Montreal Comiccon is ending today, and as usual, our Canadian geek friends at Geeks Are Sexy are on the scene to document the sights you might otherwise miss. They've already posted a gallery of the best comic book, movie, TV, and anime costumes from earlier in the weekend, with more coming in the next couple of days.
Check out all the pictures posted so far, and visit the site Monday and Tuesday for more!
Carl Zimmer's new book She Has Her Mother’s Laugh makes the subject of genes and heredity accessible to non-scientists. It covers many subjects, such as royal inbreeding, eugenics, mitochondrial DNA vs. chromosomal DNA, and the weird things that can happen along the way as a new human is constructed.
To focus in is to find chromosomes playing all sorts of tricks. Take, for example, chimeras. To the ancient Greeks, the Chimera was a fire-breathing hybrid monster; to a biologist, chimeras are organisms that comprise cells from two different individuals. Ranchers are familiar with one type of chimera, the freemartin, which results when a cow carries opposite-sex twins. Connected by a shared placenta, the fetal calves exchange stem cells. The bull calf grows up into a more or less normal bull, while the heifer—the freemartin—has undeveloped ovaries and exhibits masculinized behavior (and is particularly tasty on the grill). Where does one calf end and the other begin?
Zimmer describes a bizarre twist on the free-martin: a girl with different-colored eyes and ambiguous genitals who appeared at a Seattle genetics clinic. Her ovaries proved to have only XX chromosomes—typical female—but her other tissues were mixtures of XX and XY. Further analysis showed that she had started out as opposite-sex twins. But early in development, the two embryos had fused, becoming a single, highly unusual child. Like a verse from the old Ray Stevens novelty song “I’m My Own Grandpa,” this girl was her own twin brother.
But chimeras are not just oddities. You surely know one. In pregnant women, fetal stem cells can cross the placenta to enter the mother’s bloodstream, where they may persist for years. If Mom gets pregnant again, the stem cells of her firstborn, still circulating in her blood, can cross the placenta in the other direction, commingling with those of the younger sibling. Heredity can thus flow “upstream,” from child to parent—and then over and down to future siblings.
There are more fascinating tidbits from the book at The Atlantic. -via TYWKIWDBI
(Image credit: Mayuko Fujino)
Three horses on Christie Mclean's dressage team had gone lame, and as they were shorthanded, Mclean volunteered to ride Wallace the Great. Wallace had done well in local low-level dressage competitions for the past month. But he was rejected for competition.
With three competitions left to go in the season, her team were hoping that Wallace’s contribution could help them to qualify for a championship.
"It didn’t cross my mind that we wouldn’t be able to take part," said Christie.
But it was not to be, as British Dressage - the national body that oversees dancing horses - turned Wallace down because he’s a mule.
Yes, Wallace is an 11-year-old rescue mule belonging to The Donkey Sanctuary. But he wasn't the stubborn one in this story. British Dressage cited their rule book, which says competition is only open to horses and ponies. After the story was published, a public outcry in support of the mule caused the board of directors of British Dressage to hold a meeting Monday, at which they decided to open competition to mules.
British Dressage has got round the stubborn problem of what to do with a mule, by changing its definition of a horse.
It will now follow international regulations which define a horse as a horse "or a pony or other member of the genus Equus. A horse shall be born from a mare."
Mules are the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, so the European definition puts Wallace in the clear.
Wallace and McLean will compete in Gloucester on July 21. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: SWNS.com)
Remember the cat that got upset when her owner disappeared? A guy in Romania pulled the same disappearing act in front of his cockatoo. This is one pet that can vocalize his dismay! People all over are trying this on their pets in the "What the Fluff Challenge," and there are a ton of videos on social media to prove it. Check out a compilation of pet reactions in the video below. They range from "Who cares? " to "It's the end of the world!"
-via Tastefully Offensive
In 1875, Los Angeles was a town of around 8,000 people, and there were no palm trees in sight. The palm trees were added to make people want to come and buy land in southern California, but it wasn't L.A.'s developers or city planners who came up with the idea: it was the French.
Up until the mid- to late-19th century, the French Riviera was sparsely populated. But popular writers began traveling there, and found it was pretty nice. That, coupled with a trendy new health fad in which time in a dry warm climate is supposed to have good effects on the body, increased its popularity. Immediately developers moved there and began building it up. Palms, already a symbol of warmth from the Middle East, were ideal for this kind of rapid development.
Remember how palms aren’t like other trees? One way is that they’re outrageously easy to move around: they don’t have elaborate root systems like oak trees, but instead a dense yet small root ball. This can be pretty easily dug up and transported, then planted, and palms are not particular about where they are, as long as they have sun and water. To make things easier for developers, palms, being more like grasses than trees, don’t demonstrate all that much difference between individuals; one Mexican fan palm is pretty much like the next. And if you’re a developer, consistency and ease of transportation is a fantastic combination: you can line the streets with them, or plant one on each side of an entrance! And it’s cheap and easy and looks festive. Plus, it has this preexisting association in the minds of your customers (who, in the case of the early French Riviera, were mostly British) with warmth and exoticism.
It worked for the Riviera, so maybe it could work for Los Angeles, right? Only the California developers and city planners went a few steps further in branding the city with palm trees. Read the history of the palm trees of L.A. at Atlas Obscura.
A border collie named Maker obeys all commands even when the commander has his back turned, as you can see in this selfie video from dog trainer JohnK9. That's a good dog. -via reddit
John Atkinson at Wrong Hands hands out the BS with his latest comic. The level of plausibility for the five weird "facts" is about equivalent, meaning any of them could be true if you remove the punch line. Atkinson says he will reveal which one is true sometime today, maybe in the comic post or in the comments below it. Wanna take a guess ahead of time? -via Nag on the Lake
Duane Scott Cerny started out in the business of collecting other people's things at a young age, when he traded toys with his classmates, then graduated to selling Playboy magazines to high school friends, then he worked in an antique shop. Eventually, he had his own antique mall. After years of buying and selling, Cerny wrote a memoir about the business called Selling Dead People's Things.
In “Selling Dead People’s Things,” Cerny takes us inside a few hoarder dens, describing the sights as well as the smell, which he says is “a vile mix of feces, mold, decay, and death.” In one chapter, Cerny tags along with a man named Marvin, who makes a living in one of the weirder corners of the real-estate industry by cleaning out the former homes of hoarders in order to make them presentable enough to sell. For Cerny, these trips into olfactory hell—Marvin rarely eats before a cleanout—hold the potential of one or two hidden treasures amid the garbage, or perhaps an entire cache of goodies that can be sanitized, disinfected, and resold. For Marvin, everything else is equal before the blade of his shovel. The work, we learn, is grinding and monotonous, and falls into two basic categories—ankle-deep or knee-high—referring to the height of the plastic garbage bags that Marvin wraps tightly around his legs to protect himself from the worst filth.
At some point, most serious collectors and dealers have their own hoarder moment, in which they consider, if only as a passing thought, whether their collection of porcelain signs, candlestick telephones, comic books, or sofas has become a hoard. Where does one draw the line?
“I think when you can’t have people over, you’re a hoarder,” Cerny says.
The book is about more than hoarders, but hoarding is one of the subjects of an article at Collectors Weekly in which Cerny gives us an overview of hoarders and obsessive collectors he's encountered, both alive and deceased, while obtaining antiques for his store.
Go ahead, watch the video before you read the rest of this blurb. It's not long. I'll wait.
Ian Kilpatrick went biking on a trail at Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield, Virginia. He titled the link to this video as "I like to ride mountain bikes. I'm also not very good." This short clip has been compared to a Roadrunner cartoon, in that you don't actually see the crash, but you hear it and see the smoke cloud rise. We don't know exactly what he hit, but it sounded like a rusty set of box springs with a few shopping carts thrown on top. He says both he and the bike survived the incident. Knowing that, it's a pretty satisfying video. -via reddit
New Zealand lacked mammalian land predators for millions of years, and was a marvel of biodiversity up until the arrival of man, who introduced rats and other new species. Stephens Island lies between the two big islands of New Zealand, and became a refuge for species that had been hunted to extinction everywhere else. Then humans moved to Stephens Island in 1894 to operate a lighthouse. They were three lighthouse keepers and their families, including David Lyall and his cat Tibbles.
Shortly after David Lyall took position as the assistant lighthouse keeper at Stephens Island, Tibbles started bringing him such presents. Although Lyall had been on the island for only a short time, he could put a name to most of the birds Tibbles brought him, except for one peculiar specimen. This bird was small, olive on the back, pale on the breast, with body feathers edged with brown. It had a narrow whitish yellow streak above the eye, short wings, and a long, straight bill. Lyall had never seen this bird before, and for that matter, no biologists ever had. Sensing that he was on the verge of a new discovery, Lyall sat down one evening and by the light of a paraffin lantern, started to prepare the specimens. He sent a number of them to some of the most renowned ornithologists of the time, including Walter Rothschild, Walter Buller, and H. H. Travers.
Walter Buller immediately recognized it as distinct species and began preparing a scientific description to be published in an upcoming journal. Walter Rothschild, a British banker and zoologist, acquired several specimens from Lyall for a handsome price. It was Rothschild who suggested the scientific name Traversia lyalli in honor of David Lyall, the discoverer, and naturalist H. H. Travers, who helped him procure the specimens.
Within a year, Tibbles no longer brought in Traversia lyalli, or the Stephens Island wren, as her prey. The bird couldn't be found alive, either. Although there have been a few sightings in later years, the wren went extinct. Every existing specimen of the species was caught and killed by Tibbles. Read the story of the wren that is no more at Amusing Planet. We only know about it because Lyall was an amateur ornithologist. Imagine how many other species humans have wiped from existance without us ever knowing. -via Strange Company
While the title of the linked article implies that one cat hunted the wren to extinction, Wikipedia adds more details to the story. When the lighthouse keepers and their families moved to the island in, it is believed that more than one cat was brought along. At least one cat was pregnant and escaped into the wild. Within a year, the island had a growing population of feral cats. By 1897, shotguns were brought in to exterminate the cats, and by 1925, there were no more cats on Stephens Island.
"I don't know if this is really mean or not."
Yes, covering someone's yard in toilet paper is pretty mean, and even more so if it's right before a rain shower. But hey, it might make a great viral video! George Matus, the 20-year-old CEO of Teal Drones, played a prank on his COO Billy McGuire by toilet papering his home, using a drone, of course. Watching the drone in action is pretty cool. The upside is that if any expenses are incurred in cleaning it up (meaning, they hire someone to do it), the company can write it off as an advertising expense because of the video. -via Laughing Squid
Once a song is mixed and any master tapes of individual performance are discarded, there's no un-mixing the music, right? Not so fast. A new artificial intelligence project from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) can extract and isolate individual instruments from a blended recording, or even a recording of a band playing together.
The system, which is “self-supervised,” doesn’t require any human annotations on what the instruments are or what they sound like.
Trained on over 60 hours of videos, the “PixelPlayer” system can view a never-before-seen musical performance, identify specific instruments at pixel level, and extract the sounds that are associated with those instruments.
For example, it can take a video of a tuba and a trumpet playing the “Super Mario Brothers” theme song, and separate out the soundwaves associated with each instrument.
This technology will be a boon to recording studios, remixers, and anyone who wants to learn, say, the trumpet part from an orchestra performance. I can see it being used in schools to help music students, which would be great if done in private, but humiliating in front of one's classmates. What's the worst that could happen? Someone will record a middle school band recital, isolate the worst player, and upload it to social media for laughs. Read about the program and its potential uses at MIT News. -via Gizmodo
(Image credit: MIT CSAIL)
Jeb Corliss used a GoPro 360° Fusion Camera to record a roller coaster ride at Magic Mountain. That means you won't be able to see the coaster itself as it appears to the rider, or anyone else. The POV is his hand! He stabilized the footage, and the finished product is a weird, almost psychedelic ride that you'd expect from a cartoon. Cosmic! -via Geeks Are Sexy
Paula Godwin took her dogs out for an early morning walk last Friday in Arizona. Along the way, she came close to stepping on a rattlesnake! But her 6-month-old puppy Todd jumped in the way, and was himself bitten by the snake. Quick medical intervention saved Todd, but the golden retriever's nose was swollen and itchy for days. Godwin's Facebook posts indicate that her hero dog is healing up nicely. See a video gallery of Todd here. That's a good dog. -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Paula Godwin)
We learned in grade school that America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, but we didn't learn much about the Italian explorer or how his name came to be linked with two continents and eventually the short name for the Unites States of America. The picture here shows one panel of the world map that provided that link.
Similarly to many other countries, the US did not decide on its name after a careful selection process in which its people sought a fitting linguistic symbol of shared national heritage; instead, its name was somewhat randomly bestowed upon it by an outsider. The person credited with naming America was a German cartographer named Martin Waldseemüller. Born around 1470, Waldseemüller drew his seminal map in 1507 with a colleague, Matthias Ringmann. He created a 32-square-foot woodcut map that had a land mass separate from Europe or Asia, in its own hemisphere, with two oceans on either side. And he gave one sliver of it a name: America.
That sliver was a just a small part of South America, but somehow the name stuck. Waldseemüller did not include the label "America" on his subsequent maps, indicating that he learned more about the relative explorative contributions of Amerigo Vespucci. Read about the single map that named America, and see all 12 panels of it at Quartz. -via Digg
(Image source: Library of Congress)
