:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Saturday, August 08, 2009 ::

Link Dump

Things I didn't find time to write about this week:

Flow-based organizations can grow an archive with microblogging

Blasphemy laws in the 21st century

Plan to use jumping lice in battle against Japanese knotweed

The H-Word
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Word "Hipster"
by Chas Bowie
[via null device]

Pigeons in aerial photography

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore: The definitive view of British nightlife
"the best days of your lives will be wiped away by a change in fashion"

Fine Waters: Comprehensive Resource of Bottled Water of the World
Etiquette for Drinking Temperature:
"Serving all waters at the same temperature, let’s say 55 degrees Fahrenheit, will nicely show their differences. A slight increase in temperature will have a calming effect on waters with larger, louder bubbles. In general, the colder the water, the more focused it will be.Water can be served at almost any temperature, but knowing how to manipulate temperature will allow you to better pair the waters with food and establish a true epicurean dialogue."
Or you could serve it ice cold and some people like to serve it at 100 degrees C with an infusion of leaves.
[thanks Jules]

Labels: Ecology, Environment, Fashion, Music, Photography, Religion, Water, Wildlife

:: Dan 8.8.09 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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"The creatures were pictured by British photographer David Slater in Etosha National Park, Namibia."





They look fake but these shots are amazing.

Labels: Ecology

:: Dan 11.12.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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"Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan, and it’s considered by scientists to be the only animal that cheated death. They’re able to return to polyp stage due to a cell change in the external screen (Exumbrella), which allows them to bypass death. As far as scientists have been able to find out, this change renders the hydrozoa virtually immortal."

Labels: Ecology, science

:: Dan 11.12.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader."

Kevin Kelly: The Next 5,000 Days of the Web
"At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?"

Dan Dennett: Can we know our own minds?
"Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us."

Deborah Gordon: How do ants know what to do?
"With a dusty backhoe, a handful of Japanese paint markers and a few students in tow, Deborah Gordon digs up ant colonies in the Arizona desert in search of keys to understanding complex systems."

Labels: ants, Ecology, philosophy, science, web 2.0, web 3.0

:: Dan 7.12.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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We're doomed! Alien-like Squid With "Elbows" Filmed at Drilling Site.



It seems the Kraken has finally awoken.


[About the lego Kraken]

Speaking of which, the Triffids are back too! I'm slightly concerned that 'it is billed as a "fast-paced, futuristic and electrifying take" on Wyndham's work' but I still can't wait to see it. Slow, impending dread is always better. As Simon Pegg explains.

Labels: Ecology, Environment, Lego, Literature, Sci-Fi, Zombie

:: Dan 28.11.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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Do government departments waste piles of our tax on slick marketing, carefully worded sound bytes and committee led graphic design? No, not all of them. There's the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). Who produce documents like Habitat management for bats: A guide for land managers, land owners and their advisors [1.4MB PDF] the fill it with cartoon drawings that seem to confuse bats with some kind of flightless bouncing ground-borne mammal, like an excitable winged mole, and even provides a table to demonstrate how common or rare a given species is that includes a key with various stages of happy flappy bats.





Exactly what demographic was this aimed at?

Labels: Ecology, Environment, Gov

:: Dan 15.9.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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Clive Thompson on How Man-Made Noise May Be Altering Earth's Ecology

Bernie Krause listens to nature for a living. The 69-year-old is a field recording scientist: He heads into the wilderness to document the noises made by native fauna — crickets chirping in the Amazon rain forest, frogs croaking in the Australian outback.

But Krause has noticed something alarming. The natural sound of the world is vanishing. He'll be deep inside the Amazon, recording that cricket, but when he listens carefully he also hears machinery: The distant howl of a 747 or the dull roar of a Hummer miles way.

Krause has a word for the pristine acoustics of nature: biophony. It's what the world sounds like in the absence of humans. But in 40 percent of the locations where Krause has recorded over the past 40 years, human-generated noise has infiltrated the wilderness. "It's getting harder and harder to find places that aren't contaminated," he says.

This isn't just a matter of aesthetics. The contamination of biophony may soon become a serious environmental issue — Krause says that man-made sounds are already wreaking havoc with animal communication. We worry about the carbon emissions from SUVs and airplanes; maybe we should be equally concerned about the racket they cause. ...

Labels: Acoustics, Ecology, Noise

:: Dan 30.5.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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wildwalk 02
Originally uploaded by gusset.


There is a passage in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids where he decribes how quickly London was taken over by plant life once the human population had moved out. It seemed a little over the top to me when I first read it. Until I saw this. The closed down Wildwalk building in the centre of Bristol is still full of thriving plant life despite not being cared for. And in places it has broken through the façade to the outside, so it can hang it's branches in the sun and rain again. The building is being eaten alive from the inside. Unfortunaely it looks like it's going to be reopened (as an aquarium) so we're not going to be able to chart nature's conquest over it as I would like to see. Maybe in a few years we'll see it being torn apart from the inside by a giant squid. I look foward to that.

Labels: Bristol, Ecology, Environment, Urban Decay

:: Dan 15.4.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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Irwin fans 'in revenge attacks'
"Dead stingrays with their tails cut off have been found in Australia, sparking concern that fans of naturalist Steve Irwin may be avenging his death."
Once again I am astounded by human stupidity.

Labels: Ecology, News

:: Dan 22.3.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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Not long now! Our days are numbered.


- Click here for more blooper videos

Labels: Ecology, Video

:: Dan 21.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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"Yangtze river dolphin driven to extinction
· Intensive survey reveals disappearance of species
· Scientists blame shipping, hunting and fishing"


"So long, and thanks for all the fish."

Labels: Ecology, Environment

:: Dan 8.8.07 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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www.skullsite.co.uk... for all your skull identification needs!

I like this glossary entry:
Colonic Literature
Academic papers incorporating in their titles a superfluous subtitle separated by a colon.

Labels: Ecology, Goth

:: Dan 12.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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