There are 7.98 billion people on planet Earth. This is one of their stories.
(I was interviewed for a podcast. I fear I might have rambled on about spiders a bit much, which is currently a terrible danger in any conversation with me. Sorry.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
And now I’m imagining the opening credits of an alternate-universe version of Extraordinary Attorney Woo, in which she’s hyperfixated on spiders rather than whales.
Yay! This country needs to see Biology professors as inspirational.
Not gonna lie, I do miss the cephalopod discussions a bit.
Although you have made me take a bit more of an interest in the spiders I find around the home. I even let the ones I find outside live now, unless they’re black widows.
This certainly beats the horse-scorpion-locusts in the Book of Talking When High on Hallucinogens (aka Revelations).
When you tell someone “You are one in a million” you are telling them, “there are 1400 people just like you … in China.”
My wife still makes me relocate spiders found in the house, but our son is finally on board with pushing back. Last week, he said: “Why are we evicting her? Count the mosquitoes in that web! That spider is doing the Lord’s work!” :-D
Couldn’t the Lord just like make the mosquitoes vanish…?
You are 65 and STILL an associate professor? mmmmmm . . . And still spouting your anti-belief-in-anything-but-what-I think opinions on your mighty BLOG racket machine. Sorry, you never left the Lutheran Church, but you are trying very hard on being the martyr of your own religion: Materialist Nihilism. Well, someone has to do what you do, you just keep on doing it while you can.
Naked City reference…
In my adult lifetime we crossed 7 billion and now we’re about to cross 8. I’m not that old.
Here is the download link for the MP3 (it is missing on ten7’s web page):
https://cdn.transistor.fm/file/transistor/m/shows/23009/0b978bcc655545d20455eb31dde60ed1.mp3
PZ have you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel) ? It has intelligent spiders in it.
Yes. Also Children of Ruin, which has both spiders and squid in it.
Looking forward to Children of Ruin. ^_^
You said the spider populations are declining and the neighbors won’t let you in to see their collections.
My sewer drains out to the street, as expected. Unlike my neighbors, and because this house has issues, I have a private manhole that accesses the outlet to the street.
If you want to find spiders find a hole to crawl into.