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p. [Tuesday 18th March]

p. Even though I understand how it works, flight always amazes me. When you’re sitting in a 747, thundering down the runway, it’s always something of a surprise when the thing gets off the ground. Like a magic trick, knowing how it works just impresses you more. Mind you, taking off is the easy bit — all you have to do is balance a few tonnes of aeroplane on the rear wheels to get a bit of a draft under the wings, get up to 330 mph, and hey presto, you’re airborne. Or so I’m told — I’ve never tried it myself. No, the real skill is in landing. I should say that the real skill is in landing safely — gravity tends to take care of the getting to the ground thing without any intervention.

p. The best bit about flying is seeing great landscapes from the air. This trip wasn’t particularly spectacular in that respect, but on a flight to San Diego, I spent most of the trip with my face pressed to the window, marvelling everything below. There were glaciers, terminal morraines and drumlins galore — it was the whole of my physical geography A-level laid out before me, but would have been a lot more useful before my A-level.

When I was looking for a picture of a particular species of beetle yesterday, I came across this wonderful site, full of exquisite photographs of beetles. My favourite is this fantastic, metallic number. A little tip: any beetle with a species name which includes gloriosa, sumptuosa, pulchra or resplendens is likely to be a bit of a stunner.

Any mention of beetles always reminds me of JBS Haldane’s famous quote:

What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?” “I’m not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles.”

[via Evelyn C Leeper’s Quote file]

Update: I spoke a little too soon. I had to repost this entry when I discovered that all sorts of Bad Things™ happen when you try to mix the MT-Textile way of specifying links and the normal HTML method. Must never do that again.

This is amazing and horrifying at the same time: a young lad has had his partially-severed head sewn back on. Successfully. [via ext|circ]

Apparently, I’m 78% happy. I reckon that more than ¾ happy isn’t too shabby: happy enough, but still with things to strive for. Or something.

“The Life of Mammals” has been a consistently great series: wonderful photography, innovative discoveries of animal behaviour, and sparing—but highly effective—use of CGI. I thought the sequence in yesterday’s program where David Attenborough stood inside the skeleton of a blue whale, while the internal organs were built around him, was superb. There are some things that you just couldn’t do any other way, and it seems to me that getting an idea of the sheer titanic scale of the blue whale (heart the size of a small family car, 10 tonnes of blood) is one of those things.

This week’s bravery award goes to the camera people involved in the “Omnivores” episode of The Life of Mammals. First there were the grizzly bears. Big, hungry grizzly bears. I feared for the cameraman on that one, not to mention David Attenborough. I was on the edge of the sofa shouting, “Look behind you - there’s a big hungry bear!” David’s such a pro that he carried on with his effortless, unruffled delivery while, barely 50m behind him, half-starved bears galloped about after salmon. I wouldn’t fancy my chances of out-running one if it decided I was coveting its fish.

Then there was the bat cave. Paul Stewart (the cameraman) must have really picked the short straw for that particular assignment. I can imagine the scene: they draw lots. “Yay! Platypus in Australia!”. “Woohoo! African savanna!”. Then Paul picks his assignment. “Oh bugger.” The others are all laughing and chanting, “Paul’s got the bat cave, Paul’s got the bat cave…”

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I’ve just finished reading “The Science of Discworld” by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. The book alternates chapters based in Discworld, where Ponder Stibbons has created a miniature cosmos called “Roundworld”, and chapters in which the science of our own world (from the Big Bang to the present day) is explained. I have a confession to make. I’m a biologist, but I don’t really like reading popular science books for fun, or indeed any non-fiction. Call me mad, but after a long day at work doing science¹, the last thing I want to do of an evening is read more about it: give me fiction, and the more escapist, the better. So I approached this book with the secret, guilty intention of quietly skipping over the science chapters.

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Ever since I saw the link on Plasticbag.org, I’ve been hoplessly addicted to watching Kitten Cam . I’ve spoken before about my weakness for cute fluffy things. This, added to the fact that I really like cats, but can’t keep any because I live in a rented flat where pet ownership isn’t allowed, makes the Kitten Cam as addictive as crack for me. I keep telling Mr. Butshesagirl that I’m “just going to have a quick look at what the kittens are doing”.

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I’ve just watched this week’s “The Life of Mammals”. It’s just not fair. I can lecture about animal behaviour until I’m blue in the face, and the students won’t remember it. But I’ll bet you a million pounds that they’ll all remember the shrew train for the rest of their lives. To be fair, the quality of the filming is superb, and there’s nothing like David emerging from the undergrowth somewhere to catch your attention (note to Mr. Attenborough - those bats are pretty much frozen solid, you know - you don’t need to whisper). Of course, they occasionally gloss over the complexity, but they still manage to get across a lot of valuable information. The segment with the heat sensitive camera in the bat roost was particularly enlightening. Apart from anything else, it tells us that David should wear warmer trousers, or he’ll catch his death of cold.

Cute animal award of the day: the shrew train elicited a lot of aahs, but the award goes to the elephant shrew (a Formula 1 rodent). I thought that the adult elephant shrew was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen until the baby turned up. I may be a scientist, but I’m not immune to the charms of cute fluffy things.

I’m currently reading “The Science of Discworld” by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. It’s a really fun and surprisingly thought-provoking book, using Discworld as a model to discuss important issues in science in our world (“Roundworld”). I might write a longer post on it later when I finish it, but one quote in particular (about Unseen University on Discworld) struck a chord:

“A university is very much like a coral reef. It provides calm waters and food particles for delicate yet marvellously constructed organisms that could not possibly survive in the pounding surf of reality, where people ask questions like, ‘Is what you do of any use?’ and other nonsense.” p. 142-143

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According to a report in Scientific American, researchers have found that Tetris is actually a very hard problem to solve. One of the authors of the original report, Erik D. Demaine, said:

“While you’re playing Tetris, you’re really solving hard problems”

This totally validates all that time I spent bashing away at a monochrome version of Tetris on my old PowerBook 100 when I should have been writing my thesis. Hey, I was training my mind! And having lots of dreams about oddly shaped blocks falling all around me…

Apparently it’s true: red-haired women needed 20% more anaesthetic than brunettes. Mr. Butshesagirl is a ginger-nut, so now he knows why he hates going to the dentist.

He was also very proud when it was reported last year that the gene from red hair is at least 10,000 years old, and may possibly have originated in Neanderthals.