Links. Just because.

I've been cleaning my desk today. Emptying In boxes. Filing and paying bills and sorting.

I'm down to the virtual boxes now, and tidying up my bookmarks. Here are some of the recent additions.

Whale survives 19th century hunt.

"...a 50 ton bowhead whale was discovered with a 19th century bomb lance fragment lodged between its neck and shoulder the bomb lance fragment was patented in 1879, ..."

From Deep Sea News.

Drowning in a Sea of Plastic

"Increasingly, researchers are peering through their microscopes at the specks in seawater samples and finding miniscule bits of poisonous garbage instead of life-sustaining mini-critters. It's plastic-- broken by sunlight and water into itty bitty pieces, but still intact."

From Common Ground.

Plants prefer siblings.

"Plants have a secret social life and there's a lot known about it, but the notion that it included the ability to recognize kin is new," said researcher Susan Dudley, an associate professor of biology at McMaster."

When Fat ... is a Good Thing.

"Two new studies have received little notice in the media, perhaps because their findings tell young people caught up in dieting and the desire to be thin, that they need to eat more and have more body fat."

From Junkfood Science.

An Illustrated History of Trepanation. Not for the squeamish.
What the Slug had eaten for dinner. Slug fecal analysis, from Snail's Tales.
Where poison dart frogs get their poison. From Behavioural Ecology.

As good as it gets. From SansGod.

"People are buggers. They won't conform to scientific examination. If you devise a hypothesis to explain a behaviour, it will immediately be proven false. It may work for one person, perhaps even a group of people. But apply your theory to society then it'll fall on its arse.

Not only that, people behave like quantum particles."

And, since I'm on the topic, the Atheist Blogroll. Some good blogs here.

One last one, Richard Dawkins, "About Time".

"... mysterious stuff ..."