Charlotte and her classmates recently had a visit from half a dozen or so live owls at a special presentation at school. It was the lead-in to a science unit they did wherein the kids got to pick apart owl pellets — the regurgitated bits of bone, feathers, and other parts of their prey which the owls cannot digest. According to Charlotte’s teacher, the kids are usually grossed out initially, but usually find it interesting, and that was exactly Charlotte’s sequence of responses. After she found out she was going to have to dissect a pellet, she was very unsure about the project, but she was brimming with details after they were done: she and her lab partner found five vole skulls in their owl pellet.
While Charlotte’s class got to see and touch (with rubber gloves) the real thing, you can do your own virtual owl pellet dissection here. If you still aren’t satisfied, you can even buy owl pellets for your own home experiments here. And for that complete verisimiltudinal experience, you might want to listen to these recordings of owl calls while you’re digging through the owl barf.
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
Thanks to Shelley for alerting me that last night’s edition of the local TV newsmagzine “Chronicle” featured Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, whom I blogged about recently in conjunction with the various atheist billboard campaigns around the country. I was busy helping Charlotte do her homework, so I didn’t watch the show, but WCVB’s [...]
Update to yesterday’s post about boiled eggs:
The picture at the top is what I got by boiling two eggs in 180-degree-ish water for 6 minutes. Sorry for the so-so photo, I only had my cell phone handy.
The eggs were indeed nicely done. The cooked ring of egg white was consistent in its thickness [...]
