FAIL
awild | April 5, 2010Today's breaking news in Ant Science is this:
Newly discovered pieces of amber have given scientists a peek into the Africa of 95 million years ago, when flowering plants blossomed across Earth and the animal world scrambled to adapt.
Suspended in the stream of time were ancestors of modern spiders, wasps and ferns, but the prize is a wingless ant that challenges current notions about the origins of that globe-spanning insect family...Inside the Ethiopian amber is an ant that looks nothing like ants found in Cretaceous amber from France and Burma.
Wow- that's big news! I wonder what this…
cwilcox | February 16, 2010I love the show Psych. For those who don't know the show, it's about a guy named Shawn Spencer (actor James Roday) whose uncanny powers of observation allow him to convince the Santa Barbara Police Department that he's a psychic. He's adorable, eccentric, and totally awesome in mostly every way. But I found myself yelling at my television (ok, my computer - I watch it on Hulu every week) while watching the most recent episode. I was really, truly pissed.
Let me explain. In the show, Shawn and company were tracking down evidence for a murder that was committed five years earlier to prove that…
cwilcox | September 5, 2009Sometimes, when I get bored, I play around with sites like Google. Barry was sitting there talking about how much he missed seeing the Steelers play, and before long, we were Googling how to get from Hawaii to Pittsburgh, including a quick and dirty Google Maps. So what's the best way to get from Honolulu to Pittsburgh according to Google Maps?
That doesn't look so bad. But, let's take a closer look at step 14:
That's right - Google recommends we kayak across the Pacific Ocean - all 2,756 miles from the north shore of Oahu to some park in Seattle. It'll only take us just over 15 days…
awild | April 29, 2009Seriously, is there a name for the disorder whereby people think everything with wings is a honeybee?
bioephemera | March 26, 2009
From Failblog.
(I dedicate this to Hungry Hyaena, who holds extremely nuanced views on the ethics of hunting, and would no doubt have an easier time if he embraced complete denial, like this poor person).
sciencepunk | March 6, 2009
Thanks to BoingBoing for this great video of Mr George the SuperMagnetMan, vendor of all manner of high quality, super-powerful magnets. As he demonstrates in this video, these magnets aren't toys! Or rather they are toys, albeit ones powerful enough to crush your puny, fleshy fingers. The money shot is around the 3-minute mark...
So perhaps you've watched the lime getting pulverised into the beginnings of a good pie, and you're still not convinced these magnets are dangerous. Lucky then, that someone out there was unlucky so you don't have to be stupid. Here's the aftermath of Dirk's…
awild | September 18, 2008Speaking of bad science reporting...
Not the right ant.
Nope.
Camponotus? You've gotta be kidding.
It isn't Lasius, either.
Nor Ectatomma. (And isn't that Corrie Moreau's copyrighted photo?).
awild | February 3, 2008I have thousands of absolutely awful photographs on my hard drive. I normally delete the screw-ups on camera as soon as they happen, but enough seep through that even after the initial cut they outnumber the good photos by at least 3 to 1. Here are a few of my favorite worst shots.
Thinking that nothing would be cooler than an action shot of a fruit fly in mid-air, I spent an entire evening trying to photograph flies hovering over a rotting banana. This shot is the closest I came to getting anything in focus.
That's a nice finger in the background. It's mine, you know.
Imagine how…