Cephalopodcast

[via bioephemera]

ATTENTION!

Sunday is the first annual International Rock-Flipping Day.

The point is simply to have fun, and hopefully learn something at the same time. We don’t want to over-determine what that something should be: those of a more scientific frame of mind might focus on i.d.s or ecological interactions, while those of an artistic or poetic bent could go in a different direction entirely. Pictures alone would suffice, of course. But whatever you do, please be sure to replace all rocks that you flip as soon as possible, so as not to disrupt the natives’ lives unduly.

Here at Cephalopodcast HQ we are making plans to visit our favorite rock flipping site. You can share your results via Flickr or email your efforts to the organizers below.

• Official IRFD proclamation by Dave Bonta
• More IRFD details from Bev Wigney
• IRFD Flickr pool
• JM reminds us that this weekend is also the Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw. Maybe there is a bonus for flipping a chip instead of a rock.

UPDATE: I made a couple of optional and complimentary web badges to accompany any IRFD events. Available in various sizes and with or without a grass border.

We recently finished listening to the audiobook of the last Harry Potter book. There seemed to be quite a few supposal elements in the story that gave me the same vague kind of disappointment I got from reading the Narnia Chronicles as a youth. I can’t believe that these are original observations (edit: they are not), but you can tell me what you think after the jump.

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So the meme of the moment is focused on science tattoos. It is something the kids seem proud of today and they are not alone.

Naturally enough, cephalopods provide a lot of inkspiration when it comes to tattoos. Over at TONMO they did a reader survey to find out what motivates people to go under the “pen.”

The most popular location for a cephalopod tattoo is the lower back, with four (25%) tattoos residing there. The left arm was a close second (3), followed by a 3-way tie for right arm, left leg, and upper back (2 each).

So why do people choose to get a cephalopod tattoo over something different? Here is some of the insight provided by our responders. It’s interesting to note the prevailing observation that cephalopods are so “alien”-like.

• When I was a kid my uncle took me scuba diving, and I held a small octopus on that arm [where I got my tattoo]. It was such an amazing experience…
• I’m a scuba instructor, and they’re my favorite…
• my favorite animal since i was a kid
• Cephalopods are my favorite creatures on the planet. They are not only highly intelligent and full of personality, but they are both entirely alien looking (compared to all other animals) and adorable at the same time.
• I like cephs a lot, and have devoted a lot of time to them. More importantly, I found an image of a ceph that resonated with me, and seemed to reflect other aspects of my life besides cephs.
• …you can’t really sail to French Polynesia and not get a tattoo, so i got one of an octopus…
• I love cephalopods - the last (known) living sea monsters, intelliegent, and alien to us - but given that most of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans, they’re probably more abundant than even all 6 billion of us. Their colors and elegance of motion make them living art (to me, anyway).
• ‘cuz they’re just so gosh darn squidly!

They have galleries containing tattoo images broken down into three categories: octopus, cuttlefish, and squid. An interested cephaloblog reader was also kind enough to share his sinewy octopus tattoo with me and I am glad to see it turned out pretty well.

But I’ve never been inked myself. I’m afraid if I did, it would end up looking something like Dicrostonyx torquatus.

See also

• Love Lab: Sea life tattoos (over 12 pages!)
• TONMO: Cephalopod Tattoos
• Paryngula: Tats for Science and discussion
• The other 95% tattoos
• eMedicine: Histology of Tattoos
• “The most intense tattoo you will ever see [via digg]

UPDATE: The meme continues.

• Metafilter: Awesome science tattoos
• Street Anatomy: the anatomy tattoo gallery

We are gearing up for some video productions at my day job. While working on pre-production, the issue of shooting crowd scenes came up. In many cases, you have to get clearance from anyone who appears in a scene. For video in public venues, where people are part of a crowd scene, it is often required to place notices about the presence of recording equipment. A typical example is available here [doc].

But what about the gonzo, DIY videographer who is on the move? You would think the presence of a large video camera would be enough indication that recording is taking place. But I wondered if a more portable disclaimer would make a difference. I still don’t have an answer. But I added an example to my CafePress shop for your consideration:

IMPORTANT NOTICE

IF YOU CAN READ THIS SHIRT, THEN YOU ARE IN PROXIMITY TO AN AREA WHERE VIDEOTAPING IS TAKING PLACE AND YOU MAY APPEAR IN THE PICTURE.

BY ENTERING THIS AREA, YOU GRANT TO _______________ THE RIGHT TO PHOTOGRAPH YOU AND RECORD YOUR VOICE WITHOUT COMPENSATION IN CONNECTION WITH THE VIDEO: _______________ AND ITS DISTRIBUTION AND EXPLOITATION. YOU RELEASE _______________ AND ITS LICENSEES FROM ALL LIABILITY. _______________ ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR INJURY TO YOUR PERSON, OR DAMAGE OR LOSS TO YOUR PROPERTY.

The use of camera or audio recording equipment is prohibited. Thank you.

I am not a lawyer. This shirt is for entertainment purposes and (probably) does not consitute a legally binding contract. But you can grab a Sharpie™ and fill in the name of your video production to see if it works.

Mingle is a Web 2.0 dating site. They have a marketing ploy that’s got the blogosphere buzzing. It’s a rating system for blogs based on the MPAA rating system. The MPAA’s system is proprietary, so I don’t think Mingle will be allowed to continue this for too long. And the automated results are also somewhat questionable. It just seems to scan the text for objectionable keywords. A more effective system would also consider what sites a blog links to and what sites link back to it.

More importantly, there are better, less gimmicky ways to rate your blog. If you have control over your metatags, consider adding your own rating to the header.

Attributes:
<meta name="Rating" content="text">

Safe For Kids	G
General	Roughly equivalent to PG
14 Years	PG-13
Mature	R rated more or less
Restricted	X rated

Of course, there is no uniformity or consensus on what constitutes objectionable material. This metatag can also be replaced by the more targeted PICS tag.

• How To Label Your Pages With PICS Meta Tag

The Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory, a science centric teaching facility based out of the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia, needs your haikus:

The [Science Creative Quarterly] is about to embark on a creative bioinformatics project that aims to collect a myriad of Haiku’s that reflect on an organism. These, we will collect and present as an exercise in phylogeny at a later date. Called the Haiku Phylogeny project. For more details, please go here.

Here is my contribution:
 

   PATTERNS IN THE SAND

   Heave ho, there she goes
   a sea turtle on the beach.
   Don’t disturb her nest.

• The SCQ’s Most Exceptional, Illustrious, Spendiferous Haiku Phylogeny Project
• Compulsory squid haiku
• A guide to defining the haiku form

Take eight minutes out of your day and watch this clever little animated PSA about sea turtle conservation. Even though it is targeted at European travelers, its message is global.

The short film explains how UK tour operator practice can make a positive difference to the conservation of endangered loggerhead and green turtles during the summer holiday season at destinations in Greece, Crete and Turkey.

It’s not nearly as dry as it sounds. In fact, it is delightfully moist.

• Turtles in Trouble movie
• Turtles in Trouble resource page, including training script and handout
• Marine Conservation Society press release

[recursively via Majikthise]

Got my first introduction to the Mr. Hell Show. This YouTube excerpts contains a skit with a lonely giant squid. Rated FV for fantasy violence.

Leatherback sea turtles are the largest and most ancient lineage of marine turtles. Eleven of them have been fitted with satellite transmitters as part of the Great Turtle Race, which begins on April 16, 2007.

The event is organized by The Leatherback Trust, Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP), Conservation International and Costa Rica’s MINAE. Some of the turtles are sponsored by Plantronics, Yahoo and West Marine, among others.

The whole site is a pretty slick production and includes Flashified trading cards for all the animals and a Flickr page. No word on whether the sponsors got to stencils their logos directly onto the turtles.

The sponsored turtles…are “racing” toward feeding areas south of the Galapagos Islands after nesting at Playa Grande in Costa Rica’s Las Baulas National Park, the primary nesting area for leatherbacks in the Pacific. The leatherback is a 100 million-year-old, massive sea animal that outlived the dinosaurs but is now dangerously close to extinction. Leatherback numbers have decreased at Playa Grande from thousands of nesting turtles 10 years ago to fewer than 100 in the last five years. This online event will raise funds to protect Playa Grande and raise awareness about what individuals can do-no matter where they live-to help protect sea turtles in our daily actions.

Lesson plans for K-5 and 6-12 grades are hosted by ERIC. Additional educational materials are supposed to be available in the “Sea Turtle School” area at www.GreatTurtleRace.com.

• Wikipedia: Leatherback Sea Turtles
• Great Turtle Race
• Great Turtle Race: Lesson Plans
• Flickr: Leatherback Turtle
• Yahoo Video: Great Turtle Race
• The Leatherback Trust
• National Geographic: It’s Tough to Be a Leatherback Turtle (3-5)
• National Geographic: Can Research Save the Leatherback Turtle? (6-8)

UPDATE: Stephen Colbert devoted part of his monologue to the leatherback race. One of the turtles is named after him.

[via Make]

Back in my LFS days, we gave new customers this rule of thumb: one gallon of water for each inch of fish. So these little lighbulb aquariums wouldn’t make good starter tanks. But they are tiny and cute. And now you can learn how to make your own.

• Instructables: Light Bulb Shrimp Aquarium
• Palmtop Aquariums

[via Consumerist]

Continuing our series on weird aquariums, here is a video showing a combo deep fryer and goldfish tank.

Because oil floats on water, despite the massive heat (163 degrees Celsius) the goldfish simply stay away from the surface and all is well. They eat the crumbs of croquettes and other fried foods that fall to the bottom, and can live in there for 5-10 years as they happily clean away, ignorant to the fact that certain death awaits any potential escapees.

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Trolling the Google for sharky news so you don’t have to:

Swim At Your Own Risk is your daily dose of all things sharky… oh, and we’ll also try to fill you in on any other aquatic antics we stumble upon.

• SAYOR: squid
• SAYOR: dolphin
• SAYOR: sharks

In the tradition of Internet adages, I’d like to add another. In any discussion of sea life, no matter how rare, strange or disgusting, some knucklehead will always ask how well it goes with lemon or butter. I am calling this Gorton’s Law.

Now the more compelling question is to ask why this happens. Why do so many people consider the sea to be a smorgasbord? What difference is there between animals in the ocean and ones on land? For many, I suppose there is none. For example, on a swamp tour in Louisiana, our guide was kind enough to remind us that in his great state, if it bleeds, they eat it. However, Sylvia Earl, in her book Sea Change, makes the point that we often eat higher up on the oceanic food chain than we do on the terrestrial one. She equates eating tuna with eating bushmeat. But it is true that many cultures do not eat large carnivores. Is this just because lions, tigers and bears are comparatively rare in the environment? Is that just because we have already extirpated them in our past? Obviously, it is certainly more dangerous to tangle with them than a herbivore. And perhaps that is the key. Even the fiercest of oceanic predators are manageable once landed. It can be a struggle to get a grouper on board, but once on deck it doesn’t take much to subdue it. So maybe it’s just a matter of buoyancy.

Many who would recognize the absurdity of a plan to sustain large and growing numbers of people by hunting and gathering from the land buffalol, deer, wild birds, rabbits, squirrels, roots, and berries seem to disengage their power of reason when it comes to the sea, apparently believing, somehow, that ocean systems are fundamentally different from those on the land, that they can year after year yield huge, comercially viable takes of wild-caught organisms and rebound indefinitely.

-Sylvia Earl, Sea Change

Some folks know St. Christopher as the patron saint of travelers. It is not uncommon to keep a small icon of him in a car for safe transit. My own little Honda has a slightly leggier talisman watching over us. Some might discount the putative protective power of cephalopods. But from this account in Panabasis, the Journal of the Janus Museum, you can clearly see there is precedence for their benevolence :).

Very pleased to announce a major museum acquisition, Ex Voto Pulpo, a contemporary anonymous painting on a steel sheet. For those not familiar with the term, an ex voto is a thanks offering to the Virgin or to a saint. Many, like our acquisition, commemorate a miraculous intervention. This particular ex voto is personally gratifying because it shows a cephalopod in a very sympathetic light - the octopus is saving the chap in the boat, you see, and not attacking him - its stern expression is a look of steely determination, rather than anger….

It’s always dolphins that get credited with epimeletic¹ behavior. Clearly there is a need to also consider the beneficence of octopuses as well.

(Via ponto, who has also documented recent less charitable encounters between certain Felis sp. and Architeuthis dux)

A classic major discovery, according to one post on the Sea Turtle Listserv:

A FLATULENT turtle set off an aquarium’s fire alarm after being fed a Christmas treat of Brussels sprouts.

It broke wind and the bubble it created was so strong, it set off an emergency sensor inside its tank at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth, Dorset, yesterday.

It indicated the water was at a dangerously high level, so marine biologist Sarah Leaney rushed to the aquarium.

Perhaps if the turtle was given access to the Attack of the Sprouts game, the results would have been less alarming 8O.

Man, this is wrong on so many levels.

Fish ‘n Flush is a hard-acrylic aquarium that holds 2.2 gallons of water and wraps around a separate 2.5-gallon toilet tank. The kit, from AquaOne Technologies, costs $299 and includes the aquarium and flushing systems, including filters, pump, two artificial plants and a guide. An LED light costs $25 extra.

• Courant.com news story
• Gizmodo

UPDATE: Well, I guess there is a bathroom sink to add to the tacky decor choices. See also, the movie.