X-altruists are compelled to good, even when doing so makes no sense and brings harm upon them. The cannot tolerate injustice, and go to extreme lengths to help those who have been wronged, regardless of their personal relationship to them. Now, I am not speaking of the guy who helps an old lady cross the…
Awesome Flash animation from the University of Utah, showing relative sizes from a coffee bean to a carbon atom. I wish it could also zoom out and show astronomical sizes, too, like this FSU slide show (not as smooth as the Utah one) or the famous Powers of Ten movie.
A few years ago, my daughter was thrilled to receive a hand-me-down fanny pack. (See the price tag hanging on my spiffy new one?)Earlier this month, when my wife took the kids on a family visit for about 10 days, my daughter cried for me at night.
Robin Burkinshaw has finished Alice and Kev, an interesting exercise in computer-assisted storytelling, using screen shots from The Sims 3 to tell the story of a homeless father and daughter. Originally the story was told serially, with a few posts a week; then there were a few very long gaps, but the story is finished…
Yesterday in my journalism class, I asked everyone in the room to take out a coin and flip it twice, and raise their hand if it came up the same. Then I asked the ones whose hands were up to flip again, and keep their hand up if the coin came up the same yet…
If language is as instinctive to humans as dam-building is to beavers, if every 3-year-old is a grammatical genius, if the design of syntax is coded in our DNA and wired into our brains, why, you might wonder, is the English language in such a mess? Why does the average American sound like a gibbering fool every time he opens his mouth or puts pen…
For anyone who’s ever forgotten something or someone they wish they could remember, a bit of solace: Though the memory is hidden from your conscious mind, it might not be gone. —Wired
A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably…
The HD version actually came out better than I thought it would. More photos after the jump…
Disturbing, yet cool. Biotele.com A beam of white light is made up of all the colours in the spectrum. The range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between. But there is one colour that is notable by its absence. Pink (or magenta, to use its official name)…
He thinks that he will never see A poem lovely as a tree. But poems charm and poems please, And many are lovelier than “Trees.” A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast, Can hardly look at God all day, While lifting leafy arms to pray. Where are her eyes,…
“The Zoo and the Carnegie Science Center are my two favorite places in the world!” chirps my daughter from the back of the van. “Can we go to the Science Center instead?” “No, honey, we’re driving to your penguin class,” I tell her. She grabs her brother’s arm. “Both of us?” she asks. “The two…
Bring on the bongo drums and the black turtlenecks — this looks like fun. Students in a poetry class were asked to write their poetry on a piece of fruit, and then share their text with the class. Melanie stood holding her Cassaba melon like a globe or Yorick’s skull in her left hand and…
An interesting method of publicizing high-quality science in a form accessible to (and editable by) the general public. RNA Biology will require Wikipedia pages from all authors who submit work to a new section of the journal, to be launched later this week, that describes families of RNA molecules. The first paper scheduled is “A…
“It was on the third night that we found out that the octopus Otto was responsible for the chaos. “We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out the 2000…
Because the children were rarely bored – at least, when a television was nearby – they never learned how to use their own imagination as a form of entertainment. “The capacity to daydream enables a person to fill empty time with an enjoyable activity that can be carried on anywhere,” Belton says. “But that’s a…
I’m always amused when the TV reports from storm landfalls are peppered with statements such as, “There’s nobody here but reporters.” Who needs fairness, objectivity, and nuance when there’s a storm a-brewin? Who needs balance, when you’ve got a pole to lean against? Oh, the drama of the live storm stand-up! TV correspondents bellowing while…
From the BBC… thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary. The 3,000-year-old skeletons were in such good condition that anthropologists at the University of Goettingen managed to extract a sample of DNA. That was then matched to two men living nearby: Uwe Lange, a surveyor, and Manfred Huchthausen, a teacher. The two men have now become local…
If the following line doesn’t get you reading The Steampunk Home, nothing will: I can think of two steampunk references to octopodes. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.
A fascinating exploration of learning at a very early stage. Thanks for the link, Robert. (BBC) Usually, cuttlefish eggs lie in an envelope full of black ink. But this clears as the embryos grow older, leaving them growing within translucent eggs. These unborn cuttlefish also have fully developed eyes. That leads the researchers to conclude…