Humor

Record setting year for highs and lows - global warming doesn't just mean hot, people.H/t Toothpaste for Dinner

It is that time of the year, the season, and a good excuse to contribute with something that can be at most only very loosely connected with science. These happenings unfolded around this time of year, and it involves all the makings of a good Xmas story: lots of snow and cold overcome mainly by the warmth of hearts. It happened back in 1993, when in the east of London, especially around the tube stations of Leyton and Leytonstone, new age travelers squatted a whole row of streets along the subway tracks in order to stop the M11 motorway's A12 link extension. That was quite a strange scene…

Paleontologists recently unearthed bones, likely in Montana or Wyoming, of a new dinosaur species dubbed Stochastisaurus. "Based on surrounding species and the fossils themselves, there's an approximately 88% chance that Stochastisaurus was an herbivore," says the lead researcher. The new species of dinosaur more likely than not had something interesting about its head, perhaps heavy bone plating like Pachycephalosaurus, a frill like Styracosaurus, a crest like Corythosaurus, or a hollow series of tubes like Parasaurolophus. This interesting head feature is almost exactly equally likely to…

This should not go out in anything but my own personal feed. Please let that work? :D :D :D

Did you know about the anime Squid Girl? Apparently it came in third in the 2010 "Net Buzzword Awards," a competition that was heretofore unknown to me. Shinryaku! Ika Musume earned the Bronze Prize for the sentence-ending phrases "-ika?" and "-geso." In Masahiro Anbe's Shinryaku! Ika Musume (The Invader Came From the Bottom of the Sea!) comedy manga and the anime adaptation which premiered in October, a squid girl vows to invade the beaches of mankind since humans have polluted the seas. However, her invasion is less than successful, and she ends up on dry land. Ika Musume/Squid Girl…

Last week while baking muffins with my son's preschool class, I set fire to the school. Okay, technically I didn't set it on fire—it was only butter smoke from the tin that set off the alarm, necessitating the entire school of a couple hundred kids filing out to the basketball courts while the fire department arrived en mass. Anyway, after the holiday break my wife will be back for Wednesday cooking and I don't imagine Thanksgiving will be NEARLY so exciting. Besides, Leif was line leader that day, and he was really, very proud to lead the class evacuation. (I stood there with my large metal…

If you aren't familiar with the cultural lowest common denominator that is the faux reality show "Jersey Shore", well, you are lucky.    It follows the travails of some truly idiotic youngish (and pudgy) people as they drink and fight their way through another mindless day. Regardless, it's popular so a group took the opportunity to show us all how we could learn molecular biology ... the Jersey Shore way. Check out classic quotes like: "See these purple nitriles?   Ladies don't like that, right there.   But you (unintelligible unless you are 18 and living in New Jersey)…

Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts. Henry Blaha

Statistically, whichever of these you are not will be funny.   The one you are, not so much.

Anthropomorphizing, the process, as Twain might say, of “underestimating the animal by assigning to him human traits,” has had a good year. The reasons range from the continuing dominance of the Obama dog, Bo, on Fox News (Bo: “Socialist or simple anarcho syndiclist?”), to the rise of kitty cat “jammers” for tabby sleepover night. Not kidding. On the sleepover thing. In the scientific world, where the “a-word” has long been hated, there was one unmitigated triumph. The Jackson Lab, long the principle provider of mice labs all over the world—and a longtime anti-anthro force—finally signaled…