Biomes Blog

Entry #75

Happy Birthday Kelsey (8), Justin (7), Jared (5) and Nicholas (6).

Cool Site of the Week: Crazy Rabbit.

The industrious clock.

Mapquest for Frodo Baggins.

(Can you tell it's late and I'm tired yet?)

Bonus Comic: (Click on it. It makes it big.)

Entry #74

Happy Birthday Michael (5), Connor (5) and Alec (6).

Mustang Bobby has a very good post about how some people read a bit too much into Tolkien.  It’s just a story.

Pop Culture Clash: Inspired by the movie Deliverance, here’s a silly take on “Deuling Banjos” starring a squirrel, a penquin, a bunch of pigs and the Dukes of Hazard.

Whoever came up with this is a genius.  (I know, I'm a bit late with this since we are now down to two four.

To honor our week from Hades with our shark crisis, here's a great site about them.

Entry #73

Happy Birthday Brien (8) (name not mispelled), who also was the first person to pet our new shark.  It took three days, around 40 phone calls and hundreds of miles on the odometer, but we did replace our shark.  I got it into the newly set up shark pool 2 hours before our first of 7 parties this weekend started.

It's a different species than what we normally keep.  We usually have smooth dogfish but this one is a spiny dogfish.  She's about three feet long.

As a bonus we had the NOAA Fisheries Aquarium donate two dozen baby chain dogfish.  I've wanted one of these for a long time but they are found in very deep water and do not survive when put into captivity.  These where captive bred so are completely adjusted to the warmer water and lack of pressure found at sea level. 

Entry #72

Ok. I'm getting swamped with emails about yesterday's post. What Crises?

We have tons of animals at Biomes to learn about. Fish, horseshoe crabs, starfish, lizards, snakes, turtles, seahorses, eels and on and on. But the big draw is our sharks. Because we aren't open to the public we can have our scheduled groups hold, touch and pet many of these creatures, including the sharks, without harm to the animals. And it works. We haven't lost a single shark in the seven years I've been keeping them.

Visitors often ask why I'm so strict about food, drinks, hand sanitizers etc. not being allowed at the center (or in the case of birthday parties, not being allowed to wander around the building with these). To understand this imagine replacing your lungs with a fish's gills. If you drop a bottle of bleach on the floor it might smell a bit, but you leave the room, clean it up while holding your breath, or whatever. But for a fish a drop of bleach in the water is breathed in. It's like pouring it into your lungs.

Bottom line is something got into the shark tank this week (I'm sure not intentionally, but you never know). We don't know what it was, but on Tuesday they refused to eat and Wednesday morning we came in to find all three of them dead. This is February so the timing couldn't be worse to replace them.

We have at least four commercial boats out today with requests to hold any sharks they catch for us. Our boat, (actually "ace collector" Dan's) is in dry dock so we can't go out ourselves. Rebecca, Elizabeth and I spent the entire day yesterday emptying, sterilizing and refilling the shark tank (it's a 700 gallon tank, which means we moved 1400 gallons of water by hand).

So, for the next two days I sit by the cell phone waiting for news of a shark catch. Biomes I is loaded with pails, 30 gallon storage bins, air pumps, and anything else I might need to hold and transport anything our friends might happen to catch.

In the meantime, here is the lobster cam.

So, wish us luck, and our sharks' last requests were that you vote Democrat next November.

Entry #71

The Marieville School (N. Providence) started their One-Month Aquarium Program.

Major crises at Biomes today. No time or inclination to blog. Hopefully I'll have an update and good news tomorrow or Friday.

So, until then Play: Escape!

Entry #70

Tuesday's Trivia: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to a planet. Which one isn't coming back?

The Coggshall School (Newport) and the Ellen Hathaway School (New Bedord, MA) began their One-Month Aquarium Programs today. New Bedford played an important role in the underground railroad.

Every single school teacher should be reading this article. Unbelievable.

I mentioned the other day that my 14 year old son Graham’s been fooling around with audio using “Sound Studio”. He wrote and recorded some really funny songs for what he calls “Chimpunk Productions” (think 1960’s Bob Dylan with vocals and harmonica, but in an Alvin and the Chipmunk’s voice), which I’ll try to post an example of soon. My favorite is one is called “String”, with the lyrics that include:

“...and then my string landed on the president’s head. By now I’m wishing that I was dead. I ran, ran as fast as I could, the president knew that he should, send the secret service after me. Send the secret service after me”.

Anyway, he couldn’t get the tune out of his head all night and asked me what the word for that was. I couldn’t remember, but a little googling gave us “earworm”.

Entry #69

We started a "House for Hermit Crab" program at the Providence Hebrew Day Academy today (for my mother's first grade class).

Ouch!

I know this is old, but watch this great Honda ad.
And here is a hilarious parody (from England, of course) that took me forever to find.  I saw this months ago but all the links to this around the web bring up error messages.  I finally found it, although it took me half the afternoon, so you better laugh.  (It's actually an ad for some sort of "118" telephone service, or something, in Great Britain.)

Click here if you think you have bugs crawling all over you.

Amen, Kevin.

Whenever I have trouble falling asleep I just try counting sheep.

Search Results: Someone found the Biomes Blog by searching “Conclusion in reading on The Gingerbread Man in first grade”.

Albino Monday: Squirrel.

Entry #68

Ok, I feel like I'm in a dark, silly mood so after getting the birthday notices out of the way, lets have some fun.

Happy Birthday John (5), Autumn (5), Zachary (5) and Marissa (6).

Movie Etiquette:
Note: I stole this from Soloner’s Blog. Only a total geek would laugh at this. (I’m still laughing.)
What NOT to do during "Return of the King".

Movie Reviews:  So I watched “The Princess Bride” again last night (for the 6th time). Here’s my review:  This should say it all:  It is “inconceivable” how funny this movie is. 
Then I watched “Seven”.  This is the best disturbing movie ever made and anyone who thinks that Brad Pitt can’t act hasn’t seen this. (Not for the kids! Dark, dark, dark.)  The ending will knock you off your kiester.

Play:  A game for girls. Throw rocks at the boys.

Seriously, a few years ago a chinese restaurant in town was closed by health inspectors because they were serving seagull in place of chicken.  This flash animation reminded me of that.  Apologies to Harry Chapin.

Puppy house-breaking tip #23:  Use old newspapers instead of a laptop.

Entry #67

Happy Birthday Evan (6) and Terrell (5).

We do about 300 birthday parties per year at Biomes.  You’ll notice on the birthday party section of our website that we have a rule stating “no pinatas”.  Blindfolds, swinging sticks and glass aquariums just don’t mix.  But there is a humanitarian reason for this rule as well.

Want to get depressed? See the Population Teller.

Dept of Educashun: A first rate primer on the Evolution of Life on Earth, from the master.

Click here to watch a girl being drawn.

I read a study that said that toddlers who cannot yet read see an arrow in the Federal Express logo.  Here’s the logo.  Can you find the arrow? (if not, ask a two year old to point it out.)

Entry #66

Buuurrpp
Graham's been fooling around with audio files to go with his movies, so I got him to make up an ad for the Biomes Center. The first take didn't go so well. (That's me on the right.  Apparently Graham ignores my receding hairline. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

I’ve had a cable connection for so long now I’ve forgotten how much I hate this sound.

Try out the “scribbler”.

Rusty Redux: In Entry #10 I linked to a quicktime movie of Rusty the narcoleptic dog.  As the owner of a dog with epilepsy (we woke up to her having another mild seizure this morning), I don’t know why I laugh at this every time I see it. Here he is again (drumroll please), the one and only Rusty!

Entry #65

Astronomy News: Coming in June 2004 is the Transit of Venus.

Bookmark this and check in once in a while. Neat stuff.

The Westwood YMCA (Coventry) visited us this morning with a big group of 50 kids.  We also gave a tour to a small private group of children and their parents.

Personality test: Which sea creature are you?
Turns out I'm a jellyfish.

Graham took the test and he's a fish. (His quote: "This is about as accurate as a fortune cookie.")

Chris, at Interesting Times has this to say today:

On the bright side
A lot of the campaign material that Dean generated says "Dean for America" not "Dean for President". The former is still true even if the latter is no longer operative, so you can keep on wearing those buttons and displaying those bumper stickers.

I’ll be keeping my Dean sticker on Biomes 1, but I may add a few others.

Entry #64

Happy Birthday Emily (8). We also had a small day care center visit us this morning.

Non-animal of the Week: Eelgrass.
The most important plant in Narragansett Bay is eelgrass. Most "plants" found in the ocean are algae (seaweed), which are not true plants. Eelgrass is a real plant and even produces underwater flowers and seed pods. It is vital to many of the animals found at biomes, especially seahorses, pipefish and flounders. Learn all about it here.

Ouch.

Koufax Awards. It’s sort of like the blog Oscars. For those of you that follow the right blogs, meaning of course, left blogs, some of which are found over on the right, the results are in. My choices for "Best Blog" and “Most Humorous Post” won. Turkee. heh.

Entry #63

Why there is no longer a British Empire:  This is an intersection in London, England.

Fascism alert. The FBI is now monitoring your internet use.

In "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams writes that the universe was created by a giant space goat. Guess that explains this.

Posted because it’s my blog and I just felt like it:

Red VW Microbus, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction.

Play the Haggis Hurl.

Entry #62

We had an amazing 114 visitors stop by for our open hours today.

Happy Birthday Lajhon (5).  Biomes will be closed tomorrow so we can get caught up on some animal maintenance projects.

Today’s Odd Site: This is a microscopic study of a cheeseburger.

The jumping frog. Thought to be extinct, the California Red-Legged Frog has been rediscovered. It is thought that this is the animal that inspired Mark Twain to write the ""The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Play: Find it.

Today in History:  In 1918 Lithuania gained its independence.

Albino Monday: Penguin

Entry #61

Happy Birthday Michael (6), Brenden (6) and Alex (10).

Reminder: Open hours tomorrow from 11:00-2:00.

Cool Site of the Week: This is just too amazing. It starts with a picture of the universe and then each image is magnified by ten. Check it out and see where it leads. Its called Power of Ten.  (You can slow down or speed up the slide show using the bar beneath the picture.)

A Dictionary of Sea Terms.

I found this on a blog called “Indigo Ocean”.  It’s a colorized electron microscope image of grains of dandelion pollen landing on the skin surface of an insect.

Mount Everest Panorama.

Bonus Comic: (Clickity-click)