snails

Turns out casual experimention with a little meth here and there is a good thing, if you're a snail. A paper recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology explains how snails were able to remember negative stimuli longer when under the influence of a bit of speed. When great pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) venture into low oxygen water, they extend a breathing tube above the water's surface. Researchers seperated a bunch of these party snails into two groups and put one sober group in normal water and another in meth-laced water. Then when the snails went to extend their…

In reverse order: 5.  David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists. "I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist." This sparked some lively action in the comments. 4. Lively or not, Wilson and Dawkins lost fourth place to snail jokes. A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails.  3. A walking tour that lets you See exactly where Phineas Gage lost his mind   2. "Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size We're constantly told -- we writers are, anyway -- that people won't read long stories. They're hard to sell to editors,…

  A press release about Snails on methamphetamines works for me.  The story is about memory. The jokes are about snails:   Snail Joke #1 A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails. Cop is interviewing the turtle afterwards, still at the scene. Turtle still flustered. Cop asks, "Just start at the beginning." "I don't know," says the turtle. "It all happened so fast."   Snail Joke #2 Guy opens his front door and grabs the paper off the porch. There's a snail on it. He gives a flick of the wrist, and the snail sails off the porch into the garden. Three weeks later there's a knock at the…

So a week back or so, a number of friends read an article about death by rectal eel and immediately thought of me. For those of you who missed the story, it went a little something like this: * Chinese man gets drunk with friends and passes out * Friends think it would be hilarious to insert a large living swamp eel into the man's butt while he is unconscious * Hilarity does not ensue. In fact, the man dies. Chinese doctor says the eel "consumed the man's bowels" The article was widely reported in major news outlets like CNN and the Times, but I am linking instead to the UK edition of…