Carl [kahrl] -noun
1. A strong, robust fellow, especially a strong manual laborer. 2. A miser; an extremely thrifty person. 3. A 25 year old Irish guy with too much to say and not enough people to listen.
I certainly now believe that the key to being fit and active does not lie in a gym or on a threadmill, but rather in the open air where one can actually have reason for being fit. I mean… what’s the point in being able to run forever if you’re not outside enjoying nature in the process? Short answer: there isn’t one.
:(
Wake up, world.
Marketing 101: Logos are, from the very beginning, designed to be recognised at a glance. Any one with a basic knowledge of business knows that your company will be the most successful when the brand is firmly implanted into the minds of just about every human being and having a recognisable logo is the best way to go about this.
Let’s go back to the ridiculous comparison above: leaves are not like logos. They are not designed to be recognisable. The only reason they are defining parts of a plant is because that plant has adapted it’s leaves for survival and mister botanist has taken advantage of this.
You could argue that you’d be uneducated if you cannot identify the leaves, and perhaps more uneducated if you can identify the logos but that’s quite unfair. If you think about it critically, we use products created by the companies above just about every day and thus we learn to recognise those logos because we’re constantly in front of what they sell. I’ll be honest, botany seems incredibly boring to me so it would only make sense that I take no interest in it. Therefore, how in the world would I be able to identify those leaves if I take no notice in it?
Finally, to the people whom inevitably sat back and tutted at this image (I’m looking at you invisiblebee,) the sad thing is that sitting on your high horse like you’re innocent of this disgusting capitalism doesn’t work when you own a computer created by a multi-billion dollar company. It’s almost funny.
I fucking hate when morons like this attack people just because they’re ashamed of their own shortcomings.
Leaves are “not designed to be recognisable” - says who? This blatant lack of understanding of nature and evolution is EXACTLY the point of this post. Most leaves have absolutely evolved and survived in a way that takes their ability to be recognised as a factor.
Whether it’s early humans recognising them to know which trees/plants contain certain fruit, the strongest wood, etc, or other natural life knowing which trees are best to live in, feed on, or hide in, the physical image of these leaves have had a massive part in which ones had their seeds spread, and therefore aided evolution.
And that’s the entire point being made! Including what invisiblebee said. There was a time when it was essential to know one leaf from another. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago when every kid in school knew which was which. We knew them by name, by tree, by fruit that accompanied them, by a whole bunch of factors.
But now, generally speaking; kids don’t.
You think saying things like “(people should be) learning more about the natural world than they do, if only for the sake of respect and safety of our environment” is obnoxious? So how do you define ridiculing someone for daring to suggest “Being able to recognize and appreciate the natural aspects in our surroundings is really important for if we want to conserve it and help to protect it”? Get a dictionary and you’ll see which one fits best into the “obnoxious” catergory.
Nobody has blamed any individual company for this. It’s a comment on humanity as a whole. So what if she’s using a mac? Or microsoft? Or sitting on a chair made by Ikea? Or wearing Nike shoes?… they are not in question here. So to suggest invisiblebee is on a “high horse” just because she made those comments is laughable. Just another feeble attempt to refuse acceptance that the problem is with us, as human beings. It’s always the same; “oh it’s the corporations… those big bad multi-nationals that we can’t live without!”. An attempt to avoid human responsibility by focusing on the brands instead of the issue the brands are being used to highlight.
So get over your logos and see the actual point people are making here.
And if you genuinely believe a person can’t make this point while on “a computer created by a multi-billion dollar company”, then your logic suggests you can’t make your point while breathing the fucking air produced for you by these leaves that aren’t really worth knowing about.
In short; a piece of NASA space junk, a 6 ton satellite, is currently heading towards the earth.
They say they can’t tell where it’ll land, but can give the parameters of latitudes up in North Canada/Russia, all the way down to South America/South of Australia… which basically means it can land almost anywhere in the most populated parts of the planet.
They claim there’s “only” a 1-in-3200 chance of it “hitting a person”, which, when you think about it, isn’t really that unlikely. It’s more likely to “hit a person” then you are to be hit by lightning… or experience an earthquake… or get hit by a car… or drown… or get electrocuted. All of these things are less likely to happen to me or you than this satellite hitting a person.
To add; Obviously, when it enters our atmosphere, it’ll break up and a lot of it will burn up. However, NASA themselves have said there are at least 30 parts that will survive entry, and they will certainly crash into earth.
So I have to wonder… does that a 1-in-3200 chance estimate acknowledge flailing pieces of debris that will separate miles from each other?
It’s also important to point out that I made a point of quoting the “chance of hitting a person” - because that’s the info they gave… hitting a person. What about buildings? What about forests and jungles that could catch fire? What about other forms of life?
The earth is 70% ocean, which is good because that’s already a 70% chance of each piece safely missing land (because who cares about aquatic life, right?).
So there’s basically a 30% chance it’ll hit land. Take out unpopulated desert and mountain areas and we’re left with about a 20-22% chance of it hitting some kind of eco-system. That’s a high chance!
Now don’t get me wrong, I live by science… I have a massive thirst for knowledge and am very thankful to have a lot of the info we get from satellites. But if this is how we’re going to handle things… “ah sure it *probabaly* won’t hit us”, then fuck that, we need to change something.
Currently, in Earth’s orbit, there are thousands of tons of space debris that WE have put there. I’ve found estimates of over 250,000 pieces of debris. This isn’t the last time we will have this problem. I know NASA has closed off large parts of its space exploration because of budget cuts, but even today, in many parts of the world, we’re sending up all sorts of shit that doesn’t need to be up there.
Image from NASA, portraying the amount of space junk surrounding us.
So congratulations, Humanity… you can now add that to the list of ways you’ve fucked yourself.
This is a fairy wasp, alongside an amoeba and a paramecium.
Fairy wasps shrink to the size of amoeba by sacrificing their neurons.
Fairy wasps are some of the tiniest creatures on Earth, an entire insect roughly the size of a single-celled organism like an amoeba. That means their individual cells must be incredibly tiny…and that requires losing much of their nervous system.
The fairy wasp, otherwise known as the fairyfly, is a parasitic insect that can measure as little as 200 micrometers long, making it roughly the size of unicellular organisms like amoebas or paramecia. Of course, this insect isn’t a one-celled organism, which means its thousands of individual cells have to be shrunk down to unbelievably small sizes.
The fairy wasp’s tininess has its uses - it’s able to avoid most predators and invade other insects’ eggs undetected. But there’s a pretty hefty trade-off for the creatures’ biology, according to new research from Alexey A. Polilov of Russia’s Lomonosov Moscow State University. He discovered that as much as 95% of neurons in adult fairy wasps don’t have a nucleus.
That’s surprising, considering a nucleus is generally considered a pretty crucial part of a cell, particularly since it contains the cell’s genetic material. And while baby fairy wasps do feature a full set of nuclei in their neurons, they lose them as they grow older.
This sacrifice is apparently what allows fairy wasps to remain so ridiculously tiny, and losing so many seemingly crucial nuclei doesn’t actually matter all that much, considering fairy wasps are still able to do all their complicated behaviors, like flying around and invading other eggs. It almost makes you wonder why us bigger species still bother with all these cellular extravagances… you know, like fully functioning neurons.
Horseshoe Bend, near Lake Powell in Arizona
I’m adding this to my list.
Well this is kind of awesome.
The lovely scent of cut grass is the reek of plant anguish: When attacked, plants release airborne chemical compounds. Now scientists say plants can use these compounds almost like language, notifying nearby creatures who can “rescue” them from insect attacks.
A group of German scientists studying a wild tobacco plant noticed that the compounds it released - called green leaf volatiles or GLVs - were very specific. When the plants were infested by caterpillars, the plants released a distress GLV that attracted predatory bugs who like to eat the caterpillars in question.
According to “Science”, where the researchers published their study today:
They found that when these plants are attacked by tobacco hornworm caterpillars,Manduca sexta, the caterpillars’ saliva causes a chemical change in the GLV compounds the plants had produced. These modified compounds then attract predatory “true bugs,”Geocoris, which prey on hornworm eggs and young larvae. Although more research will be needed to figure out exactly how the molecules in the caterpillar saliva cause this change in the GLVs, it’s clear that the caterpillars themselves cause the change in the GLV signal, the researchers say. It may thus be possible someday to induce the same sort of change via genetic engineering, which might protect plants against pests without encouraging the resistance that pests develop in response to pesticides.
We’re all sick, twisted, torturous murderers.
