Biomes Blog

Entry #1447: Fried Green Tomatoes

Today’s slideshow is of the winners of the 1980 “small world” microphotography contest (click on “slideshow” to view).

The comic “Russell’s Teapot” has come a long way. Here’s his first comic, and here’s a fairly recent one. (Ignore the dates on the page, they’re all the same.)

Car interior panoramas.

I don’t have a sweet tooth and avoid junk food as much as possible, but I think I could probably eat a box of banana twinkies a day. You can buy them online here.

Bryan Preston is clueless about China, but Sadly, No! straightens him out.  Incidentally,  Sadly, No! is one kickass website.

Perfected: The Ann Coulter song.

OK Go-Here it goes again. I love this.

Stuff You Should Know: The name origins of all fifty states.

RHODE ISLAND. Named "Roode Eylandt" (Red Island) because of its red clay. We don’t have red clay here. That’s Hartford.

iPod Shuffle:

1. All Revved Up With No place to Go (Meatloaf)
2. The Last Worthless Evening (Don Henley)
3. Long Distance Operator (Bob Dylan and The Band)
4. How Long Blues (Eric Clapton)
5. Inn Town (Whiskeytown)

This week’s recipe is Fried Green Tomatoes, below the fold.
I can’t believe it’s taken me 43 years to try this. This comes out very similar to eggplant parmesan, but much, much better. Seriously, I can't describe how good these are. It may just be my new favorite food.

Entry #1446

In case you missed this before, here’s Violet the octopus killing a crab. She died of old age last summer. Our new octopus is named Indigo. I’ll have some photos and video of him soon, but right now he’s still extremely shy and spends most of his time hiding behind his aquarium filters.

I’m highly recommending the Ken Burns documentary “The War”. It is as good as his series about the Civil War. I had no interest in seeing “Baseball” or “Jazz”, but this guy is one hell of a filmmaker.

You can watch the fifteenth episode of Twin Peaks on YouTube. Start here at TP 15-1 and follow the links to 15-8 (they skip 15-4).

Cool Site of the Week: Mystery Meat Macrophotography.

Movie Rating: Best in Show. This is the funniest movie ever made.
5.0 starfish out of five. Watch some outtakes.

Entry #1445

I am a ...

MSNBC has a handy little pictoral guide to species that are listed as threatened by the IUCN. Here’s the International Union of Conservation’s website.

Don’t tase me, bro. I have a couple of good friends who are local cops and they are very honest and professional police officers. But I also take part in a charity golf event every year sponsored by several local town police departments, and I can safely say that many of these guys are overcompensating jerks like this cop.

Morford: You big, fat pile of bacteria.

Analyzing the sexual meaning of character names from the movie Dr. Strangelove.

Entry #1444

Pet Corner: Painted Cats.

Today’s slide show features real photos of on-line gamers along with their avatars.

Stupid people make my teeth soft. This guy thinks Harry Potter opens children up to be possessed by the devil.

Now we’re cookin’: Mice on a stick.

Bacon eating contest.

Entry #1443

  Yogi plays on a trampoline.

Take Rolling Stone's almost impossible rock and roll quiz. I only scored a 25.

I absolutely hate anti-bacterial soaps. I’ve banned them from my education center because using them kills crustaceans when they are handled by the kids. But as I travel around visiting elementary school classrooms they are nearly ubiquitous in our schools. Here’s a good article from the New York Times that explains why they are so bad for humans as well.

Movie Rating: Fantastic Four.
This movie was bad. I mean really bad. It sucked, to be honest. But when I was eight years old I was bed-ridden for three months with rheumatic fever (that’s what killed the Frugal Gourmet, Jeff Smith), and creature double feature and comic books made life bearable. One of my favorites was the Fantastic Four. So I have kind of an affinity for this piece of junk film, so I give it 3.9 starfish out of 5, instead of the 1.7 rating it deserves.

Albino Monday: Sheatfish.

Entry #1442

Since I lost my dog in September, and don't plan on getting another for at least a couple of years, yesterday I signed up as a dog walking volunteer at my local animal shelter. First they are making me attend a two hour orientation (yawn) and then I'll be assigned some dogs to spend time with three days a week. I think this could be fun, especially since the shelter is located right next to our bike path. I just need to be sure I'm not tempted to start taking my charges home with me.

The largest arthropod ever, an extinct species of sea scorpion, was about eight feet long.

New circular-shaped fishing hooks are saving both sea turtles and catch and release fish that happen to swallow the traditional J-shaped ones.

The FSM gets a seat at the table at this year’s American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting. RAmen.

Stuff You Should Know: Improving your credit score.

Entry #1441

Animal of the Week: Golden Eagle. I was reading up on these birds and didn't realize how large a prey they were able to take down. Here's one killing a small deer. And how about this one plucking a grown mountain goat from the side of a cliff?

Why your grocery bill keeps getting larger and larger, or how Bush screwed our Thanksgiving.  Worst. President. Ever.

Why are religious websites so unbelievably tacky?

Now we’re cookin’: Pizza Huts in Japan serve this nasty pizza, topped with four cheeses, bacon wrapped hot dogs, mini-hamburgers and pepperoni. Each pizza is over 5,000 calories.

Entry #1440

The evolution of the flagellum, explained with a little help from Boston.

The Jesus chair looks comfortable.

Glamour mug shots.

An Aptronym is a person’s name that suits that person’s profession. For example, growing up I knew of a local marine biologist named Dr. Fish. Worth 1000 does a photoshop contest creating celebrity aptronyms.

Stuff You Should Know: Mostly canine mascots of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Entry #1439

Robert Newman's History of Oil. Click the image to play.

Entry #1438

One Million Blogs for Peace is now up to 963 sites.

Pet Corner: Even if you don’t actually own a dog, you can still meet chicks in the park using Rent-A-Pet.

Cool Site of the Week: Answers in Genesis BUSTED!.
If you aren’t familiar with the website Answers in Genesis, and I won’t link to it since I don’t want to be responsible for your grey matter shrinking, it’s basically a young-earth, creationist nonsense site. AIGB takes it on.

Meet the washlet.

If you are sick of getting your bike stolen, you can buy these rust stickers to make it look like a piece of junk. Or you can buy a lock.

Entry #1437

My blue lobster made the local news last night. I’ve seen blue ones before, but this one is the most brilliant color I’ve ever encountered. Watch the video.

  Librarian action figure.

Here’s a giant list of Gods. How many are you atheistic about? My guess is only one less than me.

Parents, lighten up. Bumps and bruises are good for your kids.

A gallery of people named Jack.

Confessions of a former Circuit City employee.

Entry #1436

I was reading about John Cole’s conversion from Republican to Democrat at his blog “Balloon Juice” and this reader comment jumped out at me as one of the best descriptions I’ve seen yet of what being a Democrat really is:

“the great thing about the democratic party, john, is that none of us feel a deep and abiding commitment to it. that’s because it’s not a cult. it’s not a religion. it’s just a very loose, dysfunctional attempt at voluntary association. like democracy itself, it is the worst political party, except for all of those other political parties that have been tried from time to time.”

Michael Gerson is a former Bush speechwriter and has a new book out. He recently appeared on the Daily Show, and this guy is representing the democratic position in this interview. He’s a conservative in denial, which is really pretty sad.

Iraqi soldiers standing up as we stand down. This isn’t a joke.

The real Rudy.

Albino Monday: Yawning tiger.

Entry #1435

This week's water tower is found in Waite Park, MN.

Timewaster of the Week: Pop some bubble wrap.

Stuff You Should Know: How to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

Another optical illusion, this one is called “motion binding”.

Meet Wendy the muscular whippet.

Bad Prosecutors.

Entry #1434

Why a return to whaling won’t solve our energy crisis.

Road or no road, nature creates a river.

During the 2006 elections Democrats cleaned the Republican’s clocks across the country. According to polls and this article, it looks like 2008 could be even better. Thank your favorite deity that the grownups will be back in charge.

You can go here if you are interested in where our navy’s eleven aircraft carriers have been lately.

You can watch the fourteenth episode of Twin Peaks on YouTube. Start here at TP 14-1 and follow the links to 14-8.

Entry #1433

This week's Marine Life Series diary on Daily Kos is up. This one is about monkfish.

Lolinate any website. Here’s lolBiomez Blog.

Two brothers waterboard each other and determine that, yep, it’s torture.

This guy is converting SUVs to run on vegetable oil, getting nealy 100 mpg and blowing the minds of Detroit auto engineers.

Now we’re cookin’: Food Frauds.