the wages of sin don't adjust for inflation

Okay, so I don't understand exactly what it is she's making or what you do with them, but this woman? My new hero. She replaced a process that used $100,000 fabricating machines with.... Shrinky-Dinks. No, I am not shitting you. She's custom-manufacturing high-tech devices in a matter of minutes using shrinky-dinks and a toaster oven. This technology can be used in stem cell research, and she also sees applications for making solar cells more efficient. She's like MacGyver, only super-hot and probably like... a million times smarter. In fact, she and MacGyver should have little MacGyver-like children, who will inevitably RULE THE WORLD.

This picture of the core of the Milky Way is ridiculously beautiful. I want to wallpaper a room with it so when you step inside it's like you're at the center of the galaxy. That would be so freaking awesome. Almost as awesome as actually being in space. Almost.

Smalleye stingrays are actually quite large when it comes to their other body parts, and a BBC camera crew has for the first time captured one on film. It doesn't seem all that impressive until the diver starts swimming next to it and you're all, "OMG WTF GIANT STINGRAY!"

Apparently scientists have discovered the gene that causes age-related hearing loss in humans and have managed to prevent hearing loss in older mice by removing that gene. I'm taking this as yet another sign that the cyberpunk novels of my youth were on the right track with the future of medical technology.

I should note for the record that I do not like coffee. At all. But I do like the insane designs that the world's "baristas" make with said coffee. For instance, the universe in a cup or this super bad-ass dragon. This has nothing to do with science really (well, it does, but only in the way that all everyday things somehow have something to do with science), but I wanted to share.

You should know that this is how everything goes to hell during a zombie apocalypse. This is only marginally science-related, in that it shows us how science will be the doom of us aaaaaalllll.

Welsh officials finally heed my warning, telling beach-goers to watch out for devious deadly jellyfish-things. Good on you, Wales, for listening to me before it's too late.

Speaking of which, in case you haven't seen them yet, you should check out these killer pictures of ice jellies from the deep Arctic oceans. What the articles about these findings don't say is that the deep Arctic oceans are probably home of the secret jellyfish base from which great jellyfish armies will eventually spread across the earth and KILL US ALL. So really, you should look at the pictures for know-thy-enemy sort of reasons.

Also, apparently crested pigeons create a whistling alarm sound with their wings when they take off, which alerts other pigeons to danger. It's not really jellyfish-related, but it is interesting.

Here's a pretty little animated short about evolution:

A Record Of Life from Owen Gatley on Vimeo.

In completely unrelated news, the tall ship Hawaiian Chieftain will be sailing these local waters in the spring, and yours truly has booked a ticket. Unfortunately the Lady Washington won't be sailing with them as usual, but next year maybe they'll both be back and I can book a battle sail. I am excited like an excited thing, and keep telling myself that motion sickness is a mind disease. I CAN OVERCOME IT FOR A LIFE ON THE SEA, MATEYS. Or at least I can eat a lot of ginger and take a dramamine. Whatever. It's gonna be so awesome.

Here now for your entertainment is a much more enjoyable form of the linkspam: bioblogging! w000000t!

Science has proved Aesop's fable, "The Crow and the Pitcher." Researchers offer crows a juicy worm in a pitcher of water, crows drop pebbles into the pitcher until the water level rises enough for them to snatch the worm. I fucking love crows, man. They're smart little fuckers.

Here's a cool bit of bio news: orangutans use leaves to fashion "musical instruments." Apparently the point of it is that using the leaves lowers the pitch of their call, making them sound like bigger orangutans than they actually are, and in theory making predators think twice about coming to eat them.

This one I have to link not so much for the information -- which is interesting, but I'm not really a botany enthusiast, so it's not interesting enough on its own -- as for the hilarity. The Fruit Is A Lie, a post about what is and is not technically a "fruit."

And while we're on the subject of plants, here are some fucking massive ones that eat meat. It's a pitcher plant so big it catches rats, you guys. Coming next week on the "SyFy" channel: Pitcher Plant vs. Venus Fly Trap II: Ultramegadeath Showdown! And for an added dose of cool? They named it after David Attenborough.

Something else to add to the list of cool: this venomous sea snake uses its tail to fake out predators. While it's got the business end of its venomy head down in a crevasse looking for noms, it holds its tail in a manner that makes the tail look like a head. You're fucking awesome, venomous sea snake. I mean, assuming you're not in league with the jellyfish.

By the way, if you didn't check out Fuck You, Penguin from the last time I linked it, you definitely should now. Not that anything significant has changed or anything, just that you really don't want to miss this. At all.

Since I've been traumatizing you all with the constant end-times in the news, I thought I'd go for something a little different today with some science and tech news.

Are crows the smartest animals in the world? Well, yes. I mean, aside from humans, and even that's a near thing. Crows are fucking awesome, you guys. I don't need SCIENCE to tell me that. I can ask my GUT.

Here's a really cool video of an ocean wave from underneath, and while we're talking ocean, an awesome invention to generate energy from the movement of the ocean. I know there are other technologies to do that, but this one sounds tremendously simple and pretty promising.

I don't remember whether I linked this story when I read it before or not, but I'm pretty much in love with the story of a man and his solar oven. Solar ovens have been around for a long time and are seeing a bit of a revival now as people are getting more and more interested in sustainable living, but I really like this guy's concept just because it's so incredibly simple and cheap. The coolest thing about it, from my perspective, is that it could make drinking water safer for so many people who otherwise would have to waste their firewood or pay an exorbitant privatized-water rate to get clean drinking water. (But the water crisis is a whole other blog, I reckon. ;))

Of all the things we could build with nanotechnology, water-repelling swimsuits would not have been at the top of my list. How about bandages that magically heal the wound underneath with nanotechnology? How about THAT? Or how about Replicators that can assemble themselves in any shape they want and then try to overrun the earth, thus allowing us to be saved again by Richard Dean Anderson? How about THAT? But no. You give me swimsuits. I'm disappointed in you, technology.

If you watch Lie To Me (or The Mentalist or any of the other shows founded on a basic principle of White Guys Being Much More Clever Than Everyone Else Around Them -- and let's not even get into how absolutely abysmal that last episode of The Mentalist was), you probably have some idea about the ineffectiveness of the lie detector. Most people could probably produce off the top of their heads at least one method for beating the basic lie-detector, just from watching television, and most of us have some idea that the things aren't exactly foolproof. Now a study by linguistic and phonetic scientists concludes that there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that lie detectors actually work. The punchline is, of course, that an Israeli company which produces lie-detector machines is threatening legal action if these scientists ever publish on this idea again.

Birds Can Dance, Expert (and Zany Videos) Reveal This particular news item has proved the old saying about assuming: I kind of always assumed everyone knew that animals can have rhythm and can "dance." I mean, there are how many species of birds that do mating dances? But I think the point here is that these birds are dancing to music and adjusting to changing tempos. Personally, I'm a little more impressed when they're just dancing to the music in their heads. Also, "[experts] reviewed thousands of YouTube videos" isn't really something I ever want to see written for methodology in a scientific report. For srs.

Also, one of these things is not like the others, but I'd just like to point out that Lt. Choi, who is a Arabic linguist, officer in the Army Reserve and West Point graduate, is being discharged because he admitted to being a homosexual, which counts as "homosexual conduct" under the deeply and profoundly ridiculous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Oh, Obama. You have so many things to change. I hope that this is one of them.