Good stuff

I couldn’t fathom the thought of using a Word template with 150 odd individual pictures, so I wrote a simple script to composite all the images.   Here’s the original video:

And here’s the flip-book version:

Clearly, Henry and I need to make a better video, and better flip book, but it’s promising…. more to come.

Click for more cute pandas @ zooborns

Read this excellent description of the process here at NeuroLogica.

For example, you hear that unplugging your cell phone charger when not in use will save the planet.  Well, your cell phone charger takes 0.5 watts, and if plugged in all the time it takes 0.5 W * 24  hours/day = 12 W-hour/day Driving your car takes about 40 kW, and if you drive for 1 second a day, that’s 40,000 W * 1 s / (3600s/h) / (24h/d) =  46W-h/day.  So… unplugging your phone charger when not in use is approximately equivalent to 1 second of driving.

If unplugging your phone charger when not in use makes you feel good, that’s fine, but don’t think you’ve done your part because you do this.  It’s pissing in the wind.  We need to make BIG changes to have BIG effects.

Another fascinating tidbit:  A single annual intercontinental flight on an airplane that’s 80% full consumes approximately the same amount of fuel & energy as a daily commute of 30 miles in your car!  One flight, and you’ve doubled your annual fuel consumption!

Asymmetry in snails. They use the same gene we do for the purpose.

Humans are asymmetric — especially internally.  It’s critical that we are, we couldn’t live if we had symmetric innards.  PZ Myers just posted a really interesting article on the new discovery that snails use the same gene for asymmetry as we do.  Some scientists idientified the gene, then knocked it out.  The snails with that gene knocked out come out as straight tubes instead of curled up in an asymmetric manner.

For a science geek like me, it’s a pretty nifty experiement.

Dolphis can steer their sonar using some kind of beamforming technology.

Dolphins can steer their sonar +- 20 degrees left and right by emitting multiple clicks.  This seems somewhat similar to beamforming, or perhaps more akin to a directional microphone.  I don’t understand the physics of it, but perhaps I can get hold of the actual paper and figure out more.  Sounds pretty nifty.

http://www.crome.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/dolphin-sounds.mp3

Watch this video:  You will not be sorry.  You may be late for work however. Click on the ‘Watch this video’ button when you’re t the site.

Click on the photo for the full story

I still like the green sea slug plantimal as the best cross-species gene transfer, but wasps are pretty good too.

There’s no consent for these surrogate parents. Tens of thousands of wasp species lay their eggs inside caterpillars [ed.  Google says there are more than 200,000 species of wasp], injecting toxins that paralyze the hosts and allow their young to feast on the innards with impunity. Researchers have long wondered what exactly these toxins are and where they came from. The answers, a new genetic analysis reveals, have to do with a virus that infected wasps millions of years ago.

That’s pretty sweet.  Wasp gets infected by toxic virus.  Wasp co-opts virus genes and uses it as toxin to let babies feast on a caterpillars.  Wasp has 10,000 descendant species.

Or…. if you prefer…. God made 200,000 species of wasps, and gave only 10,000 of them the ability to lay their eggs inside catapillars, and inject the caterpillars with virus-like toxin that coincidentally perfectly matches the DNA from an actual virus.  He does this just to tweak the collective nipples of anybody who might be sequencing DNA strands 6,000-10,000 years after the creation.

You know.  Whichever works for you.

My Sister knitted that sweater!

My sister Althea knitted Coraline’s starry-blue sweater.  This and other Coraline artwork is on display in San Francisco at the Cartoon Art Museum until February 15th.

Althea just got back home from the opening of the movie in LA.  She said that the premier went great, and that people loved her sweater.

Some background:  Althea’s gone totally bonkers over miniature knitting.  It’s how she makes her living now.  Check out her stuff at bugknits.  She normally knits at 1/12 scale.  But she’s knit some stuff at 1/12/12 = 1/144 scale (i.e. for dolls for the dolls).  She seems to be in a class by herself in terms of miniature knitting.

Go buy some of her stuff at http://www.bugknits.com.

Well, here’s a guy who likes to stuff pigeons in his pants.

Those are pigeons stuffed into his socks. I'm not even going to talk about where he stuffed the eggs he was smuggling.

(Of course, there are exceptions to the Aussie-Bonkers rule, and you are one of them.)

Don't ya just hate it when that happens?

This guy seems to be a little worse for the wear after being struck by lightning.

He was 40 to 45 feet long, and weighed in 2,500 lbs.  Click the photo for more information.

Yikes.

Well, my wife hates them.  Can’t even stand to look at them.  But I always kinda liked them for their creepyness.  Well, Rita Mehta at UC Davis really took a liking to how they eat, and how they are similar to snakes.   

In any case, as you might know, fish have the regular-old type teeth in the regular old place, you know, in their mouth.  But they also have teeth in their throat (or pharynx).  

Radiographs of Muraena retifera with pharyngeal jaws "at rest" behind the skull (top) and fully protracted after prey capture (bottom)

Usually fish feed by opening their mouth quickly, and suctioning water and food into the back of their throat where their second set of teeth can get a hold of the food.  But morays are different.  Due to their long shape, they can’t generate the suction necesary to bring food back to the extra teeth.  So the moray developed the ability to actually move its extra set of teeth from its throat, right into its mouth, grab the food, and ratchet it down.

Look at the top image to the right.  It’s a bit unnatural, isn’t it?  It appears that there is a second, fake jaw placed behind the fish’s skull.  Well, that is really the natural rest position of the pharangual teeth.  

The bottom image shows the teeth actually move up into it’s mouth and grab food down.

And finally, for the coup-de-creep, check out these 2 short videos.

This guy's much bigger than your cat

Check out this cutie here:  http://charliesplayhouse.blogspot.com/2008/12/bonc-3-devil-frog.html

Read about it here among other places.

Check out the original patterns, and the reconstructed ones.

Is this the cutest baby pigmy hippo you’ve ever seen or what?

Check out all the newbors at ZooBorns.

Read the full story here. 

Watch this video of 10,000 amoebas joining into a sort-of-multicellular-thingy and going for a walk.

http://www.gamereclaim.com/2008/10/128/

Unfortunately, you can solve all levels pretty quickly.  Fantastic contraptions can keep you busy for a long time.

• Here’s one ugly solution I came up with: http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2084594
• And another http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2086118
• http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=2086559
• Wall Walker
• Mission to Mars solution
• Totally awesome: This one we didn’t do. It was already there.
  
• U-Turn solution
• The Bumper
• The Slingshot
• Saved Swinger Sadie, henry and I worked this one out.
• Back and forth and wedge is a cool one I did.
• Dog o 1 tail is a cool one
• The Conveyor (caleb & henry)
• Transplant This