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Food porn; Rules of thumb; Eclipse from space; Self-aware magpie

10:12 AM Thu, Aug 21, 2008 |
By Sheila Lennon    Email this author |   Email this entry

grilled-cheese.jpg

Made you look: Food Porn Daily: click, drool, repeat. Taking food photography to a new level of detail. Thumbnail gallery.

The authors are Amanda & Tyler from What We're Eating and Nicole from Pinch My Salt -- more conventional food blogs.


Conventional wisdom: RulesofThumb.org. From its About page, "A rule of thumb is a homemade recipe for making a guess."

There are hundreds here. A few I like:

The moon rises 50 minutes later than it did the day before.

Zigzag to outrun a crocodile.

If a polar bear charges you, dodge to the right. Eskimos say most polar bears are left-pawed.

You'll get more money at resale time if you buy a red car.

If you get arrested, and you did it, and it's your first offense, skip the lawyer, plead guilty, and take your fine and/or probation. It will save you time and money, and it's the best "deal" most attorneys can arrange.

Tom Parker has turned these into a series of books over the decades -- the sort you keep it in your bathroom. Or bring your laptop in there with you.

 

eclipse99_mir.jpg An eclipse as seen from the space station Mir in 1999. An astronomy picture of the day from NASA. (The archive index.)

 

Science: 13 things that do not make sense

 

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Magpie, a member of the crow family

Self-aware bird: I, Magpie at Science News:

Magpies are the first non-mammal to demonstrate a rudimentary affinity for self-recognition, psychologist Helmut Prior of Goethe University of Frankfurt in Germany and his colleagues report in the Aug. 19 PLoS Biology. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and ravens, magpies join apes, bottlenose dolphins and elephants as the only animals other than humans that have been observed to understand that a mirror image belongs to their own body.

"When magpies are judged by the same criteria as primates, they show self-recognition and are on our side of the 'cognitive Rubicon,'" Prior says.

Bonus: Magpie sounds

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