Lyssomanes viridis, known to those of us who do not speak dead languages as the magnolia green jumping spider, is a lovely translucent green spider that wouldn’t hurt a fly um, is harmless to anything larger than a honyebee and is undeserving of any arachnophobic reactions. Until you get close. Really, really close.
Because, while all jumping spiders have the same equipment, on the magnolia
Several years ago, I witnessed a particular action from a friend’s dog that startled me. The dog had come into their living room on a lazy afternoon and looked around for a place to lie down, to find the other dogs had already claimed all of the best snoozing spots. He actually got a slightly pained expression, tail dropping and ears twitching back slightly as if hearing a harsh sound –
xkcd is great today:
Ophrys apifera.
Yes, I read xkcd before Why Evolution Is True, but the latter has more detail on the whole subject.
When this book was first published, I was 10 years old, in that directionless, awkward stage between playing Bionic Man and shooting Stormtroopers with my blaster, so if you want to consider this review ill-timed that’s fine with me. There is likely nothing I say here that hasn’t been said before, but that’s probably true of the entire blog anyway. I also need to note that the
Following links just now, I began reading a post on what Vanessa Williams discovered about her DNA. The money quote:
My DNA breaks down as follows: I’m 23% from Ghana, 17% from the British Isles, 15% from Cameroon, 12% Finnish, 11% Southern European, 7% Togo, 6% Benin, 5% Senegal and 4% Portuguese.
Now, I can’t wait to go to Ghana and Cameroon and Togo and Senegal — it’s a great opportunity
Walkabout podcast – But how? Part 10
It’s admittedly been a while since the last ‘But how?‘ post, and the reason is, I’ve been having trouble finding further topics that fit the goal (which is demonstrating how a secular worldview answers more than what religion is often claimed to do.) So
One would think that recognizing pseudoscience is an easy thing, almost intuitive – and, to be honest, it is, provided the right measuring stick is used. But there’s simple, and then there’s simple, you know?
First off, we can get some other bits out of the way first. There’s no reason to get all pedantic over a firm definition of pseudoscience, but can we count such things
Down at the park the other day, chasing whatever I happened to come across, I did a few casual photos of unknown insect larvae, roughly 15mm in length, doing their best at denuding a small tree. Upon returning and unloading the memory card, I realized I’d caught some details I never expected to see, and certainly didn’t realize at the time, or I would’ve gotten
I feel slightly guilty about appending an ‘astronomy’ tag to this, because it’s going to seem not just distantly-related, but wholly out of place to some reading. Yet, there really is a legitimate bearing, as I hope to demonstrate. So let’s take a brief look at the history of extra-terrestrial encounters, because sometimes it helps to know the perspectives of the time.
I am
