Sarah Palin and Lyssenko

I just began to understand Sarah Palin, and here is how:

Under Stalin, Darwinism was outlawed (they had Lyssenkoism[0]). If the secret police found fruit flies in your house, you were shot or sent to Gulag because one can test Mendel's rules using them. Sarah Palin recently told she wants to stop fruit fly research. And her name rhymes with Stalin. And she can see Russia from her bathroom window. This is all really scary now when we know the connections.

I'm just reading "Weiße Gewänder"[3,5] by Wladimir Dmitrijewitsch Dudinzew[2,6].



The original is "Белые одежды" by Дудинцев, Владимир Дмитриевич, an english translation exists ("White Garments", ISBN 9780091736095, the author's name is spelled "Dudintsev" there).

[0] A crude version of Lamarckism kept alive by police violence (and by publishing fake experimental results or mistaking disease-caused plant deformations for species transmutations).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Dudintsev

[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wladimir_Dmitrijewitsch_Dudinzew

[3] Sorry, no Wikipedia page except for the russian one: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%B4%D1%8B_(%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD) but google-translate gives a readable result (except for the word "shearer" which is the name "Strigalev"[4]). The Belorussians even made a movie from the book: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%B4%D1%8B_(%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BC)

[4] I think google-translate should really start parsing the text now (currently they are only doing a search-and-replace using their huge corpus of texts available in multiple languages). This gives funny results: "начатую Стригалевым" means "begun by Strigalev" (the preposition "by" is silent in russian and requires the instrumental case, ending in "ym") but comes out as "begun Strigalevym".

[5] ISBN 3.353-00508-0, Verlag "Volk und Welt" Berlin, 1990.

[6] "Dudinzew" is the ancient german transcription of Dudincev[1]).

Maryam Namazie: The Islamic Inquisition

Her keynote address at the Dublin World Atheist Conference is here.

Islam per se is fundamentally no worse than any other religion. The tenets, dogma, and principles of all religions are equal. I don't believe in good or bad religions; in my opinion all religion is bad for you. Religion should come with a health warning like cigarettes: ‘religion kills.’

...

Religion in general and Islam in particular can only be considered liberal and reformed (at face value at least if even that is possible) when it has been pushed in a corner and out of the public space - when it has been forced to run soup kitchens rather than courts and Islamic Assemblies.

Read the whole thing at http://maryamnamazie.blogspot.com/2011/06/islamic-inquisition.html

Störmthaler See again

Calling buzz from inside maps crashes the latter, and mobile buzz doesn't allow adding pics, so I have to test blogger as well.
Edit: it says "authenthification fail". Trying again.

Unicode again

Google just claimed to have blogger "rewritten from scratch". Let's see whether they undestroyed the unicode handling (broken since 2008).

This is a cuneiform dingir (U+1202d), entered using the gtk input method (C-S-u, hexnumber, space to finish): ��

This is the same dingir, entered as a HTML entity (ampersand, hash, letter x, hexdigits 1202d, semicolon): ��

First visible change: The "preview" button opens a new tab, the directly entered dingir is already broken (replaced by a pair of black diamonds with question mrks inside), the entitized works. Now lets save and look.

Edit after looking: The directly entered dingir is now destroyed even in the source code (I did all editing in the HTML editing subtab), the entity is still there. So at least there is one way to enter unicode, albeit an inconvenient one.

Edit 2: Fun fact: If I search my blog for "unicode", the result box shows my old post (2008-02-19) with correctly displayed cuneiform characters. If I click on the search result, it gives me a page with the same characters broken.

Edit 3: After adding "Edit 2", google broke the HTML entity as well. Now I'm stuck with only questionable diamonds (a diamond might be a girl's best friend, but I'm a man).

Bike lock that hoists your bike up a lamp-post - Boing Boing

Bike lock that hoists your bike up a lamp-post - Boing Boing

Schleichen sind giftig, und ich bin schuld daran

Letzten Sonntag auf der Radtour habe ich eine Blindschleiche vom Weg gesammelt und ins Gebüsch gesetzt, ohne mir Gedanken um die Folgen zu machen.

Schwerer Fehler.

Abends zuhause gehe ich ins Internet und finde das hier bei B. G. Fry:

http://venomdoc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4610

mit Link zum Preprint hier: Bryan Grieg Fry, Kelly Winter, Janette A. Norman, Kim Roelants, Rob J. A. Nabuurs, Matthias J. P. van Osch, Wouter M. Teeuwisse, Louise van der Weerd, Judith E. McNaughtan, Hang Fai Kwok, Holger Scheib, Laura Greisman, Elazar Kochva, Laurence J. Miller, Fan Gao, John Karas, Denis Scanlon, Feng Lin, Sanjaya Kuruppu, Chris Shaw, Lily Wong, Sanjaya Kuruppu, Wayne C. Hodgson: Functional and structural diversification of the Anguimorpha lizard venom system.

Man stelle sich den Horror vor, wenn ich ein Kätzchen gerettet hätte und am selben Abend alle Katzen giftig geworden wären. Wahrscheinlich hätte es in der Nacht noch Millionen Tote gegeben.

Nun zum Thema. Untersucht wurden allerlei Warane (lasse ich hier weg, da jeder weiß, dass die giftig sind), Krustenechsen (dito) und drei echte Schleichen (Anguidae): Celestus warreni (Giant Hispaniolan Galliwasp, keine Ahnung, wie das auf deutsch heißt, ist aus Haiti und vom Aussterben bedroht und hat Beine (wenn auch recht kleine)); Gerrhonotus infernalis (Texas Alligator Lizard, bis 60cm lang, Texas, mit Beinen) und Ophisaurus apodus (auch Pseudopus apodus [2], Scheltopusik, bis 1.4m lang, lebt im Balkanraum); außerdem einige wenig bekannte Arten (Shinisaurus crocodilurus und Lanthanotus borneensis, letzteres ein Waran im weiteren Sinne).

Hier ist ein Cladogram der Anguimorpha mit Markierungen der Gifterwerbsereignisse (Bild 1 auf S. 26 im Original).



Wenn ein Gerrhonotus zum Radiologen kriecht und Kernspin vom Kopf machen lässt, sieht das so hier aus (Bild 14, S. 39):



Das orange-lila-gestreifte sind die Abschnitte der Unterkiefergiftdrüse.

Beim Scheltopusik sieht das Maul im Querschnitt so aus (die Oberkiefergiftdrüse ist mit "mmxvg" markiert, die Unterkiefergiftdrüse mit "mmvg", das ganze ist ein kleiner Ausschnitt aus Bild 15, S. 40):



Das ist insofern interessant, als hier die ursprüngliche Ausstattung der Toxicofera (Giftdrüsen im Ober- und Unterkiefer) erhalten geblieben ist.

Leider wurde unsere Blindschleiche (Anguis fragilis) nicht mit untersucht. Aufgrund ihrer Stellung im Stammbaum würde ich ebenfalls Giftdrüsen erwarten, allerdings weitgehend verkümmert wegen [0], und das Gift eventuell kaputtmutiert (analog zur kaputten PLA₂ in Aipysurus eydouxii, siehe [1]).

[0] Ungeziefer braucht man vor dem Verzehr nicht vergiften, wenn es sich nicht gerade um Scorpione handelt (das machen einige Echis in manchen Gegenden und haben das passende Gift dazu, siehe Ituri visit + The Scorpion Experiment (viperkeeper auf youtube) oder W. Wüster et al. Co-evolution of diet and prey-specific venom activity supports the role of selection in snake venom evolution).

[1] Fry BG et al.Putting the brakes on snake venom evolution: the unique molecular evolutionary patterns of Aipysurus eydouxii (Marbled sea snake) phospholipase A2 toxins

[2] Ich weiß nicht, wie aktuell die Gattungsnamen sind oder ob vielleicht Pseudopus paraphyletisch bezüglich Ophisaurus ist.

Vuvuzela tone holes - Tonlöcher

Since many people on teh intertubez asked for the positions and diameters of the needed holes, I write this post in both languages so that searchers will find it.
The single-piece vuvuzela available here in .de is 67 cm long (for users of imperialist units: 1 in=2.54 cm).
The hole positions are measured from the lower end.
The distance between the first and second hole is very inconvenient, I'll probably glue the first hole and drill another one closer to the second one. This should not cause a big difference - I still can optimize the diameter, and the sound is rather bad in the upper octave anyway, so this compromise should not cause trouble.
You should start with smaller holes first and then expand them by tuning.

Da viele Leute fragen, wie und wo man die passenden Tonlöcher bohren muss, habe ich das hier in beiden Sprachen geschrieben. Ich benutze eine einteilige Vuvuzela aus dem Baumarkt mit 67 cm Länge. Die Lochpositionen sind vom unteren Ende aus gemessen.
Der Abstand zwischen den ersten beiden Löchern ist unbequem für den kleinen Finger, wahscheinlich klebe ich das erste zu und bohre ein anderes weiter oben, wobei ich den Fehler durch Variation des Durchmessers korrigiere. Das kann zwar nicht in beiden Oktaven gleichzeitig klappen, aber in der oberen klingt das Instrument sowieso nicht gut.
Ich empfehle, die Löcher erstmal etwas kleiner zu bohren und dann beim Stimmen aufzuweiten.

Positions/Positionen
1. 29.7 cm
2. 34.5 cm
3. 37.7 cm
4. 40.8 cm
5. 45.0 cm
6. 48.3 cm
7. 51.0 cm

Diameters/Durchmesser
1. 7 mm
2. 5 mm
3. 4 mm
4. 5.5 mm
5. and 6. 4.5 mm
7. 4 mm

Data scaled approximately from/Daten aus folgendem Bild skaliert:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Salmaj.jpg

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71PvcXxSX7A

Connecting twitter and buzz

The forward way (twitter→buzz) is easy (but not configurable): Just connect your twitter account on the buzz settings.

To send informations back, it is harder: buzz and twitter don't cooperate directly, so one needs an auxiliary server (e.g. twitterfeed.com, which regularly looks for new posts on buzz and sends them to twitter).

This leads to a very predictable problem: Messages will bounce between buzz ind twitter in an infinite loop. This is alleviated by the fact that twitterfeed relays only one message per hour (but this also makes debugging the problem much harder). Googling for this gave several approaches:

1. Give up (the most frequently chosen one).
   
   This is bad, since now (and for the foreseeable future) twitter will have much more readers than buzz. By giving up one would restrict one's readership to people with google accounts. Personal discussions showed me that people are reluctant to create accounts on google due to the recent privacy discussions.
   
2. Use a fourth party solution (e.g. yahoo pipes - I'm too lazy to try this).
3. Disable the import twitter→buzz
   
   This obviously breaks the loop, but makes twitter the main aggregator for everything. Since twitter is less user-friendly than buzz, this would require me to care about both services manually. But it might be the only working solution.
   
4. Use the filter option in twitterfeed (this excludes posts containing at least one in a list of words from being relayed).
   
   This variant looks useful at the first glance, but isn't that much:
   buzz imports the tweet without adding anything to the content (it displays the word "twitter" on the buzz page, but this is not included into the message itself).
   twitterfeed, OTOH, relays only the pure content of the message, and prepend or append arbitrary strings, and can filter for the presence of words (i.e. not arbitrary strings).
   
   Using this, one might include "foo" at every buzz→twitter transfer, and kill messages containing "foo". This would break the loop only after the message has circled around once.
   
   Another option would be filtering for "bit.ly", which is used by twitterfeed to squish the message below 140 bytes. This fails for another reason: the "bit.ly" part is near the end of the message and gets chopped off before filtering and importing (and a new "bit.ly" is appended at the end after filtering and importing).
   
   Looped messages contain my name twice in a row (separated with a space), but since the filtering works only for words, not strings (space is the OR operator there), I cannot filter for that either.
   

For now, I have to stick with the third variant.

Edit (2011-06-20): In the meantime I learned that twitterfeed's filters are positive-only, i.e. I can't say "transmit all messages which don't contain the word".

Butantan abgebrannt

Vergesst den Sch...-Golf - am Wochenende gab es eine richtige Katastrophe.

In den regulären Nachrichten war es nicht, deswegen werden es viele nicht mitbekommen haben: Eins der Gebäude des Instituto Butantan ist abgebrannt, und zwar das mit den Präparaten. Die gute Nachricht: Lebenden Schlangen ist nichts passiert. Allerdings sind 85000 präparierte Exemplare (darunter viele Holotypen und ein paar hundert noch unklassifizierte) verloren, ebenso 450000 Spinnentierpräparate, davon einige tausend unklassifiziert.
Auf Venomland ist ein Video verlinkt, laut WW sind die dort evakuierten Boxen nur Spinnen für die Serumgewinnung.

Bishop Windle about Rev. Bernard Prince

The following letter (discussing the cover-up strategy for a case of sexual abuse in Canada) has recently appeared. I don't need to discuss it here, but since the PDF is only scanned, it does not contain a text stream and is therefore not searchable. I therefore OCRd it (using tesseract), fixed the most obvious OCR errors and dumped it here to help google find it.

A discussion by Michael Ruse is on HuffPo. The original PDF is here:
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00579/Feb1993Windleletter_579544a.pdf

THE BISHOP'S HOUSE l
168 RENFREW STREET
REV. J.R. WINDLE D.D.         P.O. BOX 7             TELEPHONE (613) 732-3895
PEMBROKE. ONTARIO I
KBA 6XI


FAX (613) 732—1714

February 10, 1993
His Excellency,
Most Rev. Carlo Curis, D.D.
Apostolic Pro—Nuncio,
Apostolic Nunciature,
724 Manor Avenue,
OTTAWA, Canada
K A OE3

Your Excellency:

Re: Rev. Bernard A. Prince

Further to our telephone conversation of February lOth and
yor FAX transmission, I wish to confirm in writing the following
convictions and recommendations.

In conscience, and before God, I must inform Your Excellency
that I am adamantly opposed to Fr. Prince receiving any Papal
Honour or ever being promoted to the Episcopate.  The consequences
of such an action would be disastrous, not only for the Canadian
church but for the Holy See as well, given the climate which exists
in Canada at this time.  I can say without hesitation that all of
the Ontario Bishops and the President of the CCCB would support me
in this assessment.

As Your Excellency is well aware from the recent scandals in—
volving a Bishop, and a priest from Ottawa, the mere passage of time
does not ensure that charges will not surface in the future since
there is no statute of limitations for such inappropriate activity.

When Fr. Prince was first proposed for his present position
in Rome (on the recommendation of the now Archbishop F. Franck), I
explained to the then Archbishop José Sanchez (now Cardinal Sanchez),
in his capacity as Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangeliza—
tion of Peoples, that, while the charge against Fr. Prince was very
serious, I would not object to him being given another chance since
it would remove him from the Canadian scene.  (Archbishop Ambrozic
had already informed me that Fr. Prince was no longer welcome in the
Archdiocese of Toronto unless he underwent psychiatric treatment at
the Clarke Institute.)

I also took the precaution of informing the Bishops in whose
dioceses Fr. Prince had previously worked of what had been brought
to my attention and a copy of this information was forwarded to
the Nunciature.  ( A photocopy of this material is enclosed.)

%%%%% page break %%%%%

THE BISHOP'S HOUSE l
168 RENFREW STREET
REV. J.R. WINDLE D.D.         P.O. BOX 7             TELEPHONE (613) 732-3895
PEMBROKE. ONTARIO I
KBA 6XI


- 2 -


However, Your Excellency, the situation has become more
precarious since Fr. Prince's appointment to Rome. Recently it
has been brought to our attention that there was not one but four
or five—victims in all (all minors who talk freely among themselves
§ about their involvement with Fr. Prince), and that several lay
people of the WilnoeBarry's Bay area, as well as a number of priests
of the Deanery of Barry's Bay are aware of these unfortunate events.
It appears that two of the victims are first cousins.  Hence there
is some general knowledge of Fr. Prince's untoward conduct and any
papal recognition or promotion would surely result in animosity and
"admiratio", along with other possible ramifications.

A further compounding factor is that recently the original
victim came to see both Monsignor Barry, the Vicar General, and the
priest to whom he had first reported the incidents.  In his conver-
sation with Monsignor Barry he asked three questions:

(1) Are Father Prince's superiors in Rome aware of his V
past behaviour and activity?

(2) Is he receiving any counselling to correct this
abusive behaviour and tendency?

(3) Is he being properly supervised?

The reason for the latter question is that the victim learned through
his wife's friend that Fr. Prince was frequently travelling abroad
and had dined with a member of the Canadian Embassy in Thailand who
originated from this area. Hence the victim felt he was not being
properly supervised as he was travelling alone and extensively.

The original victim, and apparently one other, are currently
undergoing counselling (and have been for some time) to assist them
through the traumatic memories of their experiences (which were of
considerable duration — and not isolated, as we were led to believe),
and hence the question about Fr. Prince receiving counselling.  In
Canada, when a charge is laid, such counselling is mandatory by law.

The victim asked for Fr. Prince's address so that he could write
to him — on the advice of his counsellor — to inform him that he was
"no longer in his power".  This appears to be a necessary element of
any cure from the results of sexual abuse.

The victim assured Monsignor Barry that he would _not_ lay any
charges (although his counsellor strongly advised him to do so),
unless he learned that Fr. Prince was victimizing other individuals
and that appropriate steps were not being taken by his superiors to
obviate this possibility through counselling and supervision.

%%%%% page break %%%%%

THE BISHOP'S HOUSE l
168 RENFREW STREET
REV. J.R. WINDLE D.D.         P.O. BOX 7             TELEPHONE (613) 732-3895
PEMBROKE. ONTARIO I
KBA 6XI


- 3 -


Consequently, Your Excellency, the scenario which exists today
is considerably different from when I first spoke with Archbishop
Sanchez.  At that time we were under the impression that the incident
was isolated, in the distant past, and there was little or no danger
of any scandal ever emerging.

However, the knowledge and extent of Fr. Prince's previous
activity is now much more widespread among both the laity and the
clergy than previously existed.  Hence, were he to be honoured in
any way it could easily trigger a reaction among the victim(s), or
others who are aware of his previous conduct, and this would prove
extremely embarrassing both to the Holy See and to the Diocese of
Pembroke, not to mention the possibility of criminal charges being
laid and a civil lawsuit ensuing.

I wish to point out to Your Excellency that this information
is reaching us in bits and pieces, from various sources, including
sordid details, but we have no way of assessing the total accuracy
of these reports.  However, once a matter of this nature becomes
public it has a tendency to escalate, and, like the recent Ottawa
case, it might become worse as events unfold.

One redeeming factor is that it would appear that the victims
involved are of Polish descent and their respect for the priesthood
and the Church has made them refrain from making these allegations
public or laying a criminal charge against a priest.  Had this happened
elsewhere there would be every danger that charges would have been
laid long ago with all the resultant scandal.  Unfortunately one
priest, who was talking with one of the victims who partially revealed
Fr. Prince's activity while living with him in Ottawa, has been some-
what indiscreet in his comments about Fr. Prince, and has had to be
cautioned by the Vicar General in this respect.  The priest in question
it is also a good friend of the mother of one of the victims so he has
been able to glean additional information to confirm his suspicions
about Fr. Prince's activity and openly confronted the Vicar General
about his suspicions and knowledge.

I regret both the length and contents of this letter, Your
Excellency, but when there is so much at stake for the Church in
general and the diocese in particular, given the adverse climate
we are currently experiencing, any promotion for Fr. Prince, even
for a Papal Honour, but most especially for the Episcopate, would
have horrendous results and cause immeasurable harm.  All of the
E . Bishops of Ontario who are aware of this situation (and there are
several) would most certainly agree with my assessment in this regard.
They include: Archbishop Ambrozic, Archbishop Spence, Archbishop
Wilhelm, Archbishop Gervais, Bishop O'Mara, and Bishop Tonnos since
each of them was involved directly or indirectly with Fr. Prince.

%%%%% page break %%%%%

THE BISHOP'S HOUSE l
168 RENFREW STREET
REV. J.R. WINDLE D.D.         P.O. BOX 7             TELEPHONE (613) 732-3895
PEMBROKE. ONTARIO I
KBA 6XI


- 4 -


One final point. As noted above, the victim's counsellor has
been advocating that he lay a charge against Fr. Prince to enable
the victim (as he put it) "to get the monkey off his back" since
he still suffers from periods of depression and anxiety. His wife
knows the reason why.  The victim has resisted this counsel and
feels he can accomplish the same end by writing to Fr. Prince to
inform him that he is no longer under his control or power.

However, as previously mentioned, a promotion of any kind
would indicate to the victim that he is being further victimized
and hence we could anticipate that a charge would be laid and a
public trial would follow.  This has been the pattern which has
been followed in recent events of a similar nature and it is a
situation which we wish to avoid at all costs.

I hope that the above information will assist Your Excellency
in dealing with this difficult and delicate problem.

With respectful and prayerful good wishes, I remain, Your
Excellency,

Faithfully yours in Christ,
J. R. Windle
Bishop of Pembroke

Sklaverei ist offenbar gar nicht so unpraktisch

Gerade bei Rachel Maddow (hinter einem Schneier-Interview) gefunden (Vorspulen bis ca. 3:40, vorher kommt etwas über Bankster):

Business groups are worried by the potential effects of provisions banning the import of all goods made with convict labor, forced labor, or forced or indentured child labor that were included in a [recent] Customs bill. Business source say [the bill] could cause DHS to more-actively seek-out imported products made with child labor, forced labor, or convict labor. Sources conceded that this was a sensitive issue because industry groups do not want to be seen as opposing strict mesaures guarding against human rights abuses. However, one source did expect a push from lobbyists closer to the Finance Committee markup of the bill.

Der Beitrag ist von November, aber ich bin jetzt darauf gestoßen, weil ich mal meine RSS-Abos in Ordnung gebracht habe.

Books mentioned by Viperkeeper in Holiday_Book_Ideas_Part_1 and _2

For the lazy people out there, I looked up (as far as possible) all authors (inclusive spelling), exact titles and ISBNs of the books recommended in abovementioned videos (part 1 and part 2).

ISBNs are in brackets [short/long as far as found]. I added informations about my success finding them on the german bookshops and Lehmann.

1.1. Roland Bauchot (ed.):
"Snakes: a natural history"
Sterling Publ. NY 1994
[0-0869-0654-5]

Hugendubel lists a more recent edition of 2006:
[1-4027-3181-7 / 978-1-4027-3181-5]

1.2. Jamie James:
"The Snake Charmer" (the one about Joe Slowinski)
Hyperion

hugendubel.de found a paperback [1-4013-0995-X / 978-1-4013-0995-4]
and a more expensive [1-4013-0213-0 / 978-1-4013-0213-9] (might be hardbound)
There are also editions that seem to be audiobooks.

1.3. Editors/Writers of "The Living Australia":
"Dangerous Australians: The Complete Guide to Australias Most Deadly Creatures"
Murdoch Books 1986
On lob.de (i.e. Lehmann's) I found [0-85835-821-2 / 9780858358218]

1.4. Khan, Muhammad S.:
"A Guide to the Snakes of Pakistan"
Chimaira Buchhandelsgesellschaft mbH 2001
[3-930612-44-5 / 9783930612444]

2.1 DeLang, Ruud; Vogel, Gernot:
"The Snakes of Sulawesi"
Chimaira Buchhandelsgesellschaft mbH 2005
[3-930612-85-2 / 9783930612857]

Found on Chimaira's Website:
http://www.chimaira.de/gp/product_info.php/info/p60308_The-Snakes-of-Sulawesi-Band-25--A-field-guide-to-the-land-snakes-of-Sulawesi-with-identification-key.html


2.2 Mallow, David; Ludwig, David; Nilson, Goran:
"True Vipers: Natural History and Toxinology of Old World Vipers"
Krieger Publishing Company 2003
[0-89464-877-2 / 9780894648779]

2.3 Dobiey, Maik; Vogel, Gernot:
"Venomous Snakes of Africa / Giftschlangen Afrikas"
Chimaira, Terralog series
[3-89973-365-7 / 9783899733655] (found on lob.de)
[3-939759-04-X / 978-3-939759-04-1] (both on lob and hugendubel)

2.4 Vogel, Gernot:
"Venomous Snakes of Asia / Giftschlangen Asiens"
Chimaira, 2006
[3-89973-364-9 / 9783899733648] (on lob)
[3-936027-93-5 / 9783936027938] (both on lob and hugendubel)

2.5 Whitaker, Romulus; Ashok Captain:
"Snakes of India: The Field Guide"
Draco Books, Chennai, 2004
(Publisher Data found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Whitaker)
[8190187309]

2.6 Wilson, Steve; Swan, Gerry:
"A Complete Guide to Reptiles of Australia"
New Holland Publishers, 2003
[1-876334-72-X / 9781876334727]

2.7 O'Shea, Mark:
"Venomous Snakes of the World"
Princeton University Press 2005
[0-691-12436-1 / 978-0-691-12436-0] (hugendubel)

lob.de has a book of the same author and title, but from
New Holland Publishers Ltd., 2008
[1-84773-086-8 / 9781847730862]

Hugendubel has a german book which seems to be the translated version:

"Giftschlangen"
KOSMOS (FRANCKH-KOSMOS) 2006
[3-440-10619-5 / 978-3-440-10619-8]

2.8 John Visser; David Chapman:
"Snakes and Snake Bite"
Purnell, 1978
[0-86843-011-0 / 9780868430119]

Shrew venom paper freely available

The paper "Convergent evolution of novel protein function in shrew and lizard venom" by Aminetzach et.al. (Hoekstra Lab, Harvard) has become freely available. It was mentioned last month all over the media, so I don't need to describe it here again. OTOH, Venomdoc's "The Toxicogenomic Multiverse" disappeared from his download area - but I assume everybody has got it by now.

PS: Venomdoc's page changed again - the directory "/downloads" seems to be stale, there is now a directory http://www.venomdoc.com/venomdoc/Scientific_publications_files/ which contains the multiverse paper.

OTOH, TANSTAAFL: The directories in the filesystem are now somehow preprocessed by the webserver, and the conventient link "Last modified" at the top is gone.

Church and Women

Seltsam: Wenn man ins Google-Suchfeld
church women
eingibt, um ein Exemplar von Alonzo Churchs Arbeit "The ontological status of women and abstract entities" zu finden, kommen zwar 10 Millionen Treffer, aber nur Mist.

If you enter
church women
into Google's search query entry in order to find a copy of Alonzo Church's paper "The ontological status of women and abstract entities", you get about 10 millions of hits - but only crap.