The good, the bad and the sad

The list of nakedly corrupt practices by Donald Trump is long, but not as fun as hitting Clinton.

Via Steve Bates, The Guardian keeps track (tries to keep up with) Trump's lies.

The story of the woman in the Brussels airport bombing.

Scientists ride in to the rescue of a bullied little girl who loves bugs.

Bathing Birds, Bugs, and Bees...

How to take a proper bath... if you are a bird.

Do teachers work hard enough?

Paul Krugman discusses the good ol' days.

Those who pay (or don't pay) income tax.

Margaret Atwood interview.

Fantastic views of the lions of the Serengeti.

What is really causing heart disease.  (Hint: our crappy diets and what we're being fed by the food industry.)

Bugs, toilets and mushrooms will save the world!

Musical mobs in subways!!

Bach on a mobius strip.

Studying the bee deaths in detail.

The condition of China's farm land.

Monday minibits..

Rep. Darrell Issa's big day... oops.  And Issa's interesting background that people seem to ignore.

Eat more bugs and save the world!  Basically because we are cooking the earth and things are going to die.  C02 in the air.

Europe banned these food production practices... and the US does them.

Normality v Normalcy.  Normality, please.  Normalcy just grates on the ears...

Best and worst and things in between...

What the second amendment is actually all about.

How to treat PTSD.

And I thought fuzzy caterpillars were cute!

Imagine if you were stuck in a room with a blank computer and a floppy....

Making the 'War on Terror' forever unwinnable..

The best photos of 2012.

Finding buried treasure in the U.K.

Science that leaves you aglow

MESSENGER delivers its first image from Mercury

Bug Highway:

How much fresh water is left on earth?

Another video of the Japanese quake.

And all things radioactive: Caesium fallout from Fukushima rivals Chernobyl.

Why are there so many different ways of measuring radiation?

Workers at Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant are trying to prevent radioactive water from seeping into the sea.

Tom Tomorrow helps explain it all.

The radioactive ocean that we've been using as a bomb site and dumping ground:

Radioactive pollution in the ocean is nothing new. We've been loosing the stuff offshore since 1944.

Gah!!!

In New York City, bedbugs now are 250 times more resistant to the standard pesticide than bedbugs in Florida, due to changes in a gene controlling the resilience of the nerve cells targeted by the insecticide.

We're going to have to walk around in those hazmat suits and live in plastic houses....

Other articles on bedbugs.

Update 5/31/11: Top 10 Myths about Bedbugs

Alien hitches a ride on a submarine

Demands to be taken to our leader...

Ol' Bart attached itself to a submarine that was exploring the ocean floor. When the sub surfaced, people got an unexpected look at the slithery stowaway. The creature is a pinkish in color, two and a half feet long, and wouldn't be out of place in an Ed Wood movie (no offense, Bart).

The story was originally posted on Reddit by a guy who works for the submarine company. It quickly went viral from there. Once news of the creature's existence hit, Web searches immediately soared. Online lookups for "sea creature found," "giant isopod," and (our personal favorite) "terrifying sea creature" all roared.

It's worth noting that the existence of the Bathynomus giganteus isn't, in and of itself, a surprise. Scientists have long been aware of them. The shock came from seeing one up close in all its cockroach-like glory.

Looks like an overgrown sowbug if you ask me...

OMG! Sowbugs are the alien minions of Ol'Bart!!11! We've already been overtaken! Aaaaahhh....

The most important question to ask though.... is it good to eat?

Missing ladybugs

If you see one, get its name and address and then replace in the wild.

Across North America ladybug species distribution is changing. Over the past twenty years several native ladybugs that were once very common have become extremely rare. During this same time ladybugs from other places have greatly increased both their numbers and range. Some ladybugs are simply found in new places. This is happening very quickly and we don’t know how, or why, or what impact it will have on ladybug diversity or the role that ladybugs play in keeping plant-feeding insect populations low. We're asking you to join us in finding out where all the ladybugs have gone so we can try to prevent more native species from becoming so rare.

Something beautiful

To share:

flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

Should I be worried?

Someone googled black raid bug spray meth recipe and got my blog...

Raid in your meth? Really? Would Raid add something extra to the usual twitchiness and paranoia? Like a fondness for cockroaches?

That's not just a cockroach!

It's a CIA operative!

So what's hot at DARPA right now? Bugs. The creepy, crawly flying kind. The Agency's Microsystems Technology Office is hard at work on HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), raising real insects filled with electronic circuitry, which could be guided using GPS technology to specific targets via electrical impulses sent to their muscles. These half-bug, half-chip creations — DARPA calls them "insect cyborgs" — would be ideal for surveillance missions, the agency says in a brief description on its website.

Scientist Amit Lal and his team insert mechanical components into baby bugs during "the caterpillar and the pupae stages," which would then allow the adult bugs to be deployed to do the Pentagon's bidding. "The HI-MEMS program is aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis," DARPA says. "Since a majority of the tissue development in insects occurs in the later stages of metamorphosis, the renewed tissue growth around the MEMS will tend to heal, and form a reliable and stable tissue-machine interface." Such bugs "could carry one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination."

So we must activate our own state of the art defenses!







The arms race will never cease!

Unidentified flying machine?

Surveillance flying dragonfly? or just a bug?: (Via Sagemarm)





The photographer, Frank F. says:

Just taking a picture of the F-14 Tomcat while driving thru Pensacola, Fl. on 7-25-2007. Then when I got home, we downloaded the pictures. Then as we were looking at the pictures, I noticed what looks like a dragonfly. But when veiwed full size, (actually looks pretty clear), you can see it looks man-made. I mean, look at the body, it looks mechanical. It is located on the right side half way down by the trees. Never saw or heard anything while I was there. What a trip, huh!

I think the squirrels and raccoons are in on the flying device if you ask me....

Update: It has been suggested that it is a micro-UAV, a spy drone of sorts. They are developing all sorts.