From a report in The New Yorker on Bonobos, which contrasts these apes’ public image with how little is actually known about them:
A fact not emphasized in wildlife films is that ape identification is frequently done by zoomed-in inspection of genitals. A lot of the conversation at Lui Kotal’s dinner table dealt with scrotal shading or the shape of a female bonobo’s pink sexual swelling. (“This one is like chewing gum spit out,” Caroline Deimel, the Austrian, once said of a female.)
Carl Zimmer on Androgenesis – further proof that when it comes to reproduction, nature is more daring than any science fiction writer:
Androgenesis, it turns out, transforms fatherhood into a parasitic invasion. It begins like normal fertilization, with a sperm fusing to an egg. But then the egg’s DNA gets hurled out of its nucleus, so that the sperm’s genes are the only ones left in the egg. The egg begins to develop into an embryo, but only after it has lost the mother’s DNA.
Why, I’ll bet the reduced environmental impact from turning off those lights might even recoup a small fraction of the resources consumed to drive the massive multimedia extravaganza advertising Earth Hour.
Oh, wait. There isn’t going to be any reduction in environmental impact. Not unless the world’s power-generating utilities decide to scale back the fossil fuels they’re burning to reflect a one-time, one-hour tick in the time series.
Yes, I know. It’s only supposed to make “a statement”. It’s supposed to be a symbol. And what does it symbolize, exactly? It symbolizes “hope” — which is to say, our infinite capacity for denial
The standard male response is: “if I’m going to look at an avatar’s butt the whole time I play, I’d rather it was one I found attractive”. This turns any covert slights against their sexuality on their heads: hey, look, I’m so masculine I play female characters! The standard female response, in contrast, is that they get hit on so often when playing as a female that they have to play as a male to escape it: hey, look, I’m so feminine I play male characters!
Neither of these excuses stands up to scrutiny, of course.
[also via Rob Donoghue, ibid].
To mark the passing of Netscape, Sean Burke installed netscape 0.9 and took it for a test ride.