I clearly recall being told in elementary school that the skin colors of dinosaurs are unknown because the necessary parts do not survive the fossilization process. I think that bothered me at first. I got over it eventually and had no trouble accepting that dinosaurs probably were similar in color to some selection of extant reptiles. Still that’s not as nice as knowing for sure.

Let’s put aside dinosaur skin color for now. Scientists have discovered pigments in the protofeathers of some dinosaur fossils. The new observations are of melanin-containing organelles called melanosomes, which exist in the feathers of birds today.

The two most common types of melanin found in modern birds are eumelanin, associated with black and grey feathers, and phaeomelanin, found in reddish brown to yellow feathers.

Both of these types melanin were seen in the fossils being studied.

National Geographic: Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time.

Here’s one of the articles I have in my backlog of items to share; it is from a while back.

Back in December, a respectably large cache of garden gnomes was discovered in a Mount Vernon, Washington resident’s back yard when high winds knocked down her fence. The fence was concealing around sixty yard gnomes — at least some apparently stolen from other yards — along with other yard ornaments. See the link for more details.

Seattle P-I: Gnome-napping: Thefts may have created backyard statue stash.

The Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California was shutdown on Tuesday by bottles of honey. They did not know they were dealing with honey at the time. From “Bottled Honey Shuts Down California Airport” in VOANews:

Two Transportation Security Administration officers were also treated and released from the hospital after being exposed to what were described as “fumes” from the bottles.

My path to the VOA article: Boing Boing >> Backwards Beekepers >> VOANews.

I just pulled this one out of my email drafts folder.

“Dream of solar sailing in space lives on in new project” discusses an announcement by The Planetary Society to build, launch, and test LightSail-1 — a small craft that will be propelled by solar sail. As explained in the article, previous attempts to launch solar sail craft failed.

I have always been intrigued by the solar sail concept (I am intrigued by a lot of things, though) and will try to keep an eye on this.

I learned about this story in an email from a mail list.

“I Lost 331 Pounds” is a short slide show story about a man who topped out at over 500 pounds, but ultimately reached a healthy weight after taking up cycling.

I have for a long time been fascinated by the symbiotic relationship between some species of acacias and ants. Honestly, I have also for a long time been fascinated by ants alone. Now some researchers have observed interesting behavior by a species of jumping spider, Bagheera kiplingi, that lives on the same acacia plants.

In many of these ant-plant relationships, the ants are provided food — called Beltian bodies — by the acacia plant. The researchers observed the spider B. kiplingi “hunting” and eating the Beltian bodies as its primary source of food, making this spider the first known to have a primarily vegetarian diet.

Read a summary of the research here. The research manuscript is at doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.049, but you will need an individual or institutional subscription to get the full text.

Manufacturing methamphetamine used to take a whole home chemistry lab, but now it only requires a two-liter soda bottle, some cold pills, and household chemicals.

The downside of making your own meth (other than addiction and various ill effects)? The process is dangerous and leads to an explosion if oxygen is allowed to participate in the reaction.

The American Heart Association has reminded us again that Americans consume a lot of added sugar each day. Between 2001 and 2004, Americans consumed, on average, twenty-two teaspoons of added sugar daily. The recommended limits? For men: nine teaspoons, and women: six teaspoons.

This article claims that teenagers eat thirty-four teaspoons of added sugar daily, on average. It also has some other interesting information, such as the amount of sugar that “fruit-flavored” yogurt contains: six teaspoons.

And to put this into a unit that actually helps you: one teaspoon of sugar is about 4.2 grams.

Everybody has seen this already, but for my own records here are video clips of Representative Barney Frank, Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, at a town hall meeting where he holds his own against some attendees unhappy about health care reform. After the first video completes, a second automatically loads and is also worth watching.

The first video sets the tone, but I particularly enjoyed Rep. Frank’s handling of the exchange about illegal immigrants and their status in the bill:

Frank: Illegal aliens are specifically excluded from getting any assistance in the bill. Section…
Mob boos. Somewhere in the exchange some people yell, “read the bill!”
Frank then finds the section of the bill and reads it.
Frank: It’s right in the bill. I will be glad to show it to you.

Some people apparently refused to believe the bill itself, and Frank responds with this zinger:

It is a little odd to be accused of not having read the bill by people who object when I do.

In the August 2009 edition of the Communications of the ACM, venture capitalist Tim Draper argues that now is the time to innovate and try to make something happen. Unfortunately, for you civilians out there, viewing the article’s content requires ACM credentials.

Update: I have discovered that this article is available as a preview of the digital edition of Communications of the ACM. How lucky; everyone can view it without credentials here.