fun
cagapakis | June 2, 2010The World Science Festival starts today in New York City with tons of exciting events from BioArt to The Science of Star Trek and all sorts of great stuff in between! If you can't make it to New York there's also a twitter page and a blog here on ScienceBlogs accompanying the event that you can follow along with, and I had the chance to write a post over there about how I got into science as a kid. So go check it out! "What if Science Were Like Sports?" Here's a little teaser:
awild | June 1, 2010Speed was essential to scoring points in yesterday's istockphoto taxonomy fail challenge. Commentator JasonC replied within minutes of the original posting with 8 answers correct to the appropriate level and is awarded 8 points. RobM and MarekB also picked up a point each for adding identifications of the Syrphid and the fire ant male.
Correct answers were considered those that identified the mystery insects to the same taxonomic level as the original iStockphoto misidentification:
Red Admiral
Robber Fly
Hemiptera
Crane Fly
Katydid
Cuckoo Wasp
Hornet (Vespa)
Drone Fly (Eristalis)
Sugar Ants…
awild | May 31, 2010
Mystery #1
I admit, I like to pick on iStockphoto, the pioneering company behind the high volume/low cost microstock model of media licensing.
There's nothing wrong with microstock. After all, the thriving web-based market for cheap images is a ripe opportunity. But buyers get what they pay for, and they should be aware that a photographer who nets forty cents an image is unlikely to fact-check with the same level of rigor as one paid $400 an image. So the microstocks are entertainingly peppered with error.
Tonight's challenge: put a name on each of these ten taxonomic disasters from the…
awild | May 30, 2010Playwright Tom Stoppard retells Shakespeare's Hamlet as an absurd comedy from the perspective of two minor characters. The brilliant Gary Oldman and Tim Roth star in Stoppard's own film adaptation (1990). Here's an excerpt:
cagapakis | May 26, 2010There is big excitement in lab today--my very talented labmate Jake has won the Division of Medical Sciences graduate student science haiku contest!!! Here is his burrito winning entry:
Green lasers on high
Shining to illuminate
Synechococcus!
It's definitely haiku day over here, so share your science haikus in the comments for maximum fun!
awild | May 24, 2010This looks like it could be painful. What is it?
Five points to the first person to name the organism, and five for the structure.
The cumulative points winner for the month of May will win either 1) any 8x10 print from my insect photo gallery, or 2) a guest blog post on the (safe-for-work) topic of their choosing.
[SEM image by the lovely and talented Elle Camino]
awild | May 23, 2010
The Boneyard Bombshells (red) take on The 'Paign (blue) in Champaign-Urbana's first ever roller derby bout
How many rocket scientists does it take to set up a roller derby bout?
Apparently, the answer is two. That's how many were on hand Friday night to help lay the track for Champaign-Urbana roller derby's sold-out exhibition bout. In a university town there's a lot of spare expertise floating around. I'm pretty sure we had the most precise track ever measured out in the history of the sport, and the league is only four months old.
Mrs. Myrmecos (a.k.a. Elle Camino) skates for the…
cagapakis | May 20, 2010This is a pretty old video we made about Craig Venter that I've shared before on Hydrocalypse, but I think now is a good time to share it again. When Craig isn't creating synthetic bacteria, he's sailing the world, searching the oceans for interesting DNA sequences. We were inspired by this lifestyle (and sometimes even his science too) and SNL, and from that came Venter's on a Boat, by Hydrocalypse Industries (warning: the song contains a lot of bad language):
cagapakis | May 18, 2010I've written before about artificial life researchers from the 18th and 20th centuries working to create robots that attempt to recreate the human voice. I recently saw this terrifying video over at the PopSci blog of a recent robotic voice machine and wanted to share it:
Over at Noise For Airports, Nick shares a very different way to combine biology, computer science, and music--The Heart Chamber Orchestra, which plays music generated from the rhythm of their combined heartbeats in real time:
cagapakis | May 18, 2010My silkworms are starting to turn into silkmoths! The first moth emerged from his cocoon this weekend, I hope more are close behind so that he can mate before he dies! I didn't expect him to come out so soon so I didn't have my real camera but I wanted to share my blurry phone pictures of the event:
In industrial silk production they can't use the cocoon that gets left behind because the moth uses an enzyme called cocoonase to chew his way out, breaking the otherwise continuous silk thread. I'm starting to explore ways that I can use this silk though--so far I've only made friendship…
awild | May 10, 2010What is this odd little beast?
Five points each for the first person to pick the order and the family.
The cumulative points winner for the month of May will win either 1) any 8x10 print from my insect photo galleries, or 2) a guest blog post on the (safe-for-work) topic of their choosing.