| Alan Dean Foster: Predators I Have Known - great white shark | | It's a funny thing about great white sharks (and that's not a contradiction in terms). They smile. Exactly the kind of smile you would expect to get if you crossed the Cheshire Cat with Dracula. Coming straight at you, the expression is downright unnerving. Here's this one-ton plus eating machine, the top Piscean predator in the sea, with a mouth big enough to swallow you whole and teeth serrated [..] Leer nota completa |  | Publicado 24-Feb-2011 por Alan Dean Foster en guestblog
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| Round-the-world with no bags for 90 days for charity | | ScotteVest, tech- and travel-friendly clothing makers mentioned here periodically since 2001 ("nerdwear of the first water" it was called then), started something called the "No Baggage Challenge" last year. Travel writer Rolf Potts went around the world in six weeks with no luggage whatsoever -- just the items he could slip into the mazillion pockets of his SeV jacket and clothing. Yes, it's a pu [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 03-Feb-2011 por Bob Harris en guestblog
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| Sea Lion shot in the face lives | | Another heart wrenching story of good work done by the Marine Mammal Center. On December 8th, locals on Swede's Beach (a tiny cove in Sausalito where incidentally I used to live,) came across a listless and barely moving California sea lion. They called the Marine Mammal Center, who came to its rescue and found that it had been shot in the face with a shot gun. During the few weeks of his recovery [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 29-Dec-2010 por Jason Weisberger en guestblog
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| Rocket to Russia: Day 0 | | Seeing one's name in cyrillic script is slightly jarring. Dateline: Prague Local time: 9:11am. Weather: slightly overcast and cool. As bassist for electric guitar icon (and extremely nice person) Joe Satriani on a European tour I thought to regale you, dear Boing Boing reader, with the exploits of an American rock band touring in Russia. We've been traveling around Europe with two buses (one band [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 05-Nov-2010 por Allen Whitman en guestblog
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| Machiavelli Is Everywhere | | Maybe it's the times, but I'm seeing references to Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince everywhere. Jeffrey Pfeffer's new Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't mentions him only briefly (in a section titled "Likability is Overrated," natch) but Machiavelli's notion that he's describing the world as it is and not as we'd like it to be is Pfeffer's point as well. (If you want to read the origi [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 21-Oct-2010 por Jimmy Guterman en guestblog
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| A sign even Ian Curtis would find funny | | Last week, I posted about a New Order song. OK, I guess, but wouldn't a matrimonial law firm named after the band that yielded New Order be even better? (Hat tip: 33 1/3)...
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| Too Much Darkness? | | "Stick!" My favorite part of The Promise, a documentary about the making of Bruce Springsteen's 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town that was on pay TV this month and will be available for sale next month, is when we learn that one of the many reasons recording took longer than it should have is that Springsteen felt he could hear the sound of Max Weinberg's stick hitting the drum. That ruined [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 14-Oct-2010 por Jimmy Guterman en guestblog
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| Curating a TEDx (or, from Arrogance to Humility) | | Arrogance is an enormous turn-off in personal relations, but sometimes it's a pretty good motivator to do good work. It's what turned this music fan into a critic and producer: the (sometimes quite incorrect) belief that I could do something better. Arrogance is one of the two dueling ingredients of ambition, which is, after all, a combination of arrogance that you can do something better and humi [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 12-Oct-2010 por Jimmy Guterman en guestblog
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| Nagoya COP10 Primer #4: with reference to Twitter | | Continuing from: Nagoya COP10 Primer #1: with references to Star Wars Nagoya COP10 Primer #2: with a reference to Kevin Bacon Nagoya COP10 sidebar: UNFCCC YOU! Nagoya COP10 Primer #3: with a small reference to LOL cats So what should be done at Nagoya? This is the 20 million species plus question. And for all of the criticism that I've (and others) have proffered, we should appreciate that the tas [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 03-Sep-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Thanks for reading and "May the scientific method always be with you." | | Phylomon cards: "EUROPEAN HONEY BEE, I CHOOSE YOU!" I had a great experience here at Boing Boing, and want to send on a big thanks to Mark, Cory, Xeni, David, Rob and the rest of the crew for letting me spend some quality time here. I'm also grateful to the many museum folks who let me chat with them, and so graciously showed me their projects. Kudos especially to Bob Bloomfield for the warm welco [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 02-Sep-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Art, nature, the history of science, and whoa, aren't these are beautiful? | | Plate 73 of the John Reeves Collection of Zoological Drawings from Canton, China, 1774-1856. (© The Natural History Museum, London). Reeves was an English tea inspector, but also amassed a wonderful collection of Chinese drawings of plants and animals during his time in Canton. A few weeks back, I had a great conversation with Judith Magee, Library Special Collections Curator at the Natural Histor [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 02-Sep-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Chic apartments for London birds | | Take a look at this art project entitled, "Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven" In the sought-after London boroughs of Chelsea and Islington, inner city birds often have to claim their nesting space quickly! However, birds that are open to changing their wild ways might be convinced to try out the innovative bird-housing concept developed by the artists atLondon Fieldworks. The "Spontaneous Cit [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 31-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Why natural history museum collections rock! | | Photo: Tom Goskar. Used with permission. So far, it's been a very interesting experience in the month and a bit into my sabbatical at London's Natural History Museum. First off, there was that element of giddiness: coming back to an iconic institution that takes me back to my time as a kid in awe of dinosaurs, blue whales and all the sparkly stuff in the mineral exhibits. Next came, a weird sort o [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 31-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Chewbacca, Han Solo and R2D2 drawn as if part of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh | | Illustrations by James Hance, used with permission. I'm surprised I didn't catch this earlier, but James Hance has recently released a series of lovely images. Here, he re-imagines Han Solo as Christopher Robin, Chewbacca as Pooh Bear, R2D2 as Piglet, and even (this is cool) an AT-AT as Eeyore. Definitely go to his Cartoon page to see the images in their full glory. Also this just in - James write [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 31-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Nagoya COP10 Primer #3: with a small reference to LOL cats | | (Continuing on from previous primers: 1. Star Wars | 2. Kevin Bacon) O.K. now on to business... Here are the Convention on Biological Diversity's three basic objectives: 1. The conservation of biological diversity 2. The sustainable use of the components of biological diversity 3. The fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources They also have - or [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 31-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Can crowdsourcing produce funny humor pieces? The next step | | In case you missed it, here is the set up. And from the comments from that previous post, there were many great titles. Some lend themselves more to an essay type humour piece, whereas others were just funny as one-liners. It was tough choosing, but I'm going to go with two titles. One is a tweak, but seems to involve a subject matter near and dear to Boing Boing readers, plus should be good for a [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 31-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Some Final Thoughts on Conventions (and a visit to Power Morphicon) | | Photo: Shannon Cottrell/LA Weekly from Power Morphicon Last Tuesday, I asked artists about their experiences with conventions. There have been a lot of interesting responses, as well as some advice. Please read the comment thread when you have a chance. The comments made me think about the impact conventions have had on Shannon Cottrell and I as journalists. I had asked Shannon about this and she [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 31-Aug-2010 por Liz Ohanesian en guestblog
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| Neglected organisms haiku | | A couple years ago The Science Creative Quarterly started asking for phylogenetic haiku: or poetry of the 5-7-5 form that focused on a specific organism. We actually have hundreds of submissions, but haven't had a chance to sit down and present them all as a single collection (one day, we'll get to this, one day). Anyway, it's quite striking how in haiku land, it's the "un-cute" that gets the most [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 27-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Question: How long would your Ph.D. have taken if everything worked? | | When I meet other scientist types, this can be one of the most interesting questions to throw out there. We can use mine as an example. I did my grad studies in Microbiology and Immunology, but basically I was doing biochemistry type work (cancer research with a lot of molecular stuff). It took me just over five years to finish this sucker which is pretty typical in North America. Of course, when [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 27-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Hail the mighty microbe! Bacteria on hand at the Deepwater | | Just so that we don't forget that in the area of biodiversity, microbes do indeed rule the Earth, Ed Yong over at Not Exactly Rocket Science does a great job of reporting on a recent study looking at the Gulf and its ever changing bacterial community. In the Gulf of Mexico, nature's janitors are hard at work, mopping up the aftermath of a man-made disaster. On 20 April, 2010, an explosion at the D [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 27-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Citizen science and why biodiversity is a great portal to discovery | | (Image: Stemonitis) In case you don't have a handy dandy seaweed identification key, get your free one here and do some science. Recently, a friend asked me about my earliest childhood memories, and two very vivid ones came to mind. First, there is this image of a sycamore seed falling from the sky; the aerodynamic wonder that can helicopter down from the tall heights of a tree. Second, and also i [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 27-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| This is not a perfect dinosaur turd. Or is it? | | A few weeks ago I had a chance to chat with Paul Taylor in the Paleontology department of the Natural History Museum. I was chatting with him about a curious specimen that has, over the years, gained a little bit of notoriety in the museum's collection. You see, it was a mystery. What you're looking at is a slide of Dinocochlea ingens. On the left, you've got the original 1922 paper which detailed [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 26-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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| Can crowdsourcing produce funny humor pieces? | | "Reviews on historic books by people who haven't actually read the book." "Likely names of organisms had Linnaeus been a science fiction fanboy." Although I still have difficulty considering myself a writer type, what little experience I do have in this world is mostly limited to publishing humour pieces. I guess my niche is to do this and still stick to science and technology subjects. So far, I' [..] Leer nota completa | | Publicado 26-Aug-2010 por David Ng en guestblog
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