Greg In The Desert

According to Live Science, a few dinosaurs were still roaming around New Mexico 500,000 years after the great apocalypse that killed the rest of them.

The whole idea that a space rock destroyed the dinosaurs has become controversial in recent years. Many scientists now suspect other factors were involved, from increased volcanic activity to a changing climate. Either way, some 70 percent of life on Earth perished, and an asteroid impact almost surely played a role.
Scientists recently analyzed dinosaur bones found in the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin. Based on detailed chemical investigations of the bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they are found, the researchers think some dinosaurs outlived the crash that occurred 65 million years ago and stuck around for a while.

New Mexico is a popular place for Dinosaur hunters because of how well fossils has been preserved.

• Drop in daddy long legs is devastating bird populations | Science Blog – Warm summers are dramatically reducing populations of daddy long legs, which in turn is having a severe impact on the bird populations which rely on them for food.

  New research by a team of UK scientists spells out for the first time how climate change may affect upland bird species like the golden plover – perhaps pushing it towards local extinction by the end of the century.

  It also points a way forward to how we can attempt to strengthen habitats to help wildlife adapt to our changing climate and prevent such consequences.

  Previous research has shown how changes in the timing of the golden plover breeding season as a result of increasing spring temperatures might affect their ability to match the spring emergence of their cranefly (daddy long legs) prey.

• RGE – New Home Sales Fell 41% in February 2009 – The parade of the mathematically innumerate business writers continue to misread data. The latest evidence? New Home Sales.

  After incorrectly reporting the Existing Home Sales, the mainstream media misread the Census department report of New Homes.

  No, New Home Sales data did not improve. In fact, they were not only not positive, they were actually horrific. The year over year number was a terrible down 41%. Sales from this same period a year ago have nearly been halved.

• Rio Rancho home construction surges – New Mexico Business Weekly: – Home building permits surged in February in Rio Rancho, lifting the entire Albuquerque-metro area to post a 54 percent increase over January’s permit numbers, according to publisher Jan DeMaggio’s Albuquerque New Housing Market Letter.
• MacBook Pro: Apple Now Offers $1200 8GB RAM Upgrade on New MacBook Pros, Backwards Compatibility Unclear – It may cost around half the price of the machine itself, but Apple now offers an official 8GB RAM upgrade, mysteriously only for 2.93GHz and 2.66GHz MacBook Pros. Wait, we thought the max was 4GB?
• The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone – It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
• Eight years and counting | Mac OS X | Editors’ Notes | Macworld – In case you’ve lost track of time, Tuesday marks the eighth anniversary of the release of Mac OS X (version 10.0.0). In that time, there have been 52 different releases of OS X, counting the public beta as well as major and minor updates. So in honor of this eighth birthday, here are eight great things about OS X.
• Craving: Crunchy Oven-Fried Chicken – It's not that we're afraid of frying or even that we're hoping to avoid the extra calories. It's just that sometimes we want a bit of that lovely crunch without going to all the trouble of deep-fat frying. Any good oven-fried chicken techniques or recipes to recommend?
• Electronista | Sprint details WiMAX rollouts for 2009 – Sprint today outlined its expansion plans for its WiMAX 4G service for the next year as well as some early hints of its 2010 plans. The carrier now hopes to launch its wide-area wireless in Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Portland and Seattle at varying points throughout the year. It has also pushed back its originally planned Washington DC introduction to 2010 and expects to reserve other major cities for service next year, including Boston, Houston, New York and San Francisco.
• Letters – To – Ex-V.P., A.I.G. From – The Taxpayer – NYTimes.com – To the editors of the nytimes: I am happy that the DeSantis family was not a victim of the A.I.G. malfeasance and has kept its home. Across America, in scenes worthy of “The Grapes of Wrath,” people must squeeze their possessions into their cars or — if they can afford them — into storage units, under the eyes of their children because, unlike Mr. DeSantis, they have also lost their homes.
• Op-Ed Contributor – Dear A.I.G., I Quit! – NYTimes.com – The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.