inkycircus

Pity the skink

I promised myself I wouldn't post any more animal stories, then I started reading about the stumpy-tailed lizard, or skink, and I couldn't help myself. In order to produce a little skinklet, this scaly creature has to undergo a spectacularly challening pregnancy. One that makes a human pregnancy seem like a walk in the park. The lizard is covered in rigid scales, so its growing baby has nowhere to go. Instead of creating a bump, the baby squishes mum's organs, particularly her lungs and digestive tract. To the point where at the end of her pregnancy she can't really move much, or breathe, or eat. But even more eye-watering than this is the size of the offspring by the time it's born. It will typically weigh up to 35% of the mother's own weight. That's like me giving birth to a 23kg or 52lb baby. Compare that to average human birth weight of 7.5lb, and the biggest ever baby who weighed just over 22lb and you'll begin to see how impressive a feat this is. The benefit for the lizard is that this giant baby is far from helpless when it's born, so doesn't need too much parenting. But that's quite the maternal investment, don't you think?

Via ABC News Australia. (PHOTO:BUSHIE)

Happy end to a prickly problem

The hedgehogs of the island of Uist have been given a stay of execution, and Scottish conservationists are rejoicing. Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, has been culling its population of hedgehogs for years, in an attempt to protect the island's rare wading birds and their eggs. Protecting these birds is clearly A Good Thing, but doing it at the expense of 600 odd hedgepigs has drawn a lot of critisism. From Brian May of rock group Queen, amongst others. The conservationists have been secretly abducting the hogs and taking them to the Scottish mainland for as long as the cull has been in effect, so they're delighted to be given the green light to take the whole spiky population without any need for stealth. I'll say one thing, I bet the people who had to do the culling are pretty relieved. Murdering hedgehogs has to be right up there with clubbing baby seals in the ranks of meanest job ever...

Via BBC News. (PHOTO: ZAGER)

Psychic warfare

NO NEED FOR RADAR, I SHALL FIND THE ENEMY USING ONLY THE POWER OF MY BRAIN. (PHOTO: MANOLO).
In 2002, the Ministry of Defense carried out a vital piece of scientific research. They spent almost £20,000 hiring researchers to carry out the tests, and accepted the insignificant results with aplomb. They were satisfied that the phenomenon they were testing for would have little value as a form of defense. The study has just come to light thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and the MoD have felt compelled to explain their actions in doing this piece of research. Why did they feel the need to justify themselves? Because they were testing whether 'psychic ability' and 'remote viewing' could be harnessed in the defense of the nation. Riight.

The MoD had originally tried to recruit 12 individuals who had publicly claimed to be pyschic, but when all 12 of these people refused to take part, the study went ahead using 'novice' volunteers. Who, suprisingly enough, demonstrated no psychic ability at all. Now, I'm not a total sceptic about the strange and unusual powers of the brain, I'm glad the the stuffy MoD has an open mind, and I generally approve of finding alternative methods of defending Queen and country rather than starting wars all over the shop, but I'm pretty sure that celebrity 'psychics' aren't exactly the ideal alternative...

Via BBC News.

Safer on dry land

PICTURE THIS THING 10M LONG AND YOU'LL GET MY DRIFT. (PHOTO: CX ED)
Really really deep water scares me. I love swimming, I'm not afraid of water at all, but if I can't see the bottom of the water I'm not happy. Why? Because I always imagine that one of these is right under my toes. It weighed 450kg and took 10 hours to land. It's 10m long. A London bus is 8m long. That's a mighty big squid. A colossal squid to be exact. One expert said "calamari rings made from it would be like tractor tyres." There's some scary stuff in them thar oceans, I'm telling you.

Angry angry ocean karma

We've had some heated debates at the circus over whaling. Should they, shouldn't they, who decides, how good is the evidence, how many whales, if any, are safe to harvest. And why Japan bothers to keep on pretending their whaling is for scientific research. Why don't they just join Iceland and Norway and hunt openly, instead of using cowardly loopholes built into the International Whaling Commission. Oh right, because they've taken control of the IWC by purchasing votes from tiny nations, so they might as well stick with the system and change it from the inside.

Whatever. Japan convened an IWC meeting last week hoping change the now 20 year-old moratorium on commercial whale hunting. Only 34 of IWC member countries attending, with anti-whaling countries such as Canada, the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand boycotting the proceedings.

Days later a Japanese whaling ship near Antarctica, the Nisshin Maru, caught fire. The whale processing deck was mostly  destroyed. One crew member died. The "scientific" whale hunt for the season might be abandoned. The cause of the fire is unknown.

Now I wouldn't put it past those crazy Sea Shepherd guys in New Zealand, even though the jury is still out over who rammed who in last Monday's "encounter" between the activists and whalers. But I don't think this was malice or coincidence. I think it was karma.

Which makes me crazy. But I think it's catching. Because you know why the news agencies have churned out a million blow-by-blow stories  - on the fire, the rescue mission (and rejection of Greenpeace assistance), the engine restart, the engine turn-over but still dead in the water, the possible oil spill and subsequent penguin colony destruction, the winch status, which determines whether the ship can haul whales out of the water - because it has this strange feeling of justice (at least to those already convinced that scientific whaling is total crap). And justice tastes good. Kind of sweet. Kind of like this quote from New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark: 

"I think [the Nisshin Maru] needs to be towed back to where it came from," she said. "And one would hope that the fact that this season has been so ghastly for the Japanese whaling fleet … might give cause for reflection on whether they come back again."

It's unfortunate that my brain has to kick in and ruin the happy smug-party. Because rejoicing in this event only shows how divided the argument really is. A broken IWC is bad for both sides of the debate and especially bad for whale populations. "Scientific" whaling is not the answer; plus it gives Japan even LESS credibility about being a responsible whaling nation IF the anti-whalers were to try and talk about commerical harvests. And the anti-whalers need to pull their head from their bums and realize that lots of whaling is already happening and if they'd talk reasonably maybe we could all regulate it better. You know, learn something. Likewise, objecting out of the moratorium, like Iceland and Norway did, won't help us come to a solution for this uniquely international resource problem.

We need some sort of international consortium that cannot be bought or riddled with loopholes to figure out what, exactly, to do. We need a powerful scientific committee to take charge and say how many of which species, of what age/size/sex can be safely taken from which populations (and then shave off a few for good measure).

Until then, I guess I'll settle for the crippling of the Japanese whaling fleet.

Step away from the spearmint tea...

TEA IS RISKY, BUT WHAT ABOUT GUM? (PHOTO: FRY2K)

I think most herbal teas are a big disappointment. Blackcurrant & honey or lemon & ginger might sound tempting and smell absolutely delicious, but they all taste the same. Boring. Peppermint tea is the only one that's even vaguely tasty, so I drink it by the bucketload. As do many other people I know, male and female. They might be even more inclined to stick to peppermint now that scientists have shown that spearmint tea has a hefty effect on male hormones. The story that I read in The Guardian sold the discovery as good news for women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome, and so it is, these women need all the help they can get. Women drinking the spearmint tea showed a 25% reduction in testosterone which is a significant decrease. If it helps, brilliant. But men should clearly steer clear of the minty drink and stick to blackcurrant, however tedious the taste.

Green by decree

Most of us could manage to be a bit greener in our lives. Whether that means not eating Chilean strawberries in winter, not flying around the world quite so much, or just replacing some of our lightbulbs with energy efficient ones, we could do more. But who should be compelling us to do so? It's reasonably clear that most people don't bother to make such efforts when left to their own devices. But does that mean that the government should intervene and start making non-green things illegal? Australia's government is just about to do exactly that, and ban normal incadescent lightbulbs in favour of the energy efficient equivalent (via The Guardian).

This Big Brother theory can actually work, as shown in Ireland where you have to pay a small fee in shops to get a plastic bag. They give you a paper one free of charge, but plastic costs extra, leading to a huge drop in the number of plastic bags used each year and a nice little nest egg of money to be put towards green projects (via MSNBC). Of course, this hasn't solved all the country's environmental ills, but it certainly has made a difference. I think it's a good idea. Normal light bulbs waste a lot of the energy they use, by turning it into heat instead of light. So masses of energy will be saved if everyone uses the efficient light bulbs. People will get used to the weird neony light in no time.

(PHOTO: BUZZYBEE)

Meat - just say no

At the moment, I'm working on a project about being green. When I started on it, I thought I knew a reasonable ish amount about greenness, carbon footprinting, etc etc, but I've come across a few things that I hadn't the first idea of. I know that when you're buying food you should buy local, organic, fair trade blah blah, but I naively hadn't really even considered the environmental impact of eating meat. I've read (and seen) Fast Food Nation, and it brought me the nearest I've ever been to considering turning veggie even though I'm a fairly dedicated carnivore. But that was pretty much purely for health reasons, because watching the cows being processed into beef was so amazingly repulsive. But now that I know that America grows significantly more grain to feed the nation's cows than it's humans (ref: Cornell Uni), and that it can take 15,000 litres of fresh water to produce 1kg of beef (various sources, eg Food and Agricultural Organisation), and with all the bird flu hoo ha currently going on here, that vegetable lasagna is looking a whole load more tempting.

(PHOTO: SH0DAN)

Old people are bad for the environment

According to a new report called 'Greening the Greys', the Stockholm Environmental Research Group in Yorkshire have claimed that people aged between 50 and 64 are the worst offenders in terms of carbon footprint. I was about about to go and tell my mum off for warming the globe, but decided to read a little further down the news story on BBC News. And found that while this group did seem to have a larger carbon footprint than the average person in the UK, the report only surveyed people aged 50+. The 50 - 64 group were only worse in comparison to the 64+ group, which isn't so suprising. They're enjoying the good things in life like foreign holidays and fine dining, and unfortunately for the planet these things all cost carbon. But from the looks of it it's all pretty anecdotal and attitudinal anyway, and the report is really just aiming to raise awareness of green issues amongst this particular age group. With this in mind, I have to say I think the choice of name for the report is a bit daft. My mum was flattered at being called a Silver Surfer (old person who's online) and I think she'll find it funny being called a Grey. I hope everyone else will feel the same way! PHOTO: ROBMANIA.

She's Such a Geek Photo Contest

In order to celebrate the fabulous collection of essays about female nerdom in She's Such a Geek, we are running a photo contest over at Inkling. In essence, you have to take a nerdy photo of yourself and send it to Anne. Photos that reference the book in any way will receive bonus pointeroos. The prize is a simply beautiful poster of Lady Lovelace Ada Byron, seriously old school glam math nerd.

The first three submissions are already up at the Inkling page. One from Kristin Abkemeier (above), who wrote an essay in the book and also writes for Inkling. And of course one from me and Anne (we made good use of Anne's retro glasses collection... the ones that Anne wore had a really strong prescription and I kept on fearing that she'd go blind during the photo shoot. Annnnnyway).