Nature: November 2003 Archive Page

There are some things that the birds do that, colloquially speaking, "just blow us away." We were training Alex to sound out phonemes, not because we want him to read as humans do, but we want to see if he understands that his labels are made up of sounds that can be combined in different ways to make up new words; that is, to demonstrate evidence for segmentation. He babbles at dusk, producing strings like "green, cheen, bean, keen", so we have some evidence for this behavior, but we need more solid data....He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh." --'That Damn Bird' (Edge)

Polly wanna freak you out! **Awk!**

"In order to maintain airspeed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?"

Actually, wrong. By comparing the European Swallow with bird species of similar body mass, we can estimate that the swallow beats its wings 18 times a second with an amplitude of 18 cm... Jonathan Corum --Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow (Style)

This pop-cult reference is, of course, to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

--Saturday's Lunar Eclipse (Yahoo/AP)

I didn't actually see this part of the eclipse, but I put off Peter's bath so I could take him out during the totality, and then cut his bath short so I could show him the moon re-emerging. Peter asked whether an eclipse was dangerous, and wanted to hold my hand. Of course I told him nothing bad would happen to the moon...

...as long as he was good.

(Just kidding.)