A reply to a question in Notes & Queries yesterday recommended purchasing lion and tiger urine from Chester Zoo to stop neighbourhood cats from urinating in a vegetable patch (G2, page 17). Chester Zoo would like to forestall requests for its big cats’ urine: it asks us to make clear that it does not in fact sell either tiger or lion urine. Many years ago the zoo sold elephant dung, but it no longer does.

(via Regret the Error)

1. Of course there’s always debate about invasive species, but usually… Well, usually you don’t think hippopotamus, not in the same mental grouping as zebra mussel and starling.  But apparently we live on a place where that can happen; where Colombian drug lords decide to create a haven (of sorts) for hippos; and where, even today, the problem lingers.  (NYT, via MeFi)
2. But who’d hijack a hippo?  Probably no one. But maybe you want precautions in place, just in case: 
   

   The crate was hoisted onto the flatbed with a 120-ton construction crane. For security reasons, there were no signs on the truck indicating that the cargo was a hippopotamus, the zoo said.

     (WaPo, via Schneier)

3. But it’s not all fun and games.  (Actually, part of #1 is already treading into the not-fun-and-games category, if you read into it.)  Sometimes hippos fight sharks.  At least in Italian natural history books from the 60s, maybe.  (via Tetrapod Zoology)

• It turns out computers can figure out what language you’re speaking without actually hearing you.  In at least some controlled circumstances, anyway.  (NewScientist, via Monochrom)
• “Astonishingly”, (1) people forget their passwords all the time, but (2) the ever-helpful “secret” “questions” are not really either — at least, not as far as security is concerned.
• If I had a car I needed to get into on a regular basis (as in, for driving), this would be wicked awesome.  It’s not everyone who can open a car with his shoes.
• And this video montage is just kinda sweet.
• This post is a good example of why I’m recently drawn to reading Tetrapod Zoology on a regular basis.  The lead-in sentence (I think) sells itself:
  

  I used to receive random unsolicited emails from an individual who strongly promoted the idea that birds could not not not not be dinosaurs, that the entire dinosaur family tree was screwed up beyond belief, that ‘dinosaurs’ had evolved from random assorted diverse archosaurs, that cladistics was rubbish, and that all mainstream palaeontologists were idiots.

  Read on.

• I am still waiting for these business cards made out of meat to get real.  (No, not like that.)
• Without having perused it much, Ficly at minimum stands out as an interesting concept — a place for collaborative story-telling (in a time & place where social networks are, weirdly, moving us away from that kind of collaboration).  (via SimpleSpark)

You decide. Whatever the case, it’s kind of amazing.

(via Ectoplasmosis)

This falls into the category of things that are uninteresting in real life, but which become interesting through the act of photography. Or something. (It may simply be that the photographs aren’t accompanied by the rank refrigerator smell that’s always lurking, waiting for the right moment to assault your nostrils.)

The photos are accompanied by brief descriptions of the households they represent.

(in GOOD Magazine, via The Morning News)

(via Ectoplasmosis)

We accidentally referred to a “stellar sea lion” (29 November, p 6). The featured mammal is a Steller’s sea lion.

All in good time, all in good time.

(via Regret The Error)

Newspaper article about Wikipedia errors turns out to have its own factual errors… and the author of the piece then posts an explanation… on Wikipedia.

(via Regret the Error)

(via I Watch Stuff)

DNR spokesman Hoy Murphy says Casell has a permit for the tiger. And Murphy notes this isn’t the first time Casell’s dealt with an escape: a 400-pound Asian brown bear got loose in May 2006 and hasn’t been seen since.

(Herald Dispatch [1 Dec 2008], via Cryptomundo)

Quote:

“One might be able to envision potential applications ranging from medical interventions to use in video gaming or the creation of artificial memories along the lines of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in ‘Total Recall.’ Imagine taking a vacation without actually going anywhere?

“Obviously, we need to conduct further research and development…”

(via io9, via EurekAlert: “Ultrasound shown to exert remote control of brain circuits” [29 Oct 2008])

The Pomegranate.  (No, not the fruit.)

It’s kind of amazing how much effort actually went into this.

“A fresh cup of coffee from your smart phone.  Yes, it’s finally possible.

(via MeFi)

Maybe it’s pop culture eroding my brain, but “Functionalized Nanoporous Gold Leaf Electrode Films for the Immobilization of Photosystem I” doesn’t have quite the same kick as “cyborg leaf”.

Good work making science relevant to modern society, NewScientist!

(Don’t expect electricity-generating houseplants anytime soon — but still, it’s interesting work.)

If you’re the sort to buy something online, and buy it before you’ve seen it in person.

A useful tool for comparing relative sizes of objects.

(via gHacks)

After reading an article on 10 extinct beasts that might conceivably be reintroduced as living, breathing animals on planet earth, is it wrong that the thing I most fiercely crave is to watch a sci-fi movie where the phrase “it might be possible to boot up the moa genome in an ostrich egg” is used?

NewScientist examines 10 extinct species, and looks at the conveniences and difficulties of bringing back each one.

(For the impatient, the beasts are: sabre-toothed tiger, neanderthal, short-faced bear, tasmanian tiger, glyptodon, woolly rhinoceros, dodo, giant ground sloth, moa, Irish elk, giant beaver, and gorilla — which isn’t extinct, yet.)

(NewScientist, via Monochrom)

Say what you will of Lockheed-Martin’s take on Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles-as-documentary; this proof-of-concept (if that’s the right phrasing) test video is eerily captivating.

(References: http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html, http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/12/killing_robot_b.html, http://www.thirdeyeconcept.com/news/index.php?page=336)

Criggo is my new favorite frivolous blog indulgence.

Filed under Things I Am Bad At: Judge a book by its cover.  The goal of this (simple, difficult) game is to guess the average number of stars under the book’s listing on Amazon.  You get a running tally of how many you guessed correctly.

As we become too lazy to do our own work, we send technologically augmented turtles and seals to be our detectives and scientists.

(via BoingBoing and NewScientist)

A sort of Netflix for magazines, Maghound has recently launched — and looks like an intriguing concept.  You pay a set monthly fee, and can easily change which magazines you get from month to month (getting the same # each month, relative to your subscription level).  Also, they have a great logo:

Unfortunately, the selection of magazines still seems a little limited.  Hopefully they’ll be adding more magazines, and we’ll see less of the unhappy Maghound.