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Skydiving ants
Feb. 20th, 2005 04:32 pmI hate clothes shopping. It's not so much the trying on or the finding of things. I don't mind that too much. It's nice when I can find something that fits me, looks good, and that I actually like (which unfortunately excludes a good 99.9% of the known articles of clothing out there). No, what bugs me is the part where I have to pay. For some inexplicable reason, I am fine with the fact that I probably have well over $100 worth of Megaman action figures sitting on my bookcase, but when I end up paying about $100 for a suit and new blouse which I actually *need,* my brain cringes at the thought. However, I can now be assured of looking quite spiffing for the job fair I'm going to on Tuesday, and I guess I can placate my inner accountant by doing something silly like saying, "Oh, look, I saved $130," since I got it at Nordstrom Rack. Besides, it's not like this outfit isn't going to be getting much use. On the contrary, since I'm desprately lacking in the Nice Business Attire department, I'll probably be wearing it to every single job interview I'm going to have in the upcoming months.
Completely switching subjects, for the senior ecology seminar I'm taking, every week we have to write a "journal entry" on some ecology-related articles we saw in either the popular press or some scientific journal. Normally this involves a lot of grabbing random journals like "Behavioral Ecology" or "American Midland Naturalist" off of the shelf and paging through them in search of something I can get through fairly easily. This week, I grabbed the latest issue of "Nature" off the shelf (it's a weekly general science magazine written by and for hard-core scientists), and found an article about Cephalotes atratus, a species of tree-dwelling Peruvian ants who, when they're attacked by predators, jump off the tree trunk. This seems like seriously weird behavior--the ants can't fly. But the authors of the article found out that the ants can sort of direct their free fall and almost glide over to a landing back on the tree trunk. My inner eight-year-old was all, "Cool! Skydiving ants!"
The inner eight-year-old decided that the other article I'll be doing a writeup on is about the unique ecosystems that develop on whale carcasses. "Wow, lookit all the stuff that live on dead whales! Nifty!" (yes, my inner eight-year-old uses words like "nifty." Don't look at me like that.)
Completely switching subjects, for the senior ecology seminar I'm taking, every week we have to write a "journal entry" on some ecology-related articles we saw in either the popular press or some scientific journal. Normally this involves a lot of grabbing random journals like "Behavioral Ecology" or "American Midland Naturalist" off of the shelf and paging through them in search of something I can get through fairly easily. This week, I grabbed the latest issue of "Nature" off the shelf (it's a weekly general science magazine written by and for hard-core scientists), and found an article about Cephalotes atratus, a species of tree-dwelling Peruvian ants who, when they're attacked by predators, jump off the tree trunk. This seems like seriously weird behavior--the ants can't fly. But the authors of the article found out that the ants can sort of direct their free fall and almost glide over to a landing back on the tree trunk. My inner eight-year-old was all, "Cool! Skydiving ants!"
The inner eight-year-old decided that the other article I'll be doing a writeup on is about the unique ecosystems that develop on whale carcasses. "Wow, lookit all the stuff that live on dead whales! Nifty!" (yes, my inner eight-year-old uses words like "nifty." Don't look at me like that.)
