Not weird, definitely wonderful:
Photograph by Gunjan Sinha, National Geographic Photo of the Day
You should really pop over to the Nat Geo site to see this in full form. Gorgeous.
I’ve mentioned my tornado dreams in the past; this isn’t a tornado, but this is the kind of cloud that if you see it you know something’s brewing.
I miss that, being able to see the weather brewing.
Two-fer weirdness!
Fred Clark at Slacktivist/Patheos tipped me off to both of these—okay, he didn’t email me personally and say, Hey, Absurdbeats, these might be candidates for your weird wonder series, but as I’m a reader and he presumably writes for his readers, why not say he wrote about these for me?—where was I? Oh, yes, while trying to decide which to use, it occurred to me that this is my blog, and I can both of these suckers if I damned well please.
Which I do.
Russell Adams, Wall Street Journal
[...]
One year early on when Mike Konesky was “It,” he got confirmation, after midnight, that people were home at the house where two other players lived. He pulled up to their place at around 2 a.m., sneaked into the garage and groped around in the dark for the house door. “It was open,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Oh, man, I could get arrested.’ “
Mr. Konesky tiptoed toward Mr. Dennehy’s bedroom, burst through the door and flipped on the light. A bleary-eyed Mr. Dennehy looked up as his now-wife yelled “Run, Brian!” Mr. Konesky recalls. “There was nowhere for Brian to run.”
[...]
That’s right, ten men have been playing tag for 23 years.
That’s some fuckin’ dedication, man, and if it isn’t quite as weird as some stuff (or the next item), it’s still a damned fine enough to count as wondrous.
Now this, this is weird:
Source: scuba.com
The comment on this delightful specimen:
Come on, evolution, you cannot be serious with this sh—
Oh, wait. OH. Ha! I get it. Clearly the red-lipped batfish is a work of satire, not meant to be taken as a literal “animal,” which would of course be ridiculous. Sorry, I can be a bit slow sometimes. Nice one.
The site is WTF, Evolution?, and it’s only two weeks old, so go ahead, catch up, then follow it FROM THIS DAY FORWARD.
I was talking with one of my students today about how amazing biology is—I did manage to restrain myself and not use the phrase ‘weird wonder’—especially in comparison to non-quantum physics.
Nothing against non-quantum physics—gravity and the conservation of matter and the principle of inertia are all deeply practical things—but it’s not. . . ohmyfuckinggod mindblowing the way quantum physics and almost all of biology is.
Newtonian physics, I mused to the student, is efficient and predictable, but biology, emmm, not so much. Biology is all about survival, so anything that will get you there, well by gum, let’s do it! And if conditions change such that more adaptations help with survival and reproductive fitness, go ahead, just tack those adaptations on!
If physics is sleek and efficient, then biology is a Rube Goldberg contraption.
“I’m not sure we’re done with this fiddler crab yet.” “Don’t be such a perfectionist, evolution, it’s good enough.” “But the claws are totally different sizes, don’t you think people will notice?” “Dude, it’s fine, let’s go make some birds with funny butt feathers.” (Thanks to @davelevitan for the suggestion.)
It’s true, I don’t always love life, but damn! I do loves me some Life!
The poetry of material things
What a lovely name for a Tumblr.
I am a materialist—tough to be Marxisch and not a materialist—but, honestly, I hadn’t really considered the poetry in the material, itself.
It was there, of course, in every Art Deco building or carved lintel, every curving bridge, strutting muscle car, and heavy-ceramic diner coffee cup. I noticed the beauty, but not the material, the sea, not the water.
I love this image. Ordinary and sublime and balanced without fussy symmetry. Just so.
How can this be real? It must be a poem. . . .
(h/t The Near-Sighted Monkey)
How is this not among the best news in, um, the galaxy?
Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it would taste vaguely of raspberries.
Ian Sample of the Guardian reports that after years of pointing their telescope into the nether regions of the ‘verse,
astronomers sifted through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a vast dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy. While they failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries.
“It does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries,” Arnaud Belloche, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, told the Guardian.
Curiously, ethyl formate has another distinguishing characteristic: it also smells of rum.
I’m a gin and whisky woman, myself, but still. . . .
(Whoops, forgot to note: h/t Charlie Pierce)
This cat
is afraid of this.
I do not understand.
He clearly likes the soft:
But only the human bed. Not the cat bed.
Strange boy.
Oh, this made me giggle. . .
Theron Humphrey
. . . and a little wistful.
~~~
A De Brazza monkey—what a magnificent creature!
And s/he lives on this planet with us—our neighbor. If one considers the earth a big ol’ neighborhood. Which some days I do.
Shakespeare comes to mind. . . .
h/t: Cute Overload
Courtesy of the redoubtable dmf, a few of the Google street-shot photos caught by Canadian artist Jon Rafman:
The. . . absurdity of this scene strikes me.
The building makes the rock seem alive.
See the rest of the sad, surreal, and puzzling photos—including one of a tiger ambling across a parking lot—here.
Cousin!
And, to steal the line from Cute Overload (from where I also stole this picture): Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo that’s cold!
(Image via Uzoo Facebook page.)
And remember: Ape, not monkey. A-P-E.
Despite Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park being a wildlife refuge, poaching is still a problem. The snares, set by hunters in the region, are intended for antelope and other forms of game, however young apes are known to get accidentally caught in them. While adults are normally strong enough to get out of them, younger apes aren’t so luck and often die. That was what happened to a young infant named Ngwino, who was found too late by workers from Karisoke, and later died of snare-related wounds. Deep lacerations had sliced open her leg and gangrene had set in. …
On Tuesday tracker John Ndayambaje spotted a trap very close to the Kuryama gorilla clan. He moved in to deactivate the snare, but a silverback named Vubu grunted, cautioning Ndayambaje to stay away. Instead two juveniles—Rwema, a male; and Dukore, a female; both about four years old—ran toward the trap. According to Ndayambaje, “Rwema jumped on the bent tree branch and broke it, while Dukore freed the noose.” The pair then spied another snare nearby—one the tracker himself had missed—and destroyed that trap as well. Vecellio believes this wasn’t the first time the young gorillas had performed such teamwork. “They were very confident,” she said. “They saw what they had to do, they did it, and then they left.”
Remember: gorillas are apes, not monkeys. APES, NOT MONKEYS!
Sorry, pet peeve.
Anyway. Clever critters.
h/t Charles Mudede, The Stranger
