Remember that billowing cloud of ash from Iceland that floated over Britain and other parts of northern Europe this past spring, shutting down airspace from London to Hamburg and filling airports with fuming travellers? It wasn’t all bad, I discovered yesterday. In fact if you were an archaeologist, particularly a British archaeologist, that plume of […]
Curiosities
I’ve often had the same thought myself. You have too, haven’t you. http://abstrusegoose.com/208
I thought I’d made the case against parasitic wasps with evidence and eloquence. I thought that would be the end of it. But no: counter-arguments were made (even if insects did evolve first, Josie, I can still feel superior), gauntlets thrown down, aspersions cast (you think I didn’t notice “delicate flower,” Heather?), and lines drawn […]
Five years ago, I was invited to speak at BugFest, the annual insect extravaganza at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, about my book, Buzz: The Intimate Bond Between Humans and Insects. One day before the Fest, (which features an arthropod Olympics, butterfly gardening and a “Cafe Insecta”) I was a guest on North […]
My apologies to all the delicate flowers out there. But here is a video that will actually make you feel sorry for a vampire bat. Assassin bugs really do come by their names honestly.
I was going about life one day, visiting my step-daughter the entomologist who showed me, in a microscope, a pale green little aphid which was eating a leaf. Inside the aphid was a tiny parasitic wasp which was eating the aphid. Through the aphid’s transparent body, I could see the wasp’s buggy little eyes. I […]
I’ve always wanted to enroll in gladiator school. I once took a course in fencing, but it seemed far too precise and finicky and I hated the drills. I’d prefer to bash it out like Russell Crowe does. The next best thing to attending gladiator school is watching Terry Jones, one of the guys from […]
Like millions of other readers I’ve turned into a couch potato this summer, curled up with Stieg Larsson’s addictive page-turners. I could be out accompanying my dog Max as he tears through his favorite park hunting for forgotten sandwiches on summer evenings. Or dallying on the beach with g&t in hand. But no. I’m at […]