quote of the day
No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
— Robert M. Pirsig
don’t be a grumbletonian
I’m looking forward to purchasing a copy of the first dictionary of slang. Out of print for 300 years, it is being published by the Bodleian Library from a rare copy unearthed in its collections. From the website:
Originally entitled A New Dictionary of Terms, Ancient and Modern, of the Canting Crew, its aim was to educate the polite London classes in ‘canting’ – the language of thieves and ruffians – should they be unlucky enough to wander into the ‘wrong’ parts of town.
With over 4,000 entries, the dictionary contains many words which are now part of everyday parlance, such as ‘Chitchat’ and ‘Eyesore’ as well as a great many which have become obsolete, such as the delightful ‘Dandyprat’ and ‘Fizzle’. Remarkably, this landmark of English from 1699 was compiled and published anonymously, by an author who has left us only his initials – ‘B.E. Gent [gentleman]’.
Be sure and read the sample entries.
Via the most excellent blog The Centered Librarian.
be subtle
I know only a few people brassy enough to hand out one of these cards to someone.
sounds familiar
This is crazy.
The oldest evidence of a fungus that turns ants into zombies and makes them stagger to their death has been uncovered by scientists.
The gruesome hallmark of the fungus’s handiwork was found on the leaves of plants that grew in Messel, near Darmstadt in Germany, 48m years ago.
The finding shows that parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control the creatures they infect in the distant past, even before the rise of the Himalayas.
The fungus, which is alive and well in forests today, latches on to carpenter ants as they cross the forest floor before returning to their nests high in the canopy.
The fungus grows inside the ants and releases chemicals that affect their behaviour. Some ants leave the colony and wander off to find fresh leaves on their own, while others fall from their tree-top havens on to leaves nearer the ground.
The final stage of the parasitic death sentence is the most macabre. In their last hours, infected ants move towards the underside of the leaf they are on and lock their mandibles in a “death grip” around the central vein, immobilising themselves and locking the fungus in position.
“This can happen en masse. You can find whole graveyards with 20 or 30 ants in a square metre. Each time, they are on leaves that are a particular height off the ground and they have bitten into the main vein before dying,” said David Hughes at Harvard University.
The fungus cannot grow high up in the canopy or on the forest floor, but infected ants often die on leaves midway between the two, where the humidity and temperature suit the fungus. Once an ant has died, the fungus sprouts from its head and produces a pod of spores, which are fired at night on to the forest floor, where they can infect other ants.
Scientists led by Hughes noticed that ants infected with the fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, bit into leaves with so much force they left a lasting mark. The holes created by their mandibles either side of the leaf vein are bordered by scar tissue, producing an unmistakable dumb-bell shape.
Writing in the journal, Biology Letters, the team describes how they trawled a database of images that document leaf damage by insects, fungi and other organisms. They found one image of a 48m-year-old leaf from the Messel pit that showed the distinctive “death grip” markings of an infected ant. At the time, the Messel area was thick with subtropical forests.
“We now present it as the first example of behavioural manipulation and probably the only one which can be found. In most cases, this kind of control is spectacular but ephemeral and doesn’t leave any permanent trace,” Hughes said.
“The question now is, what are the triggers that push a parasite not just to kill its host, but to take over its brain and muscles and then kill it.”
He added: “Of all the parasitic organisms, only a few have evolved this trick of manipulating their host’s behaviour.
Why go to the bother? Why are there not more of them?”
Scientists are not clear how the fungus controls the ants it infects, but know that the parasite releases alkaloid chemicals into the insect as it consumes it from the inside.
Via Rick. 
Never imply Poles drink excessively
Here are some interesting travel tips taken from the edge of the cultural divide.
800% better
Oh this is good. Someone has taken Justin Bieber’s song “U Smile” and slowed it down 800%. Surreal.
i thought so
In the wake of the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy, it is appropriate to note some other businesses the same distance from the ‘hallowed ground’ of the World Trade Center.
Pikes Peak International Hill Climb
Driver: Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima.
Certifiably crazy.
science in the cloud
This is cool. Go to Einstein@home and download the program. It uses your computer’s idle time to search for gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO gravitational wave detector.
Einstein@home recently made its first discovery, a radio pulsar found in data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This was all done by volunteers allowing their computers to process data while not being used.
Traveler to the undiscovere’d country
Roger Ebert writes a very insightful and moving essay about Christopher Hitchens.
quote of the day
“My goal was to make the audience laugh but leave them unable to describe what it was that had made them laugh.”
paging Alan Sokal
Several days ago the publication Virology Journal published an article entitled “Influenza or not influenza: Analysis of a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time” which attempts to establish that the mother-in-law of Simon Peter in fact had influenza. Needless to say, the scientific blogging community was immediately outraged at this nonsense, and the paper is going to be deleted soon. Catch it while you can.
My favorite sentence: “The authors note that Luke did not quantify the fever as the Fahrenheit temperature scale was not invented until 1724.”
brilliant
Millions Of Barrels Of Oil Safely Reach Port In Major Environmental Catastrophe.
via The Onion, of course.
quote of the day
“I think we need to rename the Bible Belt. It’s more like the Dirty Underwear [Belt] of America.”
– P.Z. Myers, from his blog.
