Twenty randomly selected books from my library...

The much reported synchronised locking-up of first generation 30Gb Zune MP3 players appears to have an explanation from Microsoft: it's a poxy Leap Year bug!

I suppose this is only to be expected from a company that enshrined the "1900 is a leap year" flaw in its flagship Office component Excel.

Thisismoney.co.uk announce that Money Mail have awarded their 2008 Wooden Spoon award to British Telecom.  This is from an online customer survey.  One notable quote from the article is:

There were two areas you felt most aggrieved about. The first was dealing with overseas call centres. You complained that you are forced to spend a substantial amount of time pressing buttons in the automated system before you can reach a human being.

In this year of not only the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, but the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, we can expect the major celebratory events to be countered by the usual mediaevally-minded creationist suspects.  The journal Nature has published a useful document with the aim of highlighting an publicising why (the vast majoroty of) scientists regard evolution by natural selection as a fact -  "15 Evolutionary Gems"- the contents are as follows:

Gems from the fossil record
   1 Land-living ancestors of whales
   2 From water to land
   3 The origin of feathers
   4 The evolutionary history of teeth
   5 The origin of the vertebrate skeleton
Gems from habitats
   6 Natural selection in speciation
   7 Natural selection in lizards
   8 A case of co-evolution
   9 Differential dispersal in wild birds
  10 Selective survival in wild guppies
  11 Evolutionary history matters
Gems from molecular processes
  12 Darwin's Galapagos finches
  13 Microevolution meets macroevolution
  14 Toxin resistance in snakes and clams
  15 Variation versus stability 

The Natural History Museum has a packed programme of events to celebrate the big Darwin anniversary in 2009.   I'm not sure why they've chosen the image on the left as par tof the logo - it seems to suggest Darwin is swearing us to secrecy!  (I wonder if it's a photoshopped image...).  In any event, this is a big deal in public understanding of science, and my university, The Open University, is a significant contributor:

The Open University is working with the BBC to co-produce four TV series that consider the impact and legacy of Darwin's theories and ideas in an attempt to engage the public to take their interest in Darwin further. The four series are: Tree of Life (BBC ONE) where Sir David Attenborough argues the case for the importance of the science of evolution; Life (BBC ONE) which will capture the most extraordinary and awe-inspiring animal survival behaviours ever shown on TV; Andrew Marr on Darwin's Legacy (working title, BBC TWO) which will explore the impact of Darwin's theory in science, society, political movement and religion; and A Year in Darwin's Garden (working title, BBC TWO) in which entomologist and farmer, Jimmy Doherty, recreates many of Darwin's ground-breaking experiments with plants.

Change applied 1st January 2009.

Owing to a number of apparently spurious user accounts, I've changed the way new user accounts are set up.  Before you can set up an account, you need to request a passcode from Robert (see "Email me" from the Main Menu for contact details).

Of the many questions in evolutionary biology, the genetic basis of reproductive isolation between species and subspecies is a pretty hot topic. Drosophila pseudoobscura is a new world Drosophila species that has been used in evolutionary biology studies for many years.  This paper looks at the genetic basis of the hybrid sterility and segregation distortion seen in crosses between two subspecies, D. pseudoobscura pseudoobscura (referred to as "USA") and D. pseudoobscura bogotana (referred to as "Bogota"). It's a nice illustration of the impact of the 12 Drosophila genome sequences now available - D. pseudoobscura was the second Drosophila species to have its genome sequenced.

There is only partial reproductive isolation between these subspecies - male progeny from Bogota females crossed with USA males are virtually sterile (though when aged, they apparently yield offspring, though with a distorted sex ratio indicative of segregation distortion).  The female siblings are fertile, as are the offspring of a cross performed between UAS females crossed with Bogota males.  The two subspecies therefore obey Haldane's Rule.

It's probably the worst kept New year Honours story I can remember, but Chris Hoy, triple Gold winner in Beijing has been knighted. 

Here's his response (BBC).  cyclingnews.com's report

The Guardian has a front page report updating the status of the Government's proposals to monitor all UK communications (the "Interception Modernisation Programme" or IMP).  This the proposal to record the names and addresses of all communications, but not (at this stage) the contents of the communications.  This execrable plan is estimated to run in at about £12 billion, a sum which you would think the Government would quail at, in the present financial circumstances.

Bizarrely, considering the database is supposed to be vital for  national security, one proposal is that it be run by private industry.  Apparently this is under the illusion that privatised work will be more cost-effective than that run by Govenment.  Ho hum.

Just picked this up via the Open Rights Group website.  Tom Watson MP has a blog and has solicited opinions on his colleague Andy Burhnam's Big Idea - that voluntary age rating of internet sites is a practical solution to the perceived problem of nasty websites being inflicted on unsuspecting kiddies.

A quick squizz through his blog suggests this blog posting has generated a larger number of comments than any others - mind you, even his worst-commented articles do better than most of mine in that regard :-(