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This week's Marine Life Series, Horseshoe Crab Basics, is up on Daily Kos.
Check out this video of a team of orcas attacking a seal stranded on an ice flow. The whales create waves to try to knock the animal off the ice.
Meet Eclyse, the zorse.
Why Biomes? From Entry #23.
Notes on the Democratic debate at Howard University:
After 15 years on the high seas, rubber ducks prepare to invade Britain.
How to drive like a cop. Actually, these are some pretty good driving safety tips.
"Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder." --Thomas Paine
Top ten reasons to get out of Iraq.
You might want to buy Glenn Greenwald’s book. He does some good work.
Welcome to Koko’s World.
Trivia (6 Biomes points): What’s this?
Today’s slide show is of a beach floating on the water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
On Hardball, Edwards replies to the shrieking harpy. (After you hit play, move your cursor to the side and click on your desktop. This will disable the autofresh on DailyKos but still allow the video to play, eliminating stops and pauses.)
Creative ways to spruce up your Volkswagon Beetle.
Ann Coulter is such a classy woman.
If science were a crossword puzzle.
Now we’re cookin’: Recipes with popcorn in them.
My Starvation Diet, by Emily Yoffe. 1500 calories per day and you too may live to be 120 years-old.
Ok, I held out as long as I could. But everybody's doing it.
I take great pride in my G rating, family values and all. I'll be voting for Rudy in 2008.
Watch this Norwegian ad encouraging kids to grow up to become engineers.
Pet Corner: Buy your Bite-Meez Cat Puppet Toy here.
If you name your child Wayne, be sure it’s his first name, not his middle, or he may grow up to be a murderer. I know, you’re thinking John Wayne Gacy and that it’s not such a big deal. But check out this list of guys arrested for homicide in 2005 alone.
Yoga poses for fake pilots.
It was driving me nuts trying to figure out who Bill Kristol reminds me of everytime I see this crazed wingnut on a TV clip. It’s Karl-Otto Alberty as the Sherman Tiger tank commander in the 1970 Eastwood film “Kelly’s Heroes”.
War-mongering neo-con and
traitor to his country, who sells
out for a Fox News paycheck.
War-mongering Nazi and traitor
to his country, who sells out for
a few bars of gold.
What’s the longest river in the world? If you said the Nile, you might be wrong.
Forgot to post this last week. Send a Father’s Day card.
This week's water tower is found in Covert, MI.
CNNMoney.com chooses the Prius as the top pick in their “great fuel-efficient cars” article. It’s been a year and a half since I bought mine and I still can’t recommend this thing enough. So far the argument that the amount you’ll pay servicing it offsets the gas savings has turned out to be a bust. This has been the most reliable and inexpensive to own car I’ve had in my life. I fully admit to making bone-headed financial decisions on a regular basis, but this wasn’t one of them.
Now we’re cookin’: Deep-fried quarter pounder.
My heart went ticky-ticky tack.
Today’s long read is “Braindroppings” by George Carlin. It’s most of his book available for free online (thanks Dan).
This week's Marine Life Series essay on Daily Kos is up. It's about river otters.
Pet Corner: The Ashera is a new breed of cat that can reach a weight of up to thirty pounds. It’s a hybrid animal developed by crossing an African Serval and an Asian Leopard Cat, and then breeding this cross with a domestic cat. You can order one for only $22,000 from the Lifestyle Pets company.
You simply won’t believe these marriage tracts e-cards.
I want an “I heart my Roomba” teeshirt.
Now we’re cookin’: How to make the world’s tiniest pancake and cook it over a cigarette lighter.
Representing myself, I beat a lawyer in court this week. Although I won't go into any detail, he was a complete clown. What kind of attorney gets his cell phone confiscated by a judge in the middle of a trial?
How Scott Adams creates a Dilbert comic.
Stuff You Should Know: How to talk to a climate skeptic. It amazes me how the same people who doubt climate science because “all the evidence isn’t in yet” have no trouble blindly believing all kinds of wacky things like guys walking on water, non-existent WMD’s, virgin births, and a boat that once held a pair of each one of several million species of animals on it.
Yesterday a civil rights bill was passed by congress. One of two nay votes was cast by one of the biggest right-wing morons around: Georgia's Lynn Westmorland. See him again here.
iPod Shuffle:
Movie Rating: The Illusionist.
Edward Norton is such a good actor, and this mystery by the director producers of Crash and Sideways is a treat. Although the "mystery" itself is pretty easy to figure out early on. Mary had it nailed after 20 minutes. 3.4 starfish out of 5.
Largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island, and other cool island and lake combinations.
I didn’t realize Berk Breathed is still doing comic strips. It’s a Sunday only called Opus. Here’s an interview with him.
Timewaster of the Week: Play around with a really ugly little dog.
Fun at the Creation Museum!!!! is a long pictoral essay on a trip to the new museum for the science-challenged. Unfortunately the photos are very small, but you can click to embiggen them all. (thanks Skeptica)
Meet the Citarum, the world’s most polluted river.
Animal of the Week: Pistol Shrimp.
Watch this incredible video of a pistol shrimp stunning its prey with a shockwave bubble created nearly a foot away.
Stuff You Should Know: How to stretch, by Kermit.
I’m not sure what this would be useful for, but you can get inside your picture using a new service called photowoosh. Very cool stuff.
The Library Cat Society adopts cats and has them working in libraries around the country charming visitors and controlling rodents. We have one at Biomes. His name is Sammy.
Play! Mini-putt.
Whoever has the Biomes Blog bookmarked (so no referrer identified) and checked in at 5:14 yesterday afternoon became our quarter millionth customer.
Take this short IQ test. It’s timed so you need to be quick. I scored 29.
Ten rock star plane crashes.
I read this article that says that in 1986 the Russian government sent pilots flying over Chernobyl to protect Moscow from the radiation by seeding rainclouds with silver iodine. I thought to myself “I think Kurt Vonnegut’s brother developed this process.”, and thanks to wikipedia I discovered I was correct. Yay for me. You can read about some of the details of this nuclear event here.
Albino Monday: Skunk.
This week's water tower is found in Three Rivers, MI.
Reality Homer Simpson.
Watch a trailer for SiCKO.
Cool Site of the Week: eBird.
Meet the Fat Man, and you probably shouldn’t watch the movies he’s posted. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my bike.
This week's marine life series entry is up. It's about the molting process in arthropods, known as ecdysis.
Morford: I Do Not Have $1 Million.
Today’s health and beauty tip is from CoCo- Beautiful New Look of Nose.
Watch a deep-sea crinoid crawl along the bottom. Someone should let it know that these echinoderms aren’t supposed to move.
What tree did you fall from? I’m a maple. Someone’s trying to start a trend, but I think that even folks who buy into Astrology’s nonsense won’t fall for this stuff.
Queen got yesterday's trivia. The photo was of the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet.
Greenlanders are cheering on global warming.
Other than the fact that they will have a “D” after their name, I have no idea who I’ll be voting for in the primary, and probably won’t for quite a while. Bill Richardson is not very high on my list, but this ad puts major points in his column.
After thirty years away from music, it’s nice to have Cat Stevens back. I hope he sticks with it. Here he is performing “Peace Train” in 2006.
I recently posted this article on what is believed to be earth’s sixth mass extinction, but I’m reposting it to give you another shot at reading it. Please do.
iPod Shuffle:
Trivia (10 Biomes points): Who’s this?
A bowhead whale killed in Alaska had a 130 year-old arrow embedded in it’s neck. The weapon has been traced back to 19th century New Bedford, MA. I didn’t know this, but apparently these whales can live for over 200 years.
Why would anyone paint an elevator’s floor like this?
Typepad has a new feature that allows you to download a file that records the number of hits each past post got. Here are my top three:
2/23/07 (Violet kills a crab.)
2/8/07 (Violet opens a jar.)
12/5/06 (no idea why, nothing special there.)
And this unremarkable entry, from January 2004, was the first post to get a hundred or more hits.
Today’s slide show is about things you don’t see every day.
Stuff You Should Know: How to get rid of stuff.
Twenty-five words that make you look like an idiot when you mispronounce them.
I agree with Groucho, I wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would have someone like me as a member. Ok, maybe this one.
One million blogs for peace. Sign up if you’ve got a site.
I just stumbled upon this photo from around 1992. It’s me with Odie the deaf dalmation and Dundee the world’s greatest ridgeback. This was in my side yard playing with their favorite toy; an empty sheep feed sack from Agways. This time of year can still be pretty rough for me even though it's been eight years since I lost Dundee. Odie I don’t miss so much, although I did manage to find her a good home. She became very aggressive around The Boy when he started walking. I taught Odie sign language in order to give commands to her and the ridgeback picked up on every one. For the rest of her life Dundee and I communicated this way, even long after we placed the Dalmation.
Here’s another one of me and Dundee playing in the snow a few months later.
Now that I'm all choked up, I'll repost the movie of Ngazi, who will turn seven next month. I kid around about her being a second rate Rhodesian compared to TWBR, but we still love her. Graham filmed this when he was in middle school and made it look like an old grainy black and white film. Ngazi.
I was going to quit while I was behind with all the dog stuff, but what the hell. Watch a bulldog on a skateboard. And not just standing on one. Very impressive.
Mantis shrimp vs Octopus. This is an incredible video. An octopus is a very formidable predator, but this one decides not to mess with the mantid. I posted an essay on these shrimp a while back here.
There’s a cool new book out about deep-sea creatures. That first one in the N.Y. Time’s review is an anglerfish. A dumbo octopus is below.
The New Yorker on Obama. Two Biomes points for the person who guesses my choice for the Dem ticket as of today. (This could change, of course. And probably will.) And let me know what your choice is as well. Assume Gore is not running.
"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck." -- George Carlin
