Some more interesting etsy stuff I’ve seen:

Removable vinyl wall art by ellynelly – easily customize and decorate walls. You can choose your own colors for most of them. There is also a variety of these created by Blik Surface Graphics, including some designs from Threadless.

Wood and resin jewelry by modica. You can customize these, choosing your own resin colors for each of the wood circles.

“Reflecting pool” earrings by themusesjewels. Most of the blue you see when looking at the earring straight on is being reflected back – it’s really a silvery mirrored dish shape with a blue bead cupped within.

The first known example of parasite induced fruit mimicry: Scientists report (in the April issue of American Naturalist) the discovery of a parasitic worm that infects ants and turns their butts bright red — so they resemble berries. The parasite also changes their behavior, causing them to wave their butt around in the air. A bird spies the “berry”, eats it up and is infected. Bird poop is fed upon by the ants, completing the parasitic cycle.

Science magazine had an article exploring a paradoxical observation: acacia trees fenced off and protected from herbivores seem to be less healthy. It turns out the acacia trees are usually in a symbiotic relationship with a species of ant that protects them. When nobody’s munching on the trees, they stop providing for the ants and the symbiotic relationship breaks down — in a way that’s actually worse, in the end, for the acacia.

Then I started wondering, tangentially, if giraffes and acacias coevolved tallness. So I googled around… what I actually found was some surprising controversy regarding the evolution of the giraffe’s neck.

Everyone pretty much assumed they evolved tall necks to reach more leaves, but in 1996 a couple of guys proposed that the neck was actually a product of sexual selection. Turns out that the males use their necks as weapons when fighting each other. Check out this crazy youtube video. (url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7HCIGFdBt8 )

The argument they had against the feeding hypothesis was that giraffes spend a lot of time browsing at or below shoulder level. In 2007 another group published a study which found that higher quality biomass was available to giraffes higher up, due to competition with other foragers at lower levels. In the end I think I’ll stick with the tall-to-reach-leaves-hypothesis, but I thought this video of fighting giraffes was too awesome not to share.

I like the idea of Etsy. A place where people can showcase and sell the things they make – a free for all online gallery and crafts show. Although a lot of the stuff there is amateurish crud, some of it is really quality work. These knitware ceramics, for example, look pretty cool.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
– Orson Welles

It’s the traditional day for starting weight management regimens. As I’ve done before, I’ll be recording my weight, caloric intake and exercise in an online directory.

Update – I discovered that Facebook has a great application for keeping track of food and exercise and weight … I may just use this instead of keeping records in that directory there. Sorry. I think you can see my info there if you have an account.

ROUS found in Indonesia!

Preserving land to save as-yet-undiscovered species seems more tangible when someone discovers a seriously giant rat!

Here are some previous posters I made for genetics department social hour, in reverse chronological order.

I just framed a couple things by myself at the Framer’s Workshop in Brookline Village area. It took a while, but it was fun to do it by myself! And I guess it doesn’t cost so much, either.

The first is a painting I bought on Etsy from Shayla Maddox.

The second is an awesome original of an online comic strip that I got in return for a donation a long, long, long time ago from Jeffrey Rowland. The comic strip “When I Grow Up” has since finished but you can still read it online. I’m too lazy to dig through archives to locate the exact strip, so I’ll just show you my pictures. I hung it up in the bathroom, for obvious reasons once you read the strip.

NOTE TO MY PARENTS AND RELATIVES: This comic strip contains a dirty joke!!! If you read it please pretend you didn’t so I won’t be embarrassed!! (I’m talking to you, Mom.)

So I’ve been doing social hour posters for a while for our lab. Maybe I’m getting lazy. This round’s poster comes in two varieties: raw and interpreted. (You can click to get larger images.)

I’ve set up a new site for comics, now this can revert to being a random thoughts blog. Maybe I’ll add little notes on the subject contained within the comic. There’s a new comic there right now, Winged and a Prayer. There’s a captcha, so hopefully commenting will be easier.

Did you know that the gender of bees is based on ploidy? Female bees (workers and queens) are diploid, with two copies of each chromosome (like humans). Male bees (drones) are haploid, containing only one copy of each chromosome (like sperm and egg cells). Fertilized eggs turn into female bees, unfertilized eggs into males.

Worker bees can actually start laying eggs, but unlike queens the worker bee cannot mate. She cannot produce new workers or queens – only male drones. The worker bees only do this when the queen has died and the hive is queenless – thus, it’s a sort of last gasp effort to get the genes out.