The “Shoppie Awards”
Saturday, May 10th, 2008Our email in-boxes have all been touched by them. Some are so blatently obvious that we must wonder at the gullability of the ones who earnestly forwarded them to us. Sporting subject titles such as “Really Amazing Pictures” and “Winner of the National Geographic Picture of the Year Award”, these images have long circulated in cyberspace without receiving […]
It’s a Gas!
Monday, May 5th, 2008
Pooting, Tooting, Farting, Breaking Wind, Cutting the Cheese, whatever you want to call it, the average person produces about half a liter of intestinal gas per day which is expelled in the form of flatulence about 14 times daily.
The following web links get into the science behind this smelly but vital bodily function:
Kidzworld: The Science of […]
Blue Food
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
George Carlin had a comedy bit about blue food.
“Why is there no blue food? I can’t find blue food — I can’t find the flavor of blue! I mean, green is lime; yellow is lemon; orange is orange; red is cherry; what’s blue? There’s no blue! Oh, they say, “Blueberries!” Uh-uh; blue on the vine, […]
Deceptive Practices
Thursday, April 24th, 2008The following are just a few examples of how animals use mimicry as a survival strategy.
Mimicry of Other Species
Why bother evolving your own venom when you can capitalize on the reputation of another species to protect you?
A Sinaloan milk snake (right) closely mimics the color pattern of the venomous coral snake on the left. The strategy […]
Shake Rattle & Roll
Monday, April 21st, 2008In the predawn hours of this last Friday Morning (4/18/08) I awoke in confusion. At first I thought I had overloaded the washing machine and imagined that the unbalanced spin cycle was causing the house to vibrate. As I began to shake off sleep I remembered that I hadn’t turned on the washing machine - […]
Super-size Me!
Saturday, April 19th, 2008All creatures are designed in a scale that allows their particular muscle and skeletal structure to properly support their mass. If you had the ability to supersize living things as has been the plot of many a science fiction movie, some unexpected consequences would arise.
If a scientist could really super-size a 5 foot tall, 100 pound woman to 10 […]
Animal Oddities
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Once again, truth proves stranger than fiction.
Does anyone remember the Simpsons episode where Bart catches the 3-eyed fish in the pond polluted by waste from the nuclear power plant? Well, nature has produced some specimens far weirder than that!
Mike, The famous headless chicken
One-eyed and noseless kitten
Two-headed turtle
Three-headed toad
Four-legged duckling
Five-legged dog
Six-legged cow
Seven-legged lamb
Eight-legged frog
The animal world is strange […]
Feed me, Seymour!
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Scientific question #326,572 from my 10-year-old:
Is there really such a thing as a man-eating plant?
No.
There are however over 640 plant species that attract, capture, kill, and digest animals and protozoans. These are known as carnivorous plants. In order to be classified as carnivorous, the plant must have the ability to do the following things:
Prey must […]
Nothing Matters
Saturday, April 5th, 2008“Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one” Albert Einstein
Matter is all the “stuff” that we see, feel, and smell around us. By definition, matter has mass and takes up space, and it includes substances such as water, wood, rock, metal, and air. At the most basic level, these substances are built from […]
Why surfing was a bad idea in the Pliocene
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Great white sharks can get very big. The largest on record was caught off the coast of Cuba in 1945. It was a female measuring 21 feet and weighing a whopping 7300 pounds! In comparison, the mythical white shark from the movie Jaws, was a 25 footer. There are anecdotal accounts of great whites as large as 31 feet, although there is […]
