UPDATE (4/7): I posted a link to a nice animated GIF which shows the (approximate) effect of scaling up the MC/data jet energy scale factor on the CDF new particle signal. See here.

UPDATE (4/7): I added some considerations on the tentative CDF signal in a separate post today (4/7). You can find there a comparison with older semileptonic diboson searches at CDF and DZERO.

A solid month of almost daily “there is no problem but today we have big progress on it” is near, and a post on this record was planned to come in a few days time, but today my irony meter exploded, a lowly height has clearly been already reached. Greg Laden has covered it already, and his take is similar: Welcome to the "I'm starting to get cynical" edition. Yes, this is pretty much what I thought about the news today, too; how can you not get cynical.

Is stupidity rising? Are we witnessing an alarming proliferation of irrationality and an exuberance of ignorance? 

I've just come across a fabulous tune from Newfoundland that captures perfectly the chaos of jigging (fishing with special lures) for squid:

Holy smoke! What a scuffle! All hands are excited.
'Tis a wonder to me that there's nobody drowned.
There's confusion, a bustle, a wonderful hustle,
They're all jiggin' squids on the squid-jiggin' ground.

A gigantic theropod dinosaur has been discovered in China.

According to findings published in Cretaceous Research, the newly named dinosaur species Zhuchengtyrannus magnus probably measured about 11 meters long, stood about 4 meters tall, and weighed close to 6 tons.   The identification was done from fossil skull and jaw bones

Deaths due to cancer for both men and women in the United States continued to decline between 2003 and 2007, according to the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer. 

Overall rates of new cancer diagnoses for men and women combined decreased an average of slightly less than 1 percent per year for the same period. 

Mysterious Symmetry between Destruction and Growth asked “How on earth does blowing stuff up violently constrain unrelated growth mechanisms? This is the mystery.”

Upon launch, there will be 32 picosatellites, all desperately trying to beam their messages to Earth. FCC frequency coordination and requirements are the next hurdle to solve for Project Calliope.

Calliope is an amateur mission so we play by amateur radio rules. Calliope is armed with a half-watt Radiometrix transmitter. I already have an FCC-issued amateur HAM radio technican-class license, but that is just the first step.

In the autism world, feel-good stories really don't come along all that long often, and heartwarming stories about severely impaired individuals all of a sudden speaking out in perfect English through the use of dedicated facilitators are uplifting stories. We want to believe that miracles happen, that geniuses exist inside nonverbal severely disabled people, just waiting for the chance to shine through the noble efforts of a selfless facilitator. 

Fisherfolk can be tremendous founts of information about marine animals. They know where to find different species, what sort of baits they like best, what sizes to expect, and how all these things change with the seasons. Smart marine biologists spend a lot of time talking with fishers and learning from them.

That said, fishers can sometimes draw rather curious conclusions from what they observe. Here's an excerpt from a recent article by well-known angler and fishing writer Charley Soares: