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12 Days of Inkfish, Day 12: Cuddlefish
Sometimes a cuttlefish wants to cuddle, and sometimes it wants to attack you with its face and ingest you whole. Both sides of the cephalopod's personality are on display in this video from the BBC....
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That was the year that was 2012
So, how was it for you? For me, 2012 was quite a tough year, for personal reasons, which is why the blog has been a bit sparse of late. On the plus side, that means only 70 posts to recap this time!...
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Annoying technical problem
Well, doesn't that bite? TPP composes and prepares a Friday Fabulous Flower blog, but can't up load the image because of some stupid blogger technical problem. OK, then that blog is on hold. Let's...
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Lentil, sausage, and parsnip soup
The voting did not take long to count: 1 for parsnips, none for anything else, so parsnips it is. Parsnips were a favorite vegetable of my youth. Parsnips, carrots, and salsify were always planted...
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Whistling for Whistlers
Male and juvenile golden whistler Pachycephala pectoralis, photographed by S. Lloyd. Female golden whistlers resemble the juveniles. The name Pachycephalidae (or some orthographic variant thereof such...
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His & hers tricycle house and garden
My affection for unusual cycles knows no bounds, and this is actually very, very clever: a two person mini-house and garden mounted on two tricycles. Now the abode is so clever - complete with shower,...
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Why Humans Prefer Not to Gallop
As kids, we discover that our two legs can manage many different gaits. After walking and running we figure out how to tiptoe, hop, and skip. (Personally, I decided at one point to become a better...
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Macropredatory ichthyosaur, Thalattoarchon saurophagis, from the Middle...
New in PNAS. I assume by terrestrial apex predators in the Carnian they are thinking about phytosaurs and/or large rauisuchids as they (p. 3) state that "Although large predators such as the...
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Transferring Consciousness
My brother was just in town, and we had our usual argument about Old Man's War, which he loves and about which I'm less enthusiastic (it was a fun read, but...). Perhaps one issue that keeps me from...
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Dastardly tree attackers
What kind of person attacks trees? Trees can't get away, so as a target they don't offer much sport. And even very large trees are easy enough for a puny human to destroy using our tools, fire, saws,...
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Who knew VCs had a sense of humor
So it's the annual J P Morgan Healthcare Conference in California and I see, of all things...#jpmpickuplines on Twitter. I don't know how much these can mitigate the still-dour VC landscape, but hey,...
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Rare as hen's teeth?
Having had a budgee take a chunk out of my finger once, the idea of birds with nice sharp teeth is a bit frightening, but teeth they had as this fossil find demonstrates. This article also mentions a...
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Professor -- The Easiest Job in the World
There has been a small kerfuffle over Susan Adams's article at Forbes, titled "The least stressful jobs of 2013": University professors have a lot less stress than most of us. Unless they teach summer...
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Us professors got the least stressful job for sure
Susan Adams at Forbes in an article about the least stressful jobs provides a most naive perspective of the modern professorship. "University professors have a lot less stress than most of us. Unless...
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What I Read (2012)
(Grade A-F, no E's) Title-Author Additional thoughtsA The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell 15 short chapters discussing various aspects of knowledge, truth, and metaphysics. A great read.C-...
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Will bromine turn squirrels purple?
Most winters Punxatawney Phil is the furry face of Pennsylvania, but this year, he's got competition: meet the purple squirrel of Jersey Shore (which should not be confused with either a television...
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How to carry groceries on a bicycle
Bicycles are very efficient vehicles, but not the best at carrying things like groceries that tend to be rather heavy and a bunch of loose items. Ideas abound about how better to do this particularly...
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Extraction of square roots
Oppenheim A. (1955). 2553. Extraction of Square Roots, The Mathematical Gazette, 39 (329) 237. DOI: 10.2307/3608773 At the end of his article on the extraction of square roots(1) Professor Haldane...
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Captive Animals Act Smarter
In the Kenyan wilderness, hyenas facing a meat-stuffed puzzle box performed impressively—impressively badly, that is. Researchers expected the animals to be up to the challenge, but few of them ever...
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Winter weather?
The winter of '12-'13 is looking like another mild one as records fall for most number of days without a inch of snowfall. Having grown up in the upstate New York snow belt, TPP has witnessed a 104...
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