Let us take a moment to contemplate my “most viewed” flickr photo of all time:
Hmm. That’s me five years ago with a giant, itchy spider bite on my chin. If you google “spider bites” (without quotes), you’ll see me on page 6. I recommend careful consideration before looking at the first 5 [...]
Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
My friend Theresa is doing a 24-hour video game marathon as part of the Sarcastic Gamer Extra Life fundraiser, which benefits Texas Children’s Hospital.
The fundraising efforts end tomorrow. (“Computer: day of the week?” “Thursday”.)[1] That’s Friday, people! Theresa only has one day to make up the last $292 to meet her $2000 goal! [...]
So look, I have been thinking about starting a web comic, but I have been feeling concerned about how my sense of humor is so weird that it’s probably not even funny to a lot of people, and I’ve sort of made my peace with that– and I also always end up thinking about XKCD [...]
Here is a photo of a spider weaving her web:
I took it yesterday morning on the way to work. I caught her in the act, carefully dancing along the spokes of her web, pulling and touching her spinnerets to the proper places. I wonder if she needs all eight legs to do it [...]
I went to the Seattle Aquarium yesterday and was awed and amazed. My friend Faith went with me, who somehow faithfully remembers all the marine biology things I learned once upon a time. I couldn’t even remember what sea urchins were called, which made me sad.
I made a tiny montage of some [...]
My virus is raging still, but I think I’m going to go to work tomorrow, because it’s raging less and I don’t want to have to apply for sick leave. I’ll beg a mask from the lab or something.
When I’m sick, I like thinking about what’s going on in my body. It’s basically [...]
I noticed that one of the sketches I posted to flickr (again, part of the sketch-a-day project) had recently gained a lot of view hits. The hits all seemed to fall on August 7th and 8th, which coincided with the announcement that CERN was going to begin testing of the Large Hadron Collider the [...]
From Nature Biotechnology 26, 721 (2008) News:
UK passes hybrids
Nuala Moran
The UK Parliament has voted to allow the generation of human-animal hybrid embryos, creating the most liberal legal framework anywhere in the world for embryonic stem cell research. The move confirms that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority acted within its jurisdiction when it gave permission [...]
I have this compulsive need to organize all my plant photos into sets based on which botanical family they belong to. My list of plant families keeps growing and growing and is turning entirely unmanageable on flickr. (You can see the group of plant family sets here.)
I’ve never formally studied taxonomy, and I [...]
I spotted a Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) in the front yard yesterday. It was rooting around for something at the base of a shrub, in broad daylight. I grabbed my camera and eased the door open very slowly to get a photo. Even though I was quiet, the possum heard me and [...]