My love-hate relationship with e-books

Ever since I read a New York Times article about the possibility of bedbugs spreading through library books, I’ve been too paranoid to check out a book from my local library. (Yes, I know people have argued that the article was way overblown. What can I say? I have an irrational fear of the bedbug.) […]

Guest Post: Data Mining and Visualization: Bed Bug Edition

Data mining. Maybe the term makes you think of tapping out facts out with a pickax, or of scary algorithms and programming. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With this handy guide, I’ll show you how to do (rudimentary) data mining from the comfort of your desk, no computer science degree necessary. All […]

TGIPF: The Bed Bug and His Violent Penis

Behold the bed bug penis. Entomologists call it a lanceolate paramere, where lanceolate means “shaped like a lance head” and paramere, the “copulatory hooks formed from outer subdivision of primary phallic lobes.” Put more simply, it curves out from the tip of the male’s abdomen and ends in a wicked point, like a dagger. This […]