There Was Once A Gurl Who Loved Science.....

There was once a gurl who loved science.....

And she formed a brilliant alliance

With a buffoon

who lasered the moon

the partnership ended in violence.

Hey. Say 5 nice things about yourself. Do it you little punk.

Whelp - I guess I have no choice. (Yay responding to memes that have been sitting in my inbox for a week!)

1. I just got a new computer and hooked it up to my brother’s tablet. I’ve never used a tablet before and within two hours or so after taking it out of the box, I had drawn my first picture with it. The drawing is far from perfect, but I think it came out pretty darn well considering I still had trouble clicking (let alone drawing a line anywhere near where I wanted to put it) when I started.

(I also posted this on my other blog too; I’m just really proud of myself.)

2. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I think I hold to that for the most part.

3. I can walk on stilts (mine are 2 ft peg stilts).

4. When I do them regularly, I’m really good at sudokus, and my crossword and kenken skills aren’t too shabby either.

5. I like science. (And I like that I like science. Does this count?)

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act: ‘Null and Void’

In a victory activists were unsure they’d get, Uganda’s Constitutional Court overturned the country’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act today, declaring the anti-LGBT law “null and void” because of a parliamentary technicality in how it was passed.  

The court determined that when members of Parliament passed the law in December 2013, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga had not established quorum — a required minimum number of members present to vote — effectively invalidating the law. 

AGGRESSIVELY SCIENCES AT YOU.

Inspired from the new tumblr blog fuckyeahconvergentevolution.tumblr.com i wanted to make a convergent evolution post. This is an example i like to use often in my presentations because it portrays convergent evolution remarkably, but i will get to that later on.

This...

So, this is kinda irrelevant to the kind of stuff I post here, but this is uncanny. It's like someone reached into middle-school-me's brain, pulled out the ideal carpet I had envisioned for my room, and made exactly that.

Forest floor! [source]

Major Migration

Q: Which animal has the longest migration route?  Bonus question: Since the [above animal] travels so much, their year is rather unique. What two things does it get in a year, that the rest of us miss out on? 

A: The Artic Tern (Sterna paradisaea)

(x)

The Arctic Tern’s convoluted migration route lands them the title of Longest Migration in the animal kingdom! Recent studies have placed the average length around 70,900 km (44,300 miles) for birds nesting in Iceland and Greenland and approximately 90,000 km (55,900 miles) for those nesting in the Netherlands! (x, x)

Every year they travel from the Arctic breeding grounds to the Antarctic, and back again.This means that they get two summers a year! The Northern hemisphere summer is spent at the Arctic breeding grounds, and they winter during the Southern hemisphere summer at sea, just North of the Antarctic ice! 

Because they get two summers per year, Arctic Terns also receive more daylight than any other animal on Earth! 

Breeding grounds (red) during the Northern Summer, wintering grounds (blue) in the Southern Summer, and migration routes (green). (Wiki Creative Commons)

If all that wasn’t impressive enough, just remember that Arctic Terns can live approximately 34 years. So if they average 70,900 km each year, that adds up to a whopping 2.4 million km in their lifetime. That’s equivalent to 60 trips around the world or 3 trips to the moon and back! (x)

Additional Reading:

Arctic terns’ flying feat: Same as three trips to Moon. (Reuters)

Egevang, Carsten, et al. “Tracking of Arctic terns Sterna paradisaea reveals longest animal migration.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences107.5 (2010): 2078-2081. (x)