The Oyster’s Garter

Alexander Lervik designed this lamp off an MRI scan of his own brain, then printed it on a 3-D printer (previously). Now Lervik has an endless source of terrible jokes based on the brightness or dimness of his brain-lamp. And it doubles as a zombie confusion device!

Oh, but the teasing Lervik must endure when the bulb burns out…

Via Boing Boing

I have been swept away in a glorious tide of sea-themed poetry in honor of National Poetry Month. The Deep Sea lads selected one each, and Jim Lemire one too. Here’s a selection from my favorite sea-themed poem ever. It’s by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, written in the tenth century and recorded in the Exeter Book. This version was translated by Burton Raffel in 1964.

No harps ring in his heart, no rewards,
No passion for women, no worldly pleasures,
Nothing, only the oceans heave;
But longing wraps itself around him.
Orchards blossom, the towns bloom,
Fields grow lovely as the world springs fresh,
And all these admonish that willing mind
Leaping to journeys, always set
In thoughts traveling on a quickening tide.
So summer’s sentinel, the cuckoo, sings
In his murmuring voice, and our hearts mourn
As he urges. Who could understand,
In ignorant ease, what we others suffer
As the path of exile stretch endlessly on?
And yet my heart wanders away,
My soul roams with the sea, the whales’
Home, wandering to the wildest corners
Of the world, returning ravenous with desire,
Flying solitary, screaming, exciting me
To the open ocean, breaking oaths
On the curve of a wave.

Read the whole poem here.

There is no place on earth, no matter how remote, untouched by humans. We are mighty: we can trawl the deep, explore the South Pole, and fish every single island in the South Pacific. But as every young nerdling knows, with great power comes great responsibility. That is why I’m introducing a new series in the Oyster’s Garter: The Managed World.

If we want to have nice things, like coral reefs and top predators, we’re going to have to actively take care of them. There’s too many people with too much technology for a laissez-faire approach. We need to actively choose the world we want to live in - and I am rooting against the world of Oryx and Crake.

So, for this first Managed World: wolves. The American West isn’t as big as it used to be. There’s no uninhabited lands for unprotected wolves to roam - instead, there’s a patchwork of ranches and towns and farms. So do we want truly wild wolves? Or do we only want to have wolves as exhibits in a park-zoo?

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It’s 90 degrees in this godforsaken desert and I’m stuck in my blistering apartment writing a grant. Isn’t marine science glamorous? To sooth my parched and empty soul, here is an assortment of amusing links that have been kicking around my Google Reader for a while.

Richard Dawkins is going to guest star on Dr. Who! I am pretty apathetic about the atheism issue, but I still get a little nerdgasm at the thought of a scientist getting to be on Dr. Who. Dawkins is married to Lalla Ward, an actress who played one of the Fourth Doctor’s companions in the late 70s-early 80s.

Sciencey crafts: These greeting cards are embedded with viable seeds - read & plant. And scientific embroidery is pretty.

A collection of awesome science toys from Middlesex University in the UK. I especially like the Shape Memory Polymer and the Magic Snow

You might think you know how pregnancy happens, but I bet you haven’t seen it explained by animated anthropomorphized talking genitals!

A monkey is not a good solution to empty-nest syndrome. No, not even if your monkey is in $500 clothes.

Many self-described “monkey people” don’t dare call them pets. They are playfully referred to as “monkids” and reared in a world of pierced ears, monogrammed clothes, a seat at the dinner table and their own bedrooms.

Oh, except for when they become violent at sexual maturity.

Little Buddie went everywhere with one couple, including trips to sit on a mall Santa’s lap. When Buddie started biting, though, neither owner felt safe, Bagnall said. A biting attack by the second monkey, Vinny Jr., sent his owner to the hospital.

Some owners go to great lengths to force their critters to behave, Bagnall and animal-rights activists said. Some pull out the animals’ teeth. One monkey arrived at Jungle Friends with a clipped tail — because it got in the way of diapering. Others come in with health problems stemming from too much junk food and not enough sun.

I was going to make this a funny entry - because, hey, “monkids” is hilarious. But then I started to get mad. Just think all the good these disturbed people could have done if they spent all that time and energy on foster children instead of traumatizing a monkey.

There’s abundant evidence that monkeys treated like people end up as poorly socialized, mentally ill monkeys. A book just came out about Nim Chimpsky, the chimp who was raised in a New York brownstone due to a bet with Noam Chomsky. Guess what? The chimp came to a sad end, still not human. Likewise, the chimps used in show business are raised like people, but only have a few years of cuteness before they become too aggressive and are sent away to do they best they can at learning how to be chimps. (Here’s a This American Life segment on a chimpanzee sanctuary for them.) “Monkids” should absolutely be outlawed.

Please enjoy the skinned heads of teddy bears, rendered in felt. [Maybe NSFW since there's artsy felted naked people way down on the page.] There’s also felt teddy bear fetal development, felt sheep skulls, and a felt headless hu-chicken.

Via Boing Boing

In the future, your plastic drink bottles and plastic computer cases could be made out of smokestack emissions. At least, that’s what Science Daily says about news from the American Chemical Society meeting. Chemists are very excited about using carbon dioxide emissions as a raw material for making polycarbonate plastic. One of the authors of the report, Thomas Muller, said, “Using CO₂ to create polycarbonates might not solve the total carbon dioxide problem, but it could be a significant contribution.”

It’s tempting to snort “Oh, great, MORE cheap plastic crap.” In fact, as I was writing this, there was significant cynical snortage. But a solution that a) makes it economically desirable to reduce the amount of emissions going into the atmosphere; and b) turns something harmful into something useful is a good solution in my book. It’s not the Magical Fix-Everything Plan that puts a unicorn in every pot - obviously, as the state of the North Pacific Gyre demonstrates, we’ve got to get a lot better about reusing and recycling the plastic that we’ve already got. But wouldn’t it be neat to have a DVD made out of smoke?

You can keep your Corvettes and Porsches. *My* other car will be a Lynx Mark I from Xcor. Well, eventually, I hope.

While space tourism companies have been building reusable rockets for a while, the Lynx is a big step forward because it can launch off a long airstrip, rather than either an assisted launch form another plane, or a vertical launch like a space shuttle. It also has the advantage of having enough extra fuel in its rocket to abort a landing and try again, something the Space Shuttle cannot manage. Plus, look at that sporty exterior. do they come in red?

The actual trip to space still leaves a little something to be desired. Call me picky, but I think you’re not really in space unless you can actually orbit the planet. The Lynx makes a 25-minute flight into the lower stratosphere. passengers get 5 minutes of weightlessness, a view of the blackness of space before making the long spiral descent to the ground. They hope to make the first commercial flights in 2010. Xcor is already working on the Lynx Mark II which will fly twice as high and stay in space longer. I hope they also get to work on a more practical, sedan version, so groups can make the trip. Ray Bradbury assured me we’d eventually have picnics on Mars, and I’m ready.

Xcor made an animation of a Lynx flight, which I’ve included after the jump, as well as a diagram of the flight path.

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Look, I know American has canceled thousands of flights the last few days for last minute inspections, but it’s my job to focus on the positive on this here mollusk- and urchordata-oriented electronic journal, and so here’s a positive fact: The FAA has cleared American Airlines to put WiFi on their airplanes. No word yet on fees for service, other than that there will be one (although access to AA.com will be free, so you can check schedules and delays ) or net speeds. Voice over IP will be disabled, whcih is probably for the best. Service will hopefully start on transcontinental flights by the end of the year.

Now all I need is a little more widespread access to electricity on these planes and maybe cross-country flights to visit the ‘rents won’t be such a pain in the tuchus.

David Meyerson from VBS.TV emailed me this video series on trash in the North Pacific Gyre. VBS sent a reporter, a producer, and a cameraman out on the ORV Alguita with Charles Moore of the Algalita Foundation (previously 1, 2, 3). The resulting film series is called “Garbage Island,” and is part of a larger VBS series on toxic pollution.

I have only watched the first episode of their 12-part series, but I strongly suspect they get to the gyre and find a soupy mass of plastic. Be warned if you’re at work - the density of F-bombs from the narrator rivals the density of plastic in the gyre. (Also be warned that this series may aggravate the latent hipster-loathing a hypothetical person might have developed while living in Brooklyn. But I digress.)

If you want to learn even more about the Algalita Foundation’s exploration of the trash problem, Dr. Marcus Eriksen will be talking at Scripps Institution of Oceanography next Wednesday, April 16th, at 12:15 PM. (set up by yours truly - *pats self on back*) His talk is open to the public, so any interested locals should come on by. Email me if you’d like more details or directions.