Skyehaven’s Cool Thing of the Day

Yes, apparently there is. The slime mold’s intelligence has been proven.

In their experiment, biophysicist Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University and colleagues manipulated the environment of Physarum slime-mold amoebas (near right). As the cells crawled across an agar plate, the researchers subjected them to cold, dry conditions for the first 10 minutes of every hour. During these cool spells, the cells slowed down their motion. After three cold snaps the scientists stopped changing the temperature and humidity and watched to see whether the amoebas had learned the pattern. Sure enough, many of the cells throttled back right on the hour in anticipation of another bout of cold weather. When conditions stayed stable for a while, the slime-mold amoebas gave up on their hourly braking, but when another single jolt of cold was applied, they resumed the behavior and correctly recalled the 60-minute interval. The amoebas were also able to respond to other intervals, ranging from 30 to 90 minutes.

The jury’s still out on the rest of us, though.

And now, for something quite different.

How does a photo with something along the order of 1.4k megapixels grab you? I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing cameras that can do this in the stores any time soon.

Be sure you zoom in on some of the buildings in the background to see the secret service men on the roof tops.

Revisiting a previous post, I just want to let everyone know that Galaxy Zoo 2 has gone live. If you’ve ever wanted a chance to participate in something bigger than yourself and make a valuable contribution to our understanding of the universe, here’s your chance. Turn off the TV and go help with something that’s huge.

I’ve been sitting here for the last hour, staring at this in horror. Sometimes having a ‘satiable curiosity can be a bit painful. I can’t decide if this is really, really cool or really, really uncool. So I’m taking a poll. Because I haven’t yet played with polls on this blog, please cast your vote in comments. Cool? Or totally uncool?

*Do you see what I did there?

If you needed more evidence that Micro$oft is evil, just have a gander at this. It was made using Micro$soft’$ latest excellent excrement software, Songsmith.

Oh, and by all means, let’s not leave out the White Wedding Ho-Down

When I’m done laughing, I think I’ll be writing a letter of protest. Someone tell me who to send it to.

A couple of weeks ago, it was cold in Alaska. No, I mean cold . Really, really effing COLD.

The cool thing about this isn’t the fact that a caribou froze standing up. It’s the comments, which range from “he’ll thaw out and be ok” to Monty Python jokes. It’s nice to see that some people still enjoy the classics.

I’ve always thought of ghost towns as a kind of romantic remnant from the American West. It hadn’t even occurred to me that ghost towns might exist all over the world. Click the link and take a tour of someone’s list of top 10 abandoned places.

I know I did.

Wow…my very first blog award! Now I know that some folks are actually looking at this. Don’t get too excited though, I’m not sure how I feel about this whole meme thing…

Here are the rules…The rules for the Honest Scrap award -

The honorees are to:

A) first list 10 honest things about yourself – and make it interesting, even if you have to dig deep!
B) pass the award on to 7 bloggers that you feel embody the spirit of the Honest Scrap.

Simple. Or not.

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1) I tend to be far more comfortable around men than around other women. I think that’s part of why I enjoy gaming and ham radio and what not…most of my hobbies usually appeal more to men than to women. Or maybe I’m just still a tomboy at heart.

2) I spent a year as an over the road truck driver. I’ve been in all the continental 48 except for VT and ME. Taking a shower in a truck stop (which is free if you’ve filled up) is an interesting experience. I don’t think I’d have been comfortable enough to do such a crazy thing (the truck driving, not the shower) without my husband…but I’d always wanted to try it when I was a kid. My dad used to drive truck and something about it struck me as romantic. I’ll admit, getting paid to drive around and see the country is pretty cool, but it’s also a hard life. I wouldn’t give up that experience for anything, but I never want to do it again.

3) I don’t have power surges. Forget that. I have effing hot flashes. And I’m proud of them…I consider them a badge of honor. The same with my gray hair, though for a different reason.

4) I am jealous of my son. There are so many opportunities now in education for kids that just weren’t there when I was in school.

5) I wish I could take back the years and do college right. I seriously messed it up the first time around and just don’t see that I’ll ever have an opportunity to try again.

6) I still secretly enjoy the occasional bodice-ripper novel.

7) My favorite snack these days is chocolate pudding. I never used to buy it, but it’s become a more attractive treat because neither my husband nor son will touch the stuff, so I can keep it all to myself.

8) When I grow up I want to be a meteorologist.

9) My teeth are like stars.

10) I really can’t think of anything else that’s terribly interesting about me to write about. I don’t like writing me or my family. Kinda crazy that I have a blog, I suppose… but I keep stumbling on nifty stuff that I want to share with people, and this is the easiest way to do it. So, keep on coming back here if you’re a fan of random “Oh, cool, look at that!” kind of stuff. But I think this is all the soul baring I’ll be doing here.

My seven victims award winners should count themselves as lucky. I found this to be a somewhat painful experience and I won’t inflict it on anyone I actually like. But if the meme appeals to you, feel free to nominate yourself.