This was magical.
If you ever needed a reason to follow @TheDailyShow, this is it.
Here’s the original segment, in case you missed it.
I LOVE that Fuckface can’t take a joke.
"They can’t just cancel a show like “Alphas”! They have to help the viewers let go! “Firefly” did a movie to wrap things up. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” continued on as a comic book. “Heroes” gradually lowered the quality season by season till we were grateful it ended."
Sheldon Cooper, “The Big Bang Theory,” S06 E20 (via statusquotabletv)
Caprica was given 5 episodes to wrap things up, shown back-to-back on a random Tuesday evening. The original series of Star Trek was given a 3rd season only after a massive letter-writing campaign but was severely underfunded. The X-Files continued for 2.5 seasons after David Duchovny left, leaving fans wondering why they even watch the show anymore. ETC. ETC. ETC.
A pickled “black devil” anglerfish… a.k.a Melanocetus johnsonii!
We recently came across this magnificent anglerfish sample while given a tour of the Scripps Fish Collection by their Collection Mgr, HJ Walker.
The female anglerfish is a veracious predator that lives 1,000 to 3,000 meters below the ocean’s surface. She fish attracts prey by dangling and twitching a glowing orb in front of her gaping mouth. This lure is actually a modified dorsal fin spine containing bioluminescent bacteria inside a soft tissue bulb at the tip of the spine. When young male anglerfish are both, they don’t have a digestive system and swim around sniffing out a female. Once attached, the male’s fins, gills, eyes, and many internal organs degenerate and it shares blood vessels with the host female. Eventually the male degenerates into nothing more than a pair of gonads that releases sperm when the female releases hormones into her bloodstream that signals she is ready to release eggs.
In “Hen’s Teeth and Horses Toes” Stephen Jay Gould comments on this unusual cohabitation: “In some Freudian sense, what male could resist the fantasy of life as a penis with a heart, deeply and permanently embedded within a caring and providing female?”
OMG. Terrifying.
I hate you.
The ‘Daily Show’ Series On Gun Control In Australia
This week the Daily Show ran a three-part series on the sweeping gun control legislation Australia passed in the mid-90s. It deserves a Pulitzer.
All 3 parts in one place. Crack up in frustration and anger at our impotent politicians and our pitiful excuses for investigative journalists that haven’t even bothered to research Australia’s incredible successes with gun control.
The prop was not custom-made in the Star Trek Art Department, but it is available from a company called Modern Props. The prop is described as “dual generators with rotating neon lights inside an acrylic tube; light-controlled panel with knobs and buttons.” It can be rented from the company, although we would expect the Art Department to finally build a similar prop of their own. The tubes appear in other science fiction series and movies as well, such as “V” (the 1983 miniseries), “Airplane II” (with William Shatner) or “The Last Starfighter”.
Sometimes you gotta reuse a prop!
Reefs Illuminated
Based on the explorations of scientists’ David Gruber, John Sparks and Vincent Pieribone comes Reefs Illuminated, an art/science collaboration. Directed by Brennan Vance; original score by Freezepop’s Sean Drinkwater. Premieres at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC April 14-May 3, 2013.
Congrats to David for this awesome footage, and to Sean for the amazing soundtrack. Great job guys :)
Happy Birthday, Grumpy Cat!
Our friend Tardar Sauce is celebrating her very first birthday today! With a Friskies campaign and a recent visit with Anderson Cooper, we’re sure her second year will be even grumpier!
Yay Grumpy Cat! Long Live Grumpy Cat!
Aequorea victoria!
This beautiful jelly, (aka “the crystal jelly”) was the unlikely star of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Its a palm-sized hydromedusae and has about 150 tentacles laced with pressure-activated poison harpoons, known as nematocysts. Don’t worry, it’s no harm to humans, but its voracious appetite includes small floating animals and even other Aequorea! Around Aequorea’s ring are small glowing photocytes that give off a blue bioluminescent glow. But, these photocytes are coated with a green fluorescent substance that immediately absorbs the blue light and transforms it, making Aequorea look like a green blinking spaceship when poked. Photo: David Gruber/Vincent Pieribone. Animation: Emma Welles.
Animating glowing undersea creatures is my new favorite passtime.
This is how @fannybottoms cleans her bib. (at The Webbles)
