Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
If you’re having a Memorial Day picnic today, you probably won’t see this in time, but the summer is long. Instructables has directions for cutting your watermelon in a way that makes it easy to remove most of the seeds. I think it may take a bit of practice, but that just means more watermelon! Link -via Lifehacker
Atractaspis are also called mole vipers, burrowing asps, burrowing adders, stiletto snakes, or side-stabbing snakes. They can bite without opening their mouths!
Burrowing asps have a highly reduced dentition, with just two particularly elongate maxillary fangs (up to a third of total skull length), two short, gently curved dentary teeth, and a couple of very small palatine teeth[...}. The maxillary fangs (there are two in each maxilla, one of which is a replacement tooth kept in reserve) are huge compared to the short, block-like maxilla: in fact virtually its entire length is occupied by the transversely arranged fang sockets. The maxilla articulates with the relatively immobile prefrontal by way of a saddle-shaped joint (this contrasts with the condition in viperids, where the articulatory surfaces between the maxilla and prefrontal are flat), allowing the maxilla to easily rotate posterodorsally and anteroventrally.
Rotating teeth? I didn’t need to hear that! These snakes burrow underground and live in Africa and the Middle East. Link
The New York Times posted a profile of the webcomic xkcd and its creator, Randall Munroe. They titled it “This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix”. I beg to differ, since I don’t know Unix and I find his comics hilarious almost all the time.
Link -via reddit
The image here is part of the latest strip.
Mr. Munroe has become something of a cult hero. He counts himself as among the fewer than two dozen creators of comic strips on the Web who make a living at it.
At Google headquarters, a required stop on the geek-cult-hero speaking tour, he recently addressed hundreds of engineers, some of whom dutifully waited for him to sign their laptops. He said he had only wanted a tour of the place but had instead been invited to speak. The real thrill, he said, was that a hero of his, Donald Knuth, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford and a programming pioneer, was in the front row.
“It’s comparable to Bill Gates’s being in the front row,” he said. “I got to have lunch with him. He’s in his 70s, but people he is in touch with must have told him about it.”
Link -via reddit
The image here is part of the latest strip.
Check out this Homer Simpson made of balloons! It’s part of an extensive collection of balloon art at Toxel.com. Link -via Digg
You have to wonder what they were thinking, but I suppose there are places in the world where you can get in more trouble for shooting pictures than for aiming a gun. Oobject has a collection of 14 cameras that look just like guns. Link -via J-Walk Blog
Frank Woodruff Buckles is the only living American-born veteran of World War I, as far as federal officials know. The 107-year-old veteran was honored at the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City yesterday during Memorial Day celebrations.
Buckles is to attend a ceremony today in which he will be presented with the American flag from the memorial site. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jNYrbhwwpK2QFrtBHpEaPH0DFhkAD90SVBG00
(image credit: AP/Charlie Riedel)
Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States entered the "war to end all wars" in April 1917.
He was rejected by the Marines and the Navy, but eventually persuaded an Army captain he was 18 and enlisted, convincing him Missouri didn't keep public records of birth.
Buckles sailed for England in 1917 on the Carpathia, which is known for its rescue of Titanic survivors, and spent his tour of duty working mainly as a driver and a warehouse clerk in Germany and France. He rose to the rank of corporal and after Armistice Day he helped return prisoners of war to Germany.
Buckles later traveled the world working for the shipping company White Star Line and was in the Philippines in 1940 when the Japanese invaded. He became a prisoner of war for nearly three years.
Buckles is to attend a ceremony today in which he will be presented with the American flag from the memorial site. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jNYrbhwwpK2QFrtBHpEaPH0DFhkAD90SVBG00
(image credit: AP/Charlie Riedel)
Fireflies is a pleasant little game where you aim for as many fireflies as you can. Ricochet shots count, too! http://kungfugaming.com/play.php?game=fireflies -via Dump Trumpet
(YouTube link)
This is what to do when you find a raccoon in the dumpster. It happened several times at my former workplace, and we kept a plank nearby for such occasions. -via Arbroath
Thanks to Twitter, I know the Phoenix Mars Lander touched down on the Martian surface today with no problems. Like any Twitter addict, the lander has been sending constant updates. You can follow along, too! Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
http://fawkes1.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=349&cID=7 to Phoenix image gallery.
(image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)
Old Australian cookbooks are on exhibit at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. Some of the recipes are pretty strange from today’s view.
Link -via Fark
(image credit: AP)
In "The Antipodean Cookery Book", first published in 1895, Mrs. Lance Rawson has a stew recipe with listed ingredients including a dozen parrots "well-picked and cleaned."
Even less appetising is a recipe in Australia's first known cookbook, dating from 1864, for a dish called "slippery bob", consisting of kangaroo brains mixed with flour and water then fried in emu fat.
The book's author Edward Abbott described the delicacy as bush fare, admitting it required "a good appetite and excellent digestion" to stomach.
His book also contains recipes for bandicoot, a small marsupial, and black swan, in which he recommends baby cygnets as particularly tender.
Link -via Fark
(image credit: AP)
(YouTube link)
A compilation of many, many crash tests. You have to wonder what they did with the data on the rolling sushi and the sausagemobile. Warning: AC/DC music. -via Bits and Pieces
Remember SARS? Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome exploded out of China in early 2003 and frightened the entire world. Over 8,000 people were infected, and nearly 800 died. The epidemic was over by the summer, thanks to coordinated efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO), doctors who risked their lives to treat patients, and a military doctor who defied his government to break the Chinese policy of secrecy about the disease. Pictured is Dr. Carlo Urbani, an Italian epidemiologist who ultimately died of SARS. Read the entire story at Damn Interesting. Link
Email This Post to a Friend