It’s Earth Day, the day we celebrate our planet’s independence from the Barren Hegemony of the Solar System! It was a hard fought battle, especially since there was no one to fight it, but we (well, not specifically us the planet, anyway) persevered!
We typically celebrate our defiant animus by going outside and gloating. Admittedly, some people (you know, them) do things like
Just had to post this.
I came in this evening from being outside shirtless, horrifying the neighbors, and felt something walking on my chest. Looked down and found a little winged aphid – just the perfect size, to my way of thinking. Grasping it by the wings and scampering outside, I carefully placed it on the azalea bush in front of one of the newborn mantises. This was touchy – they’re
Maurice Williamson, a member of New Zealand’s Parliament, addresses the floor yesterday on a bill that would amend the state of marriage to apply to same-sex couples as well:
Initially, I really liked his statements. There’s still (despite my efforts) a lot of emphasis in this country on not speaking sarcastically, especially in something as official as government assemblies. It was refreshing
This is probably the best photo I’m ever going to get of this, so I have to share. This is what spider sex looks like.
The female is the larger one, which is very typical of spiders. The little ‘legs’ seen here extending out to the front are pedipalps, and one of the ways you can easily (well, more or less) tell the gender of a spider, because the male’s are
One of those items on my mental list of images to capture is the emergence of newborn mantises from their egg sac. I’ve gotten recently hatched nymphs a couple of times, but none ever emerging.
On spotting an egg sac near the pond in the park close by a few days ago, I found dangling debris, the shredded structure of the sac, that indicates the hatching has already occurred.
Some things get accepted into culture, maybe unintentionally, maybe in a casual way, but then become established enough that we get fooled into thinking they came from a reputable source, or from careful consideration most of philosophy is this way, it seems. One that I’m going to address here is something that I’ve coined unevidence.
Unevidence should not be confused with the curious
Hey! Carl Zimmer has been inspired by one of my posts!
Didn’t give me credit, though…
Well, it’s my 500th post, provided you ignore some deleted update markers and having to rebuild the blog long ago when the last software failed to perform, and the idea that everything I write goes through a few drafts. But anyway, it’s an important milestone, since it’s halfway to 1,000 posts, which is where I actually get readers, right? Nice
Edit: I’d already used “part eight” on a previous post and missed it, so this has been renamed.
I have a small collection of school presentations that I’ve put together, primarily about arthropods – life cycles, feeding habits, camouflage, and so on. For one of them, I have pretty much everything about lady beetles illustrated, save for just one thing:
There were two things that prompted me to read this book: an interest in the curious history of psychic research within the US military, and the reputation that the author seems to have in skeptical circles. I’ll skip the dramatic buildup by saying that the book failed to address either of these.
The Men Who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson, is an account of Ronson’s
