*Uncle*

Okay, that's enough. Your humble primate author has been sufficiently bewildered by Chelicerata for one day. Their psychic power is too much for me.

[another image from Panteek, artist=Guerin]

I'm Hurting Myself

I've got to stop. I'm going to give myself nightmares. This is starting to get out of control.

The scorpion in this image is terrifying to me. I don't know - it's something about its poise and widely spread arms. It's some variety of Hottentotta, from Afghanistan. Check out the full size shot.

Well, if you want a gallery of 250 scorpions from around the world, be my guest.

"Chelicera" = Claws

Hey, whaddya know? Just learned that "chelicera" is the name given to the the first pair of appendages in chelicerata, adapted to eating in many of these (and, in spiders, poisoning).

I learned it here, where I also learned that Wolf Spiders (the kind I grew up calling Dock spiders cuz they crawl around the slats of the dock at Twin Lakes and scared the living shit out of me and my brother) are so named because folks used to believe that they hunted in packs, like wolves.

[shiver of terror]

Manifest - Programatic Design

Michael Chang, from UCLA, developed a beautiful piece of software called Manifest that generates organic designs. As he describes it in his abstract, Manifest is a:

Drawing toy that produces parameterized organisms. Procedural animation allows the organisms to swim around in a virtual fluid environment interacting with each other.

The image here is from it. Make yourself some vertebrae!

Not All Organic

The images I revere are not all evolution-this and science-that, organic chelicerata shapes and bees working together and ocean currents.

This is the finest collection of Transformer images i've ever seen. His name is "Jeff," heh, heh.

Ernest Haeckel

I've discovered a new Naturalist: Ernest Haeckel. Based on the limited number of images I've seen of his so far, he seems a bit more obsessive and alien than ol' JJ Audobon. The picture here is a detail from a glorious print of trilobytes and other chelicerata. This page has a huge TIFF of the full image that you can download and make your own poster from...

Furthermore, I've also found a massive collection of Naturalist images - it is a commerce site, so the previews are watermarked, but they're very large and very beautiful. I may even buy one of these prints.

Birds Available

I've converted a bunch of my recent songs and posted them for anyone interested. They're of varying degrees of completion - the first half basically add loops one at a time until everything's going, and then end. The second half are more carefully organized.

Enjoy!

(that illustration comes from this beautiful page from the Humboldt University of Berlin)

Note: 013 and 014 hail from last night.

Bless His Balanced Soul

It's a little dispiriting because he never quite stands straight up (and they show it from about 500 angles), but this humanoid robot has learned to - um - leap to his feet from lying on his back. even if you only download the first 10 seconds of this clip, it's a gesture that I think is worth keeping in your heart.

MPG Video Link

The forgotten Pycnogonids

So, everyone knows that the Chelicerata sub-phylum includes Scorpions, Spiders and Horseshoe Crabs. But did you know that it also include weird-ass things called Sea Spiders (also known sometimes at Whip Scorpions, and, technically, Pycnogonids)?

The picture to the right is from the Canadian Museum of Nature, although I found it at this great Underwater Gallery. Nice horseshoe crab there, too.

More sea spiders in this gallery.

Globetrekker TV

Saw an episode of Globetrekker TV last night on PBS, this one on Egypt. I remain convinced that Amy Campbell is destined to be a host on this show.

Quite a scene with the hermit up on his hill...

Piracy is Your Fault

Even Dick's getting into it.

But if you'd like to see a Japanese promo that runs in the movie theatres, here's that gem...it includes black tears.

Update: Another Dick Tracy one, where the various pirating criminals are introduced, including Miss Laptop.

Holding a horseshoe crab

Found this. Horseshoe crabs are fucked up.

Dawn's Belly

Incidentally, J and I had brunch with Keith and Dawn the other weekend, and here's the glory of Dawn's current state.

Misery at Twin Lakes

Twin Lakes 2005, version 2, occurred last weekend. Graeme's friends Nat and Sarah - who are moving to a farm they just bought 12 hours north of Vancouver, from Myrtle Ave in Fort Greene, Brooklyn - had their awesome dog Memphis, aka Bubble, around. It was his first time in the outdoors.

Comedy...gasp

Jill and I went along with Jef and Shelley to a "comedy show" last night. I had decided sometime like 15 years ago, despite my friend Jon Young comedianing for years in London, that live comedy and I would not live in the same universe. Well, this was pretty good. Time to rethink my categories.

We saw aziz ansari at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre, and a sketch comedy group called Hammerkat was there, too.

Opening Day

I'm on it. Now you can listen to me.