Scary

This is really scary. Put down your beverage and watch carefully: Is that a reflection, a bit of fog, something on the lens? Or a ghost, captured on film?

What I discovered while creating this post is that it's damn effective even when you know what's coming.

Boo.

Monster mash

I was working in the lab late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For my monster from his slab began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise

He did the mash
He did the monster mash
The monster mash
It was a graveyard smash
He did the mash
It caught on in a flash
He did the mash
He did the monster mash

From 1962, Bobby Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers.

Happy Halloween

Boys kissing edition

(Credit)

The traditional emphasis upon the occult, witches, devils, death, and evil sends messages to our kids that godly parents can only regard with alarm. There is clearly no place in the Christian community for this “darker side” of Halloween.

... Halloween is the day of the Devil, a satanic celebration of dark forces disguised as a children's holiday. Parents are duly informed by sour faced guardians of morality that celebrating Halloween puts their children in immediate danger from the Dark One himself, who seduces them ...

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It's true. During the 1950's everyone was on serious drugs. Really, really, powerful shit.

(1952 Motorola advertisement from plan59.com, again.)

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Lion update

My efforts with The Google have only come up with this picture of one the lions mentioned here. So now the NSA and various caches have me recorded looking for "lions balls" and I've got nothing to show for it.

In spite of the fetid imaginings of Senators John Cornyn and Rick Santorum, lions, whatever the size of their packages, just don't do it for me. But I'll note without further comment, that this one does have awfully big feet.

Bat update

One really cool thing about this picture (earlier) is that you can see the anatomy quite clearly.

Among us tetrapods, bats, birds and pterodactyls all evolved wings independently.

You can see the bat solution here. There's a shoulder, arm, forearm, wrist. The wing is supported on elongated fingers: it's its hand. The thumb remains free and is useful when crawling on all fours. The first finger is diminished and is barely visible on the leading edge of the wing.

There are some nice drawings of wings here.

More bats.

Happy birthday, everything

The Eagle Nebula

As is well known, the Irish primate James Ussher worked out that the unverse was created in the evening of Sunday, October 22, 4004 BCE.

We read that on that day was created the earth, then light. the next day came the firmament which divided the water above from the waters below. On Wednesday the 23d came dry land. and plants. Next day saw day and night, and the sun stars and moon. Friday saw fish, birds, all creeping things, and people. The next day god slept in because the liquor stores didn't open until noon (Genesis 1:1 to 2:3).

Or, well, maybe it went earth and heaven, then plants, then water (Wednesday?), then a man, plants, Eden and the world's three rivers, animals, a woman (Genesis 2:4 to 2:25). Whatever.

According to Gallup, fourty-five percent of Americans believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Happy 6009th, world!

Better hurry up, though. Thirty-seven percent of good christians believe that it will all end soon.

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Bats

Go see these wonderful pictures of bats at a hummingbird feeder in Arizona.

Lesser Long-nosed Bat

At The Firefly Forest via Snails Tales.

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Boys kissing

(Credit)

If the Ameircan people are shocked by all of the same-sex smooching that is on television, wait until they see an American president kissing up to the wealthiest extremists of the amoral left.

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Chemical names

Arsole
It's a benzene ring.

Megaphone
A ketone.

Curious Chloride
Curium and chlorine, of course.

Fukalite
A mineral named for the Fuka mine in Japan.

Fucitol
An alcohol made from the sugar fucose.

Uranate
A form of uranium oxide.

Angelic Acid
First isolated in the Garden Angelica plant.

Parisite
A mineral named for someone named Paris.

Sodamide
A sodium salt.

Update:
October 22-28 is National Chemistry Week.

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Orchidae leonae

The eight lifelike lion statues across from what soon will be Arizona's largest cineplex apparently are a bit too lifelike for some tastes.

Glendale Councilwoman Joyce Clark hasn't seen the statues, but doesn't think they're appropriate for a family park.

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."- Mark Twain.

And here it comes ...

"I can see children getting an instant lesson in the birds and the bees, which maybe their parents wouldn't want them to have," she said. "It wouldn't make sense to put something so salacious there." [link. My emphasis.]

It seriously creeps me out that this woman considers this salacious.

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Boys kissing

It's bunny time again.

It’s interesting when you read what Jesus Christ had to say about his second coming and the end of the age. He said it will be in the days as it was in Sodom and Gomorrah. Are we seeing that being lived out before us? I think the answer is yes.

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Red-capped manakin

The central-American bird Pipra mentalis has a particularly elaborate and humorous mating display. The clapping of wings mentioned here creates a sharp snapping noise. And then there's the moon walk ...

See and hear the wing snapping here.

"Manakins have weird, pretty extreme behavior," says Bostwick, an evolutionary ornithologist who makes a memorable appearance in the first episode of NATURE's DEEP JUNGLE. "They are very, very interesting birds."

While many birds have evolved wings that enable them to fly long distances or dodge predators, Bostwick says male manakins have evolved "really weird wings" that serve another purpose: "They want to blow a female's mind. That's the most important thing."

- PBS's Nature

Killer teddy bear

I don't know how I missed this story from September about a stuffed bear killing 2,500 trout.

State officials say a teddy bear that fell into a pool at a Fish and Game Department hatchery earlier this month clogged a drain. The clog blocked the flow of oxygen to the pool and suffocated the fish.

Hatcheries supervisor Robert Fawcett said the bear, dressed in yellow raincoat and hat, is believed to be the first stuffed toy to cause fatalities at the facility.

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Owls

I wrote before about the Great Horned owl in my neighborhood.

This morning, at about two A.M., I woke to hear two of them. Apparently arguing over the territory.

Still no sighting, but I love to listen.

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Meat - It's what's for dinner.

Mmm, hamburger ...



(1954 Franco-American advertisement, from plan59.com)

Moon

By the way, isn't that moon phase widget in the sidebar cool?

The moon was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.

-Emily Dickinson

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

La Cage Aux Foley

Leave it to those lying, bastard Hollywood liberals to rush out a sequel to a sequel to a sequel that already has a Broadway musical spin-off just to swing the mid-term elections by capitalizing on the teensiest little bit of Republican pederasty.

From the Mike Tidmus Blog.

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