Apparently the Norweian Blue isn’t the only bird who prefers kippin’ on its back.
Behind the scenes at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. flickr: The Order of Things
Category Archives: Other science
Don't Drop any Mentos in it
The Strangest Disaster of the 20th Century.
A recounting of the Lake Nyos CO2 eruption in Camaroon.
There is a physical limit to how much CO2 water can absorb, even under the tremendous pressured that exist at the bottom of a 690 foot deep lake. As the bottom layers become saturated, the CO2 is pushed up to where the pressure is low enough for it to start coming out of solution. At this point any little disturbance—a landslide, stormy weather, or even high winds or just a cold snap—can cause the CO2 to begin bubbling to the surface. And when the bubbles start rising, they can cause a siphoning or “chimney” effect, triggering a chain reaction that in one giant upheaval can cause the lake to disgorge CO2 that has been accumulating in the lake for decades.
Fiction Makes Truth Even Stranger
A term from a Far Side cartoon has been adopted as a legitimate anatomical term for describing the spikes on a stegosaurus-like dinosaur.
Time Perspectives
Don’t really know how much of this is mumbo-jumbo, but it’s something to think about. Plus, I like the animation technique.
To All of My Fan(s)
Look Closely, Doctor: See the Camera?
The Truman show delusion, as well as other related modern-era afflictions.
One of Dr. Gold’s patients told him, “My family and everyone I knew were actors in a script, a charade whose entire purpose is to make me the focus of the world’s attention.”
Another patient traveled to New York City and showed up at a federal building in downtown Manhattan seeking asylum so he could get off his reality show, Dr. Gold said.
The patient reported that he also came to New York to see if the Twin Towers were still standing, because he believed that seeing their destruction on Sept. 11 on television was part of his reality show. If they were still standing, he said, then he would know that the terrorist attack was all part of the script.
I suffer from no such delusion, because
1. My blog would be enough to show any would-be exec that a reality show based on my life would not be economically viable, i.e. my reality show is probably pre-canceled
2. I think I have the kind of friends that would tell me if such a show existed.
3. Even if such a show were to actually exist, the existence of a production company would shield me from lawsuits exacting payment for boring people to death, so I wouldn’t stress out over it.
CSI: Livermore Labs
The Radioactive Clock In Your Teeth
How C-14 dating of tooth enamel can be used as a precise forensic tool.
What's Love Got to Do With It?
Mathematical model explains marital breakups
Rey developed an equation based on the “second thermodynamic law for sentimental interaction,” which states a relationship will disintegrate unless “energy” (effort) is fed into it.
Hmmm. I guess emotional baggage is now relationship entropy. I don’t think has changed the age-old problem that investigating the three-body problem tends to create a lot of relationship entropy.
The mathematical model also implies that when no effort is put in the relationship can easily deteriorate.
Ah, yes. This is based on the work of Dr. Obvious, no doubt.
Not Particularly Unflappable
Please excuse the funkiness of the first couple of seconds. I don’t know what caused that.
I don’t know what species this is, but it’s pretty much the perfect slo-mo subject: flapping furiously but the center-of-mass is not moving very much, and didn’t fly away at my approach. I missed an even better shot while I was unslinging my camera; two of these butterflies were doing some sort of aerial ballet — either a mating ritual or fighting (or maybe both), but separated just as I got set to shoot.
Taken at Conway Robinson Memorial State Forest in Virginia.
Don't Fear the Reaper. Or Anything Else.
Probably not helpful if you have a fear of lists, or phobophobia (fear of phobias)
I do have to wonder how widespread some of these are. Arachibutyrophobia? Is that widespread outside of dogs?
There Are Oedipal Snakes on this Oedipal Plane!
The Deadliest Snakes on Land, Sea and Air
Until recently, the only time we’d heard of airborne snakes was in the Samuel L Jackson cult classic, Snakes on a Plane, but snakes don’t need human help to fly. They can do it all by themselves. Actually, Flying Tree Snakes are technically able to glide rather than fly, but even so these South and Southeast Asian jungle denizens can make some serious headway as they sail through the air – traveling distances as far as 328 feet before landing. After first slithering up towards the top of the canopy, the snake hurls itself into the ether, twisting and propelling itself away from its launch pad before landing on another tree or the forest floor.
(How do they get 328 feet? It’s 100 meters. That’s some MoFo false precision from the MoFo unit conversion!)