Biomes Blog

Entry #473

"The early bird gets the worm; the second mouse gets the cheese." -- Steven Wright

One of my favorite clients is the Steer Farm School (Pascoag) who visit every year and then invite our staff to join them for a buffet lunch at the Peking Moon. The food is pretty bad but the looks on diner's faces as forty-two second graders file into the restaurant is priceless. At least it went better than last year, though.

“Thoughts from Woody” (Harrelson) is pretty good. Kind of reminded me of Dylan’s “Last thoughts on Woody Guthrie”, and not just because of the name.

Pet Corner: Our friend, the head louse. And Play! a remove the nit game.

Creation Myth: Aboriginal Australian.

Power of ten. This is worth a few moments of your time.

Buy your extra brain-in-a-tank here.
And if you ever need to ship a real one for some reason, this is the procedure.

View the trailer for the upcoming Wallace and Gromit movie.

Because blog posts get sad when there are no pictures, here's a tarsier.

Entry #472

If you get your news from the corporate media, you probably aren’t aware that there was a very large oil spill in Alaska last weekend. Funny isn’t it?

Animal of the Week: Termites. It's what's for dinner.

Creation Myth: Huron.

What type of Sixties person are you? (via barkbarkwoofwoof.)

You are a Folkie. Good for you.

Now we’re cookin’: A tasteful knife holder you can proudly display in your kitchen.

Blinkorama, the “caught you blinking” blog.

This is the google result when Dan Quayle tries to learn about twisters.

Bonus Comic: Calvin on Prozac.

Entry #471

Stuff You Should Know: How hair coloring works.




Watch an astronaut pop a water balloon in zero gravity.

Joementum speaks: “We are a country based on a vision, a belief in creationism.” Connecticut, hang your heads in shame. (via Bad Attitudes.)

Creation Myth: Lakota.

Attention Californians. If I meet one of you I’m going to box your ears, you dopes.

Search Results: Someone found the Biomes Blog by googling “James Wolcott mauled by bear”. It brought them here.

Check out Philosopher Superheroes such as “Dangerous” Descartes.

Entry #470

Watch a very impressive little Batman movie made from legos. This was done by students at Dave’s Movie School in Orlando. All of a sudden Graham wants to move to Florida.

A blog about nothing but elephants.

Happy Birthday Joey (8).

A little piece of Dylan: You Changed My Life (1982).

I linked to the “Fox Blocker”, a device that screws into your TV and blocks the Fox Fake News Network, months ago. Now the inventor is getting death threats from the American Taliban wingnuts. This, along with the threats on those involved in that absurd Shiavo case, is what happens when you elect incompetent extremists to office and have cable news outfits serving as propaganda shills for them. And the world shakes with fear while laughing at us all.

Would you cover your car with 200 pounds of cut-up CD’s?

Albino Monday: Deer.

Entry #469

Now we’re cookin’ fer Jesus: Easter Story Cookies.

Put the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door and turn the oven OFF.  Give each child a piece of tape and seal the oven door.  Explain that Jesus' tomb was sealed.  Read Matthew 27:65-66. Then GO TO BED!  Explain that they may feel sad to leave the cookies in the oven overnight.  Jesus' followers were in despair when the tomb was sealed.  Read John 16:20 and 22.

The Lord of the Peeps: The Fellowship of the Peep.

Entry #468

Happy Birthday Ryan (6), Robert (8) and Mya (5).

Today’s light reading assignment: The Books of Bokonon, as seen in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.

Our local IMAX theater has invited Biomes to give a presentation at their opening night of the new doc Sharks 3D. We’re still working out the details but unfortunately it looks like they haven’t given us enough time to schedule them in. Updates if anything happens.

Stuff You Should Know: How to screw a bolt in space.

Creation Myth: Chinese.

Timewaster of the Week: Build a freaky frank.

Via Amy, help the humane society fight the seal hunt. This is still going on?

Entry #467

Today in History: On this day in 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occured.

Where does the time go? It’s been 16 years this week since Joe crashed the Exxon-Valdez. And we celebrate the anniversary by opening up ANWR to drilling. Nice.

Check out these really cool tip-toeing octopus videos (link via Pharyngula).

Play! Scrabble online.

The new Star Wars Episode III trailer. Hopefully Lucus gets this one right.

A public service announcement from Freddie the Dog: Learning proper manners and Great Dog Quotations.

Creation Myth: Mayan.

Friday Echinoderm Blogging: Pink Sea Star.

Entry #466

"Monday is a terrible way to spend 1/7th of your life" --Steven Wright

Someone in the real world asked why I don't do my daily "who visited Biomes" routine any more. First of all, I no longer link to this blog from the Biomes site. And second, it's boring as hell. But here's a typical weekday, based on today's schedule:
Jean hosted an early morning private tour for a group of German exchange students. She then headed out to the Hathaway School in New Bedford (MA) and the Groton Jr High School (Warwick) to take care of their One-Month Aquarium programs, and then off to the Washington Oak School (Coventry) to maintain the year-long aquarium we keep there. Meanwhile Rebecca and I hosted a field trip for a group of 53 fourth graders from the Garden City School (Cranston), with the help of our Met School intern Michaela. Nathan (5) had an afternoon birthday party and Rebecca did part three of her five-part afterschool in-class marine life series for the Dunn's Corner School (Westerly). I also shipped out the last 1200 flyers for our upcoming summer camp programs.
See why I don't do this any longer?

Forty things that only happen in movies.

Creation Myth: Scandanavian

Pet Corner: Dog shoes.

This guy’s “Save Toby” campaign has so far netted him over $19,000. Man, I wish I thought of that. Of course, I’m dishonest so if I didn’t reach my goal I’d just pretend to eat him and find the little guy a good home. Or I’d feed him to Reggie. Either way.

Entry #465

Animal of the Week: Chain Dogfish.
This gorgeous fish is actually a member of the cat shark family. It lives in very deep water, sometimes as far down as 2000 feet. Ours (pictured on the left) just turned one years old. Twenty-four of them were given to us as newborn pups (yes, baby sharks are called "pups") by a NOAA research lab. We have twenty-three left, one of them having died of a skeletal deformity a few months after hatching. Like most cat sharks, they are oviparous, or egg laying. Females lay small egg cases, called Mermaid's Purses, and leave the young to fend for themselves after they hatch seven or eight months later. Graham has made a movie of our dogfish, although the lighting is a little off since we keep them in a tank lit only by red bulbs. Being deepwater fish their eyes are very sensitive to light. We tried using a spotlight but it didn't come out quite like we expected.

First graders from the Rhodes School (Cranston) visited Biomes for a field trip this morning.

Becoming Obi-Wan. For Star Wars buffs, this is a nice little mini-doc on Ewan McGregor's work in Episode III. Interesting trivia; McGregor's uncle played Wedge "look at the size of that thing" Antilles in the original trilogy. Uninteresting trivia; Wedge is the only pilot to have survived the attacks on both Death Stars.

Creation Myth: Norse. (Yes, many more to follow.)

Now we’re cookin’: Squirrel supreme.

Tbogg is the funniest guy on the net. But he’ll also break your heart.

Entry #464

Here is a gallery of deserted farms.

Internet 101: A guide to flaming.

Search Results: Someone found the Biomes Blog by yahooing “America white frog”. It brought them here.

Here’s the history (and irony) of those yellow ribbon car magnets.

This is informative and pretty depressing. It’s called Blog of Death.

So, for this story I finally broke down and got myself an account at Salon.com. Remember watergate. It’s not the crime, it's the coverup.

Have you tried Balut? The worst part is picking the embryonic feathers from between your teeth afterwards.

Entry #463

This is all I'll link to or say about this absurd Schiavo issue. Once again the media has the circus they crave, the republican politicians turn out to be a bunch of self-serving hypocrites, the left is making sense and the wingnuts are wrong and deluded, as usual. Well, ok. I'll link to this Dailykos story too. That is all.

Dept. of Educashun: A brief history of Hitler.

Here's a tiny car. And a tiny house.

A little piece of Dylan: A Satisfied Mind (1980).

So, you think this guy got the job he wanted at Pepsi? (from Prank Letters.)

Stuff You Should Know: The Hierarchy of Candy.

The Complete and Utter Idiot's Guide to Making a Baloney Sandwich

OK, now you're ready to start making a baloney and cheese sandwich. Open the Miracle Whip. Open it. Twist the lid off of the jar. What do you mean it won't come off? Twist the other direction. There ya go!

Albino Monday: Soft-shell Turtle.

Entry #462

Happy Birthday Arin (8) and Thomas (8).

Stuff You Should Know: A nautilus design won this year's international snow sculpture competition.

Guess My Name. I was unbelievably bad at this game.

Cool Site of the Week: Solemates: The century in shoes. Try out the “dial a decade” feature.

Out of all the Star Wars characters to choose from, what 80’s kid would have picked the Ewok underoos?

Space image of the day.

Entry #461

Ant tattoos are cool. Neck spikes are not.

What’s your Southern Zodiac sign? I’m a Butter Bean and apparently I should have nothing to do with Moonpies.

Happy Birthday Rowan (5), Sheila (6) and Collin (6).

Mr. Magoo goes to the World Bank. This administration is such an embarassment.

Timewaster of the Week: The Flea Circus.

Check out “Old Tin Can”.
It’s a song from 2001 edited with old cartoons from the 1930’s.

Entry #460

Ebert on “Robots”.

Dept. of Educashun: Capture-Based Aquaculture. This is pretty interesting stuff. It’s being done by aquarium hobbyist suppliers on a very small scale as well. We picked up a cobia from one of these outfits in Florida last year out of curiosity and the fish is still doing well. Basically, instead of capturing adult fish, you harvest the larval stages and raise them in captivity.

More fake news uncovered by the New York Times (via Atrios).

Play! Couronne. Play against others on-line.

Another Hitchhiker’s trailer.

Friday Echinoderm Blogging: Rock-boring Urchin

Entry #459

What's another word for Thesaurus? -- Steven Wright

  See the skeletal systems of your favorite cartoon characters.

Al Franken is keeping me sane.  I can’t stand talk radio.  Or any radio for that matter.  The DJ’s who think they’re so cute (ohhh, the morning shows are the worst) and the ads produced by four year olds make my teeth soft.  But if you are in the Rhode Island area, you can now hear Air America Radio on WHJJ on AM 920.  The ads still suck but the quality and intelligence of the shows make them almost tolerable.  Tune in folks.

Pet Corner:  Godoggo, for the lazy dog owner.  See it in action here.  I meant to post this as a joke, but seriously, after seeing the movie I realized my dog would love this thing.  And I could read a book.

Adjectives rarely used by wine tasters.

The Steve Martin shrine.

Listen to tons of owl calls at the Owl Pages site.
Here’s a great horned owl’s call, known as a “harnk”.  This is the sound of a Christmas Island hawk owl.

Meet Rusty the narcoleptic dog.