Biomes Blog

Entry #2892: Oops

Brilliant Jon Stewart on the latest GOP debate. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be in the wrong party and having to choose between the passengers of this clown car.

Entry #2891: Octopus Ballet

The photo blog The Frame has a series on the Japan tsunami cleanup. Each scene contains three pictures: Just after the tsunami hit, three months later and then six months later.

I’ve just discovered SearchTempest, which allows you to search Craigslist by zipcode. I found a very specific item which I never would have located by scrolling through the site.

Albino Monday: Octopus Ballet.

Entry #2890: The Poe Tree

This week’s Green Thing is a funeral urn that uses your ashes to help grow a tree.

If all the atheists left the USA...

I honestly can’t tell if this Wall Street Journal discussion about jobs is parody or not. I really can’t.

Entry #2889: Mitochondrial Eve

Today’s slide show is animals and their reflections in water.

In less than a minute, Alan Grayson explains Occupy Wall Street to the 1%.

Learn about your great, great, great .... and on and on and on.... grandmother, Mitochondrial Eve. She lived about 200,000 years ago, and all of humanity share her lineage.

Entry #2888: Corduroy Messiah

Horseshoe crabs use their tail to right themselves when they get flipped upside down. I found one last month that had its tail chopped off by a boat propeller, so it can’t turn over and will eventually die. I made a prosthetic tail out of a plastic knife and sheep castrator bands (don’t ask) and it works great. See him in action.

If it’s your birthday today and you've just turned eleven, you could be the corduroy messiah.

iPod Shuffle:

1. I Will Remember You (Sarah McLachlan)
2. Secret Life (The Corrs)
3. I Don't Sleep, I Dream (R.E.M.)
4. Durban Deep (Elton John)
5. You Belong to Me (Carly Simon)

Entry #2887: Bike Power

Animal of the week: The vampire moth. Entymologists are trying to figure out how a fruit-eating insect evolved a taste for blood.

During the wintery October storm in NYC, the city confiscated Occupy Wall Street protestor’s generators. So they came up with a solution that involved stationary bike power.

A one-year-old baby thinks a magazine is an iPad that doesn’t work. Watch the video.

Entry #2886: Thunder Road Cover

It didn’t hit us, obviously, but a quarter-mile wide asteroid passed between the earth and the moon yesterday. 2005 YU55 was the closest call in 200 years.

If you live in Iceland, October 9th is Leif Erikson Day.

I’d rather not be forced to smell grass and listen to my own breath.

Hump day musical interlude: A friend’s 15-year-old son sings Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”. The kid’s good.

Entry #2885: Adding Charlie

Tuesday coonhound blogging: Another shot of Creole and some other dog at Fort Adams in Newport.

I’ve added Charles Pierce to the blogroll. His recent piece on the embarrassment that is the 2012 presidential race is an example of why.

In a pretty amusing report, Jason Linkins informs us that Bank of America is not happy with you for hurting its feelings.

Entry #2884: Barrel Roll

Albino Monday: Via Hans, a video of a very rare albino robin. And this particular bird has an interesting backstory. Its mother was found in a bush as a chick and raised by a local resident.

Octopi Wall Street.

Go to google and type in “do a barrel roll”. The Boy says it’s a reference to Star Fox.

Bonus Albino Monday: I am sale my zebra dove.

Entry #2883: Greenland Isn’t Even Mentioned

‘Gob-smacking’ scale of Peterman glacier break-up. A glacier that accounts for 6% of Greenlands ice sheet is vanishing, and once being three times higher than the Eiffel Tower, it is crumbling to pieces.

Good with God?

Watch a duckling feed some koi.

Entry #2882: Leaf Hunting

The 2011 leaf-hunting season has begun.

We are the 99% (nature version).

“Litter-al Killer”, a short PSA by my high school intern, Evie.

Entry #2881:Shakey Ground

Although the state of Arizona retains ownership, you can adopt a desert tortoise, raising a baby and friend for the next 40 - 50 years. It’s a preservation program run by the Sonoran desert museum. Although it doesn’t say, I assume you need to actually live in Arizona to qualify as a tortoise custodian.

Artificial reefs around the world.

iPod Shuffle:

1. Erie Canal (Bruce Springsteen)
2. Lilydale (10,000 Maniacs)
3. Tequila Sunrise (The Eagles)
4. Shakey Ground (Elton John & Don Henley)

Eagles - Tequila Sunrise

Entry #2880: We Are the 98% Intact

One of the most perfectly preserved dinosaur fossils ever has been found in Germany. It even includes original hair and skin.

David Brin (I read all his Sci-Fi novels in college) shows you how to argue with your crazy uncle about climate change.

Now we’re cookin’: Asparagus. It’s good for you.

Entry #2879: Koala Punk

You’ve probably seen the ads for ZBiddy and other “penny auction” sites. They sell high-ticket items for practically nothing by charging for each penny you bid. There is even some concern that they should actually be considered gambling sites, since you lose money with nothing to show for it if you don’t win the bid. Here’s a review I looked up after considering bidding for an iPad. I won’t be using these sites.

Cool site of the week: Explore the abyss.

Hump day musical interlude: Koala Punk.

Entry #2878: Tax the 1%

1000 people laid down on a San Francisco beach to spell out their message to tax the 1%. Here’s the big view of the photo.

These flying guys are incredible. Although it never shows them landing, at the end there is some kind of parachute lying on the ground next to one of them.

You could bid on an actual pouch of beef pot roast that is leftover from NASA’s Apollo lunar program.