Biomes Blog

Entry #2604: The Shadow Scholar

Albino Monday: Porcupine

Strange celebrities and who they may look like.

The recent cold snap is a result of the Arctic Oscillation, which is chilling North America while warming up the Arctic.

Meet Othello, the only cow in Manhatten.

Today’s long read is The Shadow Scholar, the story of a man who confesses to making his living by ghost writing student essays and papers.

“You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.”

Entry #2603: Rising Early in Ilulissat

This week’s Green Thing is One Block Off the Grid. You can use this site to find out if there is an active group discount on solar in your town.

Pet Corner: How loyal is a dog? This one from Brazil will give you a depressingly good idea.

This year the sun rose two days early in Greenland, sparking fears that climate change is accelerating (via Hans).

 

Super strong caution tape. Don’t drive through it.

Entry #2602: The End is Near-ish

Meet the rainbow eucalyptus.

I’m a dog lover, but I’m still rooting for the doe protecting her fawn. Creole made the mistake of chasing a deer one time, and I don’t think she’ll go after one again. They're tougher than most people realize.

Christopher Hitchens talks about his cancer diagnosis and whether it’s changed his thoughts on God. It doesn’t, and with all his faults my respect for him increases.

Morford: Ten amazing truths you already suspected, volume VI.

Entry #2601: A Barrage of Uncensored Information

These fish are giving out pedicures.

Geek Stuff: The history of the internet in a nutshell.

Brain scans show that people with mental health issues have a higher than normal degree of creativity.

Play! Define Time. Pit your word knowledge against the clock in this game of definitions and deceptions. I only scored 245 on my first try. Two Biomes points to each person who beats this on their first attempt.

iPod Shuffle:

1. Miss You (Marshall Tucker Band)
2. Simple Song (Lyle Lovett)
3. Silent Sunlight (Cat Stevens)
4. Skateaway (Dire Straits)
5. Angel (Rod Stewart)

 

Entry #2600: Snow on Mauna Kea

Animal of the week: The Eastern quoll. Now found only in Tasmania, they’ve been extinct in Australia since 1963.

Terry gets yesterday's trivia for six points. Only Florida hasn't had snow yet this year. There's even snow on the ground in Hawaii, on top of Mauna Kea.

I’m no fan of Chris Matthews, but this smackdown of the tea party clowns is epic.

Someday I would like this to be my bedroom.

Esquire's political blog has a very funny review of Obama's second state of the union address.

Entry #2599: Coats of Red and Grey

Allie, at the wonderful Hyperbole and a Half, recalls an invented game called "Wolf Pack".

Trivia (6 Biomes points): So far this year, snow has fallen on all fifty states except one. Name it.

SciAm has a list of five things you never knew about penguins.

Hump day musical interlude: This isn’t all that great, but I’ve never seen my dog so fascinated by anything on a computer screen before.

Entry #2598: Getting Rid of Bad Air

Nobody knows why we yawn.

Now we’re cookin’: Why you should never fry gnocchi.

For $10 a month, Awesomeness Reminders will call you up every day to tell you how wonderful you are.

Eat this and that. For example, if you top off your hot dog with sauerkraut it will help neutralize the cancer causing nitrates in the meat. And other examples. (Thanks, Terry).

Entry #2597: Typically Virgoish

Albino Monday: Spoonbill (link lost) (via Hans.)

As if the floods in Australia weren’t bad enough, now they have sharks swimming down the streets of Queensland.

Today’s long read is about what happens to your online presence when you’re dead.

I planned on avoiding all the new horoscope nonsense, but here are the details anyway. I really couldn’t care less about no longer being a Scorpio, but I guess that kind of dismissive attitude is so typical of a Virgo.

Entry #2596: Four Degrees

This week’s Green Thing is the MacGyver approach to winter biking. Cable ties are the new duct tape.

David Blaine is a horrible public speaker, but this TED Talks lecture about how he held his breathe for 17 minutes is still pretty good.

Morford: The murderous rampage next door.

Do Christians REALLY believe?

Animal migrations are due to changing conditions that go with the passage of the development cycle of the creature. You can learn about a few of them here, along with some great photos that go along with each species.

Entry #2595: Crocs on a Plane

I wish hell existed so there would be a place where animal smugglers would end up. One from the Congo let a crocodile get loose on a plane, which crashed. Only one passenger and the reptile survived, but villagers on the ground killed it.

Experience the auditory/optical illusion known as the McGurk Effect. You’re going to be amazed by this, and the side by side illustration they use is remarkable.

Saturday’s slide show is a gift guide for the burger lover. I want all of these.

Beautifully-colored animals.

Entry #2594: Coffee Milk

Food by state. And why single out Rhode Islanders about coffee milk? It’s just coffee syrup mixed with cow juice, and it’s delicious. It’s not like we’re consuming rocky mountain oysters, Montana.

Geek Stuff: The fifty most annoying things about the internet.

Swine flu masks.

Play! Klikwerk

Entry #2593: It Goes to Eleven

I’ve been working on a list of my top ten movies of all time. I’m having some difficulties. How do you compare a comedy with an action film? Or animation with drama? So rather than looking at direction, acting, scripts and cinematography, I’ve settled on this criteria: If I’ve seen a movie ten times, how much would I enjoy that eleventh viewing?  So, here’s my list (with clips!!) Remember, this list is based on repeat watchability, and nothing else.

1. Snatch
2. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly*
3. Best in Show
4. A Christmas Story
5. Amelie
6. Se7en
7. Casablanca
8. Run, Lola, Run
9. Raiders of the Lost Ark
10. The Matrix
11. This is Spinal Tap

*The trailer has it wrong. Lee Van Cleef is the bad, and Eli Wallach is the ugly.

Here's number one again:

Entry #2592: Rhymes With Orange

The color orange was named after the fruit, not the other way around.

Ratebeer has a list of results for the worst beer in the world title. Congratulations to Olde English 800.

From “The Philosopher” to “The Hitler”, we have a scale of trustworthiness of beard types. Mine’s not on there, so I don’t know how trustworthy I am.

Hump day musical interlude: If you wanted to work at Wendy’s in the 90’s, you would have had to watch training videos, like this one about how to serve drinks to customers.

Entry #2591: Fluttering Wing Beats

Tuesday coonhound blogging: This dog is the official mascot of a U.S. school. For ten Biomes points, what's his name and what school does he represent. I forgot to mention that Terry got the bird question the other day. It was a Canada Warbler.

Now we’re cookin’: Or not. Cheese platter pasta is possibly the worst thing you can do with left over party cheese.

What kids know about evolution (a little bit dated).

Stuff you should know: How to convert a tanker truck into a post-apocalyptic home.

Entry #2590: Rigged Drawing

Albino Monday: A one in a 100 million lobster that isn't. They're claiming it's an albino, which is a ridiculously rare color morph, but it's actually just a blue lobster (roughly one in five million) that happens to be a really pale shade of blue (via Hans). While an albino lobster lacks any color pigments at all, a blue lobster still has all the various colors that make up the exoskeleton, but a genetic mutation causes the blue pigments to mask all the others (blue lobsters still turn red when cooked, but albinos do not.)

The pope says god was behind the Big Bang. Take the poll, and I’m shocked that the only reasonable answer is actually winning. I suspect P.Z. Myers sent out his minions on this one.

For today's long read, Jonathan forwards an article about some of the scientific breakthroughs that were made during 2010.

Entry #2589: A Fading Polaroid

This week’s Green Thing is the Boreal Songbird Initiative, a network of conservation groups working to educate the public about migratory birds of the North American boreal forests. Five Biomes points for identifying this species.

People vote Republican out of ignorance, fear and bigotry. That’s really not up for debate. But media and corporate capitalization of this cowardice isn’t anything new, as Jerome notes here with a photo of a 1948 campaign billboard.

Morford: The great impending OMG of 2011.

Entry #2588: Doc Brown and the Gang

Saturday’s slide show is about what the cast of Back to the Future is up to now.

Why you shouldn’t text while mall walking.

Crazy talk. We’re too quick to use “mental illness” as an explanation of violence.

iPod Shuffle:

1. Love Song (Five for Fighting)
2. My Sister Rose (10,000 Maniacs)
3. Operator (Jim Croce)
4. Beautiful (Paul Simon)
5. If Not for You (Bob Dylan)

Entry #2587: Time Spent in the Shower

Eighty Biomes points to the first UK reader willing to send me one of these Darwin coins.

Geek Stuff: How to lie with statistics.

The one guiding principle I use whenever I try to understand any kind of socio-political event, trend or phenomenon is to simply follow the money. Ask yourself who profits from this and you’ll usually understand things more clearly. Esquire’s blog uses this same approach in trying to comprehend political violence.

This graph accurately plots the time spent in the shower.

Entry #2586: Spring for a Maid

Animal of the week: It’s a mouse deer (not a deer mouse).

The answer to yesterday's trivia picture is the gold-coated Iron Dog, the world’s most expensive stove, which goes for $4 million. I also think it’s pretty cool that the LA Weekly blog is called “Squid Ink”.

You might want to read Harold Meyerson’s WaPo piece called “Dangerous outcomes from a culture of paranoia”.

Play! Who wants to be a simpsons millionaire.

Entry #2585: The Plant List

Trivia (12 Biomes points): What’s this?

The Plant List, an online database of all the world’s land plants, has been published by the Missouri Botanical Garden and Royal Botanical Garden. The motivation is conservation, considering a fourth of all land plants are facing extinction. Here is The Plant List, and it’s this week’s bonus Green Thing.

There’s an amazing homeless man who is trying to come back from a destructive life of drugs and alcohol by showing off his voice to motorists. I hope he makes it.

Hump day musical interlude: The Unseen Sea.