grrlscientist | December 1, 2006An orca, commonly known as a "killer whale", at San Diego's Sea World twice dragged its trainer underwater and attempted to pin him against the bottom of the enclosure, park officials said on Thursday. The show's finale called for the orca to shoot out of the water so Peters could dive off her nose.
Luckily, the trainer, 39-year-old Ken Peters, suffered only a broken foot and a tear to one leg of his wet suit.
Peters has a fractured metatarsal in his left foot but was in good spirits, said SeaWorld San Diego spokesman Dave Koontz. Other trainers were examining the whale, named Kasatka, to…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006Do you need a little laughter in your life, especially after the recent election and because the holidaze are bearing down upon us like a runaway locomotive? Well, look no further because the carnival of satire is available for your reading pleasure.
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tags: blog carvinal, satire
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
Mary Ann at Five Wells is hosting the current issue of I and the Bird, issue #37. This is a blog carnival that celebrates the best writing about birds in the blogosphere.
Do you write about birds or birding? Don't keep your passion to yourself. The next I and the Bird will be hosted by none other than Duncan of Ben Cruachan Blog. If you wish to be a part of this historic event (and how could you not?) send your link and summary to Duncan ( djfraser AT bencruachan-dot-org) by December 12 for publication on the 14th.
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tags: blog carvinal, birds
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
Three NYC High School Students were invited to attend the 2006 Nobel Prize Ceremony Honoring Six American Nobel Prize Winners. The students, known as The Laureates of Tomorrow, were chosen on the basis of an essay contest.
Three New York City high school juniors will join the six American Nobel Prize winners in Stockholm, Sweden, during the Nobel Week Festivities from December 5 - 12, 2006.
Natasha Plotkin, Avishai Don, and Gena Rozenberg are the 2006 winners of The Laureates of Tomorrow - Nobel Essay Contest (tm), which is a partnership between the Consulate General of Sweden in New…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006Billions of people could be wiped out over the next century because of climate change, according to James Lovelock, a leading expert who pioneered the idea of the Earth as a living organism. Lovelock warned that as the climate warms, the global population which is currently around 6.5 billion, may sink as low as 500 million.
Given the dire situation we face, Lovelock urged people to drop the phrase "global warming," which has cosy connotations, and instead start to think of it as "global heating." He also claims that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
Everyone feels badly when their kid doesn't "make the cut" for a sports team. But in Castro Valley High School, in Castro Valley, California, angry parents decided to take the matter into their own hands. They appointed a six-person panel to choose who would play on the basketball team. Unfortunately, none of the protesting parents' daughters were chosen for the team by the committee, either.
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If you think that's poetic justice and the end of things, you clearly haven't been following the situation. The parents are not going to let this go.
"The panel was a joke,'' Patty Goodman, the…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
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Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
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tags: finland, donald+duck. weird facts
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
Stinkhorn Mushroom, Clathrus crispus??.
Click each picture for a truly large mage and then
feel free to correct me on the scientific name of
this mushroom, since I am not a mushroom expert
and need some help from those of you who are!
Images: Todd Smith.
The photographer, Todd, writes;"Here are a couple of pictures I took in my backyard this summer. I noticed a few golf ball sized spheres (see figures below the fold) growing in some mulch I had laid the year before. I thought they were common puffballs. However, inside, they looked like nothing I had seen before.
Soon they grew into what…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006I remember this fine word from the GRE exam from a dozen years ago, but I haven't seen it since, until now, thanks to The Republican War on Science, by my friend and fellow SciBling, Chris Mooney. This book was recently released in the more affordable trade paperback. If you haven't read this book yet, now is the time (I've read it once already in hard-cover, but never reviewed it, so I am going to rectify that oversight in the near future by reviewing this updated paperback).
Contretemps (KON-truh-tahn; Fr. kawntruh-tahn) [Origin: 1675-85; French, equivalent to contre- counter- + temps time…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
Benjamin Franklin.
Image: source.
I admire Benjamin Franklin for many reasons. But I never knew that in 1726, at the age of 20, while on an 80-day ocean voyage from London back to Philadelphia, Franklin developed a "Plan" for regulating his future conduct. He was partially motivated by Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." He followed his Plan he "pretty faithfully" even to the age of 79 when he finally…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006I found the most amazing story about an astronomical calculator that is the earliest discovered device known to contain an intricate set of gear wheels.This amazing calculator could add, multiply, divide and subtract. It could also align the number of lunar months with years and display where the sun and the moon were in the zodiac.
"The actual astronomy is perfect for the period," said Professor Mike Edmunds, a professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University in Wales. "Our recent work has applied very modern techniques that we believe have now revealed what its actual functions were."
This…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006For those of you following my little drama where I am fighting my involuntary lodging in a state-run psychiatric institute, more commonly known as a nuthouse, the latest news is that my lawyer asked for another continuance so I can have witnesses appear in court on my behalf.
So instead of having a court hearing tomorrow, it has been postponed until Thursday, next week.
On one hand, I am happy about this because I am terrified of the building itself where the hearing is held and would prefer to never see it again as long as I live (it makes me feel like I am on trial for murder), but on the…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
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tags: raisin, champagne. weird facts
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006
A frog on a temperate rainforest floor in the Pacific NorthWest.
Here's one of my first photos taken with my Pentax K100D, significantly
compressed for blog purposes.
Image: David Warman.
How many different species of flora and fauna can you identify in this picture, amigos bonitos?
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me,…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006
California sea lions, Prince William Sound, Alaska, 2000.
Image: Neil Moomey and Dan Beeler.
Tourists love to visit Fisherman's Wharf for the seafood, the view of San Francisco Bay, and also to watch the many dozens of playful sea lions that lounge by the water's edge, eating fish. However, in southern California, sea lions have begun attacking god-fearing American citizens. For example, this past June in Southern California, a sea lion charged several people on Manhattan Beach, eventually biting a man before escaping justice. Last spring in Berkeley, a woman was hospitalized after a sea…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006A friend and fellow inmate here at the nuthouse learned that I am in search of special words, so she donated this special word for me from her readings. To say the least, I absolutely love this word; it's beauty, its nuance! I love this word so much that I am going to start reading Proust! After you see this wonderful but much too rare word, you will agree that it is a very very worthy word for the day.
This word came from Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume I by Marcel Proust (Moncrieff & Kilmartin translation).
Anfractuosity (an-frak-choo-OS-i-tee) [Origin: Latin anfrÄctuÅs(…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006Oh great -- just when you thought it was safe to crawl out of your bunker, more troublke is brewing in the Middle East. According to a Saudi security adviser, the Saudi Arabian government said they will intervene to prevent Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from massacring Iraqi Sunni Muslims after the United States leaves Iraq. This is exactly what we don't want to happen, particularly in view of the fact that Saudi Arabia is primarily Sunni, whereas Iraq is a mix of Shi'ite and Kurds with a few Sunni thrown into the mix (Hussein was Sunni, for example).
Nawaf Obaid, writing in The Washington…
grrlscientist | November 28, 2006
Clarity of Vision
Orphaned image. Please contact me for proper attribution and linkage.
A friend, Diane, noted from my SEED interview that I enjoy sailing. So she then found this stunning image to share with all of you. When I first saw it, it took my breath away, and put tears into my eyes. Can't you just feel the salty water and warm sun on your grateful skin?
Even though this boat appears to be levitating, it is actually floating on very clear, transparent tropical waters. I am not sure of its exact location, but I prefer to imagine that this boat is located in the south Pacific Ocean…
grrlscientist | November 28, 2006.
The dot over the letter i is called a "tittle".
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tags: tittle, weird facts