February 15, 2007
11:34 am
by: Adam

Flashbang Cephalopods

It appears that Taningia danae, a deep-sea squid, uses “bright flashes to disorientate potential victims”, much like Ts and CTs use flashbangs in order to blind, confuse, and incapacitate their opponents in CS.
Check out the story here, and don’t miss the video.
Fire in the hole! Me ga mienai!
Ah, sometimes it’s fun to revel in one’s own nerdiness.
On a side note, I am willing to bet that T. Danae tastes nasty. I know that the smaller, bioluminescent hotaru ika (firefly squid), considered a delicacy in Japan, doesn’t rate among my favorite calamari dishes.

Posted in Cephalopods

February 15, 2007
10:05 am
by: Adam

Is Mencia a theif?

***Update 5***
Um, this is getting to be pretty hard for Mencia to explain away…
link
***Update 4***
Carlos Mencia and Bobby Lee weigh in on the feud.
***Update 3***
Techdirt discusses the irony of the DCMA taking the side of Mencia, who allegedly plagiarized other comedians’ acts, against Joe Rogan, who exposed Mencia.
Also, this video actually works (for now):***Update 2***
Ah, this keeps on getting better:
link
***Update***
Joe Rogan got banned from the Comedy Store as a result of the video. Luckily Joe has his gig as a UFC commentator and other venues to perform comedy to fall back on.
Mencia might have won this battle, but it will be interesting to see if his credibility can remain intact in the long-term. For that matter, I’d like to hear his perspective on all of this.
(This video is the one that the DMCA had taken down)

My brother and I enjoyed watching the first season of The Mind of Mencia, but then his stuff started getting old and repetitive to the point where I would change the channel if his program came on. I noticed that others felt similarly about the show. Why had Mencia’s show started off with such a bang and then fizzled out?
Joe Rogan’s account of his on-stage confrontation with Mencia gives the reader a possible explanation.
Did Mencia, or “Ned”, really steal some of his material? Why is he not forthcoming about his non-Mexican heritage?
The video and Rogan’s entry are undoubtedly biased against Mencia, but after reviewing the video I am left questioning the integrity of Mencia and his material.

Posted in Movies and Video

February 14, 2007
3:34 pm
by: Adam

Tabehodai for white sharks


Like Calvin, I don’t like to think of apex predators as scavengers. This is fascinating footage, but it is kind of disappointing to my childhood perceptions of white sharks, like the theories of the T. Rex being a scavenger made Calvin angry.
From a conservation standpoint, it is essential to dispel the myth of sharks as killing machines. The overwhelming majority of shark attacks on humans are accidental, and more people are killed by lightning each year than by sharks. Jaws is what we imagine a creature as awesome as the White Shark to be.
This isn’t to say that shark myths shouldn’t be preserved and enjoyed. Jaws was a good movie, and sharks make great antagonists in a story. These stories, however, shouldn’t be used as justification for hunting sharks to the point where they are unable to sustain a healthy population.
Much in the same way that people should stop blaming violence on TV and in video games for the violence that occurs in the real world. When we’re children, most of us can figure out the difference between the pretend world and reality. As long as some of us are unable to (which I am guessing is a very small minority), or, more commonly, are desperate for a scapegoat it will continue to be frustrating for those of us who have to watch these things unfold.
(thanks to Justin, via Maven, for the link)

Posted in Fishes

February 14, 2007
3:27 pm
by: Adam

Shucking Lobsters

What does an uncooked lobster that has been stripped of its shell look like?
link
(scroll down)
I’m not one to cry for lobsters, or anything else that I eat for that matter, but I would imagine that being processed in this fashion would hurt. For us, this would be the equivalent of not only peeling away the skin, but more importantly, extracting all of our bones as a whole.

Posted in Inverts

February 13, 2007
1:46 pm
by: Adam

Giant steps are what we take…

The Police are reunited!
link
I have always felt cheated that I wasn’t able to go to a Police show, but now I might be able to listen to their music live and in person.
I feel the same way about Bob Marley and the Wailers, but maybe it’s for the best. Bob is immortal.
I don’t think the Police will be disappointing, but then again I didn’t think that the Star Wars Prequels would be anything less than awesome. If things don’t pan out, I can ignore the new stuff and just keep on listening to their older recordings.
I only wish I could do that with Star Wars, but my copies of episode 4-6 show Greedo drawing his blaster first and all of the other “enhanced” bollocks that George Lucas appended onto his original works.
On a side note, isn’t “bollocks” a great word. We should all use it a bit more often than we do.
Bollocks!

Posted in Music

February 9, 2007
3:05 pm
by: Adam

A Grim Fairytale

Posted in Movies and Video

February 3, 2007
4:12 pm
by: Adam

Chitosan sounds like some Japanese dude

“After a long search for a better way to stop extreme bleeding, the U.S. Army has purchased more than 400,000 bandages made from chitosan, a polysaccharide extracted from the exoskeletons of Icelandic shrimp.”

Another cool thing about Chitosan: it’s a carbohydrate, so people that are allergic to shrimp can use it, since the proteins are the culprit of a histamine reaction.

link

Posted in Inverts, Tools

February 3, 2007
3:44 pm
by: Adam

The scent of cloud seeds

Did you know that DMS, a gas produced by phytoplankton, not only serves as a nucleus for water to collect and form clouds, but also is responsible for the Ocean’s distinctive smell?
Read more about DMS in this article, or here.

Posted in Life

January 26, 2007
4:14 pm
by: Adam

Frilled Shark Video


This eel-shaped shark was spotted a few days ago off the coast of Shizuoka prefecture. Prior to reading about the Frilled Shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) I had no idea that sharks other than the Six-gilled Shark had six gills.

Posted in Fishes

January 25, 2007
2:54 pm
by: Adam

An Outsider’s Perspective: Tenrikyo

Japanzine did a pretty good write up on the Tenri City and the Tenrikyo religion:

<blockquote>Unlike the Mormons’ inner sanctum, the Tenri main temple is open to unbelievers. We were allowed to walk anywhere we wanted within the 800 meters of the building. In some rooms people were casually praying (doing the te-odori hand dance and singing), while in others, the solemnity and seriousness of prayer was quite tangible. We walked by women receiving the Sazuke, or Divine Grant, an official license to begin spreading the word and recruiting followers.

To my dismay, no one tried to convert us while we were there. We found everyone to be quite friendly, and encountered zero hostility. As an added bonus, arriving a few days after New Year, we also received massive bags of mochi, free, from God herself!</blockquote>

link 

Posted in Japan