Friday Ephemera

The stridulating bird sings with its wings. // Panoramic dentistry. // EyeWriter. // Boneworms. // Beef magazine. “Für Männer mit Geschmack.” // Do not mix beer with oncoming trains. // People on public transport. // Eavesdropping on Apollo 11. // The Spaghetti Western Database. // Barcodes of note. // German TV test patterns. (h/t, Coudal) // Home movie reconstructions, 1974-2004. (h/t, Things) // Hand of the desert. // Stonehenge is rather dull. // What water drops do. // Arachnids. // Antony Gormley is such an arse. (h/t, Simen) // People with fish. // Fruit bats are “enthusiastic fellators.” // Frogs, not so much.

Comments

[newbie]

Wow. The Antony Gormley thing is concentrated dumb.

"Dispense with your socks. Get in touch with the Earth... This is a time of global warming. Through our feet we can begin to feel it."

[TimT]

That poor frog. Bet he croaked soon afterwards.

Love that article about fruit bats, though:

Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University in Atlanta and an expert on bonobo chimpanzees, said: "The finding of fellatio in bats is exciting news."

Bet the reporter and the scientists had fun coming up with that article. And of course the fruit bats.

[David]

“The Antony Gormley thing is concentrated dumb.”

Yes, such is its dumbery I gave it its own post. The world must be told.

http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2009/11/go-barefoot-for-gaia-.html

[Anna]

It's funny how you don't think about frog-monkey sex until it's staring you in the face.

[JuliaM]

Loved the Spider Awards - the Assassin Spider looks like something out of a sci-fi film...

[Simen Thoresen]

Thank you, David.

The Chimp and the Frog is like something out of Aesops fables. I wonder what it teaches us about humanity?
(except, of course, that the French are onto something, but are still missing essential bits of enlightenment)

Also, a pertinent comment from the water-drop video;
"
Someone at Discovery finally realized that we all just wanted to see everything happen in slow-mo. Unfortunately watching that footage is the only interesting part of the show.
"

I think that is very correct - slow-mo allows us to observe the same world that we live in, except in a way that's completely different from how we normally see it.
I wonder if a show being exclusively dedicated to high-framerate, low-framerate and other-spectrum recordings would be of interest.
I know I'd love to watch cows fart in IR, and the Werner Mehl -video has garnered 2M views in a month;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfDoQwIAaXg .

-S

[Anna]

"I know I'd love to watch cows fart in IR"

LOL. Classy.

[David]

“Classy.”

Yes, viewing cow farts in infrared retains the thinnest possible veneer of scientific legitimacy. It could just about be justified, most likely for Gaia. Whereas watching the same thing in, say, extreme slow motion would be... frowned upon and ghastly.

[Anna]

I can't help picturing that now. Thank you very much.

[David]

And someone, somewhere is Googling furiously.