bizarre
elerner | August 20, 2010"Photographic evidence" is sometimes taken as shorthand for cold, hard proof. Seeing, after all, is believing, and if we have a permanent record of an image that anyone can examine, what more verification can be necessary? Of course, we can't really trust our eyes or memories, something that has been exacerbated by how trivial manipulating photographs have become. But even before Photoshop, photographs fooled people. Beyond crude hoaxes, there remains the fact that such images are not simple slices of reality. Intentionally or unintentionally, photographers determine what information from a…
ejohnson | August 4, 2009
A rainforest in...Iran? A volcanic eruption...on Venus? This week, ScienceBloggers are bringing our attention to places where nature is defying our expectations. No matter how well we think we know the patterns and forces of the universe, we are constantly surprised: On Gene Expression, Razib takes a look at Iran's lush Caspian and Hyrcanian forests; Erik Klemetti discusses the possibility of a recent explosive eruption on Venus; Ed Yong describes the discovery of a bacterial genome that hides entirely within the DNA of a fruit fly; and in a TED Talk on Greg Laden's Blog, Freeman Dyson makes…
amillikan | May 5, 2009
The billionaire media icon Oprah Winfrey sealed a contractual deal with notorious anti-vaccination supporter Jenny McCarthy Monday that will enable McCarthy to spread her belief that vaccines cause autism across several platforms. This viewpoint is vehemently opposed in the scientific community, as it remains virtually unsupported after years of rigorous scientific investigation and, if heeded as true, has lethal consequences in the form of diseases like measles, mumps and rubella. With support from Oprah, McCarthy is slated to host a syndicated talk show and maintain a blog. According to…
amillikan | April 20, 2009
As apex organisms in the scope of Earth's multi-tiered web of life, most of us go about our day-to-day activities oblivious to the fact that bacteria are literally everywhere. Microorganisms can thrive in the most surprising locales—places totally inhospitable to human life. Recently, scientists from Harvard documented a flourishing bacterial ecosystem buried under 400 meters of ancient glacial ice; more common bacteria, Salmonella may lurk on your dinner plate, as a report citing 48,600 infections across ten states in 2008 attests; and if it's any indication from this scientific pursuit,…
amillikan | April 1, 2009Animal control units are flocking to North Carolina's Research Triangle Park to aide in the struggle to contain a herd of approximately 50 'Dinochickens,' the dinosaur-like creatures constructed using chicken embryos and reverse evolution techniques. According to one of the researchers in the facility, one of the dinochickens was able to manipulate the locking mechanism on the master containment room by entering a number on a keypad, subsequently overpowering the researchers and allowing the herd to escape through a plate-glass window. The creation of the dinochickens was part of a project…
amillikan | February 16, 2009Today is Friday the 13th, and things are getting a little bit weird here at ScienceBlogs. I mean, birds wearing backpacks? The possibility of a Neandertal genome sequenced? Scicurious talking about co... oh wait, that's actually pretty normal. If we were superstitious though, we might think there was something to all of this.
amillikan | January 26, 2009
Last Thursday, I entered The Research Triangle for the ScienceOnline09 conference. It was a place of both shadow and substance, both things and ideas. It was a place where the cryptic elements of the blogosphere manifested in three dimensions; personalities known only through pixelated text subject to the imagination took on faces and voices that would forever alter my perception of the messages flashing next to the user names I encounter every day as an administrator of ScienceBlogs. But unlike The Bermuda Triangle where people are rumored to disappear due to the activities of paranormal…
zooillogix | June 27, 2008A not at all exhaustive collection of cool bizarro aquariums.
Modular fish tank
Toilet tank. Kind of like fish purgatory.
The Fish-Bird Tank-Cage
many more below the fold...
Sink tank
The sophisticated ichthyologist's sitting room
A concept piece by a Japanese architectural firm
More of the above
This robotic fish tank senses which direction the fish is swimming and drives off in that direction. Could prove extremely useful in absolutely no circumstances.
In this Korean tank, the pump and aerator are powered via USB. Additionally, temperature is controlled via software on your…