An inverted pup-tent affair

IT overcome its short stature! IT challenged the cruel heightism of the world!

Evolution is a disease

During his research on coelacanths, Professor Donald Blake accidentally exposes himself to the fish's blood and undergoes a rapid devolution into a brutal ape-man. You just couldn't do something like that in today's economy.

The Monster Museum

The Vrolik Museum is housed in the Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam and contains nearly 500 animal and human specimens on display. Every specimen has some anatomical abnormality; congenital deformities that rendered the majority unable to survive past their birth. The various warped forms, usually floating in preservative fluid, are astoundingly varied. At the museum, one can see microcephalics, conjoined twins, ancephalics, dysmeliacs, and all the rest. The study of such developmental defects is called teratology, which literally means "the study of monsters."

Still, this is no mere freakshow. This collection (largely amassed by the father and son team of Professors Girard and Willem Vrolik) has supplied biologists and medical scientists key information about the morphological development.





Would you like to know more?
-Visit to University of Amsterdam's page for Vrolik Museum
-View this set of photos of Vrolik exhibits.

Honesty in Advertising

"MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS."

-Alleged newspaper ad placed by Sir Ernest Shackleton for his Antarctic expedition

Phase IV has come at last

We're back. We'd never really leave you, you know.

Plus, we've learned some mighty interesting things. For instance, did you happen to catch the discovery of a new global superorganism? We'll give you the run-down.

The Argentine Ant (which as you may have surmised originates from South America) has been transported all over the globe by unwitting humans. They're chiefly known for two things: 1). their aggression towards native insects and 2). their titanic colonies. There are colonies in Europe, America, and Japan that have a combined size of more than four-thousand miles in length. There is no solidarity amongst the Argentine Ants. These are fiercely tribalistic insects and inter-colony cooperation is non-existent.

However, recent observations by Japanese scientists suggests that the largest Argentine Ant colonies are in fact components of an even larger mega-colony. By taking ants taken from several different locations across the world and putting them in the same chamber, they found that the ants did not display the customary belligerence, as if they were all close relatives. The implication is that this insect society is considerably vast and comparable to human society in planetary scope.

We'd best be vigilante.

Would you like to know more?
-Read this BBC article
-Watch this scientific analysis of the ant mega-colony


Lease Holder Addendum: This is post number 88, which is the same number of keys on a piano. Good to know.

Just Say No

Pictured: Donovan's brain (left), First Lady Nancy Reagan (right)

But the rent's cheap