The Angler Fish………………………………….: “Another unusual adaptation in anglerfish is their sexual dimorphism. The males are very small in comparison with the females, and live as permanent parasites on the female. The male attaches himself, by biting, to the body of the female. His mouth fuses with her skin, and the bloodstreams of the two fishes
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What’s Special About This Number? Think of a four-digit number. Now find out why it’s special.
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Language of Prairie Dogs Includes Words for Humans Via Jim. Fascinating that we can decode the Prairie dog language, but we still can’t decode Linear A, the Minoan (possibly) language from before the birth of Christ or Rongorongo (the fantastically named Easter Island language.) That’s because the Prairie dogs speak in a language that has
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So London got hit. A while ago I wrote a little memoir of what happened when Manchester got blown up by the IRA, it’s here. It’s not very good, but it was heartfelt at the time. Our perception of this bomb’s a little different; it’s been a while since we’ve been got. The last major
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One of the distinguishing characteristics of a Philip K. Dick novel is his remarkable ability to blur the line between natural human beings and androids – human by artifice. For example, in his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, he uses devices like the mood organ to make his human characters seem more like
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I’m starting (finally) to get worried about ID cards. The government’s going to be collecting too much unnecessary information, and is *definitely* going to be allowing the banks to verify people’s identities against it. The multinational banks with no remit as to the information’s security, the banks who’ve larger turnovers than most countries, the banks
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The Big Space Fuck I picked up Harlan Ellison’s Again, Dangerous Visions because it contained a Kurt Vonnegut story called “The Big Space Fuck.” Yes, I like swear words because they are both big and clever. And goddamn, while we’re in the book barn, prideful I show my find to Jim, who says “yep. Kieron
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Iron Eyes
They say you shouldn’t look at the sun because it burns your eyes. I find myself staring at it today, and I realise that it doesn’t burn. Al, my neighbour, his eyes are long burnt (he’s a diabetic and every few months he sits down in front of a laser where they burn off yet
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Was reading a Ross Rocklyne SF piece (speculative fiction called ‘Ching Witch’ – and FYI speculative fiction was a 70s uppity name for Sci-Fi) inspired by visiting his sons on Haight in San Fran back in the day and experiencing this new ‘free love’, the early blossoming of Hippydom; I find myself contrasted. I see
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BBC NEWS | Entertainment | John Cleese writing Aardman film: “‘It will be great comedy adventure about a pre-historic culture clash between two tribes, one comparatively evolved tribe, and one un-evolved tribe,’ he said. ‘Some might consider one tribe might be the English, and some might consider that the other to be the French, the