Great parent night!

It's good to see large numbers at a parent night. It reinforces for the kids the important commitment school is.

On that news, simple announcement today. My Twitter feed, with project & homework reminders, is at http://twitter.com/MrLeipzigsClass . I'll give an update at the end of everyday to remind everyone who has homework.

Whales Explode

Britain gets all the cool science shows.

While STILL waiting for Nigel Marvin's Micro Safari: Journey to the Bugs to come out on DVD, I found these videos online. They are from a British show called Inside Nature 's Giants. Biologist Richard Dawkins comments on autopsies of whales, giraffes, elephants, and crocodiles.

This is not for the weak of stomach. THIS IS EXPLICIT SCENES of animal dissections. This is also the neatest thing I have ever scene in educational TV since Cosmos.

Also, they are on video hosts. Go there, watch the vid, but I make NO promises about the safety or propriety of comments of links on the pages. The bids and Prime Time BBC though, and appropriate.

Whale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKFqI_ymAPI&feature=channel

Elephant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kLavc70zBc&feature=related

Crocodile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJOgIqm-ylw&feature=channel

Watch now before they get taken down. It's amazing how decomposing gas makes whale carcasses guts bombs if you cut into them wrong.

The Miracle of Life

For the next few weeks, the Museum of Science and Discovery will be holding turtle walks on the beach to educate about sea turtles.

At 1:00 am, two Wednesdays ago, I watched a loggerhead the size of my recliner lay 100 eggs.

I fully recommend the experience. It's humbling to think that this has been going on, mainly unwatched, for millions of years. These guys were around with the mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs, and outlasted them all. Most probably, they were the only ones to lay eggs instead of live birth. Coincidence?

Help them along. Don't release balloons...they'll end up in a turtle's stomach, convince it it's not hungry ever again, and starve it to death. Don;t buy stuff made of sea turtles; none of it is legal.

You know, the museum had some stuff donated by customs for educational reasons...I should ask about that...

Paleo Rock

I've used They Might Be Giants to teach before, including the video Bloodmobile or the rocking "Why Does the Sun Shine." That one helped me through my college astronomy final. This is the kind of grainy first recording of one of their new ones.

I love diggin' in the dirt
With just a pick and brush
Finding fossils is my aim
So I'm never in a rush
The treasures that I seek
Are rare and ancient things
Like velociraptor's jaw
Or archaeopteryx's wing

And all the kids
Who wanna see 'em
Are lining up
At our museum

I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am
I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am

Could it be an herbivore
Crushing plants with rounded teeth
Or perhaps she's carnivore
Moves so quickly on it's feet
It's like pieces of a puzzle
That I love to try and solve
It's so fun to think about
How a species has evolved

Now all the kids
Who wanna see 'em
Can check 'em out
At our museum

I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am
I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am

Is it a T-Rex? (Digging, digging, digging, digging)
(Digging, digging, digging, digging)
Or a Triceratops? (Digging, digging, digging, digging)
(Digging, digging, digging, digging)
Or is it a Carnosaur? (Digging, digging, digging, digging)
(Digging, digging, digging, digging)
(Digging, digging, digging, digging, dig)
Pachycephalosaurus?

I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am
I am a paleontologist
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am
That's who I am, that's who I am, that's who I am

An amazing example of how technology affects us and how myths and stories evolve. This is live-action Pac-Man, going on in the streets of France.

Pacman@Lyon - Pacman Urbain
Uploaded by Glaboin

This would confuse the heck out of future anthopologists. Heck, we haven't even figured out the ancient ball games of the Meso-Americans yet.

Keep looking up. One day you may see a man in a gorilla suit throwing foam barrels off a fire escape...

Paleontology Gets Ruffled!

The definition of a dinosaur is anything descended from the common ancestor of this...

and this...

Look at the relation...

Check this family tree I snagged off ScienceBlogs. It shows there are two lines of dinosaurs; the ones that evolved into things like triceratops on the left, and the ones that evolved into ones like T. Rex and pigeons on the right. The ones on the right developed feathers, and the evolutionary unluckiness that their descendants are now served with the Colonel's secret recipe of herbs and spices.

Now they've found Tianyulong confuciusi. It's really cute, small, and herbivorous, placing it on the far left of the family. It has a covering that looks like feathers.

If they are the same type of feathers (and the jury is still out), either its a big evolutionary coincidence...or more likely the common ancestor of dinosaurs or something close had feathers.

Imagine if almost every dinosaur had feathers; picture a downy covering off up the neck of a Brachiosaurus.

Someone this week told me they hated what the dinosaur feather discoveries did to their childhood dinos. I say, if we get more discoveries like the Therizinosaurus below, bring 'em on.

I would haved loved a toy of one as a kid. That's probably why I have two in my classrooms...

In the new spirit of the blog, I’m going to post some neat things every so often. Consider this a digest of other neat science blogs.

I’ve always like cephalopods. If you haven’t heard me start gushing in class about them, that’s the family of mollusks which include, squids and octopi. I’ve always held tentacles = cool. Whether I got that influence from gaming…

…or literature….

…or the sheer cuteness of the bobtail squid…

…add tentacles to it and it gets my attention. Now, scientists have just discovered the common ancestor of most every octopus. Not only did they only start diverging 30 million years ago…the ancestor’s species is still ALIVE.

Details can be found here.

Imagine the idea that we’ve only discovered 25% or so of the species in the oceans.

Also, leaving with an awesome picture of a right whale with a human for scale.


These guys are so endangered that National Geographic put a picture of every member of that species on a two page spread. Good luck, guys.