I’ve been at the OSA Frontiers in Optics meeting in Rochester this week, and haven’t had any time to get blogging done (the absence of wifi in the convention hall and the crappy wifi in the Hyatt didn’t help). Nevertheless, here’s this week’s recap of twitter #weirdscifacts, just a little late!
You will notice a few “bonus” facts in the list: other folks are getting into the fun of listing their own weird science trivia, and I’m including them in the posts!
“Dr. SkySkull” selects several notable posts each week from a miscellany of ResearchBlogging.org categories. He blogs at Skulls in the Stars.
(I’m out of town at a meeting this week, and didn’t have as much time to read all the posts in my area. I didn’t want to leave people hanging, however, so here’s a few of the posts that jumped out at me this week; next week I’ll catch up on all of my reading!)
Check back next week for more “miscellaneous” suggestions!
As I’ve noted in a previous blog post, my wife and I have been fostering a brother/sister pair of cats, named Mandarin and Mango, for the past several weeks. Some more recent pictures, first of Mandarin at play:
and of Mango, out in the open:
The fostering has been a slow process; unlike our first two foster kitties, Mango and Mandarin were unaccustomed to human companionship and very guarded. At first, both of them would spend their time hiding under a bed or dresser, and only come out when dragged out!
We’ve been making gradual progress in getting them more comfortable, but relatively slow progress up until today. Mandarin would enjoy being petted but not want to be petted, and he would move away at the first convenient opportunity. Mango liked the petting a bit more, but she would spend her time almost exclusively in the tube of the “kitty condo” in the room. Neither cat showed any interest in the attentions of our other cats, who are constantly sticking paws under the door.
Tonight we had multiple major breakthroughs, though we have no idea what tipped the scale! Mandarin suddenly decided he likes being pet, and actually approached the wife and I and sat between us. Furthermore, when our cat Sophie decided to mess around near the door, for the very first time Mandarin went over and reciprocated! He also felt comfortable enough between us to roll over and show us his belly, a real sign of trust!
That would have been quite enough for one night, but without warning Mango decided to come out from the tube! She first circled the exterior of the room before sitting down to groom herself on the opposite side of the kitty condo from us. We thought that was impressive enough, but then she circled the room again, laid down out in the open and basically went to sleep!
We’re at a loss as to explain why the twins decided to adopt a new attitude tonight. The best guess is that our persistent efforts and kindness finally started to convince them of our good intentions! Hopefully the trend will continue and the kitties will become even more loving.
If you know anyone in the vicinity of Charlotte interested in adopting these two, please point them towards Terry at F.U.R.R.! You can also donate to F.U.R.R. here.
Time for your weekly helping of #weirdscifacts, from August 29-September 11!
“Dr. SkySkull” selects several notable posts each week from a miscellany of ResearchBlogging.org categories. He blogs at Skulls in the Stars.
Sorry for a late batch of selections this week!
Finally, just when you couldn’t imagine that Tyrannosaurus rex couldn’t get any more intimidating, comes strong evidence that the creature was also a cannibal when it needed to be! We look at two different accounts of the research: Tyrannosaurus the Cannibal, by Brian Switek at Dinosaur Tracking, and When Tyrannosauraus rex had for breakfast… another Tyrannosaurus rex by Rogue at Into Oblivion.
Check back next Monday for more miscellaneous selections!
While researching my Franklin posts, I happened upon a very entertaining paper from 1747, in which a man describes in excessively melodramatic detail the effects of a rattlesnake bite upon himself. In the spirit of interblog cooperation, I passed the paper along to Scicurious of Neurotic Physiology, who haf written an entertaining poft about the fubject! It’s well worth checking out; I especially like the part in which I am called “handsome”! 🙂
While researching my recent post on Benjamin Franklin’s electrical kite I read through much of Franklin’s scientific correspondence, and found quite a few gems! Though there is much of substance yet to be discussed in Franklin’s scientific experiments, I can’t resist sharing instead one of his more whimsical ideas: an electrical feast!
By 1748, Franklin had been performing experiments on electricity for several years, and had been corresponding with Peter Collinson, Fellow of the Royal Society, for a year. Franklin was hardly the only person working on electricity at the time; as he noted himself in his introductory letter to Collinson,
though possibly they may not be new to you, as among the numbers daily employed in those experiments on your side the water, it is probable some one or other has hit on the same observations.
It seems fair to say that electricity was a very trendy “fad” in Franklin’s time; it might be said to be the iPhone of its day. However, just like early iPhone adopters struggled to explain what exactly was revolutionary about the device, so did electrical enthusiasts struggle to justify their work.
Ben Franklin had a novel, if tongue-in-cheek, idea to resolve this: an “electrical feast”!¹
Jai Virdi has posted her special edition of The Giant’s Shoulders ‘Visuals & Representations’ at her blog From the Hands of Quacks. True to the theme, the carnival has a nice collection of pictures to delight and horrify! Thanks to Jai for hosting a great carnival!
The 29th edition of The Giant’s Shoulders will be hosted by Egil Asprem at Heterodoxology on 16th of November and is an ‘Esoteric Science’ special! Posts should be submitted by the 15th of November either directly to the host or to the Blog Carnival site.
I can always tell when Halloween is near — wandering through the bookstore, I inevitably find multiple new books of horror that I absolutely cannot resist. This time around, I found three must-have hardcovers, putting a significant dent in my wallet. The first of these is the compilation of short stories, Haunted Legends (2010), edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas:
In a world where most horror compilations consist of yet another collection of stories about zombies or sexy vampires, Haunted Legends is a refreshing change. The premise is based on a simple observation: every region of the world has its own “true” stories of ghosts and monsters, many of which are genuinely creepy; however, these stories are usually so poorly told that they’re depressingly boring. As Mamatas states in the introduction,
The “paranormal investigator” with his electronic stud finder recalibrated to find ghosts instead of pieces of wood, hell, he can barely think, much less write a compelling story.
So why not get professional horror writers to take their favorite “true” stories and rewrite them? Haunted Legends includes 20 all-new stories, some of which are by very well-known authors such as Ramsey Campbell and Joe R. Lansdale.
Back in 1752, Benjamin Franklin performed an epic — and incredibly dangerous — experiment. In order to show that lightning is a form of electricity, he flew a kite in a thunderstorm with a key attached. The key drew off electricity from the thunderclouds, and Franklin could feel a shock from the key, thus demonstrating that it had collected static electricity.
That’s about the extent of the information I learned about Franklin’s experiment when I was a kid in grade school. I never thought to look any deeper into this groundbreaking achievement, however, until I learned last week that Franklin had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society because of his electrical work. As a Fellow, he would natural be expected to publish in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and I quickly confirmed that he had in fact published quite a bit on electricity in the Transactions.
It gets even better, though: before being a Fellow, Franklin sent a number of letters describing his experiments to his friend and colleague Peter Collinson, himself a Fellow. One of these is the description of his famous kite flying experiment, published only months after Franklin himself is reputed to have performed it! In this post I’ll give an account of Franklin’s work preceding his kite-flying excursion, the full text of the letter itself, and the impact it had on electrical research.
The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. 
Skulls in the Stars 