Lack of Posting...

Sorry for the lack of postings everyone. I have recently received control of the Slater Museum of Natural History's Facebook page where I regularly post a variety of my ponderings. If you'd like to check out some of those potent, perplexing ponderables click here!

Keep a look-out for more ponderables posted right here as well!

And for good measure, a picture of a tree-shrew pooping in a pitcher plant:

Happy Birthday, Me!

My blog has officially turned one year old!

In this same amount of time, I could have:

• cultured 37 generations of fruit flies for genetic study,
• mastered two complete languages or twelve foreign alphabets,
• written 315 moderately-sized novels and one work of young-adult fiction,
• constructed 52 two-room houses for those in poverty,
• woven five 4' x 6' oriental rugs,
• sailed around the world four-and-a-half times,
• driven the Pan-American Highway ten times by motorcycle,
• slept,
• or kept-up on my schoolwork.

I guess I'm glad I made this blog instead of doing all those things...

Random Thought of the Day

Robots are going to take over the world.

One book at a time...


Courtesy of our friends over at The Proceedings of the Ever So Strange.

Random Thought of the Day

Remember a while back, I posted about the Power of Words.

This post was a little long (I mean, very long) and you probably didn't read it, but here's a great video illustrating everything I hoped you would learn from my "Power of Words" post.

The words we use to describe color actually change the way we see color!



And as a little bonus, here's the RadioLab episode on this very topic:

Abstract things like time, thought, and understanding don't exist unless we have words for thinking about them...

Random Thought of the Day

There are over 120 million Christmas Island Crabs on Christmas Island.

That's not too extraordinary if you consider the fact that the crabs usually spend their time scattered throughout the dense forests on Christmas Island.

But once a year, they make a daring trip from the inland forests to the ocean shores to breed.

120 million crabs is much more impressive when you're watching them crawl across the island's highways and houses...

Random Thought of the Day

The Blanket Octopus isn't as cuddly as its name might suggest.

Instead of projecting ink into the face of a predator, the blanket octopus will unfurl its massive webbed tentacles and frighten off its pursuer!

Or if that doesn't work, the blanket octopus also likes to carry around the tentacles of the highly venomous Portuguese Man-of-War which it won't hesitate to throw into your face if you get too close!

Random Thought of the Day

There are so many unsafe activities occurring in this video! Egads!

But more importantly, check the date and author...



That may in fact be the world's first-ever, video-recorded tomfoolery.

Thanks, Tom. You successfully invented America's Funniest Home Videos...