Does anyone else remember these from Insects Do The Strangest Things? Oh, what a fine children’s book that is.

From Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1911, G & C Miriam Co. Springfield, MA, [found here.]

This isn’t research as much as social observation, but have you heard about the iPhone girl? I noticed her story on reddit but she’s popping up all over the place:

China’s “human flesh search engine” is in hot pursuit of an unnamed Chinese factory worker after photographs of her showed up unexpectedly on a new iPhone [...]

It seems like this story hit everywhere at once, but it’s still marvelous. Here’s the BBC version of how cows always face north:

Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction.

Wild deer also display this behaviour – a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of [...]

So, the BBC is talking about one of Nikola Tesla’s dreams (he of the AC current and the plasma ball) coming true in an Intel lab, where engineers are broadcasting power wirelessly:

Intel’s technology relies on an idea called magnetic induction. It is a principle similar to the way a trained singer can shatter a glass using their voice; [...]

You may or may not have noticed a new link in the “fellow travellers” area down there on the right.

It’s to Hello, Poindexter!, the blog of Heather D’Angelo, who sometimes tours the world as one-third of the ethereal indie-pop combo Au Revoir Simone, and who sometimes studies Astrophysics at Columbia University.

For a good sense of [...]

Click to embiggen vastly

From the NASA Image Galleries:

On April 25, 2008, NASA’s Swift satellite picked up a record-setting flare from a star known as EV Lacertae. This flare was thousands of times more powerful than the greatest observed solar flare. But because EV Lacertae is much farther from Earth than the sun, the flare did not appear [...]

SONG: “When the Lights Go Out.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Sleep-deprived brains alternate between normal activity and ‘power failure’”, Labspaces.net, 21 May 2008, as used in the post “Lights Out.”

ABSTRACT: I often feel like romantic love and blackouts have a lot in common. I also [...]

LiveScience makes clear that sometimes, contraception isn’t the best decision. Or, well, doesn’t help you make the best decisions… because birth control pills befuddle women’s mate radar:

That’s because beneath a woman’s flowery fragrance or a guy’s musk the body sends out aromatic molecules that indicate genetic compatibility.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes are involved in immune response and other functions, [...]

The great thing about laser weapons, New Scientist says, isn’t just that you can fry your enemy from miles away. You can also shrug your shoulders and say, “No, really, I didn’t zap that guy!”:

As the term suggests, “plausible deniability” is used to describe situations where those responsible for an event could plausibly claim to have had no involvement [...]