Biomes Blog

Entry #167

Pet Corner: Adopt a useless blob.  Mine's green!

Now, I know a lot about marine life, but the fact that an oyster has an “area of pseudofaecal rejection” is news to me.

This guy is golfing his way across Mongolia.  (My golf league was cancelled today because of the holiday and I ain't happy about it.)

I like you.

Stuff You Should Know: Onomatopoeia.

Here’s Toby Maguire in a scene from the upcoming “Spider Man” sequel.

Albino Monday:  Hedgehog.

Entry #166

Happy Birthday Jack (7), Shayna (10) and Derek (5).

Cool Site of the Week: Monterey Undersea Canyon. (Thanks Katherine Kathleen.)

Here’s a water balloon falling in slow motion. But it doesn’t break.

Say Hello to the Worst Page on the Web. And don’t forget to click da froggie.

You know, they could have given this girl a really hard time. I’m glad they didn’t.

A lesson in optimism: The cardboard cutout zoo in the middle of a blighted city.

Entry #165

Image, Maru...you know the drill.

Happy Birthday Alec (6), Marissa (7) and Brandon (8).

From dKos:

Cooking with Biomes: How to make monkey pops.

Click here to purchase an $1800 kitchen sink.

Search Results: Someone found the Biomes Blog by googling “Kid Rock Biomes”. That would be me.

Don’t bite dad.

Entry #164

Another stupid quiz:

Running away?  You yellow . . .

What Monty Python Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Stuff You Should Know:  The history of the paper clip.

Hey, I’m a busy guy but I’m an ace at multitasking.  I use this to write my blog will cruising down I-95.

This is odd.  But, I bet once you start it you’ll watch it till the end.

Play! Feed Fullmo.

 

Entry #163

I bought a dog the other day...I named him Stay. It's fun to call him... "Come here, Stay! Come here, Stay!" Now he just ignores me and keeps typing. -- Steven Wright

They’re kidding here, right?

The rest of the fourth graders from the Fogarty School (Glouster) visited Biomes this morning. Rebecca did an outdoor field trip (and taught the kids how to dissect a clam and a fish) on site at the Rocky Hill School (E. Greenwich).

Meanwhile, I killed all our goatfish. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Good thing I'm the boss or I would have fired me. I bleached the decor in their tank so it would look nice but didn't let it dry long enough. Grrrrrrr.

Can you find the dog in this picture?

So, now that you’ve seen and heard my incredible “Bohemian Rhapsody” discovery from Entry #134, sing along to it on this online Karaoke site. Don’t do it in public though cause you’ll never hit Freddy Murcury’s high notes and you will sound ridiculous.

Attention Homeowners: Help this realtor kill bugs.

Entry #162

Entry #160 update: Busted!  My son, Graham, has threatened to post a comment saying “Dad’s lying.  His iMac doesn’t have a wide screen.” 
I’ve banned his isp.

Also, he's working on his latest movie and is learning how to dub.  Here's Ike channelling Sean Connery (1.5 MB) from "The Last Crusade".

Holy Smokes.  Today’s long, must read for all the grownups.  As Atrios said: Wow.

Animal of the Week:  The Yak.

Seriously.  This guy has a website dedicated to shoelaces.  He even has a knot named after him.

Cooking with Biomes: Twinkyhenge.

Play!  Bad Scrabble Hands.

Entry #161: Thus Ends Franklin Fest

Franklin is one of only three people on U.S. paper currency who was not president. The other two: Alexander Hamilton is on the $10 bill (he was the first Secretary of the Treasury) and Salmon Chase is on the $10,000 bill (he was the Treasury Secretary under Abraham lincoln). I've never seen a picture of Salmon Chase, so if anyone has a $10,000 bill please mail it to Biomes. I'd love to have a look at it. Thus ends "Franklin Fest" (round of applause).

Search Results: Someone found the biomes blog by googling “Rhodesian Ridgeback + snake bite”. I finally got my dog back from the vet today. She's worse than when I dropped her off last week and a total of 7 vets (including 4 neurology specialists) are completely stumped.

Welcome to Jon’s World ‘O Squirrels.

These online quizzes are just so useless. Yeah, I’ve been guilty of including them. So sue me. But here’s one right up my alley. My Results:

Oh, what could be better than this? That was the original track from 1975. Here's a live version from 1984. This is a studio track with a wierd clicking noise that turns out to be his sleeve buttons hitting the wood guitar as he plays. Did I mention I'm kinda sorta a Dylan fan?

Who in their right mind would use another person’s sweater as a kleenex?

Oh, yeah.

Bonus comic:

Entry #160

This is my computer, for those of you who care.

My favorite color is white.

Jean went to the Joyful Noise Preschool with her bucket of critters this morning and Rebecca hosted a group of third graders from the Hugh Cole School (Warren) at the center. Do you sometimes wake up in the morning and think, "Blast, my fridge doesn't look like a cow"?

Movie Reviews. I won’t bore anyone with long-winded movie reviews (but you can check out my personal Netflix page here).  I’ll just use a 1-5 scale and leave it at that from here on. Bridget Jones’s Diary: Although I think it has a superfluous “s” in the title, I am man enough (cough) to admit to a good “chick flick” when I see one, and this is one.  4.2 stars out of 5. I also rented the movie “Pi-Faith in Chaos” and it was pretty amazing.  Bonus points for shooting this in a very grainy black and white.  I give it 3.14 stars out of 5.

This is what Pi is. This is what it isn’t. Here’s how to have “Pi Day” at your school. Memorize Pi to one million decimal places.  Quiz tomorrow.

We still have openings for most of our summer camp weeks. The greatest trilogy this side of Star Wars has its own blog. Albino Monday: Prairie Dog.

Entry #159

Happy Birthday Krishnan (5) and Evan (10).

Palme d’Moore. Can’t wait to see this.

Cool Site of the Week: The “Infinite Cat Project” is Mike Stanfill’s latest. He’s the guy who brought us the “Elements Song”.

Ben again...
Ben Franklin had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals. (from the Franklin Institute Online.)

Search Results: All day long someone has been returning to the Biomes Blog via Yahoo while searching for “albino cicada”. Stop it. It’s dead already.

Cooking with Biomes: Celebrity recipes.

Here's a mousetrap:

Entry #158

And more on Ben....
During Franklin's time most people heated their homes by burning wood in a fireplace. This was not only dangerous, but very wasteful since most of the heat went right up the chimney. Ben created an iron grate stove that burned less wood and was much safer to use. This invention is now called a Franklin stove. An added plus in his design was that the iron grate in the stove could also be used for cooking.

Timewaster of the Week:  Imagination.

Darn, I missed this one yesterday: Happy Birthday Rachel Carson.

Introducing the dancing penguin.  Learn all about the penguins of North America.

Search Results:  Someone (I think it was the editor of Time magazine) just found the Biomes Blog by googling “Dessert Biomes”.  Yum.

Play! The Runaway Train.

Entry #157

I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it. -- Steven Wright

The Kingston Hill Academy (Wakefield) visited us today and Rebecca did some in-service presentations for the Armstrong School way up in Westboro, MA.

Here’s a list of the best 1,000 movies of all time. Rosemary’s Baby is the fourth best movie ever made? I notice #115 is Cat Ballou. Check this one out. It’s the funniest western ever (if you don’t count Blazing Saddles).

Geography Class: The Grand Canyon Panoramas.

So, all those silly what-muppet-are-you-type tests floating around the web get a bit tiring (yes, I link them often). Here’s one that puts them all in proper perspective.
For what it’s worth I’m a: "1.gif"

Meet your hostess Holly and her parasite friends.

Stuff You Should Know: How to hypnotize a chicken.

Here's a really big Tatonka.

Entry #156

Long time readers know about my epileptic Rhodesian Ridgeback, Ngazi (which is Swahili for "money pit bull"). Her condition has really deteriorated the past few weeks so she's spending the day at a canine neurologist (yes, they exist and they are as expensive as they sound) for an MRI and spinal tap (which, by the way, is the second funniest movie ever made).
So, while I sit here waiting for the vet's call, might as well get my day's blogging done.
(Update: She'll be there for a few days. Updated update: About a week. That giant sucking sound you hear is my bank account.)

More on Ben.....
Ben Franklin and the Gulf Stream Current. After doing more research, it seems this claim has been a bit overblown. Franklin did create the first chart of the Gulf Stream Current, but the current itself was actually discovered by Ponce de Leon in the 1500's, although he had no idea of its exact flow. Also, the Creek Indians, in Georgia, knew of the current hundreds of years before Europeans.
(Note: the article I link to below says "Seminole" indians. Seminoles did not exist until a small group of Creeks migrated to Florida after the Revolutionary War and renamed themselves.)
While US Postmaster, Franklin noticed that ships carrying mail from America to Europe took several days less than ships going from Europe to America. Researching the reason why led him to discover that the Gulf Stream was well known by merchant ship captains and whalers. Read the whole story.

Spacewander. This takes about 12 minutes to watch but you don’t have to do anything like click or steer. Just sit back and relax. It’s not like you have anything better to do.

Play! ...with time here.

Entry #155

True Story:
So, how cool is this? I got home from work early today and decided to surf around a bit before diving into my paperwork for the day. As I’m reading the mighty bartcop page the phone rings. “Hey Mark. It’s Bart.” (I’m helping him out a little with a bit of Air America Radio ads he’s trying to buy.)
We talked for about a half hour. Nice guy. Too bad he’s stranded out in Oklahoma somewhere.

One of my stops today was at a school in Franklin, MA. I noticed on the sign entering town it says that Franklin is the home of our first public library.
Update.

The town of Franklin was named after Benjamin Franklin. Among his many achievements include the discovery of the Gulf Stream Current, the bifocal lens, the odometer and the Franklin stove.

Animal of the Week: Short-spined brittle star.
These Echinoderms are one of the odder animals we have. They are very shy and spend most of the time hidden, but when they move they flail their arms about as they crawl along the bottom. The movement of each arm is like a snake, which give these animals their other name, Serpent Star.
The more common term Brittle Star is used because they can break off an arm at will. The arm then regenerates in about five weeks. When an arm breaks off it will crawl around the tank for up to two weeks before it stops moving.

Blue State/Pink State: Here are the two presidential blogs side by side.

Whatever.

Entry #154

Happy Birthday Eliza (5).

The Kingston Hill Academy (Wakefield) had a field trip to Biomes today.

Mount St. Helens erupted 24 years ago today.

The dream analyzer. Quackery at it’s finest. People who believe this garbage have their palms read as well.

Dept. of Educashun: Volcano World.

Fun with Google: Right Arrow.

Stuff You Should Know: This is an utterly complete geek’s guide to the meaning of the names in Tolkien.

I just hate it when my teeth fall out while skydiving.

Bonus Comic:

Entry #153

Golf league starts this afternoon.  Man, it's about time.

Cooking with Biomes:  Chilihead.

The do-it-yourself deity.  Just play for fun.  I can’t comment cause then I’d get all kinds of hate mail and I’d have to delete comments and, well, it would just be more trouble than it’s worth.  Lighten up.

Stuff You Should Know:  The U.S 100 years ago.

Introducing another stupid quiz:  What country are you?
My results.  I’m the United Nations.  Which isn’t even a country.

Pet Corner: Why I don’t own a Macaw.

Albino Monday:  Zebra.