Giles ,'Selfless'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, nail polish, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
This video made me a little sad:
Charlie and Spike are two kittens with Myotonia Congenita, otherwise known as ‘Fainting Goat’ syndrome. At the slightest sound, the kittens respond by collapsing and falling into a rigid paralysis which lasts about a minute before they return to normal. This condition has hardly ever before been diagnosed in a cat, is rarely found in dogs and is more common in goats. The kittens are able to walk, but they cannot run or jump. aside from this they are normal.
Coolest. Bug. Evah?
Assassin Bug Eats Spiders After Feigning Capture
A species of assassin bug has been found which creeps onto spiders’ webs and pretends to be prey, then devours the spider when it comes to investigate.
The creature, known to entomologists as Stenolemus bituberus, and actually in the spider family itself too, is the subject of a paper just published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B by Annie Wignall from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Wignall describes the exact process of “aggressive mimicry” by which the assassin bug stalks its target.
Most predators conceal themselves in order to capture prey, but the assassin bug takes the opposite approach — overtly advertising its presence in a way that entices its dinner to investigate. Web-building spiders use vibrations in their web to detect when it’s caught something, so they can go over, bind it in more web, and eat it.
The assassin bug slowly approaches the spider on its web, using its forelegs to pluck the silk threads in a manner that simulates the vibrations of a fly struggling after being caught. Wignall studied the behavior of the bugs, and found that the response of the spider to the predator was the same as its response to when a vinegar fly or aphid was caught in the web.
Once the spider is close enough, the assassin bug lashes out, and eats the poor unsuspecting arachnid. Most of the time, anyway — Wignall also observed a few occasions of spiders counter-attacking the bugs and killing and eating them instead.
Those kitties were not going anywhere in the wild.
Man, slow day around here today.
Man, slow day around here today.
Here here? or just here (i.e. there)?
Here here? or just here (i.e. there)?
Here here.
Here here is incredibly slow. I'm working from home and on the phone with Best Buy and they've had me on the line for 25 minutes and they are telling me stuff I'm googling the opposite of. Curse my lack of patience. I guess I'll just buy the scanner tomorrow, near work.
Explain the Internet to a 19th Century Street Urchin With the Funniest Flowchart Ever
That WAS pretty great. I especially like the maze in the middle.
Well that was unnerving and also unproductive. Went in to the store with the SO this morning to make a conference call to a potential camp fundraising booking. They wanted to reschedule. So I got ready to leave for my errands when thirteen law enforcement cars went tearing by, sirens blaring, including detectives. Decided maybe I didn`t need to go to the post office all that badly after all. Homicide, it looks like, and the suspect fled to the hospital?? (Isn`t that the part in the movie where the guy says, no, no hospitals and dies dramatically by the side of the road instead?) still armed, where evidently the thirteen cars subdued him and took him into custody. I have no idea. Did they think he was holding up the hospital?
So anyway, I came home instead of running errands and now want to take a nap before this afternoon`s classes, solo, with bonus studio tour.
Liese, eek!
I vote for nap.
