if your child asks you where babies come from, please don’t tell a lie or make up a story, just tell them the truth about the giant claw machine and the
imagine if the oceans were replaced by forests and if you went into the forest the trees would get taller the deeper you went and there’d be thousands of undiscovered species and you could effectively walk across the ocean but the deeper you went, the darker it would be and the animals would get progressively scarier and more dangerous and instead of whales there’d be giant deer and just wow
In the language of fashion magazines and cosmetic ads, making up is typically portrayed as an aesthetic activity in which a woman can express her individuality. In reality, while cosmetic styles change every decade or so and while some variation in make-up is permitted depending on the occasion, making up the face is, in fact, a highly stylized activity that gives little rein to self-expression. Painting the face is not like painting a picture. At best, it might be described as painting the same picture over and over again with minor variations. Little latitude is permitted in what is considered appropriate make-up for the office and for most social occasions. Indeed, the woman who uses cosmetics in a genuinely novel and imaginative way is liable to be seen not as an artist but as an eccentric. Furthermore, since a properly made-up face is, if not a card of entry, at least a badge of acceptability in most social and professional contexts, the woman who chooses not to wear cosmetics at all faces sanctions of a sort which will never be applied to someone who chooses not to paint a watercolor.
— Sandra Lee Bartky, Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power (via barbarakrugers)
An electric eel leaping out the water to shock a fake alligator head.
This must be one of the most cool and weird videos to accompany a scientific paper this year so far. The video and experiment demonstrates how eels react to half-submerged predators by leaping up out of water and administering defensive volleys of high-voltage electricity
Electric eels (Electrophorus electricus) are shown to leap from the water to directly electrify threats. This shocking behavior likely allows electric eels to defend themselves during the Amazonian dry season, when they may be found in small pools and in danger of predation. The results are published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Leaping eel in real time
The study support Alexander von Humboldt’s story of electric eels attacking horses that had been herded into a muddy pool during the dry season in 1800 on a field trip to the Amazon.
The finding highlights sophisticated behaviors that have evolved in concert with the eel’s powerful electrical organs. By the way no one knows how an electric eel can electrocute its victim without shocking itself.
GIF: Leaping electric eel in slow motion. Watch video here
