fun
awild | June 23, 2008Via GTDA comes this mesmerizing time lapse video demonstrating the efficiency of ant recruitment:
clock | June 23, 2008The long awaited game Spore is coming out soon. The Creature Creator is now available, but a bunch of us got it in advance (see PZ, Brian, erv, Chad, Brian....) and got to play a little bit.
I can't wait for the game itself, although, as others have pointed out, the game is not really about evolution. It is, like Pokemon, using the term 'evolution' to describe 'metamorphosis'. All the changes happen to a single individual during an enormously long lifetime. This is one of the basic misunderstandings of evolution by creationists - they missed the memo that evolution operates at the level…
clock | June 15, 2008Also from Miriam, not the famous old (and beloved by my kids) rote memorization of elements - but you will never forget these few basic facts about a few major elements, because it is presented in a viscerally fun way:
awild | June 15, 2008Yes, the computer is still in the shop. But there's still Gogol Bordello and what is quite possibly the world's best song:
clock | June 14, 2008Last night, my daughter and I went to hear the NC Symphony at the Green here in Southern Village. The entire square was packed (a couple of thousand people?). It was very enjoyable and an interesting choice of pieces. What was more interesting, and I am not sure I liked it, is the chosen ORDER of the pieces. The first half was filled with classics, the second half with pop stuff, including some not-well-known pieces. I am not sure that worked very well....
The concert started with Johann Strauss Sr.'s Radetzky March - a very powerful piece of music. But there is a reason why that is…
clock | June 8, 2008After reading this thread I was really nervous about going to see Kung Fu Panda, but my daughter insisted (ever since the first posters and trailers came out months ago), so we went last night. And.....
...the movie is really not what Melissa expected. If anything, it is the opposite - in one moment it uses a fat joke to make you laugh (which sometimes you manage to supress, sometimes not), but then in the next moment it shames you for laughing at the previous joke. What the movie parodies the best are old martial arts movie, from Bruce Lee movies, through Karate Kid, to Crouching tiger...,…
clock | June 7, 2008That's me. My Hobbit name. Generated with the The Hobbit Name Generator, provided by Graham Steel in the comments of this poetically frustulous post. And my elvish name is Inglor Tinuviel.
clock | June 2, 2008First LOL PLoS images are now on Flickr and Facebook. If you use the correct tag in Flickr, yours will be added to the set. Please link to the original paper when you do this.
clock | May 29, 2008Every now and then I have some fun and LOL-cat-ize an image from a PLoS ONE paper. See, for instance, LOLdinosaur, LOLtortoise, LOLtasmaniantiger and LOLpterosaur. Folks at the mothership love these. So, if a number of you are up to this I'll make a Flickr set or Facebook group, or a linkfest. Pick your favourite PLoS papers, grab images, LOLcatize them (here) and send them to me, or give me the links. Ideally, if you post these on your blogs, provide also a link to the paper itself or at least let me know which paper they came from.
This is not what I have in mind, but it is a LOL and a…
clock | May 28, 2008Or 3.5 Albatross wingspans, or 8.1 Alaskan moose antler spans, or 7.6 standard railway gauges, or 5.5 Kobe Bryants, or 2.5 London buses stacked one on top of another. That is how this site converts 12 yards. Try your own measures....
awild | May 24, 2008
We went down to the Rialto last night to catch a benefit concert by Calexico. Best show I've seen in ages. They pull off an unexpected blend of mariachi, folk, and straight-up rock, including a Neil Young cover featuring two full mariachi bands and a slew of guest vocalists on stage. Calexico is perhaps Tucson's most successful troupe of local musicians, capturing the dual American-Mexican character of the city. Watch the video, though, to see for yourself.
clock | May 9, 2008Our governor agrees. At least in the print version of this article which has a somehwat different title: "Easley supports college for aliens". I wonder why they changed it for the Web version - is the editorial position that having green or purple skin disqualifies one from higher education?
clock | May 7, 2008My daughter collects snowglobes. Or, to be precise, we collect snowglobes for her when we travel. She has a few from New York City, one from San Francisco, one from Murtle Beach, one from Milwaukee. I badly messed up when I went to Boston last year and did not get one. Last year, the TSA made a rule that snowglobes cannot be in the carry-on luggage (and I prefer to travel light and not check in any bags), but the lax security at Milwaukee airport let me smuggle one in.
Now, traveling around Europe provided me with the opportunity to greatly add to her collection: snowglobes from London,…
clock | May 5, 2008You really think I am going to put this above the fold? No way - you have to click (First posted on July 7, 2006):
Today's lesson is on the reproductive anatomy of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica), which probably applies to the wild species in the pig family as well. Although we may reflexively think about invertebrates when pondering diversity of copulatory organs, mammals are not too bad in that department either. After all, the sperm is delivered in some species into the vagina (e.g., dog), in others into the cervix (e.g., pig) and in yet others into the uterus (e.g., horse), so…