fun
awild | February 17, 2009
The Taliban Beetle, a specimen at the Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Switzerland.
Meet the Taliban Beetle.
I took this picture in 2004 while visiting the collections at the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland. For reasons I was unable to discern, a coleopterist working in the collection in the late 1990's had intended to name this new Afghani ground beetle after the country's ruling party at the time. Whether he came to regret this decision in the post 9/11 world, I do not know.
No formal description of the Taliban beetle was ever printed. So despite the official looking…
clock | February 14, 2009w00t! Miriam Goldstein had a piece published in Slate! The real references to that piece arehere.
awild | February 10, 2009Tenodera aridifolia, Arizona.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/14, indirect strobe in a white box
clock | February 10, 2009No, really, it was Anne-Marie's idea. She started it! Yeah, don't look at me!
Charles Darwin is on Twitter, Alfred Wallace is on Twitter, Richard Owen is on Twitter, even Bishop Wilberforce (aka Soapy Sam) is on Twitter. Where is Huxley?
We are already having fun retweeting non-existent Darwin tweets ;-) I hope the real Darwin and others respond with humorous stuff:
@BoraZ I can see it; "@arwallace: damn!"
Bora: @rowen next time I'll block you!
BoraZ: RT @cdarwin Please: need info on modification/domestication in pigeons for a book
BoraZ: RT @cdarwin w00t! Going on a cruise: Argentina,…
awild | February 8, 2009From David Attenborough's brilliant Life in the Undergrowth:
Incidentally, Ed Yong's interview with Sir David is worth reading.
awild | February 6, 2009
I'm hoping the stimulus bill includes a research allocation towards figuring out why "Your Argument is Invalid" can be hilarious and inexplicably odd at the same time.
(h/t Bug Girl)
stoat | February 5, 2009I thought to myself as I cycled in. More snow! And in that delightful state where left alone it is beautiful and white, but as soon as touched it squelches into sodden slush. So my sandled feet were sprayed with freezing gunk, and the thickly falling flakes covered my glasses. Such fun! School's in though, which is fair enough, as the infants got yesterday to play. What will this afternoon bring?
pdate: It brought the school closure. But fortunately friends stepped in, so I patched my way through the afternoon. Assembler is fun!
But not as much fun as Snow-crazed stoat 'goes berserk' - thanks…
awild | February 4, 2009The blue-green iridescence on these Iridomyrmex purpureus workers shines from microscopic sculpturing on the ants' cuticle.
I've never taken to the Australian vernacular for one of their most conspicuous insects. The latin Iridomyrmex purpureus translates as "purple rainbow ant", referring both to the base color of the body and to the attractive metallic refractions on the cuticle. But Aussies instead call this colorful species the "meat ant." Crass by comparison.
On the other hand, it'd probably not do my reputation of masculine bravado much good were I to stroll into a dusty pub in the…
awild | February 3, 2009
Mark your calendar. The 26th annual Insect Fear Film Festival will be held February 28th at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This year's theme is "Centipede Cinema".
The film festival is legendary. I've heard about the event for years, and its lineup of bug flicks, live displays, and art contests have received widespread media coverage. Now that I live in Champaign I'll be able to attend my first one.
The announcement:
The Insect Fear Film Festival - scaring the general public with
horrific films and horrific filmmaking since 1984
The 26th…
clock | February 2, 2009This shows how waves of humans spread throughout the world from their origins in Africa over a period of some 50,000 years. The video was created by geneticist Daniel Falush of University College Cork in Ireland and colleagues. For more info, go here: http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1000078
Soundtrack courtesy of Garageband
clock | February 1, 2009
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The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Denis Dutton
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPaul McCartney Appearance
Funny Political VideosMore Funny Videos
stoat | January 26, 2009Make of it what you will.
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were trapped so what could they do?
"Let us flee" said the fly
"Let us fly" said the flea
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
awild | January 25, 2009
Tonight's selection was suggested for your viewing pleasure by Jack Longino.
