Puttin up a New Link

Off in the sidebar.

http://thisisnthappiness.com/

Interesting and Contemplative Pictures.

Yay octopus!!!!

octopus steals my video camera and swims off with it (while it's Recording) from Victor Huang on Vimeo.

If the octopuses using coconut shells as tools didnt convince you to stop eating them, this totally will! Look how smart he is!

A great invention

This wonderful device will help you avoid all those pesky open container laws we have here in the States... Although I'm sure thats not what the designers were going for over in there in Europe where they can drink everywhere...

This kid rocks

And hes so cute and adorable and ROUND!

Also, I was discussing with my friend Janet that this isnt really a romantic song at all, is it? Its like, oh yeah, its not you, its me, I'm holding you back, but I'll always have a special place in my heart for you while I'm off screwing this other chick. Right? Right.

Yesterday I went to the future and here I am!!

Here is a crazy article about baby universes popping out of old static high-entropy universes, like alpha particles popping out of nuclei. This doesn't seem that far-fetched to me. After all, the whole entropy thing is very interesting. We started out in our universe with very low entropy, everything ordered, and entropy can't help but get higher. So this baby universe idea sort of explains how it got low in the first place, but THEN where did the original static timeless universe come from? So, apparently this Sean Carroll guy is pretty cool. This all jives with my current viewing of the Cosmos series, which is AWESOME.

This sort of reminds me of a drunken conversation I had with a physicist in Vienna. He said anything that goes against entropy is considered to be life. We were arguing about whether viruses are alive. As a biochemist, I sort of see how this is a very convenient argument, but I STILL don't think viruses are alive. They wouldn't be working against entropy if they didn't have any cells full of established life machinery to infect and they would eventually succumb to entropy themselves.

EFFING ADORABLE JAGUAR CUB

THIS IS SO CUTE.




What a little punk.

Jaguars and Panthers are not different species, its just that Panthers have a different color allele that makes them all black, sort of like an opposite-albino. Panthers still have spots though!

Marine Reserve Success!

Researchers found that marine reserves around the world are indeed successful in both raising the number and sizes of fishes within the protected boundary. The same data does not seem to extend to macrofauna, however. The success of any given reserve is also dependent on proximity to large human populations and how the local culture regards law enforcement. Remote areas with little poaching are much more successful in repopulating.


This map shows the locations of protected marine environments that encompass corals. Note the size of the dots is not an indication of the size of the reserves. In some cases, they are very small.

I found this map on THIS page which is a review of the global state of coral reefs from NOAA. I havent read it, but it looks good. By good, I mean comprehensive, not feel-good. Right.

Respect your Elder (Animals)!!

This is a really cool list of animals that live a very long time, including a sponge that can live up to and over 1500 years! One of the other cooler stories is that there are whales with 200-year old ivory spear tips in their skin that are still swimming around!!

Screw Responsibly, Save a Manatee!

I volunteered to distribute condoms for The Center for Biological Diversity's Endangered Species Condoms project. The project aims to raise awareness about the correlation between human overpopulation and the rising extinction rate on our planet. Apparently 50% of births in the United States are unplanned and the Center also is promoting education to women, who ultimately make these decisions about their bodies. I think the project is mostly a cute way to introduce the idea to the nation's social consciousness, that overpopulation is indeed a problem. We are on the way to hit 8 billion people by 2020, after all. And the sixth mass eukaryotic extinction is undeniably caused by humans. Not only do we encroach upon animals environments to live, but also to produce food and items and maintain our excess level of consumption.

The animals featured are the polar bear, snail darter, spotted owl, American burying beetle, jaguar, and the coquí guajón rock frog!!

This Man Should Get a Raise

Funniest Thing I've Seen in a Long Time

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Unusually Large Snowstorm
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

It's dark and its only getting darker!! This proves Global Darkening!

I love this webcomic.

It can't be good for the sun.

Fishes Use Gills for Ion Exchange, Oxygen Secondary!

I stumbled upon (not literally) this Science commentary that says that fish may have evolved their gills initially as agents for ion exchange. The researchers, and I'm not sure how animal friendly this is, put fish into little boxes that separated their back ends from their front ends and measured ion levels and oxygen levels in the separate compartments. Little fishes are able to exchange ions and oxygen through their thin skin, and the idea was that as the fish age, the gills would start to exchange ions and oxygen faster than the back end of the fish. The gills exchanged ions earlier in development than oxygen, so the researchers are saying that this indicates that they were evolved for this function. This is not really a very compelling argument and the researchers are talking about doing future work with gene expression to see which set of machinery is expressed in development first, but still... That doesnt quite make the argument either, because when something appears in development earlier isnt necessarily correlated with earlier evolution.

It is apparently hard to take pictures of baby fishes because there are no good pictures out there. Fish gills were too gross and drawings are boring. Here is another hit I got with baby fishes though :)

I'm Baaaaaack!!!

Back from Europe, jet lagged, not really so bad though, just have an old person's sleep schedule, early to bed early to rise.

Miss the grocery stores all over the place and every one of them had fresh cheap bread. Nice to not be living out of a bag though. Probably miss Prague the most. There's just a feeling about the city that gets to you, or maybe it was just appealing because it was cheaper. There is an honesty about the city and the people, maybe.

Current thoughts about grad school involve QUITTING. I feel more serious about it this time. We'll see.