Creek Running North has a guest blogger this week, and she has asked for inspirational stories to help her get started. So here’s a little motivational tale from my undergraduate days about my love for animals, and how I learned to overcome self-doubt and appreciate myself.
Once upon a time, there was teeny-weeny adorable little fish called Paedocypris. Then, one day, a population of bulldozers invaded their habitat, and they couldn’t compete, and they died.
The good news, though, is that a new species of Paedocypris has been discovered.
Amirrudin said the new discovery was significant because it was the only undisturbed habitat of this species. “There are still thousands of the fish in that peat swamp. My worry is that this habitat will end up like the one in Bukit Merah, disturbed by the construction of a road that killed all the specimens,” he said.
Maybe we need to classify bulldozers as an invasive species, one that can be dismantled on sight.
(via Marcus)
Just a quick update: you may remember Linda Schrenko, the creationist and Georgia state school superintendent who was indicted for embezzlement (or you may not; she is a rather minor figure in the creationism wars, notable only for blatant corruption on top of the usual blatant stupidity). She pled guilty and has been sentenced to 8 years in prison.
I never heard of this before: there exists a rare, giant, albino earthworm in the scrub prairies of the Palouse. It grows to be 3 feet long, and smells like lilies.
I scarcely believed it myself—that’s also Sasquatch country out there, you know—so I had to look it up. The Giant Palouse Earthworm (Driloleirus americanus) is real. They’re so rare, though, that one hasn’t been spotted in almost 20 years…until last year. A new specimen was found, and unfortunately, fixed in formaldehyde right away. I thought this quote was a little sad.
Unlike the celebration touched off by last year’s sighting in Arkansas of the ivory-billed woodpecker—a bird not seen in 60 years and thought to be extinct—the giant earthworm Sanchez-de Leon found last year already has been consigned to a jar of formaldehyde.
“Realistically, the giant Palouse earthworm is a lot less charismatic than a giant woodpecker,” said James “Ding” Johnson, head of the University of Idaho’s Department of Plant, Soil and Entomology Sciences.
My apologies to GrrlScientist, but I’d much rather see a giant white worm than some boring old bird.
On a warm and lazy holiday afternoon, determined to avoid any exertion and relax in my easy chair, I was contemplating something easy on the brain: beauty. I have no idea what makes something beautiful, but I could at least approach the subject empirically and catalog those things and experiences the I have found beautiful…so I put together a list. It’s nothing definitive, it’s merely personal, a set of memories of moments where I have been awestruck with beauty.
I’m not a particularly attractive person. I’m your typical middle-aged schlub, someone you wouldn’t look at twice on the street. But I have a secret: there’s a part of me that is spectacularly beautiful, and every once in a while I get to take it out and admire it.
Confirming my obvious un-Americanism, let me praise two things: Godlessness and Socialism. And here, watch a video that ties the two together.
(Actually, I’m not against America. I’m just for a godless America that cares about the welfare of its citizens.)
If you’re getting tired of the Yearly Kos news, have no fear, it’ll all be over in two weeks. If not, Matt Bai has an article on it in the NY Times. It’s The Future!
I believe in making things easy for my stalkers, so here’s where you can find me in the near future.
The rest of the time, I’m hoping I can just stay quietly in Morris and get some work done.
Here’s a applet that traverses the html of a web page and turns it into a pretty graph. There is an online explanation and examples, too—and here’s Pharyngula.
The dots are color coded specific classes of html tags. That red flower at the top, for instance, is a table—the Friday Random Ten turned into a kind of carnation.
(via BioCurious)
