You may remember from a couple of years ago that scientists accidentally found that a crow (specifically a female crow) had tool-making capabilities that suggested very strong reasoning. While digging up more info on this for one of my classes, I came across a great site about it, which includes a Real Player video clip of Miss Betty the Crow doing her stuff. Yay!

I was a big fan of the cold fusion idea when it first surfaced, because there’s nothing quite as cool as a little bubbling generator providing gobs of energy. Of course, everyone knows it didn’t work out, right? As it turns out, there may have been something to cold fusion after all. Now it looks like there’s an effect there, but the combination of finicky equipment and incomplete theory is making it difficult to figure out exactly what’s happening and how to make it happen reliably.

I’m glad that someone had the guts to continue with the research even after it became taboo; it really would be nice to know that *something* really happened there.

We don’t need no stinkin’ mouse sperm!

Folks have been trying to figure out the shape of the universe for a long time. Early answers included “a big tree” and “flat, supported by elephants on the back of a turtle”. One of the latest ideas is a Picard topology, sort of a horn shape with a really long end.

I notice that the term “pringle” has replaced “saddle” when describing areas of negative curvature…

This probably won’t make sense to anyone else, but I need to make a note reminding myself about something I thought about over lunch. (I always lose them otherwise, so maybe this will help me remember.) Read on if that kind of thing interests you.
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