The gnat-ogre, Holcocephalus fuscus, is a tiny insect that eats even tiner insects. You've got to look really close to ever see them, although they may be in your back yard.
Aptly named, gnat-ogres are miniature robber flies, and every bit as carnivorous as their larger, more visible brethren. You've just got to look closely to see them. The gnat-ogre pictured above would be measured in millimeters. They are so small that a person would likely dismiss them as gnats or perhaps extremely tiny flower flies. With the naked eye, they are scarcely visible unless one happens to be closely studying the area in which gnat-ogres have staked out. To get these photos, I was using a heavy-duty macro lens, flash, and a tripod. Fortunately, gnat-ogres are fearless and will allow very close approach.
Ohio naturalist Jim McCormac describes them as "neat," so that's good enough for me! Link-Thanks, Manticore!
Here's another contender for the title of coolest error page. The site Nosh is about food, but the video on its 404 page is about... a dead page, of course. Link -via reddit
Abandoned places can be creepy. Morgues are always creepy to most people. Put them together, and you've got some really creepy places -and even more so when you know their history. Environmental Graffiti has a photo collection of abandoned morgues in hospitals, asylums, municipalities, military bases, and even this one from Ellis Island. Link
Pinball gets a new twist when you play on the street, with people as the balls and bumpers! This stop-motion video is from the 2011 Animation Block Party Film Festival in New York City. -via The Daily What
National Geographic Traveler magazine has announced the winners of their 2011 photo contest! First place went to the photo shown here, taken by Ben Canales at Crater Lake National Park. Read the story behind the picture, and see ten other amazing winning photos at NatGeo (do not miss the Viewer's Choice winner). http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/photo-contest/entries/gallery/winners/#/63686_0_608x405.jpg -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
by Daniel M. Berry Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
In software engineering, we are told that a software requirements specification should specify what the desired software should do, not how the software should do it. This is often summarized as “What, not how.” This paper explores the validity of the advice to specify “What, not how” for requirements, including quality requirements. In the domain of the New York bagel, it may be necessary to explain how in order to make the what precise enough.
In general, there are two ways to specify any system, software or otherwise:
1. a “what” specification describing what the system does, or
2. a “how” specification describing how the system does what it does.
A system may also be described by tests that are satisfied by the desired system.
A “what” specification and a test share the property that each leaves the question of how to implement the system up to the implementer. The freedom accorded to the implementer allows him or her to find the best technology to achieve the desired “what” or testing success.
Note that there can be no test specification for any but the most trivial systems, because no finite set of test cases can thoroughly test a non-trivial system for compliance to its requirements. Edsger Dijkstra once said, “Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!”1
While the “what, not how” mantra seems clear enough, in practice it may be very difficult to separate the hows from the whats. Indeed, for some requirements, it may be impossible to specify “what” without saying something about “how.” There are also requirements, usually called quality requirements, for which the “what” specification is simply not very useful, e.g., “The output shall look good,” “The user interface shall be easy to use,” or “The response time shall be fast.” In some of these cases, the only way to make the requirement precise enough to be tested is to say something about how it will be met.
A prime example of a product requiring a detailed “how” specification is none other than the New York bagel, examples of which are shown in figure 1.2
How many readers have ever really had one? A New York bagel, such as what you get at Zabar’s, H&H, or Rise & Shine, is not just a baked good with a hole in it, despite the widespread proliferation of places that make a bread with a hole and call it a bagel in order to profit from the current bagelmania.3 A donut is another baked good with a hole in it, and we all know that a bagel and donut have little in common except the hole; indeed, a bagel and a donut have literally nothing in common.4
After considering the new Smurfs movie, the folks at Slate compiled an interactive color wheel to show the spectrum of colors by which we know our favorite cartoon characters. At the site, you can mouseover to enlarge and identify each character. Link -via Buzzfeed
Last week, Jill posted 65 Seriously Great Comic Con Costumes here at Neatorama. But she took hundreds of photographs at Comic-Con! If you are jonesing for more fans dressed as comic book, video game, TV, or movie characters, you can see (or find links to) a lot more in a massive photo post at Rue the Day. Some costumes even mashed up different universes, like this Star Trek red shirt being attacked by an Alien facehugger. Which makes perfect sense when you think about it. Link
Now, here's a blog on an extremely narrow subject that many will find fascinating. Fashion It So is all about the clothing and costumes seen on the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Charlie and Anna are having a good time capturing screenshots and coming up with commentary on the fashions of the 23rd century. For example:
This episode opens up with Worf having trouble getting on his Starfleet formalwear:
You know, I think Worf probably could take a Mr. Universe pageant. And by take, I mean UTTERLY DESTROY IN THE FIELD OF BATTLE. In fact, why isn’t that part of the Mr. Universe pageant?
You can always find videos of adorably cute and sometimes funny kids at NeatoBambino. This one features a father who means well, but his attempt to teach the baby to laugh backfires in a big way. http://www.neatorama.com/neatobambino/2011/07/30/father-tries-to-teach-baby-to-laugh-diabolically-fails/
We often post about endangered animals, but plants can go extinct as well. Plant species' fortunes are affected by the actions of humans and other animals. Consider the strange case of the plant pictured here known as Cabbage on a Stick:
Cabbage on a stick is pretty much what it sounds like: a tuft of leaves that looks like a head of cabbage sitting on top of a thick stick. It's also known as alula. In the wild, this plant is only found on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and without the work of botanists, it would be extinct. Because the only insect that could pollinate the cabbage on a stick, a type of hawk moth, doesn't exist anymore, the plant species can only reproduce if humans hand-pollinate it. Botanists repelled down cliffs to reach the existing alula, pollinate it, and bring some back with them to grow in nurseries.
Other plants are endangered because of over harvesting, environmental encroachment, or even poaching. Link
What makes a good advertising slogan? The Atlantic looks at how some slogans stay with us for decades while others flounder. It's not always a matter of crowing about the quality of the product.
In the 1980s, British Rail tried to convince potential passengers that they were making significant improvements to their service with the slogan, "We are getting there." Passenger experience suggested otherwise, and the much-ridiculed slogan proved short-lived. Ford's "Quality is Job 1" met a similar demise around the same time. There is nothing wrong with slogans acknowledging weakness and being aspirational, but they do have to pass the test of experience. Avis' current slogan, "We try harder," was originally coined in 1962, as "We're No. 2. We Try Harder." Positive customer experience ratified the claim and helped Avis achieve significant sales growth.
Included with the article is a gallery of big advertisers and their slogan histories. Link -via mental_floss
Scientists speculate that the first dogs separated themselves from the wolf pack about 100,000 years ago. And until a few hundred years ago, dogs pretty much bred themselves willy-nilly with little record of human intervention. That is, until the dawn of...
THE UNNECESSARY DOG
In postmedieval Europe, lower-class dogs pulled carts and herded livestock (and were completely unappreciated for it). But on royal estates, "unnecessary dogs" -the darlings of kings and countesses- were becoming the objects of previously unheard-of emotional attachments. By the mid-19th century, these pampered pets outnumbered the working dog population. And by the late 19th century, dog lovers who were fiercely loyal to particular breeds started forming private registries and kennel clubs so they could just as fiercely protect those prized bloodlines.
Today, after nearly 100 years of serious breeding, most pedigreed dogs are extremely inbred. The chance that a purebred dog will have a different combination of genes at any given site on a chromosome is very small: 4 to 22 percent. In most mutts, it's a healthy 57 percent. Between two members of a typical human family it's an even healthier 71 percent. The degree of uniformity among purebreds means that when a bad trait gets locked in by chance, it tends to stay as long as the breeding is confined within the group.
MORE THAN ONE SICK PUPPY
So when you hear the phrase "indiscriminate breeding," it doesn't mean despoiling those pure bloodlines with a doggie liaison outside the breed (horrors!), it refers to the breeding of pedigreed dogs who are known to carry traits that are bad for the breed- mostly physical, but behavioral as well.
A lot of breeders are doing what they can to breed out the bad stuff while keeping in the good. But meanwhile, here's the poop on a few distinctive breeds: where they came from and -because of indiscriminate breeding- the reasons why you might end up spending all your time and money taking them to the vet (or the doggie shrink).
People in Norway are leaving many flowers as memorials to the 77 people killed in the July 22 attacks. The Norwegian news outlet Dagbladet is compiling photographs of memorial flowers to add to this mosaic. It already has 2370 photographs, and submissions are still being accepted. At the site, you can zoom in to see each individual photograph. Link (English translation) -via Dark Roasted Blend
