A Momentary Taste of Being

The Sleekest, the Neatest Top 10 New Species of the Year Glowing fungi, spiders that build river-spanning webs, rust eating bacteria, and other more cuddly species.

Chasing Science at Sea While we're on the topic, I had two rare delights on Sunday before Sam's recital (another rare and extraordinary delight). We went to Sea World so he could ride Manta and Atlantic.  Generally while he rides Manta, I go into the nearby aquarium and enjoy the fact that we have somehow learned how to maintain a reef community aquarium, an accomplishment available only to the most elaborate aquaria and research institutes only a short while ago.  But the real delight is that Octopus vulgaris was out of her lair and swimming about her aquarium.  I've been here many times and the only view I had was of the octopus stuffed into a small tube that connected to adjacent aquaria.  But here she was out and about stretching and flexing for all the world to see. So, while Sam was riding Atlantis, I went into the nearby aquarium where normal one can see Pacific Sea Nettles ( Chrysaora fuscescens ) and, usually, Moon Jellies ( Aurelia aurita) both incredi...

For those of you who don't know me on facebook sharing something from there. An aquarium with whale sharks and manta rays:

Compressed Air Car

A new sub-atomic particle, a new force, or a fundamental misunderstanding of present physics?

Orbital Pictures of Mercury I'm with Miranda on this one--"Oh brave new world that has such [features] in it."

Read all about it: Joyce inscribed on a synthetic genome.  Joyce's estate is not amused.

MIT on Fukushima Thanks due to a colleague at work.

Who is the world's most typical person?

Low Fat may not be so good after all Anyone paying careful attention has to question a wealth of the supposed science behind much of the nutrition work that is going on.  It would seem to me that the closer one can get to real food--the materials that come out of nature, the better off one might be.  That just seems logical.  And it apparently is gradually being rediscovered.  Gosh, if you don't eat as many soy-lecithin coated pre-fab chicken by-product nuggets cooked in refined diesel, you might be healthier.

The natural world is so incredibly cool-- zombie ant fungus.

Visualizing WiFi

Look what a kind friend brought to my attention- -poetry about insects. As I wrote to this friend in response, can there be anything more wonderful than poetry about invertebrates?  It seems unlikely.  While you're there, check out some of the other posts--beautiful photography of intriguing insects and other natural things.

Nyiragongo lava lake

"God and Gossip" An evolutionary psychologist (ridiculous in any understanding of evolutionary principles--almost Lamarckian in its implications) tells us why humans are pathetic losers, but shouldn't look at themselves that way.

Gorgeous realization of zooming into a spiral galaxy.

The Sculpture:

Science gets there, well after Chesterton

A Brown Dwarf or a Gas Giant in the Outer Reaches This is tremendously interesting--in the outer reaches of the solar system.