Brood II: Cicada Live Cam
by Nick Glossop on May 24, 2013
Billions of cicadas are getting ready to awaken from a 17-year dormancy — and the Science Channel wants you to watch it happen live.
The network has installed a Cicada Cam in a terrarium to give an upclose look at the bizarre moment in nature. The noisy creatures are waking up after a nearly two decade hibernation all across the Eastern seaboard.
Via Mashable
Live video by Animal Planet L!ve
For maximum enjoyment, you’ll need plenty of tasty snacks and the company of some robot friends:
Maywa Denki – Dedicated To Whimsy
by Nick Glossop on May 14, 2013
Innumerable species play, and many – certainly many primates – laugh and tease and jest. But are we alone in our ability to grasp, appreciate, and delight in the absurd? How stands the octopus on Dada? (On his head-foot, of course.) As this video of the Maywa Denki group illustrates, true nonsense requires a most subtle and flexible mind, and whimsy takes dedication.
Via Laughing Squid
Originally posted May 24, 2011
A Fibonacci Cèilidh
by Nick Glossop on April 5, 2013
The mathusiasts at Numberphile go all Braveheart with a Fibonacci sequence tartan and accompanying skirl.
Dance (wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous) critters!
Fun fact: At the Battle of Stirling Bridge, William Wallace arranged his defensive shiltrons in Fibonacci sequence. The numerous but innumerate English invaders were baffled as well as defeated there.
Happy Easter
by Nick Glossop on March 29, 2013
Many more creepy bunnies at Bit Rebels. h/t Jackie Hutter.
Originally posted April 24, 2011
Paul Root Wolpe – Ethical Boundaries For Bio-Tech
by Nick Glossop on March 29, 2013
Mouse Ears
Paul Root Wolpe, of Emory University, does not spend much time making an argument for clear ethical boundaries for the conduct of bio-technology, rather he just lists off some of the more startling greatest hits of the field, and the argument more or less makes itself: bio-luminescent monkeys, bug-bots, robo-rats, animals as donor part farms (mouse ears), computer chips comprised of self-aggregated rat neurons, creatures with neural implants that can be driven like machines, and machines that can be animated–made robot–by the transplanted brains of living creatures. Lovecraft’s Dr. Herbert West would drool; there is enough in this talk to spawn an entire new cycle of Reanimator movies.
Originally posted March 31, 2011
Walking With The Beast
by Nick Glossop on March 24, 2013
c/o Charles Fréger < < Wilder Mann Image of The Savage
The bear is the wild man’s close counterpart—in some legends the bear is his father. A beast that walks upright, the bear also hibernates in winter. The symbolic death and rebirth of hibernation herald the arrival of spring with all its plenty. For festival participants, says Fréger, “becoming a bear is a way to express the beast and a way to control the beast.”
Traditionally the festivals are also a rite of passage for young men. Dressing in the garb of a bear or wild man is a way of “showing your power,” says Fréger. Heavy bells hang from many costumes to signal virility.
- Rachel Hartigan Shea < <National Geographic
