By Ben, on December 13th, 2009
Our neighbors across the street threw a Christmas party last night, and as luck would have it, it was one of the rainiest afternoon/evenings in recent memory. The streets were flooded, and I really regret not having been able to mow the lawn before the rain started…
But, luck tends to even out. This morning dawned bright and beautiful, and since Eric wouldn’t let me sleep, I decided to take him outside to enjoy the morning as only he knows how: splashing through puddles! (Last night as we went home from the party he spent about 5 minutes stomping through the [...]
By Ben, on July 1st, 2009
You certainly wouldn’t want to tread on an ant that looks like this [UPDATE: the previous link has disappeared, so I've linked to a new one, much less impressive, but still crazy scary. It's just a head shot, instead of the previous full body profile view.]. Sent to Gigapan by the inimitable Brian Fisher, of the California Academy of Sciences, one of the sites that you really must see when you visit San Francisco. (Next time I visit San Francisco, I’ll try to take my own advice!) There really is something amazing about seeing such a tiny creature in such [...]
By Ben, on June 4th, 2009
Entomology is, apparently, dangerous work. In the 1950s, apparently, an insect researcher (a human entomologist, not an insectoid scientist) by the name of Paul Hurd went to work in Point Barrow, Alaska with a faulty aspirator (that’s a sort of siphon operated by the researcher’s own mouth), which resulted some months later in “four major groups of insects (Coleoptera, Colembola, Diptera, Hymenoptera)” passing out through his nostrils.
In his write-up in Science magazine, the author recommends that “those persons who utilize this apparatus so modify it that the flow of air will not be toward the operator’s mouth” (815).
This is just [...]
