Science

The are two species of fruit flies in Pennsylvania, one that feeds on blueberries, and one that feeds on snowberries.  Not that odd, huh? well, if these two fruit flies breed, the hybrid offspring is not genetically compatible with either parent species, but is able to reproduce with other hybrids of the same heritage, and feeds on honeysuckle, not blueberries or snowberries. Wierd, huh? (0)

British scientists infect themselves with hookworms to cure allergies, asthma and Crone's disease. My favorite quote:

Professor David Pritchard and his team at Nottingham University's School of Pharmacy administered different amounts of the hookworms to themselves to prove that it would be safe. Pritchard himself stuck 50 of the larvae onto his skin. 'It was fairly itchy when they first go through the skin,' he admitted. 'After that you don't really notice them.'

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It's amazing what you can find on the back of a package of Halls cough drops:

"Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect."

That is, as they say, Good to know. (1)

been finding a few interesting links about eyes lately. The Eye Color Calculator is a pretty slick flash app to find out What Color Eyes Would Your Children Have? The color blindness webfilter runs your webpage through a filter so you can see how ugly it is to me. Set it to Protanopia to see like I see. I've been trying it out, and I don't see any difference. So either the filter is broken, or works really well. Update: a trichromate tried out the filter for me. apparently it is working. (3)

I've been saying it for years, but it's nice that someone who's actually walked on another planet agrees with me. Retiring astronaut John Young recently gave an interview with the Houston Chronicle where he gives some scary, or as I hope, motivating statistics:

The statistical risk of humans getting wiped out in the next 100 years due to a super volcano or asteroid or comet impact is 1 in 455. How does that relate? You're 10 times more likely to get wiped out by a civilization-ending event in the next 100 years than you are getting killed in a commercial airline crash. The most dangerous thing we do in Houston, of course, is drive our automobiles to work every day, so you know how dangerous that is and how many people get killed doing that. But wiping out civilization. ... It's not the point that we should move (to another planet). It's the point that the technologies that we need to live and work in other places in the solar system will help us survive on Earth when these bad things happen.

(via /.) (0)