Riddle me this: when is a pay raise not a pay raise?

"It's not a pay raise," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "It's an adjustment so that they're not losing their purchasing power."

Hmm.

via Josh Marshall

Salon.com has a little story about Apple's new iPods. They write:

"The 20-gigabyte model can hold about 5,000 songs and costs $299, while the 60-gigabyte version holds 25,000 songs and sells for $399. "

That 5,000 is a bit high - I haven't managed to squeeze more than 4,300 onto my iPod, though a combination of shorter songs with higher compression and lower sound quality could get me closer. But, that's not the issue.

5,000 / 20 = 250 songs per GB.
25,000 / 60 = 416.6 songs per GB.

That extra 40 GB must be some special kind of disk space that can hold more than it claims. Or maybe they meant 15,000 songs.

The iPod starts the work week with:

1. The Shins - Wierd Divide. Don't hear a lot of Shins on the iPod, so this was a nice surprise.
2. 3Ds - Summer Stone
3. Robyn Hitckcock - Bass. Lovely little song about... I don't know... a town and fish?
   

   The juicy flounder and the tender chub
   Will swim around you when you leave the pub
   Their mouths are open and they will not shut
   Unless you kiss them all behind the hut

4. Buena Vista Social Club - Dos Gardenias.
5. Mission Of Burma - That's When I Reach For My Revolver.
6. fieldfresh - The Legend Of John Holiday. One of my college bands trying to be all tough and stuff. Recorded nearly live to 4-track, in a basement.
7. Muleskinner - Dark Hollow.
8. The Doors - Soul Kitchen. Love the way Robbie Krieger plays guitar.
9. The Clean - E Motel. Not sure if I've ever heard this song, or of this band. It's from a 3-CD Merge CD sampler that I only like a handful of songs on.
10. The Ladybug Transistor - Jersey Streets. This is from the same CD as the one above. I meant to take it off the iPod this weekend, but never got around to it. I wish I had.

See ya next week.

The Panda's Thumb talks about the evolution of alcohol synthesis, or Do Yeast Drink What They Brew ?

A: Yes. But they didn't always.

Or, as they put it:

The authors compared the sequences of Adh1 [alcohol dehydrogenase - a yeast enzyme that produces ethanol] and Adh2 [a similar enzyme that can convert ethanol back into a form the yeast can consume] from S. cerevesiae [brewer's yeast] and from 15 other Adh homologs in other yeast species. They then calculated the maximum likelihood gene sequence for the last common ancestor of these enzymes, the primordial alcohol enzyme, which they called Adh_A. They then took modern yeast, removed their Adh1 and Adh2 genes, and replaced them with Adh_A.. Voilà, they have yeast from the Age of the Dinosaurs.

They then analyzed the chemical kinetics of this enzyme. The question was whether it was more like Adh1, the enzyme that primarily makes ethanol, or whether it was more like Adh2, the enzyme that primarily consumes alcohol. Did yeast evolve this enzyme to make a byproduct to inhibit its competitors, or did it evolve it to eat this byproduct?

The answer is that it was more like Adh1, and that early yeast were brewers, not drinkers.

Cool. And the conclusion:

We can assemble a history of yeast fermentation from this information now. The first step was the gradual evolution of efficient alcohol-producing enzymes that allowed the yeast to colonize and exploit rotting fruit exclusively. This occurred a very long time ago, in the Cretaceous. Next, there was a gene duplication event that produced two copies of Adh; initially, both would have done exactly the same thing, just allowing the lucky duplicators to pump out alcohol even faster. With two copies, though, one would have more freedom to drift and change its enzymatic properties without serious consequence to the owner. One fortuitous change would be a shift in enzyme kinetics in one copy to better promote conversion of alcohol back to acetaldehyde and enter back into the citric acid cycle. So, first they learned how to make an environmental poison to give them exclusive access to a food source, and then that same machinery was adapted to better allow them to eat that poison, permitting them recover some of the energy lost in secreting it.

Cooler.

Oh, and by the way, Fuck Karl Rove.

An excellent question. Why that would be the subject of a Viagra spam I just received, I do not know.

via SCOTUSblog:

Splitting 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a local government may seize private property for purposes of profit-making private re-development, declaring that this constitutes a 'public use' under the Constitution.

Taking private land for any reason is deeply offensive; taking it to give to private developers so they can build shops and offices is a fucking disgrace.

The majority writes:

"Those who govern the city [of New London] were not confronted with the need to remove blight..., but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference....Clearly, there is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose."

As this blogger puts it:

What does this mean for you? It means that at any point in time, a private developer can go to the city and say that they can make better use of your land than you can. What is next? Tearing down small ranch style homes in order to build multi-million dollar mansions? The Supreme Court has now decreed that the burden of proof is on the individual to somehow prove that they deserve their land, instead of it being on the taker to prove that they absolutely need it. This is an incredibly dangerous shift. This is the most fucked up combination of socialism and capitalism that I've ever seen, and it makes me sick.

Makes me sick too.

Savage Chickens is a hilarious blog featuring little one-panel cartoons of chickens, all drawn on post-it notes.

You should go read it right now, because it would be sad if you were whisked off to Gitmo without having seen this. (via ObWi)

Also, you should waste some time with stupid comic book covers, at SuperDickery:

TBogg lets loose with a beautiful blast of red-hot righteous fury:

They're stupid. Stone cold, paste-eating, ditto-headed walking advertisements for eugenics who want so hard to fit in that they'll parrot any talking point that is explained to them in easy to understand terms as long as you keep it within the two syllable limit. To respond to them with anything more than a patronizing pat on the head and an offer of pudding or a shiny dime is a waste of time. So fuck them too.

Hilarious.