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Men should just shove aspirin up their urethras
Aspirin goes here. Can I just say "thank you" to the GOP for reminding me in the last few weeks how very, very little some men think of women? I'd gotten pretty comfortable there, walking here and...
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Sucrose therapy
Darwin day was not a great success this year in terms of numbers, although a great success with those who came. Some students were a bit depressed and came for some major league sucrose therapy, and...
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Reassessment of the Triassic "Bee Nest" from Petrified Forest National Park
Tapanila, L., and E. M. Roberts. 2012. The earliest evidence of holometabolan insect pupation in conifer wood. PLoS ONE 7(2): e31668. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031668. Background The pre-Jurassic...
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A Bunch of Apocrites
An unidentified male of Megalyridae, a family of 'evaniomorphs' parasitic on wood-boring beetles, from here. During the late nineteenth century, many women attempted to achieve a 'wasp waist', using...
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Spring has sprung, almost - in February?
Here in the upper midwest February has been a winter month for as long as the Phactor can, uh, uh, oh, something, period. And both my faithful PC and my fancy satellite-signal updating watch say today...
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Someday we will hopefully have good dictation software. For now, there is...
Mary Grover at Salon has distilled the essence of using Dragon Dictate into a brief post. I couldn't possibly do better -- or even as well -- so I refer you to it. I was assured by several people that...
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Joseph Hooker - Botanical Explorer, and plant quiz too!
Joseph Hooker was one of the most prominent botanists of Darwin's day. His exploits and travels are the stuff of adventures. So hang on to your pocket books and credit cards because this new book...
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Just don't drink the water
“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.” David Auerbach, 2002. Dear fellow imbibers, having once been chided for traveling with a small supply of bourbon, the...
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Plan ahead - corn your beef
St. Patrick's Day looms just 4 weeks from now, so if you want that corned beef to be ready in time, get it started. This will be relatively easy this year because having gotten the OK from Homeland...
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On Harvard's imprimatur, woo, autism, and making a buck--er, book
What do you call a lot of ducks together? A quackery?I have just been made aware of the upcoming publication of a new book, The Autism Revolution. The book authors are Martha Herbert, an assistant...
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Spring has begun!
Not counting small weedy winter annuals, like chickweed, the flowering season, our definition of spring, officially began yesterday, the 18th! of February, with the flowering of a witchhazel and...
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So special: Visionary scientist or quack visionary?
Via WikiMedia CommonsI'm a "special needs" parent. What that means is that I've got children who fall into the category, "special needs," needs that extend beyond what people would consider typical for...
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Three puzzles of non-religion in Britain
Britain, like many countries in the West, has been undergoing a decline in the numbers of religious believers. The patterns of change, however, throw up some curious anomalies. Three of these puzzles...
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Life Among a Shrimp's Gills
Female of Schizobopyrina bombyliaster from Williams & Boyko (2004), with red box added on ventral view to indicate position of small male. For today's random subject, I drew the marine isopod genus...
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Doesn't that just frost your cake?
Seeds, once in the possession of the Phactor, seem to have a viablity half-life in terms of hours or days. And the more important they are for your research, the sooner their viability disappears...
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Amazing Preservation of a Permian Forest
The upcoming issue of PNAS has an article documenting amazing preservation of a Permian paleobotanical locality in China, the result of rapid burial by volcanic ash. The actual article is not up yet...
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The Saga of Forsteropsalis fabulosa
Male of Forsteropsalis fabulosa, photographed by Neil Fitzgerald. Technically, I had a paper last week. I say 'technically' because, at only one page long (excluding bibliography), I don't that it...
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Really Awesome Proteins: The Major Histocompatibility Complex
Part two in the RAP series is the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). This little protein really is brilliant. It’s a crucial part of your body’s defence against illness. If you think of your body...
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How the Study of Plants revealed the Variability of Climate
The news of the resuscitated "Ice Age plant", regenerated from 30.000 year old tissue conserved in permafrost, is an intriguing discovery that will help to better understand the evolution of...
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Seeds from 30,000-Year-Old Squirrel Cache Flower Again
Confession: As a nerdlet of nine or ten, I decided to help flowers get fertilized. I loved seeing the glossy seeds hidden inside the fat green ovaries of dead flowers when I split them open with my...
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