As the Protagonists Look On...

Ghost shrimp.  The name conjures up images of ethereal, wall-penetrating shrimp and very tiny, spooky spirits.  But what are they really? The least filling party food? The ghosts that always get picked last in ghostketball?  Sadly no, because ghostketball doesn't exist...

But they're learning...dear god, they're learning!

Ghost shrimp are actually a species of freshwater shrimp that have see-through bodies!  This adaptation undoubtedly is an excellent camouflage against predators, because the shrimp currently watching me write this are only visible by their eyes and the food in their stomachs.  "The food in their stomachs?!" You are undoubtedly screaming at your computer screen right now.  Yes indeed folks, one of the most entertaining reasons to have these li'l buggers is the joy of watching them eat.  My shrimp are currently existing on betta fish pellets, which are orange.  When they eat, they hold the orange pellet in front of their face, and this pellet gets smaller and smaller as they eat it (however they do that...tiny forks? mouth-straws?).  As the pellet gets smaller, an orange ball can be seen growing right behind their eyes.  If you look carefully you can see this ball pulsating as the stomach muscles (I guess) move the food around.  Pretty interesting stuff.  They also swim around, walk along the bottom, perch on plants, groom moss balls, and generally clean up around the place. 

They make excellent pets as long as you like easily maintained but difficult to see animals.  I currently have 2 in my tank, or possibly 3, since Pierre's disappearance can neither be confirmed nor denied.  What I can tell you is that right before I typed this sentence, Guy swam to the surface and grabbed a pellet! This is cool because until this point I've only seen them take food that had sank to the bottom.  Anyway, if you already have a freshwater tank, consider adding these interesting little cleaners!  

Hey man, your "ghost shrimp" is showing.

fishpictures-online.blogspot.com

The Miniature Terrors: Armies for Hire

    Ah, winter time.  The earth slumbers snugly beneath a blanket of snow, and God keeps jerking that blanket away and putting it back, undoubtedly in an attempt to piss off dear Terra.  Based on my normal response when someone disturbs my sleep, I'm expecting volcanoes any day now.  But these warm spells are more than just God's bedtime hijinks, they are tangible sprinklings of hope.  Opportunities to dream of spring time.  And throughout the world, spring time means just one thing: Brutal, insect-on-everything-else violence.

This weeks nightmares brought to you by Mother Nature, Ltd...

Segue complete!  And now, like a disco dancing CEO, let's get down to business.  

I was the prime architect and care-giver of a garden this summer, and, like the good little nature-elf that I am, I decided to grow this garden pesticide-free.  We here at Attention Boors are friends of the earth, and I, not wishing to hasten our own demise nor earn Will's eternal and slightly bothersome scorn, opted to fight fire ants with fire ants (so to speak).  Yes indeed, friends, I decided that the best way to rid my garden of any possible produce pilfering pests was to bring in my own miniature army. However, I am a man of modest means, so unlike Donald Trump, who has a team of scientists creating tiny humans with machine guns to fight crime in his garden (Lies, 1), I had to find my soldiers the natural way.  To this end, research was commenced and subsequently led to several trips to local greenhouses.  Money was exchanged, awkward over-the-cash-register banter was experienced, and I returned to my field of tiny, green ground-leechers with the homes of their future protectors.  I'll be discussing these various plants, my adventure, and the wee beasties who assisted me in growing some kick-ass veggies periodically on this blog.  As a taste of things to come, I leave you with this.

   Observe the noble soldier beetle:

Hello there.

    According to the University of Kentucky entemology website, these killer whales of the garden eat "caterpillars, eggs, aphids, and other soft-bodied insects." Personally, I've seen the benefits of soldier beetles in my garden and I highly recommend putting in a little effort to attract them.  There was a bank of lemon balm near my garden and it was an excellent attractor of soldier beetles.  I've also heard that goldenrod is good for that, too. If you try this at home, and use lemon balm, be sure to keep it in a pot or separated from the rest of the garden somehow, because lemon balm is kind of an asshole and likes to take over everything. However, it is quite effective, so plant it right and it will work wonders for you.  I had a 3'x5' patch, which is perhaps an unrealistice amount for most small gardens, but I'm sure even a solid 2'x2' plot would be fine.  It is a tall plant, but does fine in the shade (in my experience), so behind the tomato plants (if you have any of those) would be just fine.  Here is what it looks like:

Ooh! Pretty and it smells good?! I'll take it!

    So there you have it.  Look forward to my next bugs n' gardening post which probably will feature one of my favorite garden defenders, the long-legged fly!

    

An introduction, an article, an exhortation.

Hello and welcome! My friend Will and I have a bad habit of finding interesting articles online and sending them to each other while at work.  This is generally accomplished over Facebook, but we figured that if anyone found us as witty and insightful as we find ourselves, it would be irresponsible to keep our thoughts to ourselves.  But fear not, gentle reader, for this blog is not mere stroking of egos, for we rely on you, yes you, to contribute and criticize, as we will be doing to each other.  So please join us on this journey as we delve into topics as mind-bending as quantum mechanics and philosophy, as esoteric as Trollmetal and Nightcore, and as deeply engrossing to the point of kind of ruining your life as The Elder Scrolls games...

I don't know what Will is going to do, but I'm hoping to have most of my posts take this form: I'll post an article, and give my thoughts on it.  Bam. In the words of a man pointing out Stephen King's killer clown, "That's it." I assume anyway, I've never read that book or seen the movie.

Anyway, here's my first article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150047

Since you probably skipped reading it, here's my very brief summary:
This article is called

Quantum biology: Do weird physics effects abound in nature?

For years now, we who follow science with an avid but almost entirely non-professional interest have been hearing about all the cool, new, and often theoretical claims coming out of the field of quantum mechanics.  As a  philosophy Teaching Assistant for UF for two years, it was a miracle if one or two students per semester didn't try to bring quantum mechanics into every argument we discussed.  In a way, I think they are validated in this pursuit, because quantum mechanics is supposed to describe some of the most basic workings of reality.  Even in intro philosophy classes we addressed the fundamentals of reality, so it's natural that they would attempt to use QM to derail or support certain philosophical arguments. Given their generally poor understanding of the arguments in the first place (and quantum mechanics) I often had to settle for furiously punching them in my head while gently explaining that they had no idea what they were talking about.

That being said, many of QM's predictions are being confirmed, which speaks volumes for any theory.  My students' suspicions about QM's applicability were not necessarily wrong (let's not get into reasons they may be wrong), just too misinformed or speculative about what they were attempting to apply.

In this article we have some pretty solid examples of those predictions being borne out.  Quantum superposition, the idea that a particle exists in all of the possible potential spatial positions and states, for example.  If that sounds awesome/weird/unlikely, go look it up! Fly fly!  I recommend looking up double-slit experiments as a decent starting point. This is discussed as a reason why photosynthesis is so efficient. Next, quantum entanglement, the idea that some particles, no matter how far apart, communicate their states instantaneously (so, you know, faster than the speed of light...by a lot) to other particles. That's hella crazy! And not only is it hella crazy, but this article claims that it helps explain how birds navigate using magnetic fields.  Finally, it talks about quantum tunneling. Quantum tunneling has to do with the ability of electrons to disappear from one location and reappear in another without seeming to traverse the space in between.  My understanding is that this is usually between energy states, which I've always seen presented as physically distinct areas relative to an atom's nucleus, or between multiple atoms' "electron shell".  The point is that it seems to science that these electrons are giving the finger to space-time and just sort of being at point A, then  being at point B without ever being at one of the (possibly) infinite points in between.  It doesn't move, just pops between the points.  Anyway, according to the article this possibly plays a role in how the sense of smell works. Whoa.

If you're interested, read the article.  Here are my thoughts:

Frankly, if we grant that quantum mechanics is true (or at least that the experiments supporting the theory are accurate, even if the theory is wrong), then I say "Of course quantum mechanics influences biology!" Consider this, dear reader: Quantum mechanics attempts to describe and predict the actions of sub-atomic particles.  Sub-atomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrinos, blah blah blah) make up or interact with each individual atom of each element (hydrogen, helium, molybdenum, blah blah blah), the elements make up all composite physical structures (bodies, planets, viruses, blah blah blah), and the action of physical laws (quantum mechanical laws, thermodynamic laws, physical laws, blah blah blah) on physical structures results in systems that convert energy from one form to another (suns, metabolisms, power plants, blah blah blah).  Does nature consist of anything else (and I say nature specifically to exclude supernatural considerations)? Maybe, but if these laws are specifying the way that building blocks of matter interact with each other, then all of matter is affected by them.  So yeah, quantum mechanics affects biology.  That's not to say it isn't super cool and awesome to find out how it does this, or the mechanisms involved, I'm just saying it doesn't seem like a controversial claim.  It's as obvious as a Secret Service agent at a county fair.  I mean...right?


So I guess I didn't have much to say about it after vaguely describing it.  Next article, I'm going to attempt to analyze something less science-y. Ambiguity always makes it easier to bull-shit!