Damn, would I ever sign up for A Week of Dressing Dangerously. I wonder if they do pirates?

How long would this take to become predominant? Or am I ahead of myself by equating newsworthy with characteristic?

There are equations set up for this kind of question, and it depends on reproductive cycle (months in mice) and the relative advantage of the new mutation. But it's likely that there are two strains of mice on the island, each living on a different food source. As you suggest, only one strain is likely to be noticed by the media.

I'm trapped beneath my cat. Send sushi.

Also, Mile High is making me sad.

The earlier news stories seem to be wrong. Now news reports have only one minor surviving, and he is in critical condition.

I am so glad I did not hear the earlier news reports. Those poor families.

Google is in braille today.

NY1 is covering the consumer electronic's show in LV. My boss is gonna be there later this week. Not in a booth, but attending a session on the future of photo.

The coal miner tragedy is horrible. I cannot fathom how the family members must feel--who saw the mistaken reports that one was lost and 12 were alive, only to have it all reversed.

Late on this, but scientists in the lab have made these 3x size mice by altering a single gene (to do with growth hormones, I think) so it probably would require only a single mutation to do the same in the wild. Not much in the way of evolution, though, just a single gene.

Did they make 3X size mice or 1/3 size mice, or both, in different experiments? I just saw something on the Methusalah Project, and 1/3 size mice (which seem to live longer).

How awful for the families. What a shock. I can't imagine the emotional rollercoaster.

I was still awake at 1 a.m. last night (this morning, really) when the initial news broke that 12 miners had survived. And I went to bed thinking what a miracle that was. My alarm clock is set to the NPR station, and by chance, when it woke me up, it was a clip of one of the miners' family members just wailing about the situation and how the miscommunication made it that much worse. It's just heartbreaking.

And I can't help wondering if the original miscommunication got so widely spread so quickly because every media outlet wants to be the one to break the story. Hell, as media consumers, we contribute to that attitude -- "Where'd you read that? MSNBC doesn't have it." "I'm reading CNN; they just updated." We want the news, and we want it NOW.

If *ever* there were a situation in which fact-verifying was required before going live with the story, this would be the one. Just heartbreaking.

t /pre-coffee rambles from an erstwhile journalism major

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