My problem with this report?

A baby gorilla at the Toronto Zoo has his father — and fruit — to thank for his new name.

As more than 50 people watched yesterday morning, five names — each next to its own enticing treat — were put to Charles (pictured above). After surveying the lot, Charles lumbered straight over to the container marked ‘Nassir’ — alongside some select apples, pears and oranges.

The five potential names — Nassir, Neo, Nico, Nigel and Nsambu — were selected through a contest. The contest required the name begin with the letter N, to honour his mother, Ngozi.

One other comment. Though it's hard to imagine, but for a considerable part of history, very deep history, a human was to see, in his/her lifetime, far more gorillas or chimps than other human beings. Today, all we see are humans, humans, humans.

Phew.

Not only is whitey on the moon:

(CNN) NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening "a new chapter" that could allow for the development of a lunar space station.

The discovery is based on preliminary data collected when the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, intentionally crashed October 9 into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.

Slog reader Jeff Yencho just asked me to comment on this piece of news ("I read this today and thought 'geez, I'd love to hear Charles' take on this...'"):

Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures.

While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment.

From Wikipedia:

[In 1962, two physicists (Penzias worked with Wilson) began working in Holmdel, New Jersey] on ultra-sensitive cryogenic microwave receivers intended for radio astronomy observations.

In 1964, on building their most sensitive antenna/receiver system, Penzias and Wilson encountered radio noise that they could not explain. It was far less energetic than the radiation given off by the Milky Way, and it was isotropic, so they assumed their instrument was subject to interference by terrestrial sources. They tried, and then rejected, the hypothesis that the radio noise emanated from New York City. An examination of the microwave horn antenna showed it was full of pigeon droppings (which Penzias described as "white dielectric material"). After the pair removed the guano buildup, and the pigeons were shot (each physicist says the other ordered the deed), the noise remained. Having rejected all sources of interference, the pair published a paper announcing their findings. This was later identified as the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the radio remnant of the Big Bang. This allowed astronomers to confirm the Big Bang, and to correct many of their previous assumptions about it.

But, Jeff, do you see the cosmic connection? The scientist heard the birth of the universe and thought it was bird shit. What, in the case of the Hadron Collider, are we to make of this piece of undigested bird food? It cannot, I think, be separated from the bird shit that was once on the antenna/receiver system.

Here is how gorillas grieve:

Gorillas are known to hold wakes for dead friends, something that some zoos have formalized in a ceremony when one of their gorillas passes away. Donna Fernandes, now president of the Buffalo Zoo, tells the story of being at Boston's Franklin Park Zoo ten years ago during the wake for a female gorilla, Babs, who had died of cancer. She describes seeing the gorilla's longtime mate say good-bye: "He was howling and banging his chest,... and he picked up a piece of her favorite food — celery — and put it in her hand and tried to get her to wake up. I was weeping, it was so emotional." Later, the scene at Babs's December funeral was similarly moving. As reported by local news, gorilla family members "one by one ... filed into" the room where "Babs's body lay," approaching their "beloved leader" and "gently sniffing the body."

Here is how elephants express their grief:

[These] are the actions of the members of an elephant family... after a group member had been shot: "Teresia and Trista became frantic and knelt down and tried to lift her up. They worked their tusks under her back and under her head. At one point they succeeded in lifting her into a sitting position but her body flopped back down. Her family tried everything to rouse her, kicking and tusking her, and Tullulah even went off and collected a trunkful of grass and tried to stuff it in her mouth."

Finally, wolves:

[A] wolf pack after the loss of the low-ranking omega female wolf, Motaki, to a mountain lion. The pack lost their spirit and their playfulness. They no longer howled as a group, but rather they "sang alone in a slow mournful cry." They were depressed — tails and heads held low and walking softly and slowly — when they came upon the place where Motaki was killed. They inspected the area and pinned their ears back and dropped their tails, a gesture that usually means submission. It took about six weeks for the pack to return to normal. The Dutchers also tell of a wolf pack in Canada in which one pack member died and the others wandered about in a figure eight as if searching for her. They also howled long and mournfully.

As for humans, some of us can completely contain our emotions and turn the grief into a dark, inner sea that's wide and deep. We know the depths of death. No crying, no smelling, no stomping about—just the silent sea of grief.

Just 5% of everything is normal:

A detailed picture of the seeds of structures in the universe has been unveiled by an international team co-led by Sarah Church of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, jointly located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, and by Walter Gear, of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. These measurements of the cosmic microwave background — a faintly glowing relic of the hot, dense, young universe — put limits on proposed alternatives to the standard model of cosmology and provide further support for the standard cosmological model, confirming that dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of everything in existence, while ordinary matter makes up just 5%

From the accident of the universe, the sublime negativity itself, we get this other accidental universe, the accident of Miss Universe 2009:

If you hate mosquitoes as much as I do, you will draw as much pleasure as I did from this image for this Science News story:

A jumping spider feasts on a mosquito, living up to researchers' nickname of "Mosquito Terminator" for this Evarcha culicivora spider. Eating a mosquito engorged on blood makes both males and females of this species more appealing to potential mates

Nonstop is the news about diseases jumping from other animals (birds, pigs) to us (frightful!). For once, a story about diseases jumping from us to other animals:

Researchers from The Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh have shown that a strain of bacteria has jumped from humans to chickens.

It is believed to be the first clear evidence of bacterial pathogens crossing over from humans to animals and then spreading since animals were first domesticated some 10,000 years ago.

The study identified a form of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus — of which MRSA is a subtype — in chickens, and found that the bacteria originally came from humans.

The Vancouver Sun reports:

There is life in the planet's expanding dead zones, say researchers, who have uncovered a remarkable microbe thriving in toxic waters off the B.C. coast.

The bacteria takes up carbon dioxide like a plant, consumes sulphide that is deadly to most other lifeforms, and exhales nitrous oxide which is a potent greenhouse gas.

The microbe may be small but it appears to be an important global player impacting the chemistry of both the atmosphere and the oceans, says lead researcher Steven Hallam, of the University of British Columbia, who likes to point out that it is microbes that "really rule the world."

The Ares 1-X rocket rumbled out to Launch Pad 39B in preps for an absolutely critical test launch next week. The Ares rocket is meant to replace the shuttle and provide a safer way to send people into orbit—cannibalizing components from both the shuttle program and the Saturn V rockets. This will be the tallest rocket launched since the Saturn V during the Apollo era.

Keep your eyes peeled on October 27th for the launch. It should be a good show, either way.

This passage about the epigenome, "the first manual to show how genes are orchestrated inside cells" (it appeared today in a science article in the Guardian)...

If the genetic code were a keyboard, the epigenome would be the pianist. Different chords become the various cell types, and all the notes have to be played perfectly to produce a healthy human being. Damage to the epigenome — the pattern of chemicals that controls our genes — has been linked to medical conditions as diverse as asthma, schizophrenia and cancer.

So the particles we see in nature are musical notes; if the rubber bands vibrate one way, it’s called an electron; if it vibrates another way, it’s called a quark; if it vibrates another way, it’s called a neutrino. So we have a musical analogy. So, the melodies you could play on the string is the laws of chemistry; the harmonies of the string is what we call physics. The universe is a symphony of strings. And then the mind of God; the mind of God that so fascinated Einstein for the last 30 years of his life — the mind of God — we now have a candidate for it, believe it or not; it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.

And also a passage from Gilles Delueze's short but brilliant essay "Spinoza and Us":

The important thing is to understand life, each living individuality, not as a form, or a development of each living individuality, but as a complex relation between differential velocities, between deceleration and acceleration of particles. A composition of speeds and slowness on a plane of immanence. In the same way, a musical form will depend on a complex relationship between speeds and slownesses of sound particles...

Biology, physics, and philosophy—it all comes down to music: