Wonderland, by
Nadav Bagim, is a lovely macro-photo series which turns a kitchen counter into a miniature fantasy-land using household objects, and various critters as models.
posted by quin
on Dec 24, 2011 -
7 comments
Ants are one of the most abundant groups on earth, but, curiously, not a lot of things eat them. Yes, there are anteaters (who also eat a lot of termites), and some lizards specialize on ants, but the little critters are full of noxious chemicals and pheromones that put them way down on the list of predators’ preferred foodstuffs.
Because of this, many other insects and arthropods have evolved to mimic ants, taking advantage of the aversion of predators to anything antlike.
These mimics are called myrmecomorphs, and they’re the subject of a really nice eponymous feature in this week’s Current Biology.
[via]
posted by AceRock
on May 12, 2011 -
22 comments
A (mostly) vegetarian spider: "A small jumping spider has taken to hunting plants instead of bugs. Bagheera kiplingi dodges throngs of aggressive ants to feast on the leaf-tip morsels of acacia shrubs, making it the first mostly vegetarian spider known to science."
posted by dhruva
on Oct 13, 2009 -
37 comments
All hail 70s-era Shatner! He began his career with some rather prestigious projects, appearing in
The Brothers Karamazov and
Judgment at Nuremberg, as well as some rather high profile appearance in
Twilight Zone and
Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But even then, there were hints of exploitation, such as 1961's
The Explosive Generation, in which Shatner played a teacher whose job is endangered when she speaks
candidly to kids about sex. And there was 1962's
The Intruder, a Roger Corman film from 1963 in which Shatner
played a carpetbagging racist inciting violence in a southern town. (
Clip.) And, of course, there was
Incubus from 1965,
a horror film in Esperanto. (
Clip.) But, after
Star Trek, at the start of the 70s, something went haywire.
[more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie
on Nov 16, 2007 -
63 comments
I clicked this link today while perusing
this MSNBC blog (which is occasionally amusing). It seems that ArticleBot's hackles have been raised, and they are on the defensive against
mainstream media (aka
MSM). I'm not exactly sure what their point is, but I really hate it when people "overuse" the "quotation" marks in their "unique content". I would have totally left it alone if they had not called attention to themselves by responding in this manner. Plus the assistance they are offering reminds me a little of
these MIT geniuses (previously discussed on MeFi
here and
here) except designed to spider search engines. I'm sure it's completely legal, but the ethics are questionable to say the least.
posted by shoppingforsanity
on Apr 26, 2005 -
89 comments
The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I was looking online to try and identify the freaking huge spiders I saw today (possibly wolf spiders), and I came across this hand spider identification chart. Slightly unnerving when the spiders randomly wiggle. Perhaps more so if you have a problem with spiders.
posted by kayjay
on Aug 8, 2003 -
71 comments
Walking Things is an environment that generates small, walking computational organisms. "Each walking thing is built up from totally random conditions. Appearance, behavior, and walking characteristics are all assigned from a range enabling effective, functional mobility. Click on a walking thing to permutate its characteristics".
Just one of the very many wonderful (
open source) creations at
levitated.net (more bugs with bling
here). Kick off your shoes, fill your coffee cup or wine glass, and dip in.
posted by taz
on Jul 2, 2003 -
12 comments
Spiders weave huge natural wonder in B.C. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
posted by nemesis
on Nov 28, 2002 -
17 comments
They're farther along than I thought... You may have heard about Nexia Biotechnology, who have put spider genes into goats to get milk with spider silk protein in it. I thought it was still in the research phase, but Nexia have apparently
gone to market with the stuff. They've signed agreements with several manufacturers to produce spider silk protein-based products such as lightweight ballistic armor (like Kevlar, only lighter and non-toxic to produce) for the armed forces and super-strong sutures and prosthetic ligaments for medical supply companies.
posted by RylandDotNet
on Jul 21, 2002 -
7 comments
Got Silk. ''Oh, it's not that weird,'' Nexia's president and C.E.O., Jeffrey D. Turner, says as we walk around the pens, being nibbled constantly by aroused goats. ''What we're doing here is ingeniously simple,'' he says. ''We take a single gene from a golden orb-weaving spider and put it into a goat egg. The idea is to make the goat secrete spider silk into its milk.''
posted by srboisvert
on Jun 16, 2002 -
18 comments
