Notes for April 9th

• I'm a fan of space exploration.  In my opinion, that's the future, and it is the only future.  However, I don't know if NASA necessarily has a good plan to get humans into space on any meaningful scale.  The latest plans of NASA don't change my thoughts on this.
• Interesting discussion on how wasps control the mind of roaches.  And the disturbing thought of a wasp stinging a roach's brain.  
• Is it better to intensively farm a smaller area or have a more wildlife friendly approach on a larger area?  The study discussed here suggests the former, although I wonder if we think about evolutionary time scales, if the answer isn't the latter.  After all, agricultural systems will probably continue as long as humans exist (indefinitely?), and if you develop the techniques to intensively farm a small area, there's no reason economically for people to not apply those techniques to a large area.
• The taming of donkeys.  
• For two species that only diverged ~100k years ago, the grizzlies and polar bears are pretty different.  More reading on the polar bear (which is almost certainly going to be extinct in the next hundred years).