem. Tighten to rod to reduce excess relief (aka arching, or bowing) or loosen it if your neck is too straight. Some archg is needed to keep the strings from buzzing because they vibrate in an elliptical pattern. See my exaggerated illustration:

Fret damage
Frets with flat crowns or deep grooves change the string length and throw off intonation. Frets can be repaired or replaced if necessary. I can not detect any fret ware on my 3rd fret.

Fret height
A tall fret can play incredibly sharp if you press hard on the string. Test different pressures while using a tuner. With my bad G note, the lightest possible pressure puts me at 12 cents off, and the most pressure puts me at 25 cents off. By comparison, for the A string, my light to medium pressure gives a dead on C note, the strongest pressure puts me sharp by only 5 cents.

Poor Quality / Defective / Worn Strings
Cheap worn strings can cause intonation issues. I’ll try some new quality strings today to see if that helps, but there is no visual defect in my current low E string.

Fret Layout/Spacing
This is rare, but happens on inexpensive imported instruments or with a fretboard that was slotted by hand. If the angle of the fret was wrong, I’d expect my fretted C note on the A string to be off, but it isn’t.

Summary: Bad bridge adjustment, high action, barely noticible fret ware on the 3rd fret and possibly a worn out string is causing my G note to be annoyingly sharp on my Martin acoustic.

Quiz: The bridge plate is pulling off the body about 1 mm. If it was flush and the string length was 1 mm longer, would this make my bridge position problem better or worse?

Monty Python parallels in the Bush shoe attack in Iraq

Presumably the shoes were all checked for bombs before the reporters were let into the room? Bush kept his cool. What is the fate of  shoe thrower Muntathar al Zaidi? Presidents in the future may need to have proper shoe nets in place before speaking.

… Striking someone with a shoe is a grave insult in Islam.

“This is a goodbye kiss, you dog,” the journalist, Muntathar al Zaidi, 29, shouted.

Bush ducked the first shoe. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, standing to Bush’s left, tried to swat down the second. Neither hit the president. Another Iraqi journalist yanked Zaidi to the ground before bodyguards collapsed on Zaidi and held him there while he yelled “Killer of Iraqis, killer of children.” From the bottom of the pile, he moaned loudly and said “my hand, my hand.”

Zaidi was hauled to a separate room, where his cries remained audible for a few moments.

It wasn’t clear whether Zaidi was hurt. His employer, Cairo-based Baghdadiyah Television, released a statement late Sunday demanding Zaidi’s release from Iraqi custody.

“Any action taken against Muntathar will remind us of the actions and behaviors taken by the reign of the dictator and the violence, the random arrests, the mass graves and confiscations of freedom from the people,” the board of Baghdadiyah said. Friends said Zaidi covered the U.S. bombing of Baghdad’s Sadr City area earlier this year and had been “emotionally influenced” by the destruction he’d seen. They also said he’d been kidnapped in 2007 and held for three days by Shiite Muslim gunmen.

Bush said the shoe-throwing incident didn’t faze him. He tried to laugh about it, saying, “It didn’t bother me, and if you want the facts it was a size 10 shoe he threw at me.”

He continued with the press conference, taking a question from an Iraqi reporter and another from an American.

“That’s what happens in free societies when people try to draw attention to themselves,” he said.

Two other Iraqi journalists were briefly detained after the press conference. An Iraqi security guard hauled them away because one of them called Zaidi’s actions “courageous.” They were released. One of them said American officials helped free them. … – mccl

Of the throwers fate, one writer said,

“We were also filled with grief … because we knew that Muntather Al-Zaidi signed his own death warrant. This guy is finished. Mom added that he will be tortured first, most probably with shoes before his execution.”

I hope they are wrong about that. His release would be a sign of real progress in Iraq and Bush once said, “We do not torture“.

Anyway, that should be “ROMANES EUNT DOMUS”, not  “Go Out U.S.A.” Correct it and print it 1000 times.

The photo looks like someone is saying, “Follow the shoe!”. Monty Python introduced us to the word Anthrax in their Holy Grail movie in 1975, more than 20 years before anthrax made it big. This is still unexplained: the White House started taking Cipro, the antidote for anthrax, well before attacks.

“An unnamed “high government official” also advises some reporters to take Cipro shortly after 9/11″ – hc

Who would that be?