science v culture multiplied by infants

I often joke around about all the crazy psycho-social experiments I'm going to put my children through. I kid about how I'll make a conscious effort to fail to invert auxiliary verbs in the appropriate contexts, or that I'll only read adult science fiction for their bedtime stories, or that every weekend they'll be getting training on how to 'cheat' on IQ tests.

Today I stumbled across this story. The scientist with me is intrigued while the human in me is horrified. I'm fairly certain that both of those reactions are inappropriate.

Leave it to the swedes, I guess.

Sybiotic birds

Usually, when you see a symbiotic relationship between birds and large mammals, it is a mutually beneficial one, such as the case with the oxpecker and large grazing mammals in africa.

Not this time.

That is scary. I would not want to be a whale who's getting eaten alive by seagulls...

How things are done on one side of the Atlantic

In order for me to get 24 hour access to the academic building I'm currently making use of, I had to go through a 'fire induction tour'. This was an event that sounds more interesting than it actually was. I pictured some kind of hazing ritual, or at least something which required the use of a torch. However, a 'fire induction tour' is actually inherently interesting to someone who has never experienced one before.

Basically, since I would be given stewardship of the building on those odd cases where I might be the only one within it, they had to teach me what to do in case of all kinds of emergencies (such as if I were to suddenly bite into my own flesh with my teeth, accidentally, and needed something to staunch [the blood] with).

The tour was interesting in that it showed me the locations of the departmental dish washer and oven (why don't we have those?), the departmental first aid boxes (they've got one or two on every floor), the departmental printers, copiers, and supply cupboards (they've got armfulls of all kinds of stationary and stationary related products, none of which is under lock and key), and the departmental showers (that's right, 2 of them, about 20 feet within walking in from the front door of the building, you know, in case you walk, run, or cycle from home).

Artificial languages on 70's television

I just learned that the late Vicky Fromkin was hired by the producers of the 1974 television series "land of the lost" to create an artificial language for that tv show's characters "the Pakuni" people.

That's awesome.

Jack Churchill was a badass

Jack Churchill. He did more than just invent a new kind of surf board. When I first heard about him I assumed that Neal Stephenson had based his 'Shaftoe' characters (from cryptonomicon and the baroque cycle trilogy) on him.

Total badass.