Inane Ramblings of a Demented Predator

Well, that was good timing

2013-05-22T13:23:07Z

By one of those apt coincidences, had a chemical accident at work the day after I made that post about chemical accidents. I was refilling the work van's bifenthrin tank, and pointed out to the new works manager that the hose from the bowser was bulging alarmingly. Works manager points this out to the plant manager.

Works Manager: Should I get him [me, still filling tank] to stop?
Plant Manager: No, let him finish. I'll cut a length of new hose.
Hose: BANG

Cue me leaping over the ensuing ten-foot fountain of pesticide to hit the off-lever on the bowser, bifenthrin raining down all over my van, and spraying liberally over everything else in the vicinity as well. Happily, I'd kept the window on that side of the van shut, so the cabin was safe. And, of course, I always carry a change of clothes in the van too.

drhoz @ 2013-05-22T21:16:00

2013-05-22T13:16:43Z

Feeling weirdly cranky and tense this evening, and for no apparent reason (well, no reasons other than the usual, anyway. The Background Level of Aggravation, as it were).

Feel like I want to lash out at something, but I can't think why.

Gah! *shouts at the cat, who hasn't even run down my bare side with her claws out today, either*

Dr Who S33 : Ep. 25 & 26 - Nightmare in Silver & Name of the Doctor

2013-05-22T12:50:55Z

I have to say, after the excellent Doctor's Wife, Neil Gaiman's second script was a major disappointment. The incipit was not what I expected either - a few minutes of the kids still on Earth, ambushing the Doctor and convincing him to take them along, would have been appreciated. Although Gaiman did get the teenage surliness down pat.

The Mechanical Turk conceit was a good one, and the redesign of the Cyberman and Cybermats quite nice - was that CGI made to resemble stop motion? The Bullet Time idea was interesting, and at last we get confirmation that the Cyberconversion process only works on humans, but ... Emotional. Highly emotional. And why did they forget how to move that fast later?

Also, far too much idiot balling that could have been avoided. Such as the Doctor letting the kids sleep where they did. Would the sister leaving the TARDIS out of adolescent pique, followed by brother trying to stop her, really have made that much difference? And Clara seems to have forgotten she has two hands. And then you have the highly convenient ending and the Emperor's rather cheap-looking starship.

And the dress line.

Sigh...

And then there was the season finale, The Name of the Doctor.

I'll admit the incipit made me squeal with glee - but have all those clips strung together there, as opposed to saving them for the climax, ruined any tension in the resolution. I can't understand why they didn't cut to the titles straight after Clara's "You're making a big mistake."

And then there were the other miscues. It was nice to see the Great Intelligence get more use, but IMO there wasn't enough build-up this season to make him the huge threat this episode needed. And as a result his revenge seemed more like childish pique than all-consuming mutual destruction.

Plus, the sets looked cheap. Really cheap. Even if that was a nod to the old series, as a friend suggested, I expected better. :/

And then you have the two overarcing mysteries of this season and last. Nor any good explanation for why the TARDIS doesn't like Clara (when given how the episode ends you'd have hoped it would be anything BUT hostile). Clara's secret was thrown away during the incipit, and the other supposed mystery a massive let down. Sure, Moffat dodged the question cleverly, but there was nothing special about Trenzalore to make lies impossible, or get the Silence so worked up last season. On the other hand, the episode acknowledged that what the Doctor did to Solomon, etc, was murder, and the actual big reveal of the episode DID leave Purrdence and I gobsmacked, so I'll give him credit for that.

And I do wonder what Kate Orman and Jon Blum thought about the script, given some of the elements....

The Sea's Strangest Square Mile

2013-05-21T13:00:29Z

The Terror of ESL Teachers Everywhere

2013-05-21T11:11:31Z

Somebody, I forget who, said something along the lines that English was a language that followed other languages down dark alleys, mugged them, and went through their pockets looking for loose vocabulary. The following proves the point, I suspect.

If you can correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

– The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité

How Not To Do It: Ruining Stuff

2013-05-20T09:20:08Z

From one of the comments at In the Pipeline

I was a student at the University of North Dakota back in the early 70s. I participated in accelerated chemistry classes until my organic chemistry class, which found me in with the general population. These were, to me, boneheads and morons, but they managed to completely intimidate the little Chinese TA, so he rarely was around to supervise. It was our first experiment -- a simple distillation: separate the alcohol from the paradichlorobenzene. You put the solution in a flask with a few boiling chips, hooked it all up and let it cook. The moron across from me had everything set up, but he wasn't getting any distillate. A closer examination discovers he has no boiling chips, so he runs off, returning with a hand full of them. He opens the flask, leans over to look in, and dumps a hand full of boiling chips into the flask. You can guess what happens.

The super-heated alcohol-PDC solution goes straight into the air and into his face. The alcohol quickly vaporizes, and the PDC crystals are snowing over everything in the lab. The moron has scalded his face, and he's screaming "I'M BLIND! I'M BLIND!" -- his face and hair are completely white from the PDC. His neighbor reaches up while he's screaming and removes the moron's safety glasses (the one thing he had done right), and as the moron screams... "I'M BLIND! I'M BLIND! I'M... oh".

The second experiment involved vacuum distillation of di-nitrotoluene, but if you cooked it too long it formed TNT. I watched morons trying to cook their reaction vessels dry, thinking this would maximize the distillate. I walked out before anything bad happened.

drhoz @ 2013-05-19T23:22:00

2013-05-19T15:22:53Z

Just watched the Dr Who Season Finale. Got to last 30 seconds, and Purrdence and I simultaneously gawped and yelped "... the fuck?????"

Annular Eclipse Sunrise

2013-05-19T10:30:47Z

Never Alone

2013-05-19T07:21:02Z

Feather and DashDub's collaboration

I'm sure I've heard something like those opening bars and vocals before, but for the life of me can't recall where.

EDIT: *slaps forehead* Kwoon's 'I Lived On The Moon', of course!

Come To Australia - You Might Accidentally Get Killed

2013-05-19T06:03:21Z

The talk that delicious_irony and I did a talk at this year’s Swancon on all the ways one can enhance Australia’s reputation as a seething wilderness knee-deep in lethal fauna just waiting to devour, envenom, spindle, fold, and mutilate visiting tourists.

And, best of all, most of the examples we gave are absolutely real.

That didn’t stop us starting off with some of our most popular legends, of course.

The Drop Bear, our most beloved arboreal ambush predator, is a perennial favourite. Sad to say, the Internet has made most of our tourists highly skeptical that it actually exists, and it’s become difficult to convince tourists that the only way to scare them off is to smear Vegemite behind their ears (they don’t like the smell).

Of course, sometimes you get lucky, as a mutual acquaintances was when he was camping with one such skeptic. The visitor went outside to relieve himself, and by a prefect coincidence the high winds dislodged a large male koala from the tree he was using. It, snarling in fury (and an angry koala is an alarming beast), promptly headed back up the tree.

The tourist staggered back into the tent - still unzipped - and stammered “It just missed me… and then it went back up for another go.”

Plus, of course, koalas are dangerous in their own right. Chlamydia is rampant, and one of the strains they carry can jump species. And of course, their claws are sharp and powerful, and their jaws, like many marsupials, ridiculously overpowered compared to the equivalent placental.

Then you have the more folkloric Australian cryptids, such as the Bunyip, and the Yowie. Pick your own description for the former, none of the descriptions match anyway. And the latter is the local equivalent of Bigfoot and about as believable.

The Hoop Snake is also popular, despite the fact that the legend is an American import.

This story still works on tourists, especially if you embellish it with some plausible details. Coreynn regaled us with the version she told some students from Japan, about how the hoop snakes thrived as a result of the highway system, but many were killed by traffic - and if you looked at the side of the road you can see their remains. The students got very wide-eyed as they drove past the tattered remnants of burst truck tires XD

And if that fails, you can also tell them about the Australian Grass Snake, one of our many deadly species. If you’re out camping, it’s advisable to spread a ring of dry grass around your sleeping bag, so you can hear it coming… tell that one well enough and you can get them to sleep on top of their car *evil grin*

Legendary animals dispensed with, we then moved on to some real species with interesting legends about them.

Such as the Daddy-Long-Legs Spider, which has a world-wide myth regarding it’s lethality. Not true, of course, as proved by the Mythbusters and many others - it’s perfectly capable of penetrating human skin but the venom is next to harmless to something our size. Besides, they hunt other spiders, which is useful. Another spider-hunting spider frequently found is houses are the White Tails, Lampona cylindrata and L. murina.

Thanks to some lazy reporting in the 80s, these spiders earned a completely undeserved rep for causing flesh-eating ulcers. Some claimed this was because they sucked up the venom of spiders they ate, and recycled it. Complete rubbish, of course.

More interesting is the less widespread myth about the Masked Lapwing, aka Australian Spur-winged Plover.

Like many plovers, this bird will go to great lengths to distract you or drive you away from its nest. The myth revolves around the spurs on its wings, which are said to be venomous. They aren’t, of course, but no doubt the fear adds spice to the game of “Teasing the Spur-winged Plover”

Of course, it’s not just the wildlife in Australia that wants you dead. Even before you face the fauna you have to endure the environmental hazards.

Such as Earthquakes.

The Meckering Earthquake of October 1968, for example, wasn’t even Australia’s biggest, but was felt as far away as Perth, Albany, and Geraldton, and opened a surface rupture 40km long and 3m high

It also played merry hell with the only train line to the eastern states.

And Tornados! There’s an annoyingly pervasive myth in the local media that Australia doesn’t get tornadoes. We most certainly do - Western Australia is the tornado capital of the Southern Hemisphere. At the start of the year Bundaberg in Queensland got hit by five. Perth alone gets hit by about one a year. We’ve just been very lucky that nobody in Perth has been killed by one, since they’re usually small.

I once rung my wife about this.

“You know how I had that argument with your dad about whether or not we get tornadoes in Australia?”

“Yes?”

“Well we do. And you know how we had washing on the line?”

“Yes?”

“Well we don’t.”

We didn’t have a clothesline either. The entire Hill’s Hoist was last seen 40 feet up and heading for the next suburb. Quite impressive damage to the yard - half of it scoured down to bare sand, and pot plants a few meters away not even knocked over. At least my father-in-law got a patio out of it. Well, somebody’s patio. Some assembly required.

But we do get quite large tornadoes in Australia.

This photo, the oldest of a tornado in Australia, was taken in 1911. The storm in question proceeded to destroy the towns of Marong and Lockwood

“They found a six-tonne gold crushing machine carried three to four miles into the forest, which gives you some idea of the strength of [the tornado],” Clyve says. “There are not a lot of entries about how many were injured in Lockwood, but the entire town was almost obliterated.”

And Nevertire was razed to the ground in 1896

Even horses were lifted bodily into the air, and carried away for some distance. They became en tangled in the wire fences and the falling trees, and many of them were killed. As for the two churches - the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church—they were simply missed. They were standing there before the storm commenced—they had afterwards disappeared.

Trucks loaded with wool were driven from the wool road at the rate’ of 50 miles an hour. They jumped the locked points and travelled before the wind a distance of five miles. Horses were blown under the trucks and had their legs cut clean off.

I used to joke that the main reason Australia doesn’t get the really big tornadoes is that we don’t have enough trailer parks to make it worth their while. What happens the week before the convention? Two big tornadoes trash trailer parks in Victoria.

And, famously, most of the Australian countryside is made of explodium.

The eucalypts that feature so prominently are practically dripping with highly flammable oils. There’s even a myth that koalas will explode if they get too close to campfires. The trees certainly will. In fact, as an approaching bushfire bakes the forest in front of it, you can get a horribly volatile mix of eucalyptus oils and oxygen. Then it can all go up at once.

The Australian bush is so flammable that hundreds of plant species have evolved methods of surviving the conflagration. Indeed, many of them require a fire to germinate their seeds.

Oddly enough, despite living in a tinderbox, bushfires have only killed about 800 people in the history of the nation. Unhappily, 179 of those were during the 2009 Victorian Bushfires.

But if our bushfires aren’t enough for you, feel free to combine them with the tornadoes.

That far in and we finally get to the actual fauna (the koala earlier notwithstanding). Australia is famous for its wildlife, and our wildlife is famously horrible. Take the kangaroo, for example - cute bouncy herbivores with boxing talent, and the ability to lean back on their tail and rake your abdomen open with their scrotum-tearing claws.

It doesn’t help that male kangaroos challenge other males with an upright stance and wide shoulders. Kangaroos aren’t too good at differentiating species.

And the equally iconic Platypus packs a punch as well. The males have a venomous spur on their wrists, and the venom therein produces excruciating pain which may be intense enough to incapacitate the victim, and potentially lasting for weeks. A charming bonus - the pain does not respond to morphine.

We can’t leave out the reptiles. And not the snakes and crocodiles, either, oh no, I’m talking about the lizards.

Australia’s monitor lizards - goannas, perenties, and lace monitors - might no longer get to 7 meters long, but they’re still perfectly well equipped to make you a very unhappy camper. They’re venomous, for one thing. And they use those giant razor-sharp claws to climb trees, especially when surprised. Unfortunately, they don’t much care whether they’re climbing a tree or a person. You’ll care - the claws have been known to puncture the chest and cause lung collapse.

Coreynn and I entertained the audience with the tale of an American biologist visiting our local museum. They took him out for a drive, and spotted a goanna crossing the road, and all got out to have a closer look. The reptile scrambled to about shoulder-height on a tree and glowered at them.

Cue visitor, who really should have known better, but kudos for following the long-standing scientific tradition of testing hypothesis on yourself…

“I’ve heard that goannas don’t bite.” *reach*

After they managed to get the lizard off him, which was after it had savaged both his hands, his hosts told him to hold his hands over his head to minimise bloodloss. The passing traffic all slowed down for a good look at the bloke holding both arms over his head and bloody to the armpits.

And on to the birds.

This is a Cassowary.

They are not small.

The females are highly territorial, and the males very aggressive when protecting the chicks.

Plus, if you’re an idiot and attack one with clubs, then you can fully expect to have your throat ripped open.

Philip Mclean, a 16 year-old boy, and his brother, three years his junior, encounter a cassowary. Despite the size of the brightly coloured flightless bird before them, the Mclean brothers attempt to bludgeon it to death with clubs. It is a fatal mistake. Armed with its long- and sharp-clawed foot, the bird kicks the younger boy, who flees. His elder brother lands a blow on the beast but is knocked to the ground. Lying prone, Philip is kicked in the neck by the cassowary, opening a deadly wound. The boy manages to get up and run but dies shortly afterward as a result of a haemorrhaging blood vessel in his neck.

That said, our smaller birds can also kill you, by chasing you into traffic, knocking you off your bike, or causing you to choke to death on your lunch after a surprise attack.

The Australian Magpie is notoriously territorial during the breeding season, and for about two months passing cyclists or joggers risk their scalps if they go anywhere nearby. When an Australian tells you to wear an ice-cream container on your head, or a pair of sunglasses backwards, we aren’t joking.

The magpie’s testes dramatically increase in size over this period, so as Paul McDermott puts it, it’s like being “hit in the head by a two-pound flying scrotum.”

And if you’re really unlucky and turn around at the wrong moment, you’ll get that beak driven through your eye and into your brain.

And that’s just the obviously dangerous birds. Consider the small and inoffensive creature below, a native of Papua New Guinea.

The Hooded Pitohui and its relatives further south eat Melyrid beetles. These beetles contain batrachotoxins, and the birds are now so poisonous that merely handling one can make your hands go numb.

*sings the national anthem*

“Australians all let us rejoice, for we are girt by instant death”

And, indeed, Australia is world famous for its beaches, even if the residents of those beachs are a slavering mass of fangs, spines, venom, and nematocysts. Our volunteer lifesavers had an enviable 100-year record of no deaths by drowning where the swimmers stayed between the flags, which was sadly broken by a freak wave in 2011, which swept fifty people out to sea and lead to two death - one a heart attack in a 20 year old.

Of course, staying within the flags won’t help you against most of the following. Some sort of armoured submersible might.

The world’s deadliest snail!

Cone shells hunt fish, using modified radular teeth like poisoned harpoon. The poison kills fish instantly, so they can’t swim away, and it’ll finish you off too. The only safe way to pick up a cone shell is to get somebody else to do it.

The Bluebottle!

Physalia, a colonial siphonophore that washes onshore in huge quantities when the wind is right. The tentacles can be up to 50 meters long.10,000 human stings in Australia each summer, particularly on the east coast, with some others occurring off the coast of South Australia and Western Australia.

Detached tentacles and dead specimens (including those that wash up on shore) can sting just as painfully as the live organism in the water and may remain potent for hours or even days after the death of the organism or the detachment of the tentacle.

Especially fun is swimming along, faceplanting into one, and accidentally inhalling fragments of tentacle as you scream. This happens.

Of course, then you get..

The World’s Deadliest Slug!

Glaucus and Glaucilla, the Blue Dragons. These pelagic sea slugs float upside down in the open ocean, and eat siphonophores like the Bluebottle above. And then they somehow transfer the intact stinging cells to their own extremities.

There are a number of reports in Australia of kids engaged in “Bluebottle” fights - where they throw stranded Physalia at each other - being badly stung by inadvertently playing with Glaucus and Glaucilla, both of which, by concentrating the most venomous of Physalia’s nematocysts, are much more dangerous.

But far more dangerous than either..

The Box Jellyfish, or Cubomedusa!

They have 24 eyes. A box jellyfish has the closest thing a known jellyfish has to a brain. Box jellyfish also display complex, probably visually guided behaviors such as obstacle avoidance and fast directional swimming. Tests have shown that they have a limited memory, and have a limited ability to learn.

The tentacles of some species can reach up to 3 meters in length. Chironex fleckeri can weigh up to 2 kg. A serious sting from a Chironex cardiovascular collapse and death as quickly as 2 to 5 minutes. This jellyfish is why nobody goes swimming up North during the Wet Season.

And Chrionex is the big one - the Irukanji jellyfish Carukia barnesi and Malo kingi are a fraction of the size and just as appalling.

Identified in 1964 by Jack Barnes; in order to prove it was the cause of Irukandji syndrome, he captured the tiny jelly and allowed it to sting him; his son and a life guard observed the effects.

It has been described as feeling like little more than a mosquito bite. The symptoms, however, gradually become apparent and then more and more intense in the following five to 120 minutes (30 minutes on average). Irukandji syndrome includes an array of systemic symptoms, including severe headache, backache, muscle pains, chest and abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, sweating, anxiety, hypertension, tachycardia and pulmonary edema. Pain is often so severe that patients have been reported as begging their doctors to kill them to get it over with.One unusual symptom associated with the syndrome is a feeling of “impending doom”. Symptoms generally abate in four to 30 hours, but may take up to two weeks to resolve completely.

Victims have said such things as

he wished that he was stung by Chironex fleckeri, instead, since “the pain goes away in 20 minutes or you die”.

“I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to endure that level of pain without turning into a vegetable.”

“It’s like when you’re in labor, having a baby, and you’ve reached the peak of a contraction—that absolute peak—and you feel like you just can’t do it anymore. That’s the minimum that [Irukandji] pain is at, and it just builds from there.”

They’re spreading south, too. But they needn’t rush, the southern shores already have

The Blue-ringed Octopus!

Blue-ringed Octoites contain tetradotoxin - 10,000 times more toxic than cyanide.

The toxin is produced by bacteria in the salivary glands of the octopus. Their venom can result in nausea, respiratory arrest, heart failure, severe and sometimes total paralysis and blindness and can lead to death within minutes if not treated.

Especially fun is still being conscious when the paramedics give up, thinking you’re a heart attack victim.

And while we’re discussing sea life, how about some actual fish.

Such as the Stonefish, which has thirteen venomous spines along it’s back, and camouflage so good you won’t notice it until you step on it.

Or the Southern Eagle Ray, with is also deadly. Just ask Steve Irwin. He got the sting in the heart, when the ray panicked. Coreynn made the audience squirm by pointing out that the sting is serrated, and other people who step on a ray bled to death when they got their femoral artery slashed open.

But if the stingray doesn’t have a sting, you’ll be fine, right?

Of course not.

This is an electric ray, aka torpedo or numbfish. They get up to 90 kilograms (200 lb) in weight and can deliver a 220-volt electric shock

But at least you can eat the fish, can’t you?

Ha ha, says I. Ciguatera poisoning can be caused by eating any of 400 reef fish whose flesh is contaminated with toxins originally produced by dinoflagellates Ciguatoxin is odourless, tasteless and very heat-resistant, so ciguatoxin-laden fish cannot be detoxified by conventional cooking.

Hallmark symptoms of ciguatera in humans include gastrointestinal and neurological effects such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, usually followed by neurological symptoms such as headaches, muscle aches, paresthesia, numbness, ataxia, vertigo, and hallucinations. Severe cases of ciguatera can also result in cold allodynia, which is a burning sensation on contact with cold.

It’s occasionally misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis.

And here’s the bit that cause the entire audience to groan and squirm, most gratifyingly - the toxin may be sexually transmitted.

Or through breast milk.

And the symptoms can last up to 20 years.

After all this, it’s obvious that you can’t go within 50 feet of the ocean. But you’ll be safe from the sea life in the rivers, won’t you?

This a bull shark. This species is infamous from swimming up rivers. During the recent Brisbane floods, these sharks were swimming up and down the streets and across the golf courses. Some stayed behind in the water hazards.

So, what with everything in the sea, and occasional Bull Shark swimming down the street, you should limit yourself to swimming in freshwater rivers, naturally.

Hear my merry laughter.

The Saltwater Crocodile is the world’s largest reptile, river predator, and land predator. They grow up to 7 meters long, and weigh up to 2 tonnes. They’re occasionally found as far afield as Africa or the Sea of Japan, and they’ve been waiting around for American tourists (or anybody else unwise enough to trespass into their territory) for a very long time.

They most certainly eat humans. Just ask the 900 Japanese soldiers that attempted to retreat during the Battle of Ramree Island.

The year is 1945. World War II is all up in your shit. A 900 man cadre of Japanese forces on a small island off the Burmese Coast is being outflanked by Allied forces. With one side open to them, they make a bee-line toward reinforcements. It was approximately at this point that they found themselves badly wishing they were on Snake Island up there.

You see, the only thing standing in the way of salvation was a swamp. Figuring swamp vs. death was an easy decision, the 900 man force entered the swamp…

Five hundred were never heard from again.

The individual in the photo is Sweetheart, famous enough that some our audience members recognized him from the photo. Sweetheart is famous for taking on 15 outboard motors - and winning. He really, really didn’t like aluminium dinghies traveling through his territory.

Unfortunately, he came to a sad end. After his latest bout of boat-wrecking crankiness, he was captured (not shot - our crocs are a protected species) for removal to a crocodile park. But the cage caught of a snag while he was being towed downriver, and he drowned before they could get him free.

Oh, and the crocodiles have Chlamydia too, so if you’re going to have sex with any crocodiles, wear a condom.

Anyway, that obviously rules out going swimming anywhere north of Brisbane. But surely you’ll be safe in a nice river or billabong in the southern states, right? Right?

Naegleria fowleri, the Brain-Eating Ameoba! Discovered in Australia. It breeds in warm water (i.e. practically everywhere we HAVE water, in Australia) and if you get any up your nose it eats its way along your olfactory nerve and into your brain. Out of every 50 people that contract amoebic meningitis, 49 will die.

So, obviously, you must limit your swimming to well-chlorinated pools.

Ha. Ha ha. HahahahaHAhaHABWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

The Sydney Funnel-web is the world’s deadliest spider, and up to 5cm long. Its fangs can quite easily penetrate fingernail or soft shoes.

And as they wander around during the breeding season they quite frequently end up in swimming pools. But they don’t drown, oh no. They just go unconscious. And when you fish them out they’re not inclined to be grateful.

So, that’s some of the fauna. It would be remiss of me not to start on the flora.

The Queensland Stinging Tree and its relatives are so dangerous that merely brushing against one can kill a horse. Marina Hurley, a leading researcher of stinging trees, found the only way she could handle the plant to study it was with heavy welding gloves. It’s not even safe when it’s dead, since brushing against it then dislodges a cloud of silica hairs, which you then inhale.

And then you have the Poison Peas, Gastrolobium sp. These plants are especially common in SW Australia. Sodium fluoracetate is better known as the poison 1080. Somehow they manage to produce this compound without poisoning themselves. And despite living in low-fluorine soils. And even more incredibly, animals native to SW Australia have evolved to be able to eat it anyway.

Of course, if you’re not native to the area, you’re stuffed. Even kangaroos and possums from the east coast are swiftly killed if they eat it. Farmers sometimes have to scalp entire paddocks and cover it with topsoil from somewhere without poison peas so their cattle won’t die.

And there’s four other genera of Australia native plants that produce the same stuff.

But, you say, Australia is making large efforts to promote our food!

Let me tell you about Australian foods…

The Bunya-Bunya pine will drop football-sized cones on you from 45 meters up.

Macrozamia cycad seeds will kill you unless you pound the seeds in water that you change daily, for a week, and then roasted (Which begs the question - how the fuck did anybody figure this out?)

Nardoo, or Marselia, is an aquatic fern from the deserts of central Australia, and unless the sporocarps are prepared properly will destroy your bodily reserves of thiamin. The doomed explorers Burke and Wills were given Nardoo cakes by the local peoples, but weren’t told how to find or prepare the sporocarps because they weren’t clan members and it was woman’s business to collect and prepare it. Then one of the morons took a pot shot at the locals, and they weren’t given the cakes either.

And this is the Finger Cherry, or Cooktown Loquat. Most of the time, eating it is perfectly fine, and indeed in many area the native peoples and the later European settlers considered it a desirable fruit. But sometimes, in some areas, when you eat it you’ll go blind for life. And we have no idea why.

Australia has 9 of the Top Ten deadliest snakes in the world. It also has nine of the top nine.

However, since we only had limited time in the talk, I only covered one

The Death Adder. We don’t fuck around with common names over here. On the other hand, it’s not actually a viper, it’s an elapid, like the cobras and sea snakes.

But it most certainly is death on no legs - they inject, on average, 40 to 100 mg of completely neurotoxic venom with each bite. The LD₅₀ of the venom is half a milligram per kilo. One reason people get bitten by this snake is its hunting strategy - curl up under dry leaves, and wriggle its tail in front of its nose. Any bird or mammal that investigates the wriggling gets lunged at with record-breaking speed. So people can all too easily step on the snake without knowing it was there.

It’s not even our most venomous snake - only half those bitten will die without treatment.

And thus we started to wind up the talk - Coreynn pointing out that even with modern antivenenes, over the vast bulk of Australia you wouldn’t be able to get to a hospital in time anyway.

I then asked the audience which native animal was responsible for more hospitalizations than any other. It wasn’t the Paralysis Tick, although that is very serious.

It wasn’t the wombat, although wombats certainly cause major car accidents (and walk off afterwards).It’s not the Dingo, or the Red-back Spider, or the sea snakes, or the Great White Shark, or the Giant Social Crab Spiders, or our scorpions or wasps or deranged carnivorous marsupials... The most dangerous animal you’re likely to meet in the Bush, or in the suburbs, or lunging at you out of the undergrowth…

is the Bull Ant. It might not be as venomous as the snakes but the very real risk of anaphylatic shock, and the sheer number of people stung, put it way ahead of the competition.

We look forward to your next visit. As Coreynn put it "Drive on the left. Try not to die."

drhoz @ 2013-05-19T12:28:00

2013-05-19T04:29:45Z

Space Oddity

2013-05-19T02:52:17Z

David Bowie's Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.

Beautiful 'flowers' self-assemble in a beaker

2013-05-18T00:16:38Z

With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory—and not at the scale of inches, but microns.

These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that's what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.

"For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what's possible just through environmental, chemical changes," says Noorduin.

"His Eyes Bulged With Rage"

2013-05-16T08:02:41Z

drhoz @ 2013-05-16T14:10:00

2013-05-16T06:10:41Z

Home early today. It's one of those days when large thunderstorms creep across the landscape at 1 km an hour, and when they finally arrive, dump a inch of rain in 10 minutes. Which maqkes my usual afternoon jobs difficult.

Either way, I'm glad I'm home, after two 30-second long migraines earlier in the day. **** knows what that was about. Bleah.

drhoz @ 2013-05-15T21:19:00

2013-05-15T13:20:24Z

Now where is supernatural revenge when you need it?

2013-05-15T11:16:17Z

Belize City: A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project.

Wut.

2013-05-15T11:03:56Z

So Australia's capital is turning 100 this year, and for some reason they made this bizarre fucking turtle balloon with ten nipples for the occassion - Imgur

drhoz @ 2013-05-15T18:14:00

2013-05-15T10:14:07Z

A grandfather clock. Not something you expect to see abandoned on the side of the road.

On Ganges Way, near the Bertram shops, Tzisorey.

Cape York Annular Eclipse

2013-05-13T12:38:30Z

This week the shadow of the New Moon fell on planet Earth, crossing Queensland's Cape York in northern Australia ... for the second time in six months. On the morning of May 10, the Moon's apparent size was too small to completely cover the Sun though, revealing a "ring of fire" along the central path of the annular solar eclipse. Near mid-eclipse from Coen, Australia, a webcast team captured this telescopic snapshot of the annular phase. Taken with a hydrogen-alpha filter, the dramatic image finds the Moon's silhouette just within the solar disk, and the limb of the active Sun spiked with solar prominences. Still, after hosting back-to-back solar eclipses, northern Australia will miss the next and final solar eclipse of 2013. This November, a rare hybrid eclipse will track across the North Atlantic and equatorial Africa.

via Purrdence

2013-05-12T01:07:48Z

Dr Who S33 Ep.11 : The Crimson Horror

2013-05-11T06:11:32Z

Well, that was a relief. I went into it very much fearing it would be another Snowmen, in the sense of Madam Vashta, Jenny and Strax being written as helpless minions to the Doctor. They certainly weren't helpless in this one, and with the addition of Innocent Street Urchin it's looking more and more like the set-up to another spin-off series. Which would be no bad thing.

Plotwise, not bad.... bit incoherent. Villain's masterplan entertainingly demented, even if the properties of this week's brightly coloured goo were slightly too convenient. Magic wand abuse, bad guys attacking one at a time, whispered conversations held right in front of dozens of people, yadda yadda yadda. Could have been handled much better. Genre references galore - Poe, Monty Python, The Avengers, Tegan Jovanka, etc etc etc.

Well-done make-up work on the daughter. The design of the Monster-of-the-Week irritated the hell out of me, though. There was no reason to give it a remotely humanoid face, especially when the model organism has such a wide range in eye number. And my suspension of disbelief was totally blown by the pyrotechnics at the climax. There is no way any of them would have survived the launch - if they were so desperate to have everybody on the tower at lift-off, then have the stairs on the outside.

And of course the supporting cast this week was a delight, too. Rachael Stirling in another story with Victorian-era lesbians. And Diane Rigg, the original Emma Peel.

Purrdence: She's aged.
Me: Well, yes. It's been 50 years, after all.

via theweaselking

2013-05-11T04:41:50Z

More on yesterday's eclipse

2013-05-11T04:40:31Z

Which was only partial here in Perth, but nicely Annular across the main path.

I'd actually forgotton it was happening, but by a lucky coincidence started up the Doctor Karl podcast from Thursday as I left the house, and one of the first things he said was that he was ready for the next day's eclipse. I went, "Oh yeah, that's today, isn't it?" The other co-incidences then came into play. At first, it didn't look very promising - true, it was moments before dawn, but there was a mass of cloud on the horizon blocking everything but a pencil-thin beam of sunlight across the hazy sky.

But by the time I got up to the top of the hill, en route to work, the geometry and timing was perfect for me to see a red crescent sun just rising over the hills, framed by lots of cloud. Niiiiiice :)

drhoz @ 2013-05-10T07:04:00

2013-05-09T23:05:02Z

Dawn and solar eclipse - FUCK YEAH