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Storm Update

Thanks to everyone who has sent a message! Just so yall know, everything is fine on my end here in OK. Me and Arnie went to campus before the storm hit and just hung out there (with about a dozen other students pups and a cat, lol!) Realized that was the first time Arnie has been on an elevator. Arnie was more aware of this fact than I was. LOL! I really wish I had my video camera on me for that. I was relieved when I saw on the news, people emerging from their shelters with their puppahs and kittehs too, but I heard one family was missing one of their dogs and a cat, and two dogs lost…

SteelyPalooza!

SteelyKid turns five next Wednesday (F/X: "FIVE! YEARS!" like an incredulous Jeremy Piven in Grosse Point Blank), but we're having her party today. This is a distinction we've worked hard to get across, and I expect to hear her explain to other kids and their parents about 39 times today ("It's not my birthday today, it's my birthday party today..."). We're expecting something like a dozen five-year-olds plus parents and assorted siblings at Chateau Steelypips. We've laid in a good deal of food and drink, and cake, balloons, and bouncy-bounce are on the way. But if you don't hear from me…

Department of Amusing Quotations

I am currently working on a section of the BECB (the big evoluition/creation book) in which I discuss some of the legal history of the issue. Towards that end I just read the opinions of the Tennessee Supreme Court in the Scopes Trial. The Court addressed a number of issues, but we shall save that for a different post. Mostly I just wanted to call attention to an amusing statement from one of the opinions: The following statement of Dr. E.N. Reinke, Professor of Biology in Vanderbilt University, is repeatedly quoted in briefs of counsel for the defense: “The theory of evolution is…

Skip vs. The Creationists

If you are in the mood for a little light reading, have a look at this account of Skip Evans, formerly of the National Center for Science Education, conversing with some of the local creationists in Madison, WI. It's almost a shame that an apparently sincere and pretty decent guy like Kevin has fallen into the Answers in Genesis trap. He's been gullible enough to hitch his theological wagon to the complete and utter stupidity that is young earth creationism. He's been duped into believing, along with denying a staggering amount of legitimate science, that if all the animals alive today didn'…

Dorky Poll: Aristocratic Elements

"...Can you name the six noble gases?" As this could be no poser for an economic geographer, I rattled them off in their proper aristocratic order. "Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and -er- Radon. They were raised to the peerage in the eleventh year of England's George Fifth, and Neon was awarded the Order of the Seraphim by Gustav Sixth of Sweden for its compassionate service in guiding to bars and beaneries guys who roll into towns late at night." -- from The Moon's Fire-eating Daughter by John Myers Myers I used that as an opening quote (I can't remember the term for that-- "epigram…

Putting Things Inside of Other Things Since 2009

SteelyKid's day care is closed today for a Jewish holiday, so she's spending the day at home with her grandmother. It was a real struggle to get my mother to come up for the day... Something I'm sure is on the agenda is playing with her shape sorter box, which she was good enough to demonstrate on video: Note the highly advanced technique-- if it's not quite working, pound on it. She gets that from me. I cheated a tiny bit with the video, arranging it so the round hole was closest to her, and handing her one of the round objects. She hasn't really grasped the idea of the different shapes, yet…

Thursday Toddler Blogging 012011

There have been a bunch of times in the last couple of weeks where it was brought home how big SteelyKid has gotten compared to Kate, so this week, we have a Mommy-for-scale photo: The stylish headband SteelyKid is sporting is from today's Tu B'Shevat celebration at the Jewish Community Center, where she goes to day care. (Learning a whole new set of holidays is an unexpected bonus of sending her there; happily, this one isn't major enough to close the JCC, which happens a lot...) The kids made these this week, and she's been talking about her band for a few days now, so she was very happy…

SteelyKid's Weekend Excursion

We had a Barfy Toddler Incident yesterday, making a mess of Kate's spiffy new car seat, but that seems to have been a passing thing, perhaps caused by an excess of cranberry juice while on campus yesterday morning greeting new students. Thus, we went ahead with our plan to take SteelyKid to the zoo today: We only went through the part you can walk through-- it didn't seem like we'd have much luck getting her to sit still for the "safari ride" through the rest of it-- and a lot of it was kind of shabby and depressing-- small chain-link enclosures, animals scrambling for food from visitors,…

Austin, We Have a Problem

The problem is, "What is Chad going to do in Austin, Texas on Thursday night?" I have recently been appointed to the APS Committee on Informing the Public, which is having a meeting in Austin this Thursday, January 14th. Of course, as neither Austin nor Albany is a major airport, the travel to and from Austin takes up pretty much an entire day on either end, so I'll be staying over Wednesday and Thursday nights, and leaving Friday afternoon. I've got dinner plans for Wednesday night, and I'm going to meet a former student for lunch on Friday, but I have no concrete plans for Thursday night.…

Thursday Baby Blogging 102909

SteelyKid is 1000000 weeks old (in binary). To celebrate, she engages in some Thursday Night Bison Wrasslin': Atomic elbow drop! Boom! Don't worry, it's a friendly bout. Appa's very cuddly, and a good place to relax with a drink: And while I said we wouldn't engage in this sort of thing, below the fold is a picture of SteelyKid in the tub: What? You didn't seriously think I'd be crass enough to take naked bath-time photos, did you? To say nothing of posting them on the Internet... Sheesh. (The baby tub is normally stored under her crib, and she's decided it's fun to drag it out and play…

Academic "Branding" and the Guy Who Does the Thing at the Place

Via FriendFeed, Daniel Lemire offers a suggestion on "branding": Stop saying you are "John from school X". Say that you are "John who works on problem Y". Don't rely on your employer to carry your message! Of course, this is only the second of the three possible options. You could also be "the guy who works on Problem Y at school X." This is pretty much the state of play for my thesis advisor, who never had any trouble remembering problems or institutions, but often forgot names. He could describe a person's whole scientific career-- worked on this problem at this school, then moved to that…

links for 2008-12-21

Sciencewomen : Thoughts on my AGU experience Don't tell my university administrators, but sharing my latest science results is only a tiny fraction of the reason to go to a conference like AGU. Even hearing the latest and greatest science is not the entire reason. This is a lesson that is taking me a long time to learn. (tags: science academia jobs meetings) Respectful Insolence: Your Friday Dose of Woo: When a mad mathematician meets quantum homeopathy Oh, Lionel Milgrom, no! (tags: science blogs stupid medicine) Minimal Advice to Undergrads on Programming "You should treat "Thou shalt…

links for 2008-12-13

Introduction to conservation of momentum and collisions | Dot Physics "This is an introduction to objects that interact. To describe this, I will need to pull several different ideas together (that you have probably already looked at)." (tags: physics science blogs education) Spot the math errors! « Skulls in the Stars The ins and outs of some famous fake proofs (tags: math blogs education silly) Perimeter Scholars International | Welcome A new Master's degree program for people who want to learn theoretical physics from the very best. (tags: academia physics science education) ...My…

Free Books!

Kate and I are giving away books. Not all of them, mind, and they're not totally free-- you need to pay shipping-- but a couple hundred duplicate/ disliked/ never-going-to-get-read books are being discarded. If you would like any of them, there are simple instructions on Kate's LiveJournal. Don't worry that this will leave us bereft, though: That's the first section of the hardcover collection, which continues: (that's the same wall of shelves as the first picture, from the other end...), and ends on the other wall: Note the ample space for new additions on most if not all of the shelves…

Digital Is Not Infallible

I've been grading lab reports in two different classes, and I've been struck once again by the way that students attach mystical properties to anything with a digital readout. The uncertainty used in calculations is invariably put down as half of whatever the least significant digit displayed was, even in cases where the readout visibly fluctuated during the measurement. Even better, any experiment involving length measurements will inevitably produce lab reports suggesting that the uncertainty could've been improved if they had had a caliper with a digital readout, rather than a vernier…

The Definitive Statement on "Framing" and Expelled

I've managed to avoid most of the recent fracas over Expelled and what Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney have said about it, mostly by unsubscribing from the RSS feeds for most of the participating blogs a few months back. Prescient of me, no? I've kept my RSS subscription for Chris's blog, though, and I read his mea culpa post, and he's obviously quite sincerely bothered by what happened, and the way people on ScienceBlogs (both bloggers and commenters) have reacted to it. I can't say I really blame him. Anyway, his post has motivated me to actually say something about the whole controversy. I'm…

Formicophilia?

I would be remiss in my duties as an ant blogger to not pass this on from NCBI ROFL: Transcultural sexology: formicophilia*, a newly named paraphilia in a young Buddhist male. *The sexual interest in being crawled upon or nibbled by small insects, such as ants Abstract: Children whose species-specific, juvenile sexual rehearsal play is thwarted or traumatized are at risk for developing a compensatory paraphilia. The case of a Buddhist male exemplifies the cross-cultural application of this principle. His syndrome, formicophilia, was endogenously generated without reference to or influence by…

Flu poll

I saw the movie Contagion last night — it's good, but chilling. You are at the mercy of viruses that are evolving far faster than we are, and our lives depend on the luck of our genetics, the random permutations of recombination in pathogens, a bit on our efforts in hygiene and social practices, and a great deal on science supplementing our immune systems. We're one strong pandemic away from a breakdown of the social order, and we rely on science and vaccinations to help protect this tasty giant petri dish of human meat we call planet Earth. So I'm not too sympathetic when the Edmonton Sun…

Carl Rettenmeyer's Photographs

I never met Carl Rettenmeyer. I regret this.   Rettenmeyer forms a part of my heritage as an ant photographer.   As a kid, my first exposure to army ants came through Rettenmeyer's stunning imagery in Ranger Rick magazine.  His photos adorn the pages of E. O. Wilson's 1971 classic The Insect Societies as well as the later tome The Ants.   Before I ever picked up a camera, or even considered myrmecology as a career, Rettenmeyer's ants were well seared into my memory.   They still simmer there, forming a mental backdrop for thoughts of army ants. So as a tribute of sorts, I've…

Ambushed by incoming memes

Apparently the leafy green banner above is insufficient camouflage in the blogosphere.  The Myrmecos Blog has been noticed by the meme-passers.  Three times this week. Bug Girl has tagged me with the "Six Random Things".  Adrian Thysse would rather have me do "Five Things".  And Huckleberry Days linked me with a "Superior Scribbler Award". This unexpected recognition gives me plenty to blog about apart from the usual buggy fare, but the meme-passers will have to forgive me if I take my time.  It's a busy week. I'm giving the departmental seminar tomorrow, and I've got piles of new RNA…

You say dominula, I say dominulus

Meet the European Paper Wasp, Polistes dominulus.  Or is it Polistes dominula? Most biologists I know refer to this common Holarctic insect as P. dominulus, but I've just learned via Bugguide.net that the common spelling is a grammatical misunderstanding of the original latin: Explanation of Names Female ruler, lady, mistress: From Latin dominus- "lord, ruler, master" (related English words: dominion, domain, dominate) + the diminutive suffix -ul- which adds the meaning "little", and a feminine ending. Until recently treated as an adjective describing the masculine noun "Polistes",…

Image Gallery Updates

Dorylus helvolus, KZN, South Africa Last night the internet arrived at our new house. I've celebrated the occasion by tackling the backlog of photo uploads. Over at myrmecos.net the South Africa photos are starting to go up. The first batch covers Dorylus helvolus, a subterranean predatory ant. Meanwhile, the fine art galleries at www.alexanderwild.com have also been beefed up with new material, including some stylized ant portraiture and the first of the Illinois scarabs. On an unrelated note, Jo-anne has been sending along updates from the famous Ant Course in Venezuela. Word is that…

Friday Beetle Blogging: Palo Verde Beetle

Derobrachus hovorei - Palo Verde Borer Cerambycidae Tucson, Arizona Every June, hundreds of thousands of giant beetles emerge from beneath the Tucsonian soil. The enormous size of these beetles- up to several inches long- makes them among the most memorable of Tucson's insects. They cruise about clumsily in the evenings, flying at eye level as they disperse and look for mates. Palo Verde beetles spend most of their lives as subterranean grubs feeding on the roots of Palo Verde trees. Adults emerge in early summer, usually ahead of the monsoon, and by August they are gone. It is still a…

Bringing babies to conferences

A. Non Mouse, who blogs over at NaCl and hv, has just written a great series of posts about her strategies for successfully bringing a baby to a conference. Check out her how-to posts on childcare, transportation, gear, and accommodations. This is a subject that is close to my heart, and one that I've written about before (here, here, and here on a trip when Minnow was 9 months old, here at 18 months, and here's a manifesto on the subject that was featured in last year's Open Lab ). And it's funny timing too that A. Non Mouse writes about motherhood and conference travel now, when I am…

Looking for participants: women with PhDs who have taken "career break"

Do you know a woman in science or engineering who has taken a career break from her academic position? The NSF-ADVANCE program at George Washington University is doing a study of women in career breaks, whether voluntary or not, to understand the pipeline of women professors in science and engineering we are conducting a NSF-sponsored survey on women in career breaks. They are interested in women who have completed their PhD or DSc, have been employed in an academic setting and were, or have been, in a career break for less than five years. They are seeking to interview such women to help…

Please re-write this sentence. Thank you.

Ahem. I have privately received grief about the poor quality of a sentence I wrote yesterday while spouting off about my being quoted by ABC News on the first round of drugs reported used by the late Michael Jackson. (I suspect that the number of prepositions I just used here will elicit a response as well). While I'm a half-decent pharmacologist, it seems an English major I am not. Therefore, may I request that someone amongst this learned gathering kindly assist me in rewording the following statement: I also enjoyed that fact, however, that my quote was missing from the responses of other…

The Scientist Compiles Must-Read SciBlog Faves

Folks from The Scientist recently asked a group of science bloggers to recommend their three, must-read blogs to provide a guide to those who might not have been following the scientific blogosphere. Somehow I got selected to post my votes, a very challenging task to whittle down to three. However, it gave me a chance to recognize three bloggers who served among my inspiration for getting started myself and who continue to provide excellent, unique, and timely content. The article went up today and readers are encouraged to add to the comments their favorite sciblogs. I was disappointed…

Important point for patients on the withdrawal of pergolide (Permax)

You may have read that pergolide (Permax), a drug used to treat Parkinson's disease, has been withdrawn voluntarily from the US market due to its causal association with heart valve abnormalities. I hope to have time later to discuss why these heart problems occur and why other Parkinson's drugs that act by a similar mechanism of action are still safe. But for Parkinson's patients, there is a very, very important point made in the FDA's press release: Pergolide should not be stopped abruptly, because rapid discontinuation of all dopamine agonist therapies can be dangerous. Instead,…

Quote of the week

Perhaps it isn't fair to make fun of the social sciences, and I know behavioral ecology has its merits, but can you believe people get paid to study how men and women hook up? From New Scientist we learn that: ... a little bit of flirting - smiling, raising eyebrows, nodding - goes a long way towards attracting a woman, even outweighing the negative effects of some men's antisocial nature. "Antisocial men can make up a lot of ground just by being flirtatious," says psychologist Andrew Clark. Clark presented his findings at an Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour meeting hosted by…

Sunday Function

I trust you're having a relaxing Sunday? Mathematical physics can be relaxing too, especially when you just look at it. We're just going to look at this one. In fact, this is a literal mathematical instantiation of Sunday relaxation. If you fix a wire or a rope at two points and let it hang naturally, it forms a shape called a catenary. It looks a lot like a parabola, and it turns out that in fact as long as the suspension points aren't too close together compared to the length of the rope, it's a very good approximation. For this particular graph the error from a purely parabolic…

Haiku Phylogeny project (plus something funny)

Just a quickie reminder that we're looking for haikus on organisms, for a phylogeny project going on at the SCQ. As well, this summer, I'm looking for a bioinformatician that knows a thing or two about tweaking something like BLAST so that it is haiku friendly. If you think this is something you might be interested in (you know, combine your love of computational biology and haiku), then leave me a comment. I happen to have an unopened 30G video iPod (white and purchase about 5 weeks ago) that can be provided as compensation for your efforts if you want to help out with this programming…

Wilco taking a beating, and does google censor? (Truth web experiment continued)

So, it's come to this, in the latest version of the truth: Wilco is good, sometimes exceptional, but often inconsequential. You can see the editing process here. Also, does google censor things like attempts at google bombing, or is there some algorhymicy reason why the piece dissappeared from the google cache the third day in? Apparently, according to their FAQs, they don't censor - at least not without an explanation. It is Google's policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these…

Yes, sorry - been busy lately, so basically this post is a cop-out (a list of excuses)

So, things have been pretty busy round here, as among other things, I've been getting things ready for a visit to UBC by Wade Davis, which sort of explains my general absence from this blog (thanks Ben, for picking up my slack). In any event, I have other excuses for my absence which can be summarized with the following list: Children are ill My scheduled posts were accidently or perhaps deliberately junked, by bad bad people, no less. The special Director's Version of the "Bring it On" DVD has just been released. Canada is on holiday. There is a lot of marking to do. I am caught in the…

What's wrong with politics in America

Read this, weep, dry your tears and get on the phone. From the still reliable news pages of the WaPo: The nominations of two of President Obama's top science advisers have stalled in the Senate, according to several sources, posing a challenge to the administration as it seeks to frame new policies on climate change and other environmental issues. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has placed a "hold" that blocks votes on confirming Harvard University physicist John Holdren, who is in line to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Oregon State University marine…

There is nothing hotter than a science tattoo

CNN reports on a survey of the increasing number of people getting tats: The American University employee is among about 36 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 with at least one tattoo, according to a survey. The study, scheduled to appear Monday on the Web site of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, provides perhaps the most in-depth look at tattoos since their popularity exploded in the early 1990s. The results suggest that 24 percent of Americans between 18 and 50 are tattooed; that's almost one in four. Two surveys from 2003 suggested just 15 percent to 16 percent of U.S.…

Scientific specialities, political affiliations and support for “Darwinism”

Razib presents some interesting data on donations to the two main political parties by scientists. What struck me is that if you rank the professions from most Republican to most Democrat, you get the following: Civil Engineering [0.75] Chemical Engineering [0.79] Geology [0.92] Mechanical Engineering [0.96] Electrical Engineering [1.17] Chemistry [2.31] Biochemistry [5.09] Mathematics [5.44] Physics [6.19] Biology [10.3] Now what I find interesting here is that if we use the Discovery Institute's 2007 list of 700 Dissenters against Darwinism, we see that the top five groups represented are…

arXiv.org Hacked?

Has the arXiv been hacked or is it offline? When I connect to arxiv.org it shoots me to mirror sites which haven't been updated since Oct 08. Via @MartinQuantum. Also nanoscale views reports the arXiv down. Since this is a blog we can easily spread rumors by including a link to an article today about cyberattacks going on right now possibly originating from North Korea. Update 9:03 am PST: At lanl.arxiv.org you can now get papers greater than October 2008 by searching, but the "recents" and "new" isn't working. Also the RSS feed seems to only have yesterdays posts. A comment on Secret…

Google Battles Drunk Emails

A priceless new email feature for gmail: Mail Goggles: Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help. When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve…

Media Tsunami: Edwards Admits Affair But Denies Love Child

Edwards' follies are likely to hurt Democratic chances in November and further derail media attention from issues that really matter. Tonight on ABC Nightline, John Edwards will admit his affair but will deny the alleged love child, putting even more of a twist on the brewing media tsunami. As I predicted last week, this story promises to dominate the news agenda for August, leading up to and through the Democratic convention. Unfortunately, denying the link to the child will only drive the story and make it bigger. If there is any silver lining, it's that Edwards chose a Friday to make the…

Science jargon extreme version: What word has the most syllables in the english language?

So I'm getting ready for a talk on science literacy and careers, etc, and was looking for material for some new slides. Anyway, I've always been a fan of delicious sounding science jargon, and have been on the hunt for an appropriate word I can use, possibly, as a thematic device in my talk. So of course, I begin by googling the keywords, "word most syllables" and from that came across the following: Pnuemonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcano Which, depending on the source you read is either some wierd lung disease, or, as it turns out, a completely fabricated word propogated by the internet to…

Just about the most perfect picture (and book) you can use to start talking to kids about climate change.

Isn't this picture great? This is from a book called Rotten Island, which was written and drawn by William Steig (best known for his books, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, as well as Shrek). Anyway, Rotten Island chronicles a place that begs: What would happen if every creature on land and sea were free to be as rotten as possible? If every day was a free-for-all; if plants grew barbed wire; if the ocean were poison? That's life on Rotten Island. For creatures that slither, creep, and crawl (not to mention kick, bite, scratch, and play nasty tricks on each other), Rotten Island is…

Three song mix: (plus a call for some song suggestions)

I usually make a music mix about 4 times a year, with the culmination of those mixes becoming a more focused annual mix. This is something I've done since 2002, and it's always great to go back in time and check out a particular mix for a particular year. Anyway, things have been so busy the last little while, that my musical spider sense is a little off. So, I'm looking for a few suggestions from readers passing by - a link to a youtube file would be especially helpful, I'm one of those folks that can tell if a piece will grow on me pretty quick. Hoping to find 7 more songs this way. I've…

I suspect these kind of stories are best heard over a drink or two. Short illustrious collaborations continued.

A couple months back, I had a piece published at The Walrus which kind of looked at brief encounters with famous people - you know, the type that I'm sure many of us had during the course of our academic careers. One of the people listed was the time I bumped into Sir Francis Crick, and that it was notable because the cartoon actually threw off the "truthiness" to it. Anyway, at the SCQ today, I've set the record straight, and doing so, hope to attract other stories and anecdote like this for publication there. - - - CRICK: Is that your Ford Escort? ME: Yes it is. CRICK: It's in my parking…

Somewhere out there is a woman who loves my graphs

From the always excellent xkcd (click to enlarge): Someday, someday I will meet a woman who loves the fact that I like to graph. There is important stuff out there that needs to be correlated -- like the amount of torrential rain that falls outside my window vs. how many people fall flat on their ass on the way to work. These are important issues that demand graphical representation. As a side note, do you think that "Age/2 + 7" rule is fair? I would say that it is fine when you are over a certain age, but that would mean I can date a 20 year old without sketchiness. Empirical evidence…

Today in Science (0806)

Two weeks to go before the semester begins here at ASU and I still have syllabi to put together for my two classes (more on them closer to the start) along with three book reviews to finish. It has been a lazy Summer for a change, but that means there is much to do during the last few weeks before classes start. Below the fold is your Today in Science Events 1961 - Second successful manned orbital flight (USSR, Gherman Titov) 1964 - Prometheus, the world’s oldest tree, is cut down. 1991 - Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. 1996 - NASA announces that the…

No more theory!

People are discussing the Nisbet & Mooney "Framing Science" paper, but due to real life getting in the way, I haven't been able to either read the (short) paper or the (long) blogospheric coverage. I will however note that Greg Laden makes a great point over at Pharyngula: In the manner of Dale Carnegie, I'll say it and I'll say it again and again: Let's try to drop the "theory" from "evolutionary theory"... this word is doing so much work out there in normal language, it DOES NOT MATTER that scientists think "theory" means a certain thing. It does not. that is not how language works. The…

Today in Science

March 5th 1575 - Birth of William Oughtred, English mathematician 1748 - Birth of Jonas C. Dryander, Swedish botanist 1827 - Death of Pierre-Simon Laplace, French mathematician 1827 - Death of Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist 1904 - Nikola Tesla describes the process of ball lightning formation. 1910 - Birth of Józef Marcinkiewicz, Polish mathematician 1915 - Birth of Laurent Schwartz, French mathematician 1925 - Death of Johan Jensen, Danish mathematician 1927 - Death of Franz Mertens, German mathematician 1958 - Explorer 2 spacecraft launches but fails to reach Earth orbit. 1970…

On sky diving

So I survived jumping out of a perfectly good plane. All I can say is what a rush once you get over the "what the hell am I doing here"-feeling that is inevitable. Twenty of your closest friends squeeze into a Twin Otter, climb to 13,000 feet, and amazingly quickly decant themselves (as harnessed pairs) into the void. You rapidly accelerate to approximately 120 mph, freefall for a minute (feeling as, I imagine, a dog must do with its head out the window of a speeding car). At 5000 feet, you pull the rip cord. You jerk up. All goes quiet. The ride down from here takes about three minutes, and…

New Species of Sea Slug Discovered in Qatar

The Qatar National History Group, a Qatari (Qatarian, Qatarese?), nature outing group, recently discovered what is believed to be a new species of sea slug. The pictures of the colorful critter were reviewed by Dr. Bill Rudman, head of the Sea Slug Forum, and he believes it bears resemblance to a sea slug last seen in Pakistan a century ago. Perhaps more even more interesting, was Zooillogix's discovery of the existence of the Sea Slug Forum, which has an exhaustive collection sea slug pictures and aqua-slug related links. Spend a few minutes perusing this awesome collection and make your…

4 Cats, 1 Rat Artificially Resuscitated After Fire

Firefighters in Pocatello, Idaho, pulled the lifeless bodies of four cats and an albino rat from a blaze and then managed to bring them back back to life through artificial resuscitation. The fire department had purchased tiny oxygen masks for use on small animals two years ago. Do cats hear "wha-wha-wha-wha-wha" also?The firefighter who rescued the rat, Kirby Jonas, described coming upon the animal's cage. "If I were betting money, I would have put down $10,000 that anything in that cage was dead," he said, according to msnbc.com. Actual footage of Jonas during the blaze... Jonas also noted…