Why Science is Awesome, Part 1

Seeing as I am a scientist, I'm assuming there will be follow-up posts to this one, hence the "Part 1." Science has come quite a ways since the days of boiling red ants (it makes formic acid) and Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, in which he spent considerable time, among other things, studying iguanas. Of that, he wrote,
"I several times caught this same lizard, by driving it down to a point, and though possessed of such perfect powers of diving and swimming, nothing would induce it to enter the water; and as often as I threw it in, it returned in the manner above described." (Darwin, 1839, Voyage of the Beagle).
And that was a long way from before then. But there's always something to keep it interesting. A few things that have recently come to my notice:

The platypus. A really under-studied animal, I feel. Apparently they have the sense of electromagnetic reception (like an electric eel, only they don't shock people). And if you hide batteries somewhere underwater, they will find them. Now, who thought of that; that's what I want to know. And did it involve alcohol, or were they all sober? (Anyone seen "The Day After Trinity"? Scientists can drink. And if you get them all together out in the desert to make an atomic bomb without any alcohol, they'll make their own).

Komodo dragons. Big. Scary. Ultimate feminists. Well, maybe not. But, apparently, the females can reproduce without male assistance. Recently, a female did just that. Of course, after she had the miracle babies, they had to take them away from her so that she didn't eat them (Associated Press 2007).



Reptiles. Specifically, two-headed fossils of their ancestors. Recently found in China. This phenomenon, called axial bifurcation, is not an uncommon occurence in modern-day lizards and reptiles. Occasionally it will happen in mammals, but they don't usually live. The fossil is a hatchling, either a Sinohydrosaurus or Hyphalosaurus species. As an adult, it would be about 3 feet long. The fossil was found by a local farmer and sold to a museum (Pickrell 2006, National Geographic). I can't imagine being the person to see that and realize what it was. In one interview, one of the scientists quotes his reaction as being something along the lines of "'Oh my God!'" (Ker Than 2007, Live Science)

Why the Luddites Knew what they were Doing

Okay, so Christmas is over, and now my (almost 3-year-old) daughter has all these new tech-toys. Like a game system, which of course my husband had to buy for her, complete with a Dora game. Her favorite part (no lie) is watching someone else play the game. But the controller on this thing (and I was raised in a techie-type family, so it's not like it's your grandma we're talking about here) spins around, for easier controllability. Excuse me, but how does that make anything easier? Especially for a toddler who still doesn't know right from left? Because as soon as you rotate the freaking thing, moving the joystick to the right no longer moves Dora to the right; now she goes to the left.

And then I bought her this awesome stuffed dog that has earphones. You can hook it up to a cd player, mp3 player, or similar device, and it plays music. How cute, I thought. We'll get a nice, cheap cd player and she can dance around and no one will care too much when it breaks. No, my husband has to buy her a "cheap" mp3 player. Because it's "smaller" so it won't get "broken" as easily when said child is dancing around to the music, he says. Gullible me, I say sure.

This thing is tiny. With a tiny little button for controlling it. Push the middle, and it's supposed to "play" or "pause." The bottom arrow is supposed to change the volume (but somehow, pushing only the bottom arrow is both volume "up" and volume "down"). The top arrow is the menu button. The side arrows change selections. And yet, somehow, instead of getting it to play the music I can clearly see that it downloaded off the computer, all I can get it to do is go to the voice recorder mode. So there are now something like 15 voice recordings of me saying things like, "How do you get this thing to play music?" and "Stop freaking recording me!" and "GFPHOEPWCNECOWEFOM!!!!!"

Finally, in exasperation, I just turn it off. This is the key. When I turn it back on, it is now in music playing mode. I quickly hook it up to the dog with earphones (the whole reason we bought the stupid thing) and hand it triumphantly over to my daughter, even making the stuffed dog dance to the music. She takes the dog, promptly pushes the buttons and starts recording her own voice, and then asks me where the music went.