flickering pictures

When I was a kid, comic books always had those little ads for mail-order venus flytraps, with promises that they’d keep your home bug-free by crushing the life out of unsuspecting houseflies with their razor-sharp fangs and super-corrosive digestive juices. When my mom finally got me one, I was a little disappointed — no […]

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A tiny island chain, isolated and all but forgotten off the coast of Yemen, is home to one of the most fascinating and unique ecosystems on Earth. It also looks like something Lewis Carroll might have dreamed up after way, way too much absinthe.
I have to go there.
From the New York Times:
Some 250 million […]

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In the spirit of uncovering weird and wonderful things, here’s a link to Divine Caroline, which features pics and tidbits on some of the world’s strangest plants.
Up top is welwitschia mirabilis, which apparently has only two leaves in that entire writhing mass of foliage. The one at right is amorphophallus, which translates from the […]

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British Columbia’s forests are being ravaged by a scourge of tiny pine beetles, which are turning lush green trees into rotting pulp at an alarming rate. The beetles are killing so many trees that the greenhouse gases released by decomposing wood are expected to outweigh all similar gases emitted by BC’s 4.5 million residents […]

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The end of the World War II in 1945 gave birth to another war — one that was “colder” but just as terrifying. US-Soviet tension and the arms race it caused had much of the world in a panic, and WWII’s victors were falling all over themselves to test nuclear weapons and build arsenals […]

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