For the first time, a bizarre caecilian nurturing strategy has been caught on video. If you're picturing a dark-haired woman run out of meatballs, flensing herself while weeping, I'm here to help. Caecilians are an order of amphibians (Gymnophiona). Basically they look like ferocious flesh-eating earthworms. They are annulated (composed of ringlike segments). They are nearly blind, but are sensitive to gradations of light. Caecilians are primarily fossorial (burrowers) though there are terrestrial and aquatic species. They have teeth. They range from 70 mm to 1.5 M, depending on the variety.
Here is video of an aquatic species. (Despite what the video's title, caecilians aren't worms. Neither are they eels as they are commonly called.)
This is the third or so time its happened in six years. A shark has been rained upon by a beam of God's golden seed and has given birth without aid of a real boy-shark. The first time, in 2002, it was a spotted bamboo shark, and in 2007 an isolated hammerhead had a pup--only to have it killed hours later by a stingray in the tank. This time it was a white-tipped reef shark in a tank in Nyiregyahaza Centre in Hungary.
Duck and cover boys and girls. A broken-down photo-recon satellite the size of a shortbus has had it with piping close-ups of the blinding bald patches of C.I.A. operatives into their own Blackberries as they distribute Kalashnikovs and crack to third-world babies. [Phew.]
The disillusioned satellite is reported to have given its entire record collection to an obsolete cellphone satellite and seems to be inching ever closer to the precipice of uncontrolled reentry.
In 2006, BBC2 produced a documentary on the Ulas family of southern Turkey, entitled Family That Walks on All Fours. Five of the seventeen Ulas siblings walk quadrupedally. To be clear, they do not crawl on their knees but rather walk on their hands and feet. They cannot stand upright. Observers call the walk a 'bear's gait.'
(This is old news, I realize. I've been hornswoggled by the Nova channel's funneling of old content into my feed. But it is incredible and provides occasion for an interesting comparison.)
The trailer follows. You'll have to brook Nova's unembarrased Orientalism and freasksploitation-science, not to mention the coddling, gravelly syrup of Jemima Harrison's voice-over, but the images are worth it:
The wife is stoked: researchers at the University of Minnesota have engineered a bioartificial heart. That's right. The era of organ farming is at hand, and for those of us with Gordian masses of writhing vipers instead instead of hearts, this is great news!
By using a process called "whole organ decellularization" scientists have proven beyond all doubt that they should never be allowed to speak in anything but maths and advanced programming languages. But, ridiculous grammar aside, this process is nothing short of astonishing. The anti-stem cell folks should be placated by now, simply because this looks so much like a miracle that Yahweh has to have had a hand in it. Yahweh or Dr. Frank-N-Furter, it isn't clear.
For the record, I want to say that on January 11, 2008, at 3:22 AM, clutching my twenty-sided die, I invented it--a walkable metaverse.
If you've read even this far you've probably been fantasizing about the holodeck ever since your pasty flesh and velvet cloak first consigned your little peter to a decade of singlehanded abuse. Well, now you can have it. The technology, at least, exists. And soon God (Johnny Lee) is going to make it for you. We'll just have to ask nicely. I'm going to start by writing him a letter asking him to be my new dad. Admittedly they'll have to steal Seadragon from MicroSoft, but whoever makes it--and it will be made--is in for a Brave New World.
7 million teenage girls on lithium tattoo them above their buttcracks and this is how butterflies repay the tribute. Not anymore. It turns out that butterflies--that emblem of bliss, transformation, and the depressing aspirations of backwoods headshop employees--are slavers. At least the large blue butterfly Maculinea alcon.
Langer drew this conclusion from tests conducted with a group of hotel maids. She took various measurements of physical health from each maid. Then, to induce mindfulness in the treatment group, she posted a notice in the maids' lounges. This notice informed them that cleaning is exercise and listed specific cleaning-activity to calories-burned conversions. At the end of a month Langer reassessed the mindful maids. The informed group had lesser mean weight, body mass index, percentage body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Langer's explanation? 'Mindfulness.'
(In a past study Langer proved that if you say, "I am Spartacus" with enough mindfulness, you "are totally Spartacus!")
Yeah, this isn't The Onion, bro, this is a real science news source. I actually might be almost serious:
A Yale study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that children imitate the actions of adults who have proven to be untrustworthy, even to the point of excluding obvious solutions to problems.
Okay, not really. But don't let that stop you from believing and recirculating this. This week's Anti-Scientist covers the strange life of an internet hoax so hilarious that it simply will not stop breaching the canons of (reportedly) scientific fact.
On April 4, 2000, Calmann-Lévy Publishers released a book on the Mir Space Station by Pierre Kohler, author of popular French-language astronomy books. He states there that through a video-taped experiment conducted in orbit, NASA determined which sexual positions were possible without "mechanical assistance" in zero gravity.
Every week, The Anti-Scientist picks a study or news item which he dissects with the clinical detachment of the 19th century's most distinguished grave-robbing anatomists . . .
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The new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a rebellion-themed docudrama leveled at the 12 to 24 faith market. It will attempt the daunting task of making perhaps the most traditional belief in western culture edgy and hip. Like Christian death metal, it will do so in clothing rather antithetical to its subject.
But what's that you say? Nine out of ten virgins attending Dallas Baptist University already think creationism is cool. Well, yes, but this set hardly has clout in the culture wars, what with the pleated pants and New Testament trading cards. That's why they're paying star of the film, Ben Stein, and various marketing heavies for that just-so spin.
Every week, the Anti-Scientist picks a study or news report that was stillborn from the start. Then he resurrects it and makes it do a jolly dance!
How gay are American football players?
Eric Anderson of the University of Bath, Center for the Tedious Verification of the Self-Evident, has determined that college-level male cheerleaders who played football in high school, are likely to have engaged in “acts intended to sexually arouse other men.”
This is news how? Still, we have it, the neon factoid, nineteen of forty-seven footballers sampled “had sexual relations with men.”
We'll just have to ask nicely. I'm going to start by writing him a letter asking him to be my new dad. Admittedly they'll have to steal Seadragon from MicroSoft, but whoever makes it--and it will be made--is in for a Brave New World.
