http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere Science of the Weird Tue, 13 May 2008 17:42:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en You've heard about 2nd Life, right? It's the online simulation that allows you to create an avatar (a digital alter ego, if you will) and roam around a vast, seemingly limitless world. I'd never tried it before, but then I came across an article in Science News about ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/05/13/2nd-life-science/ The iconic vision of the technological, space-age future used to be the personal jet pack--a strap-on device that would allow people to zip around the clouds, presumably wherever and whenever they liked. The jet pack never quite happened, but the dream still has legs. And soon it might come equipped ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/05/05/personal-helicopter/ My kids (two boys, 7-year-old-twins) recently made a bird feeder. We painted it, hung it up in the backyard, and waited for birds to come. Now that spring is here, there are more and more birds at the feeder every morning. It's nice to watch them, my ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/04/28/the-secret-life-of-birdfeeders/ Evolution is something happens over millions of years, right? Slowly, over eons of time, primates evolve into hominids, hominids in proto-humans, proto-humans into modern homo sapiens. But evolution doesn't always unfold at such a crawling pace. Take, for example, the case of several Italian wall lizards left ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/04/23/lizard-evolution-on-the-quick/ Scientists and engineers at MIT have created a new, experimental robot called Nexi that can appear to express human emotions like anger, surprise and sadness through a series of facial expressions. The machine is an MDS robot, which stands for mobile, dexterous and social. And, indeed, as you ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/04/16/humanoid-robots-and-the-uncanny-valley/ What you see in the picture to the left is not a muppet. It looks like one, though, doesn't it? What you're seeing is a newly discovered fish with a flat face forward-looking eyes and leg-like fins that it uses to crawl along coral reefs. This weird ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/04/08/freaky-fish/ When I was a kid, one of the coolest posters I had in my room was of a sperm whale locked in a death struggle with a giant squid. (Yes, I was a nerdy kid.) And always wondered who came out ahead. the whale had size, obviously, ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/03/31/squid-beak-mystery-solved/ Here's something I bet you didn't know: Dinosaurs didn't actually live hundreds of millions of years ago. No. Rather, they were around as recently as about 6000 years ago, when the world was created out of chaos. In fact, dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden with ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/03/25/dinosaurs-in-eden/ Is this man pregnant? Not really. But sort of. There is, in fact, a fetus inside his distended belly. But it's the fetus of his unborn, malformed twin brother. I know this sounds like bad science fiction or something straight out of the pages of the National ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/03/21/fetus-in-fetu/ Dolphins are known to be friendly, intelligent and social. But altruistic? Yes, apparently. At least if you're a pygmy whale. Just yesterday, a dolphin known as Moko helped save two pygmy whales--a mom and her calf--who were in danger of being stranded on a beach on the east coast of ... http://blogs.earthsky.org/jeremyshere/2008/03/14/dolphin-saves-stranded-whales/