nudle

Cool science news.

Excerpt from an article by Seattle Times science reporter, Sandi Doughton:

Baby sand dollars clone themselves when they sense danger

The odds of growing up aren't good for baby sand dollars.

Smaller than the head of a pin, the larvae drift in the ocean — easy prey for anything with a mouth.

But a University of Washington graduate student has discovered the tiny animal has a surprising survival strategy: Faced with the threat of being gobbled up, it makes like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies and clones itself.

The resulting "mini-me" may escape hungry fish because it is even teenier than the original — and harder to see.

"If you are eaten, but the smaller version of you survives, you're still a winner from an evolutionary standpoint," said Dawn Vaughn.

HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PC.

Ewan got a new notebook computer and its screen is also a TABLET. You can draw and write on it. The screen swivels around like that girl in The Exorcist's head and then you can click it horizontal and it's a writing surface. Or a drawing pad.

Draw-ring by Ewan:

The monster.

There's a monster in my belly and it's called PMS. Every several months the monster claws its way out and informs me that it doesn't actually live in my belly but is the offspring of several mating hormones. Its tone is supercilious. It likes to use big words. It's mean; it makes me do things like vacuum a lot (I see a speck on the carpet and I only vacuumed six minutes ago!) and check my stats like a mental stutter and look in the mirror and hate myself.

I am listening to a story on the radio in the car while driving among other drivers, silly fools who should be beaten with a stick, when the monster throws handfuls of something in my eyes to make them water. This happens whether the story is about the West Virginia coal miners or the Cubs losing again or Colbert making fun of Mister President.

The monster plunges into my mouth and down my throat and hides and plays mean tricks like speaking with a dead voice to little boy N who comes over for a play date and demanding that Iona SOUND OUT THAT MIDDLE WORD in the title of Rob Saves Dad for the fifteenth time or the light goes out right now. The monster is a bitch.

The monster gets up on my desk and throws all the many, many papers into one large pile so it can light a bonfire later. Then it watches me look for that lost address for an hour and a half and it laughs HAHAHAha

Somehow the monster makes all the cosmos line up in such a way that I cannot get anything accomplished and I spend so much time at the lighting store trying to get a light fixture repaired that when I leave at 5:00 they hang the CLOSED sign up an hour early and all pour themselves a stiff drink.

The monster puts a bottle of red wine in front of me next to Iona's leftover Easter chocolate and sneers.

"Confess," the monster whispers, handing me my laptop.