Darren Naish writes about Share this:
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Darren Naish writes about Share this:
One of the other consequences of our broken water main is that our cat, Midnight, fled the house during the ruckus, and he has not returned. This is a very lazy, timid cat who has been declawed (not by us—we do not approve of such barbarity), so he’s not exactly going to thrive out there. And it’s raining. Midnight always freaked out at getting wet or being exposed to weather. If any Morris people should spot him, let Skatje know. He does have a collar with a tag and his name, address, and phone number.
A reader from Stillwater sent in a few photos of this lovely creature. They thought it was just some plant debris until it started crawling. Can you guess what it is?
Somebody has a weird obsession with hybridizing terrestrial and aquatic animals, but even more strangely, there isn’t a single cephalopod in the whole collection.
They’re rather dark and murky, but here: home movies of a creature smarter than any fundamentalist.
If you’ve been following the Australian lungfish saga, there’s a new development, and it’s an ugly one. As the Noosa Journal reports (they don’t seem to have a web accessible archive, so this issue may vanish soon; here’s a screenshot), the Queensland government is actively suppressing scientific information that highlights the environmental costs of building the damaging dams.
The Beattie Government has ordered the shredding of a vital report used to list the unique Queensland lungfish under Federal environmental laws, according to a world authority on the species, Macquarie University’s Professor Jean Joss. The shredding order follows suppression of the report shortly after it was published, she said.
If the order is carried out, a vital piece of evidence will have been destroyed to support a challenge to the Mary River Dam under Federal Environmental laws.
The suppressed study analyzed the effects of a small weir that was put on the Burnett River, showing that it had a drastic effect on lungfish breeding and recruitment, and predicted that the greater effect of a dam would “reduce recruitment to a Critically Endangered level, at which extinction is assured.”
You know the other side is completely in the wrong when they’re reduced to hiding reality. The Queensland government seems to have adopted the American Republican style of policy making.
Oooh, I love this idea: art prints on a plastic adhesive that you just stick on the wall. They’ve got squid art! Unfortunately, they’ve also got a hefty price, and doubly unfortunately, my wife has this annoying thing called “taste” which precludes me slapping squid up everywhere in my house.
(via the aptly named Squid)
I’m sorry to say that on our last trip to New York, we missed this museum.
Peruse an 1814 sketchbook by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai and eventually you’ll come across a bashful, wide-eyed octopus. You’d never guess that the innocent creature leads a secret life of debauchery. But a few years later, there he is on a woodblock print, still wide-eyed, now presented by Hokusai in a moment of infamous passion—his bulbous head pushed between the legs of a young woman, delivering a rather well-received session of cunnilingis. Hilarious and startling, it’s just one example of the explicit shunga, or “pictures of spring,” in an exhibition at the Museum of Sex surveying four centuries of Japan’s cartoonish pornography.
Next time!
(via 3quarksdaily and Jennifer Ouellette)
